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Good morning… Well this is awkward. 😬

You might have not noticed me in your inbox last week. That was thanks to a flight that was cancelled for not just one day, but two. It led to a little chaos, and I wasn’t able to get a newsletter out last week. I apologize, but hope I make it up to you with this week’s thought-provoking article!

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🌀 The Body Is Not a Machine

We talk about our bodies like they’re cars. Fuel it, warm up, push hard, cool down. Maximize output. Minimize downtime.

But you are not a machine.

You’re an organic, living, breathing being.

Much of modern science has seen exponential growth in various fields in parallel with each other. Technology, exercise science, pharmaceutics, medicine, psychology… they’ve all seemingly exploded exponentially starting sometime in the 20th century and have skyrocketed us to where we are today.

With that, much of the lingo between fields has crossed over. We now talk about our bodies like machines and about machines like they’re living bodies.

Think about the advances in science from the year 150 to the year 200. How about from 1225 to 1275? Can you even name any significant differences?

Then think about the progress we’ve made from 1975 to 2025. It’s incomparable and nearly incomprehensible.

So as our science has evolved, our language has struggled to keep adapting. Thus, we use many of the same terms about our bodies as we do technology.

Blame modernism or capitalism or whatever else, but it’s our reality.

Why your body is not like a machine

Machines don’t adapt, feel, or heal like humans do. (Well, don’t bring AI into this; I don’t want to go down that dark path just yet.)

• When a machine breaks, it needs a part replaced by someone. When your body is injured, it heals itself.

• When a machine is idle, it decays. When you rest between activity, you restore and recover.

• Machines run in a straight line until they fail. As a human, you have seasons, cycles, moods, growth.

Listen, I get why we talk about trying to “fuel,” “optimize,” and “hack” our bodies. I’m guilty of much of that language, and it can certainly be useful and motivating in the right context.

But what if we grew up in any period prior to the industrial age? How would we think about our bodies then? What words would we use to describe them?

Other analogies for our bodies

Maybe your body is more like:

• A garden: it needs regular care and tending, but the goal is never perfection; it’s growth and a fruitful harvest.

• A relationship: it’s built on communication and trust, on listening and caring and responding.

• A river: it’s constantly moving, even when it looks still. Time passes and it keeps flowing, changing, and heading in a direction.

How else can you think of your body in ways that aren’t cold and mechanical?

Maybe we don’t have to be focused on efficiency, optimization, and productivity. What other goals can you have for your body? Beauty, harmony, joy, connection?

The bottom line

I get how the robo-talk helps us conceptualize health and fitness. Trust me, as someone who loves to track the data around my workouts and biometrics, I get it. And there can be great benefit from doing so!

But what if your workouts weren’t just about performance metrics or optimization?

What if they were just a way to check in with your body—to see what it’s asking for today?

You don’t need to “run like a well-oiled machine.” You need to live like a well-loved human.

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: Shift your internal narrative without changing your entire routine. For example, catch the language you use: Swap “I have to work out” for “I get to care for my body.”

Level 2: Make small, practical shifts toward a more organic movement practice. Consider scheduling an “unstructured movement session” once a week. No tracking. No PRs. Just curiosity.

Level 3: Build a new relationship with movement that honors cycles, softness, and adaptation. Adopt a seasonal training mindset. Plan your movement around energy cycles, not relentless progress. Maybe even choose a metaphor to live by for a month (e.g. garden, wave, tree) and let it guide your movement decisions.

✍️ Drew's Picks:

• In light of recent events *cough, American Airlines, cough*, I haven’t been able to accumulate any new picks for you lately. I’ll keep an eye out for the best links and products to recommend, and still appreciate if you send some my way!

Thanks for reading! Hope to see you back here again next week :)

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).