Movement and creativity are inextricably linked. When we create, we are conceptually moving away from the way things are now in an effort to express an idea or solve a problem in a new way. Often, this conceptual, creative movement is helped by literal, physical movement. Mathematician Dan Rockmore captures this idea well in a recent article titled The Myth and Magic of Generating New Ideas for The New Yorker where he describes that many of his breakthrough creative moments came while physically moving. He explains, “the key here isn’t fitness—it’s just a feeling of being free, of forgetting for a moment that we are bound by gravity and logic and convention, of letting the magic happen.”
It’s just a feeling of being free. When we feel free in our body, we feel more free in our mind. We feel more free to create, and perhaps even more free to feel. The words on our office wall read, “Feel Free to Move,” but we view that concept far beyond the physical act of moving our bodies. We know that by moving more freely, we are able to create more freely, and vice versa.
We agree with Rockmore. It’s not just about fitness. It’s about freedom. If we look at freedom as our motivation for moving, it removes some of the pressure that we impose on ourselves when we think about it as fitness—the pressure of needing to be thinner, stronger, and more flexible before we even start, or of thinking we need to wear certain clothes, be in a certain place, or know more than we do now. None of those things are actually required for us to start moving. They just make it easier to put it off until tomorrow. But if it’s about freedom and creativity, we can’t have the same pressure. It changes the game. We’re simply moving, unbound by logic and convention, simply letting the magic happen—and as we make it a habit, seeing the effects of that magic spill over into every other aspect of our lives
