body awareness

What are your secret internal moves, your cues? I'm eternally curious about how we navigate our worlds, and the tricks, jumps, hops, and skips we use.

Sports coaches have cues for all kinds of things. "Follow through" in golf, tennis, and throwing generally. "Chest up, hips back, knees out" for a back squat. "Light feet" or "quick feet" for agility training. 

These cues aren't attempting to be accurate descriptions of the world from a physics point of view. They're an attitude/orientation that helps a human do a thing a little better.

My contention: we each are an entire compendium of little skill orientations that we use all the time. But because they're second nature and interior, they're funcionally invisible and don't often get shared or talked about.

Wouldn't it be neat if we talked about them?

Some examples from me:

• "Can I do this with less effort?" Physically, this applies to anything. Sitting, pooping, walking, standing, reading. It's an immediate invitation into my body and more relaxation. There is often habitual extraneous muscular/mental/emotional tension in the system.
• If I'm feeling small, stuck, contracted, tense – it can often help to "get as big as the room". It's not something to really think about or analyze too much. Just… become as big as the room. When I do so, there's often more space for the knotted stuff to just be and/or move. This also works great even when things are good.
• I don't have a convenient handle for this one, but it's something like: "fall into wonder as you observe (from within) your body just doing simple things". Doing the dishes or making coffee could be a chore – or I can switch into looking through this lens and just be astonished at how intricate and skillful the dance of it all is. There's no way I could thinkmanage it all, and yet somehow it all happens anyway.

So what are your cues? Nothing is too simple, silly, or obvious.

Why I keep forgetting that exercise feels amazing. This could just as easily live in my journal, but in my favorite version of reality a lot of things get added in the comments, and this lives as a resource for everyone and for me the next time I forget that exercise feels amazing.

The culture I was aware of as a kid: 

• Athletes go to gyms. The only other people that go to gyms are vain people, and they only go because they care about having an impressive appearance.
• Exercise is hard and painful. If it's not kicking you're ass, you're lazy.
• I loved playing soccer all through childhood. When I started Junior High I tried out for the soccer team. I was the best player at tryouts- scored the most goals, saved the most goals, had the most steals. But I didn't make the team because I wasn't competitive enough. On the last day of tryouts I gave goals to girls who seemed like their self-esteem was getting battered by their failure to get a goal.

My initial influences in adulthood:

• In undergrad I was required to take dance class all 4 years. The dance teacher's job was to prepare us for Broadway dance auditions, which are usually "cattle calls" of hundreds of people auditioning for one spot. So you had to be the best, the sharpest, the fastest to learn the choreography, the fastest to get into position. These classes were the first time in my life I learned what "getting into shape" meant. He spent the entire first semester of freshman year teaching us what the names of our muscles were by spending an entire 90-minute session going ham on that muscle. Freshmen voice majors at Carnegie Mellon limped around campus and yelped trying to pick up their backpacks. I wasn't taught about warm ups, cool downs, or how to navigate muscle soreness. I was expected to be capable of at least two versions of the splits by the end of my first semester of college, so I spent hours doing homework in very uncomfortable body positions.
• In my thirties I worked with personal trainers three times. I didn't know this at the time, but I've since learned from a friend who is a health coach that most people come to a personal training session and give about 40% effort, so most trainers get in the habit of pushing and pushing them to harder things in the hopes the client gets to 75 or 80%. My trainers and I didn't know that because of my dance training I was showing up giving 110%. So they pushed me the way they pushed all of their clients. And I did everything in my power to be obedient to what they were telling me to do. It took me 8 years to realize that what I had been calling "pushing my edge" had actually been the cusp of a panic attack because my heart rate was way too high and I was pushing strength training to the point of risking injury.

New updates to my experiences and beliefs about exercise:

• Thanks largely to my health coach friend, a wise ex-boyfriend, and resources from Dr. Stacey Sims, I finally was able to believe them that not only doesn't exercise have to be painful, the cortisol, muscle soreness, etc. caused from pushing create more problems than the workouts solve. And when exercise sucks it's wildly de-motivating and unsustainable.
• I've learned through countless failed attempts and Dr. Sims that any workout plan that doesn't take my menstrual cycle into account is doomed from the start. I learned that in the days before my bleed my body takes all of the tissue-rebuilding ingredients away from things like muscle repair and diverts it all to building the uterine lining. So strength training during this time results in a week of relentless pain and soreness. I've learned that during my follicular phase I'm a literal superhero. Live it up while I can, but for god's sake do not set that as my new standard to build on top of because the cycle is going to loop back again. I've learned that women have about 30% the glycogen stores in their muscles as men, so keto and fasted workouts are a distaster. I literally need to have eaten carbs before workouts to have any legitamite fuel to work with.
• I've had fits and starts of working out, but then I'd start listening to some damn exercise podcast, fall into my old mindset of "pushing for gains," and the habit would collapse.

New intentional mindsets:

I'm a week into returning to exercise, and so far everything about it is wildly different than before. I consistently feel the tug back toward my old mindsets, but I'm practicing reminding myself of these things over and over and over.

• Do classes, but relinquish obedience. The classes are great for me because a very knowledgable person has crafted something great without my having to expend any mental energy at all. But the key is that I stay connected with my body and be always willing to disobey the instructor in favor of what my body needs.
• Start slow and easy. What I want most if for exercise to become a favorite part of my lifestyle for the rest of my life. I've been mostly going to "Restorative" classes that are passive yoga stretches in a structure designed to regulate the nervous system. Nothing's hard, nothing hurts, and I leave feeling wonderful. This is SO effective at making me look forward to getting in the car and driving to the gym the next day.
• Pride can be a great energy source. It does seem to be part of my true nature that I would like other people in the class to be impressed with me. I want to be impressed with me. I'm intentionally relinquishing the lifelong energy source of "I want to get thin and hot" and replacing it with "I wanna leave here feeling impressed with myself."
• Two mindsets I picked up from Arun, "I like being a regular" and "third place," had me choose Austin Bouldering Project as my gym. It's just fucking cool, and very attractive people are everywhere. I like the thought of becoming a regular there. A lot. People knowing my name, new friendships, maybe even finding a romantic partner who likes going to the same gym together. And third place is based on home being the first place and work being the second place. I love the midset of choosing ABP as my third place. I bring my laptop and co-work upstairs after working out. I chill in the sauna.

These are all such different mindset orientations than I've ever had before, and I hope writing this helps me remember that when I do it wisely from the right mindsets, exercise and going to the gym feels friggin amazing.

Awareness of Awareness rambling thoughts. What keeps me up at night or what entertains me when other reasons (hormones, sugar, light/sound, etc.) keep me up at night is thinking bout awareness and what is aware of the thinking. This loop seems to never bore me and although i fear it’s some kind of loop that keeps me stuck. Live in thoughts like i don’t know anything for sure except for that. The loops are a life constant and also part of the fun of living. Is this a bypassing. Is this a distraction from something deeper.

Aware i’m thinking and typing now. What is noticing this. Sometimes the answer is just my mind is noticing and there isn’t much awareness of the entire view of this happening from a spot on the wall in this room, or from above looking at the roof of my office.

Is this even followable? The rambling thoughts?

What lately has been getting me to the wider awareness outside of it’s all in the mind is time. Have I ever typed before? Had thoughts before and been aware of the thoughts before? this awareness of this self over time feels much wider and less I like.

This is what i’ve been thinking bout in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. Does it keep me up? Or is this so much more relaxing and fun then thinking bout bills and the to do lists ahead or the incompletely to do lists behind?