Should I Force or Yield, or Neither?

Thank you for being here.

This newsletter is best enjoyed with a few deep breaths, and a nice cup of something.

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Here's what we'll cover today:

Part 1: Body guidance - to help you with moving, feeling and healing better.

Part 2: A life insight - to enrich your inner world and work more harmoniously with your outer world.

Part 3: An update, highlight or candid share from my life, often with a cheeky plug at the end.

This week we're blending Part 1 and 2.

Body Guidance + Life Insight are combined into one.

We're going to talk about transforming your relationship with training AKA practice.

Does your physical practice / training ever feel like drudgery?

...and do you find yourself avoiding what you "know is good for you", even though doing more of it would probably be better?

Perhaps your first thought in response to this is "yes, it does feel like drudgery, and yes, I do avoid it even though I need more."

The short one line answer is this: play more as an entry ritual to training, and take notes on how the session felt afterwards.

If you read nothing else, this is good for today.

But if you're a curious psycho-analyser like me, you'll enjoy this next part.

If you're stuck in drudgery or lack of progress, you probably spend a fair bit of your time operating in one of two modes: forcing or yielding.

Mode One → Forcing yourself to get things done even when you don't want to, and even when you're not in a great state to be doing so... Someone probably taught you early on in life that living meant forcing, and you internalised that and began forcing yourself as a life strategy. Your dialogue is around strength. But because this is your familiar pattern, you unconsciously make life choices which require you to continue to be forceful with yourself, or even with others... so you tend not to get the chance to yield. You'd rather deal with things before they become issues, except that you have an unconscious need to create things to force against, because that's what is most familiar to you.

Or...

Mode Two → Yielding to your feelings and allowing them to dictate your actions, which helps you feel a sense of pressure relief. You've learnt that yielding seems to be a safer strategy than forcing, so when things just aren't flowing and the external isn't inviting your full expression, you're happy to redirect your energy. When you feel that internal pressure build up to a point where it's uncomfortable, you become like water. You adapt because maybe this just isn't for you. But in your yielding to the external, you end up gradually diluting yourself... realising that you haven't really grown for a while. You respond to others on the level they're at, but never choose the playing field. In doing so, you disempower yourself (self denial) in order to feel safe.

Now what usually happens is we lean into one mode to compensate for having spent too much time in the other.
And when we go deeper, we see that when we're forcing in one area, or one relationship, it's because we're sneakily yielding in another, and vice versa. Deep, insanely interesting stuff that we cover in Baseline week two.

For example, maybe you've spent so much of your life forcing, or feeling as though you were forced, that now, all you want is to yield and go with the flow. Or maybe you're the opposite: you've noticed a tendency to be too passive... too flexible. And you're feeling that if you don't knuckle down and just get it done, it'll never happen.

As long as you fall in love with one mode and fear the other, you're trapped, and bound to repeat the cycle.

You'll force and yield. Surge and then crash.

You need to recognise that neither one is the way. And you need to see how much energy you've spent over time over-correcting for your reactivity (which means flip-flopping from one side to the other).

Because these two modes are actually best friends in a dance. They're playing together, except you're taking that seriously.

Forcing and yielding are one pattern, merely captured in two different moments in time.

Imagine this dynamic expressed as a wave.

Forcing is the positive (+) pole, or the peak of the wave.

And yielding is the negative (-) pole, or the trough.

Now what comes after the peak?

And what comes after the trough?

Exactly. A proportionate, compensatory oscillation between one mode and the other.

The waves keep coming. It's the pendulum of life.

There is no magic fix, but you can learn to soul-surf this ever-unfolding process like an absolute pro.

To simply remember this principle (polarity), and embrace a playful approach, will allow you to move forward with a little more peaceful potency, and a little less reactivity.

You'll gradually begin to naturally become aware of the positive in the negative and the negative in the positive.
You'll become un-moveable and unshakeable by adapting in the moment rather than gripping or running away.

But you have to keep moving forward so you can collapse this dualistic trap. There is work to be done in the noticing, and in the reformation of old patterns. I don't want you to be passive, at all. And I don't want you to be tyrannical, either. Once again, be playful and be invested.

A good teacher will help you navigate this process by helping you notice what tendencies you're slipping into, and encouraging you to explore your own biases in more interesting ways, mining the lessons from your own struggles while building a formidable skillset for the future.

They'll accelerate your growth rate, without doing it for you.

You need to be the one steering the ship... and the teacher is there to help you with the major roadblocks so you can move through more change in this lifetime.

Now the biggest obstacle to enjoyment of anything, never mind a physical practice, is the thought that:

• you're going to have the wrong kind of experience (suffering)

• it's going to last for too long (unbearable)

• you won't learn anything (looping)

And all of these things are possible... you can get stuck, hit a wall, make no progress and it can feel unbearable.

But teacher or not, you can still persist, and you should.

Because nothing ever stays the same for long, even if it seems not to be changing.

So be flexible and disciplined enough to keep showing up consistently, in better ways.

Part 3: An Update

Cohort One of Baseline just finished and you can see what people said about it here.​

If you've been following along for a while, are interested but want to chat first, you can book a call with me there too ^.

That's all for today.

Let me know if this e-mail resonated with you, or felt useful?

I love hearing your feedback!

Much love,
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- Jack