Physical Activity Australia: Movement as medicine: Rethinking physical activity for the next generation

This article explores the evolving role of movement in physical, emotional, and social development across a lifetime.

It calls for a shift away from metrics-based fitness and toward whole-person, nervous- system-informed approaches to physical activity that centre stability, connection, and relational capacity. With insights from Bluearth’s decades of work, it advocates for policy reform, practitioner training, and community-led solutions that reframe movement as medicine and as a return to what makes us human.

A new baseline: From performance to presence

In a post-pandemic landscape marked by rising screen time, mental health challenges, and widening physical disparities across generations, Australia’s movement crisis has become more than an individual health issue, it’s a societal one.

While gyms, personal trainers, schools, sports and health clubs have made remarkable progress in offering structured programs, training plans, and performance-based outcomes, a more foundational question is now emerging:How do we reconnect movement to meaning, not just metrics?

The answer may lie not in what we do, but in how we move.

Physical literacy 2.0: A nervous- system-informed view of capacity

Traditional definitions of physical literacy have focused on competency in sport and skill-based achievement. A new conversation is emerging, one that is more nuanced and more inclusive.A nervous-system-informed view of physical capacity, one that includes breath, posture, awareness, attention, proprioception, connection, and internal stability as essential components of wellbeing is emerging.

Physical literacy 2.0 fosters a deeper relationship with self and others. This shift isn’t about abandoning strength or fitness goals, far from it. The aim is to embed them within a broader foundation that reduces injury, enhances mental wellbeing, and supports lifelong participation.

This approach nurtures emotional regulation, social confidence, and cognitive resilience turning movement into a medium of learning, not just exertion.

Through our work with Bluearth Foundation, whether in classrooms or clinical settings, we’ve seen the power of this approach firsthand.

Children in our Active Schools programs report improved confidence, calmer emotional states, and better classroom engagement. Adults trained in our educator pathways describe a renewed sense of purpose and embodied leadership.

Movement as relationship

Perhaps the biggest shift of all is philosophical. We are moving from a mechanistic view of fitness, where movement is something we do to the body, to a relational one, where movement is a conversation with the body. In this view, movement becomes not just something we ‘do’, but something we live from.

Beyond children: Whole-person development over a lifetime

While many movement interventions focus on childhood, often through school-based programs, this work is too important to be siloed by age or setting. What’s needed is a lifespan approach to whole-person development.

At different stages of life, our movement needs change, but our need to feel safe in our bodies, connected to others, and present in our environments never goes away.

Whether in classrooms, gyms, homes, or clinical settings, the opportunity is the same: To treat movement as a primary input into physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development at every age.

The role of fitness professionals in a changing landscape

Fitness professionals are increasingly being called upon to do more than just count reps.

They are mentors, motivators, and often frontline responders to the mental and physical distress that comes from sedentary, overstimulated modern life.

Physical Activity Australia and Bluearth advocate for a broader recognition of the professional scope of movement educators. It also calls for policy reform, sector-wide upskilling, and better funding structures to support inclusive, community-led movement initiatives.

The future of fitness is high-touch, not just high-tech

In an age of AI, screens, and wearable tech, the next evolution of the fitness industry may not be louder, or faster, it may be deeper.

The key isn’t just more access or equipment. It’s meaning. It’s supporting people to feel at home in their own bodies, not just to perform in them.

This doesn't mean we abandon athleticism or performance, it means we reconnect them to the soil of human development: Stability, adaptability, awareness, and relationship.

The question we should be asking isn’t “How do we get more people moving?” But rather: “How do we move in ways that bring us fully alive?”

A call for collaboration

The challenges we face, inactivity, isolation, disconnection, chronic stress, are systemic. So too must be our response.

Fitness professionals, allied health practitioners, educators, policy makers, architects, designers, local councils, and community leaders each have a role to play. We must begin to think ecologically, relationally, and interdisciplinary.

If we are to build a more resilient, connected, and capable population, we need to transform how we participate in physical activity, not just physically, but socially and emotionally as well.

Funding, policy, and the path forward

As attention turns to the prevention of chronic disease and the rising cost of reactive healthcare, there is a critical opportunity to embed movement into the design of schools, workplaces, and communities, not as an afterthought, but as a core pillar of human development.

What does this look like in practice?

• Grants that support place-based physical literacy programs in regional and underserved communities.

• Upskilling for fitness professionals in holistic movement practices, posture and alignment, nervous system and trauma- informed movement.

• Co-designed programs between educators, health professionals, and sport leaders.

• Greater policy alignment between fitness, education, and mental health.

• Incentives for movement integration across workplaces, community spaces, and public planning.

These aren’t idealistic goals. They’re the next logical step in a sector that already understands the power of movement, and now has the science and public will to make it systemic.

Movement, meaning, and the next generation

The next generation thrives in spaces where movement feels natural and joyful. It learns from adults who inhabit their bodies with confidence, and from environments that invite exploration instead of enforcing obligation.

At Bluearth and Physical Activity Australia, movement is valued as education, prevention, and connection. It is not a remedy for what is wrong, but a return to what is essential in being human.

When movement deepens our relationship with the ground beneath us, the body we live in, and the people around us, it becomes more than exercise. It becomes the practice of being alive.

By Physical Activity Australia, powered by the Bluearth Foundation Author: Bettina Freake (Director, Bluearth Foundation)

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