I didn’t stop doing barre because I didn’t like it.I stopped because I didn’t feel “good at it” and that mattered for some reason.

This was an unconscious consensus for sure.

And it stuck.

The way subtle pressures rest on our body before the brain ever checks them.

I’m realizing now that a lot of my movement history lives there.In the quiet decisions.In the things I stopped trying without ever officially quitting.

This is my Body can, after all.Not my body should.Not my body used to.Just what my Body can do. Right now.

And lately, my body can do five minutes of barre.

Five minutes.That’s it.

And somehow, that’s enough.

💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about soreness. Not pain. Not injury. Just that dull, sometimes surprising physical soreness that shows up after movement. The kind that makes you pause and ask, wait, why now?

If you want to keep thinking about this with me, you’re welcome here.

What keeps catching my attention is not just that I get sore, but when I get sore. Sometimes it’s immediate. Sometimes it’s the next morning. And sometimes it shows up two or three days later, long after I’ve forgotten exactly which movement might have caused it. That timing feels different than it used to, and I’ve been curious about what that difference is asking of me.

If you want to keep thinking about this with me, you’re welcome to follow me here. https://mybodycan.substack.com

For a long time, I released stress by moving for a long time.

Long walks.Long hikes.Long bike rides.

Not fast. Not intense. Just long enough for my nervous system to settle into a rhythm and let whatever needed to move, move. I never thought of it as regulation back then. It was just what felt good. What worked.

And then, not so slowly I couldn’t do that.

Foot problems. Back problems. Endometriosis. Surgery. Recovery. Vertigo. Unpredictability.

It wasn’t one thing. It was a pileup. And somewhere along the way, the main way I knew how to get energy out of my body didn’t work.

I didn’t just lose exercise. I lost a pressure valve.

When energy has nowhere to go

Stress doesn’t politely stay in the brain.

It shows up in the body whether we invite it or not. And when I couldn’t move the way I used to, the stress didn’t disappear. It just stayed. It pooled. It poked. It pressed.

I didn’t always notice it right away. Sometimes it showed up as irritability. Sometimes exhaustion. Sometimes sadness that didn’t seem to belong. Sometimes it was just a sense of being weighed down by something I couldn’t name.

The hardest part was not knowing when my body would cooperate.

💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com

There’s a particular kind of frustration that shows up in midlife.

You’re moving your body.You’re getting stronger.You can feel progress, even if you can’t always see it.

And then your eating habits quietly slide sideways.

Nothing dramatic. Nothing intentional. Just a slow accumulation of “this is easier,” “this is around,” “this will do for now.” Suddenly, the feedback loop between effort and outcome feels… blurry.

That’s the moment I’ve been sitting with lately.

Not because I want to “fix” my body, but because I want to understand how easy it is to lose focus on what my body can do when food becomes noisy again.

💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com

How Long Is Enough Movement?

I’ve been thinking a lot about a question that kind of annoys me.

How long do we need to work out for it to “count”?

There’s something about that framing that feels gross to me. Not because it’s a bad question. It’s a very practical one. Life is busy. Energy is finite. Time is weird in midlife.

But the idea that movement only matters if it crosses some invisible threshold feels off.

Still, I think about it a lot. Probably because I’m living it.

Most of my workouts right now are short. Ten to fifteen minutes. Dumbbells for arms. Resistance bands. Booty bands. The usual suspects if you’ve been following along for a while. I’ve also added some fascia work, though I learned quickly that thirty minutes of that was a little too ambitious for me. So now I’m doing about ten minutes there too.

And here’s the thing. I feel progress.

Not visually. Not in a mirror. But in what my Body can do. In how it feels during the day. In how it functions when I’m not “working out” at all.

That shift is kind of the entire point of this project. It’s not about how I look. It’s about what I can do.

But even with that mindset, this question keeps coming up. Especially in conversations with other midlife women.

How long do we need to move?How long do we want to move?And are those the same thing?

💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com

How do you fall better?

It’s not a question I ever expected to ask. Falling feels like something you avoid, not something you train for. And yet, last week, after a completely ordinary misstep on a quiet street, I found myself asking it honestly.

I’m okay. Nothing dramatic happened. But what surprised me wasn’t the fall itself. It was how my body and my nervous system responded afterward.

A quick note before we continue

This project is now reader-supported.

Each month, 4 readers can sponsor the work so it stays open, ad-free, and unhurried.If that feels meaningful to you, you can sponsor a month here:https://zcal.co/i/AAUhO_89

Just select any of the dates in the month (just one date).No pressure. No paid subscriptions. A one time sponsorship option. Thank you.

💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com

When Rest Isn’t Enough

I’ve been sick again.

Not dramatically sick. Not emergency sick. Just that low grade, lingering, frustrating kind of sick that doesn’t knock you out all at once, but quietly rearranges your days.

The kind where you’re technically functioning, but something feels off.

For me, that off feeling shows up as disconnection.

Because movement, at least the way I experience it, isn’t just exercise. It’s how I stay in touch with myself. It’s how I know where I end and the day begins. It’s how I metabolize stress, anxiety, and whatever energy doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

And when I can’t move the way that feels natural or good, even in small ways, I start to feel less like me.

This episode of my Body can started with a question that felt almost ridiculous to say out loud.

💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com

What did I love to do as a kid, purely for the joy of it, that somehow disappeared when movement became serious?

Not productive.

Not corrective.

Not attached to a goal.

This episode, and this piece, came from remembering that movement doesn’t actually have to lead anywhere to be worth doing. It can just exist. It can meet us where we are. It can feel good in the moment and stop there.

💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com

I didn’t record this episode while lifting weights or balancing on one foot or stretching my hips on the floor. I recorded it while walking outside in Bilbao, Spain, past a fountain, toward the river, on a break from work. That detail matters.

Because this episode wasn’t really about gyms. It was about how my body responds to places, energy, sound, light, expectations, and pressure, and how I’m finally letting that information count.

For most of my life, I’ve assumed the problem was me.

Too sensitive. Too tired. Too overwhelmed. Too easily drained.

But what if the problem isn’t my body at all?

What if it’s the environments we keep asking our bodies to tolerate?

💡 Transcripts, links and more: https://mybodycan.substack.com

Vote for the mBc podcast!

We’ve been nominated for a Discover Podcast podcast award in the Health and Fitness category. Hurrah!

The Quiet Magic of Healing Sooner ✨

Some weeks feel ordinary on the surface: little routines, little experiments, tiny adjustments that all blend together. Then one small moment reminds me that my Body’s changing in ways I never expected in my fifties.

That happened to me this week. I expected to wake up with the usual neck and shoulder pain, the kind that settles in after a stressful day and hangs around like it paid rent. Instead, I woke up with the kind of mild discomfort that barely registers. For someone who’s spent more than a decade bracing for long stretches of soreness, that felt like quiet magic.

I’m still thinking about it. in fact from me but not me exactly.

💡 Transcripts, links and more: https://mybodycan.substack.com