This One’s A Banger!
Thank you so much for being here. This e-mail contains three things:
1. Therapeutic movement guidance
2. An insight you can apply somewhere in your life
3. A personal reflection / update
1. Why You Should Build Comfier Backbends
And how your head position (airway) could be restricting your pain-free range
Disc injuries, chronic lower back pain and hernias are all just some of the reasons I now choose to make back-bends a central part of my practice. They are a great reference point (check-in movement) to have in your physical practice, because they reveal:
The state of your body on any given day
Tight hips? Tight thoracic? Feeling stiff, jammed and locked up rather than elongated and elastic? You're about to find out how safe and connected your system is really feeling.
Awareness of your mindset + self-relationship
Are you forcing yourself into deeper ranges that you aren't ready for out of impatience, and therefore sacrificing both gains and joy? Or are you embracing my body's actual needs on the day, figuring out where you're stuck, and supporting yourself with the right stimulus?
Evaluation of whether your training is working
If your goal is to have a healthy body and fearless, strong, bendy spine, then you can use the strength of your back-bends as a test of whether your training is actually helping. I guarantee that if you train in a way that makes back-bends stronger and more comfortable, that training is also going to have incredible all-round effects on your life.
Here's a really accessible way to start exploring back-bends.
If you've got a sore back and have been sitting all day, go easy. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with your body... you're just jumping into new, intense ranges too fast. Going for a walk to gently open your hips, staying hydrated and getting sustained low intensity cardio in should be your priority. If you're doing that, then it's time to start exploring exercises like the one below.
2. Stop Asking for Ease While Practicing Forcefulness.
Do you want to be an effortful try-er?
Or do you want to be an effortless do-er?
The energy (e-motion) you're cross wiring with your relationships (with movement, work, your partner) is what forms the meaning within those relationships.
So, when you repeat an activity (gym, yoga, discussion) while holding a particular energy, you CREATE and BECOME more of that thing.
This happens via the formation of belief programs.
Examples:
Gym (to get strong) + Force (anger, frustration) = "strength = anger... no anger, no strength"
Yoga (to get enlightened) + Quiet Spaces (oooh how nice) = "enlightnenment = quiet, nice spaces... no nice spaces, no enlightenment"
Partner (connection + love) + Fear You Can't Be Yourself with Them = "love = not being myself... no pretending, no love"
TRICKY, right?
Yeah. But don't worry, there's a three step process to help you with this, which I'm currently teaching my online groups.
Practice feeling your body without adding storytelling
This is not the same thing as hyper-vigilance + engaging in stories about your body, but you can still feel your body while those stories are playing out, so don't worry if they come up. Just let em be, and add more feeling of the body at the same time.
Whenever I ask people how they're feeling, they often tell me a story first about what's happened this week/today so that when they finally tell me the feeling, I won't judge them. This means they're judging themselves before they've even opened their mouths. That's okay, I do it too sometimes.
But explaining and rationalising not the same as feeling. FEEL, MOTHERFUCKERS.
Practice recognising patterns / tendencies you've adopted
This means accessing a relatively calm, relaxed state and then reflecting on your life with a total lack of passion or interest in judging good/bad. You know those weird self-sabotaging habits? Put some loving awareness on them and the reason they're still there will be revealed.
If you come at this from a place of frustration or anger, you'll only see the pixelated, chaotic version of the truth. It's seeing with love, and love alone, that unlocks the juicy, mysterious details and clarifies those things that have never made sense.
If you're ready for the hero-dose version of this little truth exercise, ask someone close to you (when they're also feeling calm and relaxed) what tendencies they see in you. Timing is so so so vital. Don't do this unless you're ready to listen relatively objectively without arguing or responding. This is for you.
Acknowledge dualities and then allow both to be true while creating a third thing.
Everything is constantly changing, adapting, evolving, re-forming itself. You are also doing this, meaning that no matter what choice you make, you will change too. And within this inevitable change process, it seems as though you have just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of wiggle room. Not much. Just a smidge.
And with that tiny smidge of free-will, you get an opportunity to perceive life in one of two ways, right?
Option One: A Poor Player (shout out to Shakespeare's Macbeth)
You lean away from more life: closing to experience and choosing not to step into a less creative role (to be acted upon)
Option Two: A Way Finder (shout out to Hayden Mitchell)
Lean towards more life: opening to experience and choosing to step into a more creative role (to act upon)
NO.
There are infinite ways to perceive life, and there is always a third door. The door-less door that looks like nothing you've ever seen before. You can't find it when you look for it. WHY? The third door is yours to CREATE.
The door is created when you wholeheartedly embrace the totality of what you are, including the fact that you can't.
It's my birthday.
Birthdays often bring up a lot of feeling for me.
I am deeply grateful to have some incredible people in my life who remind me I am love, when I forget.
I know you forget too, because forgetting and remembering is in our nature.
Real love isn't about remembering all the time.
Real love isn't about anything.
It just is.
Like you.