Time is alive

Jay Griffiths’ A Sideways Look at Time is full of poetic examples the world over in which time is animate and “characterized rather than counted.” There are places where early evening is considered “cattle-dust-time,” and where January and November are known as the months of “Snow Crust” and “Slender Wind” respectively.

This characterizing instead of counting approach is particularly fruitful when applied to exercise and the way you generally move through the world. Are you often in a rush? When you work out, do you have a tendency to prioritize quantity or quality? Your nervous system (and your joints) know the difference! We can all benefit by opening up slivers in our day when we allow ourselves to think of time in a softer sense, and let it spill over into they way we move.