False Grip Rows + Rebirths

Movement of the Week

Want to move like a super-human-animal, with a light-feeling, connected body?

Developing the feet and hands is important.

Yes, they already get a lot of use and… yes… the whole body benefits when we train them intentionally, in novel positions.

Why?

The feet and hands are major sensory areas and when we move them with intention, it helps us naturally relax and organise the rest of our body.

Today we’ll focus on the hands. When the tendons in the hands are tensioned in a certain way, there is an effect on the elbows and shoulders. You can see this through the asian martial arts traditions, especially — and also in the mudras held by yogis.

We’re going to focus on the false grip ring row (featured in the Basic Beast program) to understand + build this.

If two arms is easy, try one arm. Here’s the instructional video.

https://youtu.be/H7SFz3wZlAY?si=kr4y4z9e4g9CZToa

Insight of the Week

When your stress cup is overflowing, it’s not only okay, but absolutely necessary to prioritise some things and postpone others.

You must take care of yourself as best you possibly can — I’m talking about the basic adulting stuff — eating, sleeping, sweating, pausing to breathe even when others may seem to be rushing, and enjoying whatever you can enjoy.

And you don’t need to feel the slightest bit guilty about this, because the guilt will drain more energy that could otherwise be used to serve others.

If you think beating yourself up will help you show up better, you’re kidding yourself. It absolutely does not work long term. Someone pays. The pain creeps out in moments of tiredness.

There is no viable alternative to loving yourself, no matter what choices you make downstream. Even if you aren’t understood, and even if others can’t accept it.

People are going to hurt because of how you are.

And that sucks. But it’s life. We’re all in the human condition together.

Nobody has it figured out all the time.

It’s inevitable that we’ll let someone down at some point — and it’s okay. In fact, sometimes it’s the medicine we need.

But you should make every effort to let people down well, and maintain your own dignity in doing so. This way, it’s little less painful for both of you to regroup. There is an art to this and it involves maintaining absolute love, care and good-will while you break the news that you ______.

In other words, you maintain an unconditional self-respect and internally acknowledge that you are both the product of your past experiences and responsible for acting differently in future.

Now, what about apologies?

I have an interesting relationship with apologies.

Apologies aren’t a magic word to silence others and make the struggle go away. They are not a replacement for absolute ownership of your part in things. And there’s no guarantee of mutual agreement post-apology…

In a sense, apologies aren’t necessary. If you had known better, you would have acted better, but you did your best with what you knew at the time, so if you’re 100% committed to taking absolute ownership, what’s the point in being sorry?

Maybe there’s a place for “I’m sorry”… but use it very sparingly.

What’s more powerful, in my opinion, is to say, “It hurts me to see the pain and inconvenience this has caused you, I see that you are doing your best to hold it I’ll do my best to learn from, and repair this. What do you need right now?”

Say it out loud.

Say it to yourself.

Say it with your eyes.

Say it with your actions.

Say it regardless of what happens next.

An Update

Obviously the writing comes out freshest when it relates to something I’ve recently integrated, and this is certainly the case today.

The last 10 days has felt like an especially deep excavation of suppressed emotion and a process of painful karmic purification, healing stuff that has been festering inside me for a long time.

Where I used to withdraw from conflict, I am learning to lean in with even more love, and to listen without closing.

Where I used to feign weakness or be profuse in my apologies so that others would go easy on me, I now require the truth from them, because I have learned to hold it without blaming myself for my past.

And it’s crazy how much simple stuff like the standing practices have helped (tai chi, relaxation training… the stuff in my Free Stance Series) because if I wasn’t able to reduce stress using these tools, there is no way I’d be able to function the way I currently am.

Again and again, I come back to walking the talk and applying what I share with you in my own life, because physical practice has helped me process some of the hardest things, so much more gracefully… and to create something beautiful from what would otherwise feel like an intolerable mess.

With love,

Jack