Crawling is Back in Fashion

I have rediscovered the art of crawling.

Most people spend the first year or so of life trying desperately to stop crawling and learn to walk. Apparently, I have decided to reverse the process.

My live-in carer despairs of my impatience. His favourite phrase is, “Wait a minute.” Far too often, I ignore the request. We laugh about it, but I know my impatience genuinely worries him.

Every morning I move from my recliner to my yoga mat for my exercises. There are two ways to get there.

The official method is for me to stand with his help, shuffle the couple of metres to the mat and then have him carefully lower me to the floor.

It works. It can also trigger freezing, challenge my balance and test his strength. Most of all, it is slow.

So I have developed an alternative strategy.

I go down first.

I slide from the chair onto the floor and make my way to the mat under my own steam. Sometimes it’s more of a bum shuffle than an elegant crawl, but let’s not get distracted by technicalities.

One important warning: this technique should never be attempted anywhere near a camera or a mirror. It is many things. Graceful is not one of them.

Surprisingly, once I’m on the floor, I’m in my happy place.

Years of yoga have taught me that balance matters much less when you’re already on the ground. My body seems to remember movements that it has forgotten while standing. For a little while, gravity stops being quite such an enemy.

Interestingly, rehabilitation researchers are studying hands-and-knees movement as a way of improving balance, trunk control and mobility in people with neurological conditions. Being close to the ground reduces both the fear and the risk of falling while still allowing the body to move.

That made me smile, although I arrived at the idea long before I came across the research.

It also made me realise that my son and I now have two rather unexpected things in common.

He is a special forces trained soldier and it happens to be that his watch has a built-in flashlight. Mine does too. At three o’clock this morning I accidentally discovered that mine even has a red beam – it is super useful and doesn’t hurt the eyes. I have no idea how I’d owned the watch for so long (a week) without noticing it, but at 3 a.m. it felt like I’d discovered a new toy.

The second thing we have in common is that we both know how to crawl.

Admittedly, our crawling is worlds apart. His was learned for military operations. Mine was learned simply to get from my recliner to my yoga mat.

Different reasons. Different worlds. The same skill.

As children, crawling is a milestone on the journey towards independence. As adults, we tend to see it as going backwards.

Perhaps it isn’t.

Perhaps it is simply finding the best way to keep moving.

Living with PSP has taught me that success isn’t always about doing things the normal way. Sometimes it means setting pride aside, adapting to reality and getting there by whatever route still works.

So yes, crawling is officially back in fashion.

And if it keeps me moving, I couldn’t care less what it looks like.