"Exercise doesn't make you tired. That's your mind giving up because your body is uncomfortable."
My words and my belief. My inspiration? Laurent Piemontesi, and the morning we spent in Lisses/Evry. He showed me precisely how much my mind gets in the way of my movement. I'm writing this because I'm not the only one with this challenge. What does your mind do in your life?
Face Yourself
What do you accept about yourself? What stares back at you in a mirror, in silent meditation or prayer, what guides the talking in your mind? The things I can do were in the "never" category in my mind, just a few years ago. I don't accept the limits of my mind anymore. I accept the scant limits of my body, and I also understand that I do not know my body as well as I would like. Every day, we talk ourselves out of something that is difficult or uncomfortable. We deceive the person we should care for the most. People say terrible things to themselves, in an effort to avoid facing who they are. Pharmaceutical companies have entire product lines built around helping us "deal with" pain instead of facing it and learning what it teaches. Pain, sadness, depression, it exists to remind us we have to face ourselves. There might be something about your body that intensifies the feeling. There's nothing wrong with that. You are only "unhealthy" if you deceive yourself.
When you deceive yourself, you live in a smaller world of possible. When you face yourself, impossible is a direction for development. No one who cares about you is going to say you are unable to do something. A doctor may advise against certain kinds of movement due to an injury. A trainer may suggest working on other movements first. Master your internal dialogue, and what other people say can be accepted as advice, or recognized as occasions where what you are doing or thinking of doing pushes into the impossible, and it makes them face themselves. Your courage may very well create fear in others, and they may try to deter your courage to avoid their own pain. Pain is a lesson. Restart your life as a student: learn only from teachers.
Teach to Learn
When you can explain or show something until others learn, then the knowledge has gone from something you keep to yourself to something you share and something that excites you. The role of student and teacher is interchangeable. Everyone has something to teach everyone else. If you live as a teacher, you perceive value in your own existence; if you live as a student, you perceive value in the existence of others. This balance of respect for self and others is crucial to the culture of the impossible.
If you live solely as a student, however, it is selfish. There is a giving in knowledge and wisdom, it is not hoarded like gold. Conversely, living solely as a teacher ends your life as a learner. No one has learned everything; the value of the knowledge of others is limitless. Not living as a student breeds disrespect for others, and it also can be dangerous, because the learning process can be forgotten by teachers.
Words are Victory
Language is the hammer against the iron of our minds; what we say to ourselves is as important as the words we use to say them. A dear friend of mine decided to stop smoking. She didn't quit. She just stopped. It was amazing. She sacrificed a worn-out pleasure. Her language was vital to her respect for the transformation. Quitters need patches and plans, and they never own a change, they force it into the hands of another. Reducing the fat level in a body isn't the same thing as losing weight. Losers don't bring about valuable transformation, they bring loss. Someone else I know has trimmed her body weight by 65 pounds. She didn't lose anything. She gained knowledge and interest in good foods, and saw her previous diet as apathy and pleasure-seeking.
Release yourself from a habit; gain freedom and ability through change. Words of a conqueror breed an indomitable spirit. This spirit is the heart of those in the culture of the impossible.
As much as we speak to ourselves victoriously about the changes we desire, we must also respect the changes sought after by those around us. This is being a teacher for words of victory to those around us. Bring the culture of the impossible to your life and the changes you desire, share this culture with others, teach them what you have learned in your life, and always be a student of those whose lives bring you knowledge and wisdom.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Active to Athlete
In recent days, a dear friend of mine who is the process of physical transformation, asked me what it takes to go from losing weight to being fit. Essentially, it is rather straightforward: stop caring about whatever your ideals or objectives are and simply enjoy your body.
Active
Active people do physical things with their bodies regularly enough that they are actually using their bodies. If someone is getting light to moderate aerobic activity three times a week for an hour at a time or more, they are considered active. Active keeps you alive, and it maintains your body. Someone in retirement likely has a daily constitutional activity, simply to stay active. It could be walking or a Tai Chi routine, perhaps yoga stretching. Active will not transform, but it will maintain. Active can drive off some health issues. Active is a great place to reach if you've been sedentary for far too long, and your doctor has beat you over the head with Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. You are going to look the same, more or less, and with proper dieting, you might lose some weight eventually, if you have been sedentary previously. Maybe you are comfortable being Active. It is certainly responsible to be Active. Is it enough?
There is no transformation. Active is maintenance. It is a bookmark for physique. It is a comfortable plateau.
Physique
At some point, everyone looks in a mirror. They look at other bodies, or their bodies are compared to other bodies, or they simply don't like what they see. This isn't really all that connected to health and fitness. Sure, medical statistics exist that say "if you are this tall, you should weigh this much, more or less." That's a useful guideline, and I can't remember the last time I cared at all about that. In the 70's, the fashion trend was sickly thin bodies for women in the USA, and today in some countries and cultures, being very thin is meant to be normal. Likewise, in other countries, a bit of girth is considered more attractive, because it means you can afford to eat well. The most important thing to remember about your physique is that as long as you are active, there's nothing wrong with the way you look in this regard. However, that may not be satisfying. If you ever feel you have to move your body into an appearance that isn't yours, you are being victimized by having one image overlaid on top of your own, whether you are doing it yourself, or others are doing it to you. This isn't something you should have to do, ever. You may not like your body, however, and that's really the issue with physique.
When I was in school, I remember watching my classmates develop different bodies. Some of the boys lifted weights all the time, going for kind of a beefcake look. Some of the girls took up swimming a lot (which is easy in a coastal community), and others got into competitive field sports, like soccer. Still more, and this is what I did, took up running. Slight builds, incredibly tone, and lean. Sure, there were other activities, but to my eyes, I saw bodies of boys and girls end up in different categories of physique. Admittedly, the girls got a bit more of my attention because I was a teenage boy. The swimmers had powerful, smooth forms. Unlike the runners, they didn't have a chiseled look to their form, but they looked stronger. The field athletes looked about the middle. Certainly, there were dancers, ice skaters, gymnasts, and the like. Every body had a different characteristic. This came from what muscles developed.
Building physique is about building the physical characteristics of what you like to do with your body. If you don't do much with your body, your body will lack characteristic. Whether you are as skinny as a rail, or quite a bit larger, you will lack definition. Finding your physique is about finding what you like to do with your body. This creates a transformation, just by learning what you like to do. This is something that others can see, but really, the appearance is more of a side effect and it isn't important, but it does tell a story.
Athlete
Understanding that the lessons I learned from being a teenage boy in a coastal community and studying physique were initially rather puerile, there is still some more responsible value in the otherwise jejune discoveries. All the boys and girls around me that I observed were telling me about what they like. I'm not a boy anymore, but my body tells my story. I no longer live by the coast, but I do enjoy moving my body. Mostly, I'm an acrobat, and my persona in YogaQuest says as much. I used to be a distance athlete. My story changed a few years ago. It used to be how far I could travel, now it is about moving gracefully and powerfully.
Your body tells everyone around you a story. Face it, if you met someone who could bench-press 400 pounds, you'd be able to see it. Likewise, if you met someone who could ride a bicycle further than the range of all but one manufacturer of electric cars, you would know. What story does your body tell? That might be a personal and difficult question if it is a story you don't want to share. Maybe it is time for a new story.
If you feel like you have no physique, you may simply have a story about your body that you don't like. So, what is an athlete? It is someone who has a story they tell well with their own body. Our entire lives are a story, that's the point of our existence. Finding your story is how your physique changes, either to something you like to see for yourself, or something you enjoy sharing with others.
So, becoming an athlete is as simple as finding an activity you like to do with your body, and exploring its bounds. How far can you move, how fast can you move, what height or distance can you reach, how much can you carry or lift, how much can you control the expression of motion in your body -- find a question you want to answer for yourself and answer it. Are you a warrior and want to express strength, tactic, and agility? Are you a gentler person who moves beautifully and carefully?
Find an environment where you can explore options for expressing your story through your body, and enjoy the process. Your physique will change and your story will emerge. Let go of expectations, and simply pursue the physical aspect of your identity by living and by doing as much as your passion will take you. If you look back after a few months and see a physical transformation, remember that it started by a change in attitude first.
-Joseph S.
About the Author: Joseph is the director of Geek Physique, which is a popular club in the Minneapolis-based Geek Partnership Society. It offers a variety of activities, giving participants an opportunity to explore what they like doing with their bodies. The activities are fun and often unique. Find out what's going on today at the Geek Physique Website .
Active
Active people do physical things with their bodies regularly enough that they are actually using their bodies. If someone is getting light to moderate aerobic activity three times a week for an hour at a time or more, they are considered active. Active keeps you alive, and it maintains your body. Someone in retirement likely has a daily constitutional activity, simply to stay active. It could be walking or a Tai Chi routine, perhaps yoga stretching. Active will not transform, but it will maintain. Active can drive off some health issues. Active is a great place to reach if you've been sedentary for far too long, and your doctor has beat you over the head with Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. You are going to look the same, more or less, and with proper dieting, you might lose some weight eventually, if you have been sedentary previously. Maybe you are comfortable being Active. It is certainly responsible to be Active. Is it enough?
There is no transformation. Active is maintenance. It is a bookmark for physique. It is a comfortable plateau.
Physique
At some point, everyone looks in a mirror. They look at other bodies, or their bodies are compared to other bodies, or they simply don't like what they see. This isn't really all that connected to health and fitness. Sure, medical statistics exist that say "if you are this tall, you should weigh this much, more or less." That's a useful guideline, and I can't remember the last time I cared at all about that. In the 70's, the fashion trend was sickly thin bodies for women in the USA, and today in some countries and cultures, being very thin is meant to be normal. Likewise, in other countries, a bit of girth is considered more attractive, because it means you can afford to eat well. The most important thing to remember about your physique is that as long as you are active, there's nothing wrong with the way you look in this regard. However, that may not be satisfying. If you ever feel you have to move your body into an appearance that isn't yours, you are being victimized by having one image overlaid on top of your own, whether you are doing it yourself, or others are doing it to you. This isn't something you should have to do, ever. You may not like your body, however, and that's really the issue with physique.
When I was in school, I remember watching my classmates develop different bodies. Some of the boys lifted weights all the time, going for kind of a beefcake look. Some of the girls took up swimming a lot (which is easy in a coastal community), and others got into competitive field sports, like soccer. Still more, and this is what I did, took up running. Slight builds, incredibly tone, and lean. Sure, there were other activities, but to my eyes, I saw bodies of boys and girls end up in different categories of physique. Admittedly, the girls got a bit more of my attention because I was a teenage boy. The swimmers had powerful, smooth forms. Unlike the runners, they didn't have a chiseled look to their form, but they looked stronger. The field athletes looked about the middle. Certainly, there were dancers, ice skaters, gymnasts, and the like. Every body had a different characteristic. This came from what muscles developed.
Building physique is about building the physical characteristics of what you like to do with your body. If you don't do much with your body, your body will lack characteristic. Whether you are as skinny as a rail, or quite a bit larger, you will lack definition. Finding your physique is about finding what you like to do with your body. This creates a transformation, just by learning what you like to do. This is something that others can see, but really, the appearance is more of a side effect and it isn't important, but it does tell a story.
Athlete
Understanding that the lessons I learned from being a teenage boy in a coastal community and studying physique were initially rather puerile, there is still some more responsible value in the otherwise jejune discoveries. All the boys and girls around me that I observed were telling me about what they like. I'm not a boy anymore, but my body tells my story. I no longer live by the coast, but I do enjoy moving my body. Mostly, I'm an acrobat, and my persona in YogaQuest says as much. I used to be a distance athlete. My story changed a few years ago. It used to be how far I could travel, now it is about moving gracefully and powerfully.
Your body tells everyone around you a story. Face it, if you met someone who could bench-press 400 pounds, you'd be able to see it. Likewise, if you met someone who could ride a bicycle further than the range of all but one manufacturer of electric cars, you would know. What story does your body tell? That might be a personal and difficult question if it is a story you don't want to share. Maybe it is time for a new story.
If you feel like you have no physique, you may simply have a story about your body that you don't like. So, what is an athlete? It is someone who has a story they tell well with their own body. Our entire lives are a story, that's the point of our existence. Finding your story is how your physique changes, either to something you like to see for yourself, or something you enjoy sharing with others.
So, becoming an athlete is as simple as finding an activity you like to do with your body, and exploring its bounds. How far can you move, how fast can you move, what height or distance can you reach, how much can you carry or lift, how much can you control the expression of motion in your body -- find a question you want to answer for yourself and answer it. Are you a warrior and want to express strength, tactic, and agility? Are you a gentler person who moves beautifully and carefully?
Find an environment where you can explore options for expressing your story through your body, and enjoy the process. Your physique will change and your story will emerge. Let go of expectations, and simply pursue the physical aspect of your identity by living and by doing as much as your passion will take you. If you look back after a few months and see a physical transformation, remember that it started by a change in attitude first.
-Joseph S.
About the Author: Joseph is the director of Geek Physique, which is a popular club in the Minneapolis-based Geek Partnership Society. It offers a variety of activities, giving participants an opportunity to explore what they like doing with their bodies. The activities are fun and often unique. Find out what's going on today at the Geek Physique Website .
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