A female personal training client told me I was the first person she studied martial arts with who not only talked about the hips but also showed how the hips can move. She said commercial gym instructors (nearly always cishet men) just gave lip service to "power" (coded as masculine) coming from the hips—but never demonstrated or made space for hip mobility in training because, for them, fluid hip movement is stigmatized as sensual, feminine, or queer.
That comment landed hard, and I'm still unpacking it.
What does it mean when toxic culture doesn't just shape our minds—but our bodies, movements, or pains? What happens when instructors censor their own bodies to uphold a toxic Western performance of gender? When whole categories of movement become unspeakable—not through explicit prohibition, but through absence, ridicule, or discomfort?
These are not just aesthetic choices. They are restrictions—on learning, on possibility, on health. They shape how we move, what we avoid, and what we silently hurt through.
The chronic back and hip pain so many carry isn't just mechanical; it's also culturally enforced. Suffering can emerge from policing our own movements, holding tension where there could be fluidity, and clenching where there could be release. Think about the societal urge to "suck in" the belly. What does that do to the pelvis? To breath? To ease? Our body image and insecurities are similarly shaped.
These patterns are neither neutral nor natural. Toxic physical culture narrows the movement repertoire, delegitimizing softness, mobility, and difference. We must unlearn the shame—not just intellectually but somatically. For a physical practice to be meaningful, it has to reach this deep.
– Sam
