One of my all-time favorite nerd-tastic words is 'affordance'.
According to trusty wikipedia, 'affordances are what the environment offers the individual'.
It's such a great way of describing the profound ways that we compliment our environment, being shaped by our surroundings even as we shape those very surroundings.
An affordance is that window ledge that offers you the perfect lookout perch, that 5-gallon bucket that, when flipped over, transforms into a perfect drum, and also that pesky crack in the sidewalk that you subconsciously change stride to accommodate.
Great designers think about the way that products 'afford' their users certain possibilities, as do urban planners, architects, and sports scientists.
In each realm, the fact that humans use direct awareness of environmental cues to shape their understanding of the world--and their unique possibilities within that world--means that if you can change someone's environment, even subtly, you can definitively change their life.
🤯
As a fitness coach, focused on how to impact the internal environment of bodies, I also see this interaction between a person and their environment at play when they access MOAR movement options (by expanding the usable range of motion of their joints).
Suddenly, that too-high-to-reach-shelf is not so high when your shoulder allows your arm bones to go alllllll the way behind your ear.
Suddenly that low cupboard where you keep your big stock pot is not a job for hands-and-knees, not when you have a hip that allows you to squat or lunge down to grab it.
Suddenly that too-steep-for-my-knees bike ride is not just doable but down right exhilarating (that's what's going on in the pic above--photo cred to the inimitable @true_spokes )
Of course, this 'sudden' re-orientation within our environments is not necessarily quick--the work of changing our tissues to accommodate more stable movement is substantial, and takes persistence.
But the pay-off can be life-changing.
How would your world change if your joints afforded you even 5% more access to your movement dreams?