There are sooo many areas in our body that we don't sense well. This might seem surprising - I mean, we live in our bodies all day every day, so don't we know them pretty well? It's true that we connect to some parts of our bodies well - the ones we tend to use a lot, in the ways that we use them the most.

But have you ever stood up, barefoot, and tried to lift just your *left big toe* straight up off the floor? How did that go? Did your other toes want to lift too? Did your face scrunch up as you tried to figure out how to lift just that one individual toe by itself?

Or try doing some wrist circles (make fists and roll your wrists around) and notice: are you actually moving your actual wrist joints, or are your forearms twisting around, giving the appearance of wrist movement? Same thing goes for every other joint in your body! Can you consciously isolate and move that area through a controlled full range of motion? (Probably no.) Or do other body parts want to jump in and help, meaning that the single area you're trying to isolate and control isn't actually moving well? (Probably yes!)

You can't move an area well if you can't sense that area in the first place. Therefore the real pre-requisite to improving our mobility is to improve our internal image of ourselves - also called *increasing the clarity of the body maps in our brain*.

And how do we do that? Well through muscle contraction and movement, of course! But ideally through smart, intentional movements designed for increasing body awareness - like the classes in my online yoga class library, for example ($8.99/month & you can cancel anytime!)

Once we can sense all of our parts well, we can move them well! 👏🏼