Written by Happiness is always available to you.
Mind, Consciousness, Thought
Inspired by Sydney Banks and Michael Neill
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Posts in category mindfulness
Happiness with Flow
Brownstone Fitness coaching
Finding Happiness Through Flow
How often are you in flow? Flow occurs when you’re engaged in an activity that’s challenging but not outside your skill set. It’s something so deeply interesting that you lose all sense of time and place and you have the feeling that, wherever this is, it’s exactly the place you are supposed to be.
Flow can occur on a job, in an athletic activity, through the creation of art, or in relationship with someone. In this state, your focus gives you access to your essential self. You tap into the source of natural pleasure that is our birthright. As me move into adulthood, this source gets polluted, blocked, covered up, diverted.
Losing It and Finding It Again
I enjoy (and miss) working with young people. Even the teenagers I worked with who had been beaten down, still retained a sense of the possible. For some it was rare, but almost all of them had times when they were able to access that internal flame of simple joy.
As we become adults, we’ve been clothed in “shoulds” and drugged by “must haves.” These paths take us away from the essential.
Bernadette and I think the work at Brownstone is important. There are many nights when we share our frustrations over the (small) group of individuals who pass through here thinking that what we provide is just another commodity. While I sit here writing this, Bernadette is putting in another three hours of study in physiology. She’ll then work on some relaxation visualizations. When I finish, I’ll do some reading on motivation, relieving shoulder impingement, and thinking about exercise circuits. No fast food burgers being served here.
Struggle
Running a small business like this is a struggle on many levels. We are asking people to spend a decent amount money on a regular basis to do something that is hard and that most people don’t want to do. We’re proud of you for engaging in the struggle nonetheless
In the world’s oldest wisdom book, the Bhagavad Gita Gita, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that “you are only entitled to your labors but not to the fruits of your labors.”
Our labor is not dedicated to toned arms and six-pack abs, but to freeing up your child inside, helping you to feel joy, and, when you let us, reminding you that you’re only one thought away from happiness.
You won’t find that in a 24-Hour Fitness brochure.
Meditation and The Principle of Least Action
There’s a principle of physics called the “principle of least action.” It kind of says that Nature will find the most efficient path from one point to another. This concept is easy to ignore in our workouts and as we make our way through the world. We look for quick fixes in every area of our lives. There are all sorts of “bright, shiny objects” in the worlds of diet and fitness that distract us from the most efficient path to wellness.
I received an email a little while ago from a distraught teenage girl desperate for help with her weight. She had stumbled onto the Brownstone Fitness website and is courageously reaching out for help. There are so many conflicting messages that this young lady has already received about what she is supposed to look like if she’s going to fit in and be popular. At times like these I am reminded that exercise programming and meal planning are only small pieces of the puzzle.
We pay for diet and exercise systems that we hope will get us where we think we want to go. There are at least two problems with this. One is that the conditions and environments that surround us (work, family, media messages, etc.) don’t allow us to work the systems.
A bigger problem is that a slavish adherence to a system blocks our awareness of the wisdom inside and around us. Find a time and a place every day to be quiet and listen for this wisdom. Accessing this wisdom calms the mind and allows the body to realize the healthy and vigorous state it was born for. Some people call this meditation.
Prayer happens when we talk to God. Meditation allows the space for God to talk to us. These may not be easy things but they are simple. You can discover for yourself the principle of least action.
Healthy Habits? Not So Fast
Habit and the Limits of Willpower
Like a lot of us, you’re probably here because you’re interested in becoming healthier. This doesn’t happen by accident. You need to develop healthy habits. Fire up the willpower, read enough books and stuff on the interwebs and you should be ok.
Not exactly.
On two separate occasions, I’ve had clients mention the book, “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. The book talks about the importance of “keystone habits.” They are small changes, that when put into regular practice have a significant effect on other areas of a person or company’s life.
Information is great but I’m sure you know a lot of people at work or in your personal life who are well-informed but unable or unwilling to take action.
Willpower is Limited
Exercising self control and willpower can literally exhaust us. You have to prioritize as you direct this scarce resource. Our brain even helps protect us by setting a lot of things we do on behavioral autopilot.Our relationship to food, other people, and even ourselves remains out of our conscious awareness. Would it surprise you to find out that many of these behaviors do not operate in our best interests?
Going on behavioral autopilot also keeps us safe from the fear that change causes. We get scared and the people around us get scared when there’s too much change too fast. If you start exercsing a lot, eating healthier, listen to different music, or stop wearing stockings in the winter, the people around you become uncomfortable. Your change is a reminder of their shortcomings and this can’t be allowed.
So before you choose your keystone habit, you may need to do a little groundwork. Look at who you associate with. Some of those people encourage you to be active and on the move. There are others, who by their mere presence, encourage you to be lazy and inactive.
The same thing happens with food. You’ve got the friend who eats mostly junk food; the friend who convinces you that you need to make every happy hour and that the sweeter the drink, the sexier you become.
Who do you think you should be hanging out with?
Eventually, you’ve got to shape your environment. For each of us, there are people and situations that need to be cut from our lives. Sometimes it takes a permanent change of scenery. This one may take a while.
Start Small
Pick something small for your keystone habit. You might want to start with a food journal. Duhigg’s book talked about an NIH study involving food journals. A group of obese subjects was told to record just one day a week of the food they ate. This simple instruction led some study subjects to notice patterns in their eating and to record their food entries on a daily basis even though they had not been instructed to do this. At the end of the study, the people who kept daily food journals lost twice as much weight as the other subjects. One small change generalized into healthier eating.
So your job is to pick just one small change depending on your goals. It might be reading a chapter daily in a book in your profession. It might be stretching for ten minutes. It might be keeping a food journal, or it might be making a daily list of five things you’re grateful for or five things you love about the people in your life.
It also helps to set up an “action trigger”- a time, place, or situation that signals you that it’s time to begin your small action with the big payoff. E.g. you begin your activity after your morning cup(s) of coffee. Visualizing and mentally rehearsing the trigger will help set things up.
As always, remember that it’s not about being a thinner you. It’s about being a better you.
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My World War l Injury and Why You Shouldn’t Freeze
Have you ever been to northern Ontario? I have and it’s beautiful. I took a group of fifteen 13 & 14 year olds on a two-week canoeing trip. That’s where I got my injury.
The Beautiful Outdoors
In my other life, I did a lot outdoor stuff. Most of it revolved around getting kids into nature or immersed in other cultures. Bernadette and I even won an award for having one of the top Boy Scout troops in New York City. From Philmont, New Mexico to the Arctic Circle; from Nicragua to northern Minnesota; from Ghana to Senegal, I was in a rush to provide experiences for young people who had been otherwise relegated to the purgatory of irrelevance.
The scenery on this trip was as beautiful as the trip was physically challenging. I had no idea just how challenging it was going to get.
It seems we spent as much time carrying the canoes and equipment over land as we did on the water. “Portaging” is what fancy people call it. Even with all that walking, things took a while to dry. Two of those things were my feet.
My Aching Feet
When your feet are cold and wet with little chance of drying out, it turns out that you can get something called “Trench Foot.” Trench Foot got its name from the trench warfare of World War l, where its prevalence was first noted. Left untreated, you will develop gangrene. It seems that prior bouts of frostbite (which I had gotten before) make you more susceptible. I wish someone had told me before the canoe trip.
If left untreated, the feet swell up, the skin tears away, and infection occurs. It got so I was barely able to tolerate sandals or walking. Our guide took us by a remote cabin. He wanted to talk to the grizzly outdoorsman who had had some experience with these types of things. The Old Man of the Lake pronounced that he had only seen one case worse than mine. I asked what had happened to that individual. “They had to amputate one of his feet but they were able to save the other one.”
The only semi-serious medical facility was days away. That meant we needed to paddle. That night, the pain was excruciating. I was no longer able to walk. I had to crawl to help gather fire wood and the supplies to pitch my tent. My feet looked like the balloon animals at a child’s birthday party.
Beautifully Vulnerable
I had just finished drag/crawling my pack up the shore when my two teen canoe mates, Ericka and Christian, asked what I was doing and they ordered me to stop. What they said next would have had me close to tears if I wasn’t such a tough guy…
“You’re always taking care of all of us. It’s time for us to take care of you.” They set up my tent, gathered the fire wood, made my dinner, and checked in on me until I fell asleep. Despite the pain, I slept better than I had in a few days.
Well, the trip ended. With a couple of weeks of rest and some antibiotics, I was as good as new. I never spent much time focusing on that night on the lake. Only recently, have I reflected on that moment and those emotions over a decade ago. Why the delay? I think it’s because I was afraid.
Handling Fear
Afraid of what? Afraid of vulnerability. Afraid of the chaos that exists between what I am living for and what I am running from. Fear gives us permission to freeze. It dictates our thought patterns and how we move. If you’re working in a job that you hate or you have put on weight unconsciously, that may be how you deal with your feelings of vulnerability. Is it possible that you don’t have to stay frozen? Is it possible that there is beauty in your vulnerability? Should you continue to resist chaos? I’m still working all this out for myself.
Here’s What You Do
Does some of this make sense? If it does, here’s what you need to do next:
1. Recall a time you felt fear.
2. Ask yourself what experience and feelings you denied yourself (like joy, gratitude,anger, etc.) by substituting fear in its place.
3. Notice what comes up.
Personal trainers? Not really. I prefer to think of what we do as muscular life coaching. We’re here to join you on the path if you need us.
P.S. – Go to the form up top and sign up to get free health and fitness tips.
Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?
Boy George Is Speaking To Me
Boy George understood somatic awareness.
Someone must have sprinkled some Kryptonite on one of our kettlebells. You see, I got a back spasm last week that lasted for three days. In this line of work, that’s inconvenient at best.
The Glamorous Life
I’ve said it before – this personal trainer stuff is fascinating. Sales, marketing, pain management, athletic performance, body composition, coach, motivational speaker, nutrition. There’s a lot of stuff to stay on top of and hats to wear – and I love it.
One challenge is that it’s sometimes hard to follow our own prescriptions. I know, you probably think it’s sexy to hang out in workout clothes all day. I guess I would think so too if we weren’t a new business and I was able to get more than 5 1/2 hours of sleep per night (btw, continue to do as I say and not as I do on this sleep thing).
Twenty-four hour access to a workout facility? Sounds good. But…
Bernadette and Yaromil find time for only two 45 minute workouts per week. I try to get in four workouts that last 20-40 minutes. That includes warmup, strength, cardio, flexibility.
Sometimes-not often- it catches up.
Take The Pain
Have you ever had a back spasm that just came out of nowhere ? Mine did. In fact, it took me three days of “treatment” as I fought to not look like a guy my age.
Pain can cause you to panic. Pain is a reminder of your mortality and how really alone you are. Pain causes body compensation and adaptation – the kinds of adaptations that we associate with aging. I resented having to second guess my relationship to gravity.
We have a Primal/Paleo orientation in our work. To be stooped over or injured, could be seen as an inability to organize the chaos that surrounds us. Besides, it’s not a good look on the chart of evolutionary development.
All of this flooded in on the first day. I decided that one day was enough. I used the same approach that I had with a severe knee injury I suffered a couple of years ago. I also sometimes forget that being an NLP master practitioner and being a Reiki master for two decades should sometimes be applied to my own healing and advancement.
Reframing
How do you motivate yourself? Do you focus on moving away from pain? Or are you driven to move towards pleasure? For some, it’s a combination. It’s important to bring your strategy to conscious awareness.
All that stuff I said about pain earlier? Well, guess what? Pain also rebalances us.
The more pleasure we experience, the more we want; the more fearful we become about losing it; the more we live in the future and its accompanying anxiety.
On the other hand, pain is our most frequent and potent experience of the present. We can learn to work with that feedback.
I woke up the following morning and before getting out of bed I decided to communicate with the part of me that was bringing the pain. I asked it what it’s intention was. I asked if the message could be delivered in some other way – and I promised I would pay attention.
I reflected on the fact that it wasn’t some specific workout or movement that caused the spasm. I acknowledged that the pain and the resulting compensation came from my unconscious and that it needed to be released into the present.
I gave the pain a color, a location, an intensity, and even a sound. I then visualized a healing energy with a specific color. I
brought this healing color to the pain. My only intention was to notice any changes in the feeling. I decided to be ok with having the feeling and I decided to be ok with not having the feeling.
Acknowledge your body with compassion and without judgment. When you do, you will be able to stand up straighter and bring more kindness and compassion into the world around you.
While the spasm lasted for three days, the pain subsided significantly on that morning.
Good thing. Our basement flooded the next day. I was blessed with the gift of present awareness as I spent three hours emptying buckets of dirty water.
“Socrates was famous in Athens for saying, ‘Know thyself’. It is said that one of his students said to him: “Socrates, you go around saying ‘Know thyself,’ but do you know yourself?” Socrates was said to have replied, “Not, but I understand something about this not knowing.” - Jon Kabat-Zinn
P.S. Share your thoughts with me on this one. Do you think I’m crazy? Are you more comfortable with me talking about how you can get a six-pack? Are you in pain – physical, spiritual, or emotional? What does it mean to you? If you need to, how can you reframe it? What is your body telling you? Will you listen with compassion for yourself?
P.P.S. Finally, let me clear up that 5k coaching thing. You saw that I have charged 5k per training session and thought you were REALLY getting a bargain. Well, that alleged price was paid by a major East Coast city. I was contracted to train the police department in how to employ a coaching framework in the context of police supervision. I’m good at it and good coaches are good coaches.
