Lessons from a sea squirt

I will make this quick.

There is an animal that lives in the ocean. Okay, there are many, many animals that live in the ocean, but this little animal that I am discussing today is called the sea squirt.

When the sea squirt is a young lad, it swims around the ocean as larva. It has a nerve cord, which functions as a brain, allowing it to frolic throughout the water.

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As the sea squirt grows up, it desires a simpler life. It attaches itself to a hard surface, consumes its brain and lives out the rest of its life on its firm surface, not moving.

(Random fact: sea squirts also produce natural products that are being studied for potential medicinal usage, such as cancer treatment.)

What’s interesting to neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert is that the sea squirt has a brain while it bebops around the ocean. Once it stops moving, the brain becomes unnecessary. So it eats it, consuming its own nervous system because why keep something around that requires energy when you are no longer using it?

If you take this a step further (which he does in his wonderful TED talk about the brain and movement), this means brain’s primary function is for the planning and execution of movement.

So what is one of the best things you can do for your cognitive and mental health?

If the sea squirt is any indicator, move. How amazing is that?

Two more things:

I am teaching a livestream workshop on the feet and their role in movement in Zurich this Thursday. I am super excited about the content, it’s an online workshop and if you can’t attend live, you will receive the recording within 24 hours. (This is the last workshop for a while. Register here.) As an added resource, I am including the 30 gait video tutorials for those who register from…

The Choose Your Own Adventure Movement Program. It’s a 22 page downloadable PDF with over 120 exercises and video tutorials split up into 5 categories:

• Strength

• Mobility

• Gait

• Coordination

• Stability

It’s available until the end of the month and then it disappears. More information about it can be found here.

Off to go run for my brain.

Warmly,

Jenn