Know Yourself Through Movement

an exciting new series for Body of Work!

I have a big announcement! 

At long last, I’ll be hosting a challenge series for paid subscribers, Know Yourself Through Movement.

The first round will begin Saturday, August 10th and run through Saturday, September 7th. 

This series will teach you:

• the simple skills you need to build a solid foundation of strength so you can move safely, confidently, and freely

• tools that will help you experience autonomy and self-connection through your movement practice

• the benefits of training in connection with your values and desires

• how you can use simple skills to build a profound, playful, creative, embodied personal movement practice

Month one will focus on fundamentals of movement. We’ll build a foundation of basic skills and practices to expand upon and deepen into in the future. You’ll also connect with your why as you develop a core understanding of what strength and fitness mean to you, and how you can move and train within your desire and value system.

This series will be progressive, meaning what you learn in the first round will remain with you for the long haul, becoming an integral part of your movement vocabulary.

If you’d like to join us, you can become a paid subscriber here for 60% off an monthly or annual subscription. I’m so excited to move with you!

Now for a bit of contemplation.

Tired. It’s a word we’re all familiar with - but maybe it doesn’t mean exactly what you think it means. Let’s consider the possibility that 99 times out of 100, our bodies are not too tired to move, that they are tired, rather, of being ignored, dismissed, subverted, demanded, ridiculed, shamed, torn down, overfed, starved, feared, and forgotten. 

I spent the last five days in North Carolina with Luke in great waves of movement — new lifts, new weights, new volumes, new shapes, not to mention rounds between the sheets. I wasn’t surprised when, on day three of a string of challenging training sessions, I thought, “whewww I’m tired!” My body was WORKED! And still, my spirits were high. So instead of writing it off as a day of doing nothing, I said, “I’m gonna try this thing and let my body tell me what’s what.” 

Wanna know how it went? I felt invigorated, vibrant, engaged, proud, present. Not to mention I lifted more weight than I’d ever lifted.

I’m going to try is magic. Yet trying can be quite the challenge when you’re in the “black or white”mode of thinking many perfectionist types tend to inhabit. There’s a little trick I want to tell you about that could change everything. Here it is: focus on turning judgement into observation.

When it comes to movement, this shift in perception is monumental. Let’s go back to the “I’m tired,” scenario. Often, we unconsciously judge “I’m tired,” to mean “I can’t do it.” But what if the mind didn’t actually know what that feeling, tired, meant. What if only the body knew that? When we turn the judgement and the associated meaning “I’m tired, therefore I can’t,” into the observation, “my body feels tired,” we leave our options open. We can try. What does moving tired feel like? We can let the body inform our course of action. 

Maybe tired turns into exhausted turns into a true experience of the body saying, “no.” But maybe, just maybe, tired is simply a signal that the body wants to be awakened. Maybe tired is the body saying “YES!” Maybe it’s an invitation. Maybe it’s the body saying, “I want to move, feel, breathe, become.”

If you’re not convinced, think about this. When someone hasn’t moved intentionally or with any degree of intensity for a while, they will feel tired when they begin a new practice of movement. Does this mean the body doesn’t want to move? Absolutely not. Quite the opposite; the body is waking up. Before it is revived, it needs to remember the electricity it was born with. It needs to reconnect with its felt sense of being a part of the integrated power network. It needs to remember it has a voice. It has weakened through years of forced early retirement. It wants to dance. It will huff and puff and pant its way back to aliveness. This is a body becoming an expression of its moment to moment experience. 

Tired. More often than not, it’s the beginning. 

Before I go, let’s get into the philosophy behind this series. Cause I have a feeling you may be just as nerdy as me…

As we waited for dinner one night, Luke and I contemplated the dire lack of autonomy within the fitness industry. We recalled how in all our years of movement, from commercial gyms to yoga studios and everywhere in between, the teachers we encountered rarely offered this key piece of instruction: take this and make it your own. 

For each of us, it was through a strong sense of curiosity that we discovered our own movement journeys. 

I remember one afternoon, in an act of rebellion, I criss-crossed two yoga mats and started exploring new shapes and spaces. It was so freeing to be out of that narrow rubber rectangle and to travel onto the floor beyond the mats.

The sharp edged, narrow mat is quite like the dogmatic approach most teachers unconsciously take toward fitness. Actually, before we get too far, is “teacher” even the right word for what most of these people are doing? Are they providing an education, or is it more a game of monkey see, monkey do? In my experience, the latter is most often the case. Follow the leader is the surest bet to big profits in the fitness industrial complex (FIC). And if you don’t obey the rules… well, you get kicked out of the cool kids club. 

I get it, empowering others to think critically, listen to their bodies, and develop strength according to their values isn’t the quickest route to financial domination. Cause ya know, you’re not manipulating people into believing they need you to be able to do hard things. 

But I don’t want you to believe you need me to do hard things. I’m here to guide, support, and offer inspiration precisely because I want to empower you to take this and make it your own. 

When fitness becomes a practice in autonomy, self-leadership, and creative freedom based on personal desire and value systems, the game fundamentally changes. The power of FIC’s standard message,  “you’re ugly/broken/unfuckable… but don’t worry, we can help!” starts to weaken; when you travel a few layers into why you’re doing what you’re doing, you may discover a motivation much more meaningful than one born from a faulty theory of self-worth driven by a misguided industry’s aesthetic ideals… “ideals” which are more anti-fitness than empowering. More obedience driven than autonomy enhancing. 

According to Self Determination Theory (SDT), a framework for the study of human motivation and behavior, there are three crucial factors that determine whether a person has sustained motivation to do the damn thing:

1. Autonomy

2. Competence

3. Relatedness

SDT observes that an environment that fosters these experiences offers the most volitional and high quality forms of motivation and participation. I share this with the hope that this framework sheds some light on why I teach the way I teach, as well as why you may not have felt motivated to stick with or begin training (fitness or otherwise) in the past. 

If you have or are struggling with motivation, you can ask yourself these questions:

1. Are your teachers/instructors/guides supporting your free will? (autonomy)

2. Do you feel you have the tools to become more skilled at what you’re learning? (competence)

3. Do you feel you can connect with others through your pursuit? (relatedness)

If these essential needs aren’t being met, chances are you’re not experiencing the degrees and types of support necessary to feel motivated continuing. And that’s a great thing to know. 

With that…

I am overjoyed to start offering movement education. Again, the first live round of Know Yourself Through Movement begins Saturday August 10th and runs through Saturday September 7th. But of course, you are free to go at your own pace. I want you to take the time to learn and embody movement so it becomes part of your holistic system of exploring, expanding, and growing. 

You can join as a monthly or annual member below. Subscriptions are currently 60% off — $6/month or $60/year. And if you join now, you get to keep that price forever!