Unlock the Vast Knowledge in Your Ancient DNA


DNA intuition khaled allen natural movement warrior spirit

Like magic, I went flying down the trail, smooth and easy as the wind on the mountainside, absolutely no bumps or bruises. It felt similar to riding a wave, when you have to give yourself up to a force of nature or wipe out, except that the force of nature, the wave I was riding, welled up from deep within me.

Applied Ancestry

The whole premise of natural movement is that, over billions of years, our environments encouraged adaptations within the species that led to us having certain capabilities. We learned skills as a species. Just as learning a skill for an individual requires memory and conditioning, so too does it for a species. Our species' memory is our genetic code, and the conditioning comes in the form of physical changes and adaptations. Our two legs and all the software that allows us to move ourselves upon them: that's the species equivalent of a runner's enlarged heart or a lifter's broad shoulders.

(Of course, our ability to develop those individual adaptations to specific stressors in our lives is also part of our ancestral heritage).

So, movements that most closely resemble those already ingrained into our ancestral memory are supported by an ancient knowledge. Practicing them can help us connect more deeply to our own intuition and instinct.

Sidestepping all the new age hippie woo woo (not that I normally do in my own life), this has a lot of pragmatic benefits:

As if often the case, a physical practice (in this case natural movement practiced in an appropriate context) can help us gain insight into ourselves that has applications far beyond the practice itself.

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For me, this realization has had far-reaching consequences:

So, besides the health and skill-based benefits, practicing natural movement has opened up a whole new area of capabilities: awareness, instinct, intuition, and reflex. These are all essential in order to maximize our ability to apply our physical skills, a connection that has always been emphasized in the martial arts and in warrior traditions from the Spartans to the Samurai. It was never enough to simply be strong and fast; discerning insight was always a defining characteristic of a true Warrior.