I know from experience that when I start training for a specific event, suddenly my body means something very different to me. This machine that carries my soul around and allows me to make contact with the world and other people transforms into a machine that must endure a certain physical challenge. This is special! This is different! Especially in this case because every pound of my body is an extra pound which my brother will be carrying. Let me explain.
My brother has offered to basically pull me along on the back of his tandem. That fact makes this event distinct from the couple of races I've competed in (some runs and a sprint triathlon) because in this one, I don't have to do anything but sit there if I want to do. Here's why: both my father and my brother are going and my brother is too fast a rider to have fun riding this race with our dad and his friends. These guys, let me explain, are strong. They're far stronger riders than I am and may ever be, it's just that my brother is even faster. So my job is to make my brother's job a little harder by sitting there on the back of the bike. Easy right?
Well, I still need to sit there for six straight hours, and I still need to keep my feet moving all that time. So, if nothing else, I need to train for endurance. Plus, I want to help. I might as well do something if I'm going to sit there all day.
So two things are going on: I have an event to train for, and I am going to become a lighter creature. Crazy, right? I have the option of changing the size of my body. With all of the thinking and meditating and writing on the mind and body and spirit and community all being connected, this brings ups some interesting implications. I'm still wrapping my head around all of it, and I will keep you posted as I go.
For now, what's coming up for me is being seventeen years old. That's the last time that I thought of my body in terms of how many pounds it weighed. The lightest I ever remember weighing was fifteen pounds less than I think I weigh now, though it has been about a year since I've measured my weight. And in a little over two and a half months I plan on weighing seven pounds less. Crazy! I need to go find a scale.
What does this have to do with bodywork, then? If nothing else, it gets my consciousness into my own body in new ways, which allows me to connect more deeply with what is going on in the bodies of my clients and the people around me. I can see that my body today is not ready to ride a hundred miles on a bicycle and at the same time I understand that I can and will make it ready by diligent work over time. So I understand that the body is not stuck in its current situation. When I am working with a client on moving through a specific painful tendency in their body I hold the understanding that we humans are capable of change and not doomed to remain exactly as we are (frightening though that may be). That pain in your shoulder or back or neck or jaw or wherever that you think of as part of yourself or "just the way you are"? Guess what, it's not. We can keep it there if we want to, but we have the option of realizing that it's our choice to do so. We can move from weakness to strength through training and we can move from pain to free movement through similarly applied work.
As always I start by talking about the body with the understanding that this same idea shows up everywhere. In each aspect of our lives, we are in training for something. Whether we consciously prepare ourselves or not, each choice we make sets us up for the next challenge: every experience gives us more tools we can use to meet the next situation life hands us. There are times to actively train and times to actively perform and times that are a little of each. Right now, for me, I train.
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