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| Subject: Going Soft | |
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Author: Judy |
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Date Posted: 17:24:55 03/13/05 Sun Over the past six months or so, my motivation to exercise has slowly vanished. I’ve gone from four workouts a week, to three, to two, down to one not-so-hard swim or run. Each week, I vow that this will be the week that I get it together. The week passes, but though I think about exercising each day, I always find excuses not to. I then amend the plan, telling myself that I will exercise both days on the weekend. Saturday morning comes and I can’t get out of bed. Tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll run or swim, I think. What is going on? At first, I can’t figure it out. In the past, I could hardly wait longer than two days. The nerves in my legs would fire impatiently, telling me, “move, move,” then adding a desperate, “please.” I listened because I had no choice. I was uncomfortable until I got my next fix. But those signals have gradually lessened, leaving me with a brain that well knows the connections between exercise and health, but still can’t steer my body toward the pool or track. I search for the answer. Excuse number one: Since my roommate and I moved last spring, I am no longer within walking distance of a track or pool. Excuse number two: It is winter and has been raining a lot. Excuse number three: I enjoy swimming, but am not passionate about it. Excuse number four: I am preoccupied by other, non-athletic, activities. I could convince myself that the combination accounts for my lack of motivation. But I know it isn’t the whole answer. I have never let external circumstances stop me before, so why now? Even when I worked 14 hours or more a day to finish my Ph.D. thesis, staying up every night until the wee morning hours, I still exercised twice a week. The answer comes to me one night while swimming: My body is demanding that I let it go soft. I pull myself out of the pool though I have only completed one-half my normal workout and must ignore the disappointed eyes of Blythe, the swim coach who has not seen me in awhile. The revelation is a difficult one to swallow. Soft is not for me, my brain tells me. Soft means out of shape, unattractive, extra fat and skin that will protrude from beneath my clothes. I will lose my hard-fought for muscles and have to start all over. No one will ever want me if I’m soft, my brain says. Soft is an admission that I am growing old. But there it is. I can’t fight it anymore. My body wants a different paradigm. The emphasis on pleasure that I have incorporated into my life makes my body want to feel good, all the time. I used to like pushing to my maximum physical limits. Feeling sore meant that I had worked hard. But now I want a comfortable dwelling to inhabit. I don’t know if I can quite explain it. But it’s something like, as my personality is softening, becoming less rigid and more open, my body wants to do the same. Or maybe it’s that the energy in my body is flowing more fluidly. By not exercising and allowing it to soften, I may be subconsciously hurrying along a process of unblocking a stubborn wall of electricity. I had been pondering this new epiphany when a student complained to Nicole that she can't get herself to the gym. Not for the first time, Nicole answered her in a way that both confirmed and broadened my views. Nicole told the student, maybe the reason you can’t exercise is not because you’re lazy, but because your body wants to come down. Of course, I thought. That’s what’s happening to me. I want to mellow out, be less scattered, and lead a simpler life. I want to come down. It occurs to me that exercise is an energetic substitute for sex. I’ve probably used it my whole life to release sexual energy, the electricity I feel constantly in the lower half of my body. So maybe this is also why my body no longer wants to move. With that sexual electricity being drawn out of me through OMing, I no longer need to forcibly remove it. Because substituting athletics for sex doesn’t really work. You release and build up charge, but it’s not like you get rid of that burning sensation in your genitals. It may even make it worse. Exercising regularly can make me feel like a balloon full of energy that’s about to explode. I don’t see softness as a permanent state. But I think my body wants to break down, and then build back up in a way that feels good. It wants to remain soft on the inside, even as it tones on the outside. I don’t want to give up exercise, but I want to respect the desires of my body. So I’ve decided to try an experiment. Instead of pushing myself to do as much as I’m capable, I’m going to stop when my body says that it has had enough. I tried it out this week, twice at the track and once in the pool. It took a lot of discipline to slow down instead of speeding up, to stop instead of doing more. It meant not worrying about how I looked while running at a slow pace. It meant telling Blythe at the pool that this is what my body wants. While exercising, I had to turn internally, asking myself continually, “How do I feel, how do I feel?” And when my body said, “No more,” I had to listen. I figure with this approach, I remove the rebellion factor; my body will know that it must only do as much as it wants. In this way, I’ll also build endurance and strength in a way that’s centered on pleasure instead of pain. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| I know what you mean....... | kristen | 22:39:53 03/15/05 Tue |
| sit your way to soft | KB | 22:52:40 03/15/05 Tue |
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