Dancing with gravity

on committing the physical act + it's my birthday.

The moment this piece is birthed will coincide with the moment of my birth 34 years ago —  July 17 1990, 07:17 am. It has me thinking: what is the process of coming into human form but the physical act itself? 

Here I am! Blood and flesh and neurons and hormones, living and breathing and something driving all of it.

Another question looms. What is the role of the physical pursuit?

It’s obvious I’m using my cognitive abilities to deliver this message - yet it’s delivered through my body. There is no doing or experiencing anything without this precious meat packet, this home of the nervous system, this vessel of the senses… is there?

Bertrand Russel says, “None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.” And still, I proclaim to understand this: the physical is IT. It’s THE THING. To be here, on this spinning space rock, is the physical act. A dance with gravity. It’s all I’ve ever experienced.

Care to dance?

Here is the subtext: To be, or not to be… in the body? 

Actually, you have no choice as to whether you’re in the body. You are the body. Mind and spirit embodied. There is no separation except through awareness. You are Here, one power network. Are you integrated?

Now you come to a doorway. Am I a victim? Or is this life a gift?

You can stand by the punch bowl watching the terpsichorean glory, or you can participate. You can choose to become an integral part of the party. Use those thinky feely bits, damn it!

The smartest people I know, 

and when I say smartest, I mean most perceptive; free thinkers; those able to see and feel things as they are even if they don’t like it or agree, rather than be blinded by their cognitive distortions, have a strong foothold in physical culture. 

Why is this? 

My theory: the body holds the potential for more wisdom and power than we can imagine. We don’t have words for it. We make up stories (not always to our benefit). If we want to become powerful, wise, connected humans, it’s necessary to tap into the physical act of power. Which I mean in the loving sense. Strength.

Power is different than facades of domination and subversion by a long shot. 

Power, in my view, is the ability to do, in the name of love.

I Invite you to consider what these words, strength, power, love… mean to you.

We can’t become powerful by thought alone…

though an appropriate education (relative to one's desires), a good dose of philosophy, and a regular practice of self reflection do wonders for growth.

To complete the full circle of becoming, there’s no other way than through embracing the physical act. Will. Strength. Power. Love in the most literal sense. That’s what I know. I don’t claim to know a lot. This is a hill I will die on.

For years I searched for the secrets of joy in the esoteric, ethereal, and dogmatic. In ideas of good and bad and god and spirit and sitting back and waiting for a miracle.

Theory, theory, theory. Who could prove it but me? 

Theory was seductive. Promises of beauty and perfection and… acceptance. Yes, that's what it was all about. Acceptance. 

Why is that so difficult?

Years before my dance with the ethereal, I’d been seduced by the physical…  so some part of me knew this life of theory wasn’t the real thing. I wasn’t really living. 

The real “miracle” is patience, clarity, curiosity. Going round the circle with eyes wide open, trusting the transformation at hand.

What is living, actually? I’ll let you ponder that.

Kinesthetic learning

It's the deepest form of knowing. We say, I know it in my bones, my belly. I have a gut feeling. We follow it, this curious wanting. This drive. We all learn this way, initially. Then we lose touch. We become brains talking to other brains, isolated from bodies, the power network disintegrating as we identify with ideas rather than learn from our experiences. Where is our awareness? Not in here but out there somewhere.

What are you feeling out there?

I’ve noticed lately the spiritual bent placed on everything from food to fucking. There are aesthetics of “spirituality,” theories of goodness — social currency. Spiritual conformity is social currency to the current generation just as aesthetic (not athletic) ideals have been since the advent of aerobics in the late 60s. The spiritual industry is playing a game of, “want to be accepted? Follow the leader.” It’s nothing new. Same game, different costumes, this time often laced with mushrooms and ayahuasca. Socially acceptable cognitive dissonance. A disconnect from reality. If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?

Why theorize spirit?

I don’t know… maybe as an ever present distraction from physical reality? You don’t have to do anything, but if you want my advice: feel it, soberly. Be in a body, unaltered, reckoning with the gravity of things. Gravity’s dogma. I like that phrase. 

So, here we are again. The physical IS it. SPIRIT. Interwoven. Inextricable. Soulbody. One integrated power network, if you’re committed to doing this thing. You can’t not touch it. This is the way of the mystic — not nearly as ethereal as it may seem from the poetry. 

Spirit. You could say it’s the invisible thing that drives us. You could say it’s unseeable and untouchable - except it is seeable and touchable and physical and it is YOU. It comes to life with every move you make, every breath you take (cue The Police. Sorry not sorry). Perhaps the invisibility is only mental. We just can’t conceive, in words, how this all works.

But alas! Connection is ever available, and it’s all relative to your strength. Your willingness.

Willingness to what? Feel. Herein lies the disconnect. You can’t avoid touching it, nor being it — you are who you are. But you can avoid feeling its — your — depth. You can avoid feeling anything, if you want to. You can stay on the surface forever. But why would you want that? 

I get it. I do. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it’s hard. Nobody taught us it’s okay to feel all of that. But I promise you, it’s okay. It could be fun. It could be joyous. It could be the gateway.

Where is the line between pleasure and pain anyway?

How do you define it? 

Maybe you’ve just jumped into a sexual fantasy. Yeah. Me too. It makes sense. Sex is one of the clearest examples of blurred lines.

It’s a purely individual thing, right? This pleasure and pain business, this emotion we experience, it’s simply sensation with varying degrees and flavors of intensity. What if there were no good or bad or right or wrong?  Just sensation moving through a body. 

When does getting a good spanking transform from pain to pleasure? The simple answer is: when you want it. Desire, it seems, is the magic that turns the intensity of sensation into the experience of joy. 

So maybe the same principle applies to strength? Do you want to move that weight on your back? Do you want to feel blood, muscle, heat, oxygen? 

Or is it servitude, dogmatic? Is it obligation, subversion, domination?

I digress.

We were talking about staying on the surface… right. Let’s get back to that. Well, let’s get under it.

Why are purely physical pursuits often seen as shallow?

I reckon because most of them are - but only for lack of proper guidance. Only because they are sorely lacking purpose. Passion. Desire. And not just “I want this,” desire. Desire beyond the selfish. I love my partner’s pleasure or I want the world to be a better place full of more compassionate, connected, capable people. 

Of course, we have to care for the selfish — nourish ourselves before we can pour out in any reasonable way. Nourishment is an integral part of the process of growing stronger. So you may be wondering, once we do begin this journey of filling ourselves — blood, muscles, oxygen, breath — with awareness of our power, and developing our ability to harness it, then what?

My physical journey began as purely as could be — I loved how it felt to move. And even when I fell into disorder, even when I hated everything about everything — I still loved the way it felt to be connected with my body, full of breath, heart thumping, muscles pumping. 

What happened next? 

My process of transformation took a few unexpected turns, as does any good story. 

The first go round, alone and unguided, I didn’t know how to meet my needs. I didn’t know I had needs. My first rite of passage? Learning to be selfish. To listen to my body above all else. Feed me, she instructed, when I insisted leanness was more important than nourishment. I learned eventually. I grew through the challenge. But it scared me. I thought it was too much, the nourishment needed to grow physically — to let more spirit into my body — to become a home. I didn’t know how to handle it alone. The power was overwhelming. I didn’t know why. I was in the dark.

So I looked outside. Bought the programs the books the certifications the incense. The dogmas. The theories. Anti-nourishment. Bullshit. 

My real problem? I didn’t believe I deserved all that power. I didn’t believe it was me. 

I needed to feel my own weight.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

One day, still not quite there, but enough to listen to my yearning for gravity, I realized I needed connection. I needed a partner, a tribe. I needed to share. Yes. I needed to pour. I needed a mirror. 

Though strength can be a rather solitary game, and though I often like it that way, there is a sense of community with those who get it. Who commit the physical act. Sounds kinda naughty. I like that.

First I found Luke. He’s probably getting a little overwhelmed with the compliments I’ve been giving him lately, but alas, I can’t not be as grateful as I am. And it’s my birthday, so he’ll have to take it as my gift to him. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for helping me change my life. 

That’s my dream, too. To help people change their lives. There’s magic to a commonly held belief that strength and its physical pursuit is a great connective force. That strength is an expansive mythology. That we can become better to each other by becoming better to ourselves, for ourselves — stronger, more attuned, more able to overcome challenges. And even more, able to smile as we dance with gravity, the ever present force forever leveling us.

Happy birthday to me. Thank you for reading.

P.S. You already got my PWOD (philosophical wax of the day) so I thought I’d share a small moment of my physical act, too - perhaps to inspire! It may look like a lot, but really it’s just variations of simple movements - planks, bridges, lunges, twists. I’ll be teaching pieces of this and other groovy flows to make your own in the near future, so stay tuned :)