Stuff I Wrote

After each “lesson” in my Liberated Body online course I ask students to reflect on a few questions to help them process their experience.

Unintentionally, the answers have been inspiring material for my brain to nom and poop into blog posts.

For instance:

My question: What does having a “liberated body” mean to you?

Student answer: “Being able to move with ease and skill long term + feeling joy while defying societal expectations of body/movement acceptability”

Defying soceital expectation of body/movement acceptability.

Because I could not do this is exactly how things went wrong for me.

This soceital defiance in the name of our bodies is the embodied revolution we need (maybe that’s what I should call my workshop instead?? Don’t steal plz).

It got me thinking… Why do we need an embodied revolution? Have we been bullied? Coereced? Indoctrinated?

Have you been bullied?

I didn’t realize until recently how bullied I was, we all are, by societal expectations for how a body “should” be.

Have you been bullied into dismissing your body? Made to believe that how your body looks is more important than how it feels to inhabit? I have. Most women have. Men, too.

I have have been bullied by ballet teachers to care more about my appearance and the pretty shapes I can make my body do than for the relationship I have with it.

Have you been bullied into doing someone elses’ bidding at expense of the well being of your own body?

Most of us been reduced by society to think that the body is nothing but a piece of meat to manipulate. That the highest echelon of acheivement is to appear to fit in and toil away at the expense of ourselves being present as… Ourselves!

Well I got news. You. Are. Not. Steak.

The Meat-Body and the Feeling-Body

That we are reduced to a “meat-body” who has fogotten it can feel is at the root of so much suffering.

For me, the manifestation of my meat-body was an eating disorder. For others, addiction. For others, being sucked into a career path only to wake up one day to see how it’s not what they really wanted, but what their parents wanted for them.

Whatever your case may be, our CULTutral environment asks us to dismiss inhabiting a body that can feel.

At best, we are advised to exercise as a clever ruse to pretend we’re taking care of our bodies. But this advice is for the meat-body- Conform, fit in, look busy, but don’t feel.

Its no wonder its so tough to figure out for ourselves what is “best” for our bodies. And everybody’s got advice for the meat-body that sounds great.

Go for a run. Get an injection. Try these orthotics.

The only advice I feel is ethical to give is that nobody can know what’s best for your body but you, but as you are now, you’re probably asking the question to a piece of steak.

So, how do you know what’s best for your body?

Society knows best

For most of us, the pull of society’s standard is too strong and becomes “what’s best”. By this travesty, we gradually forget how to actually feel our bodies.

Not only are we steak, we are so well cooked we need to add globs of sugary BBQ sauce to make going there even palatable.

We need help from apps that tell us when to eat, when to sleep, when to move, if we’re breathing the right way.

We need all kinds of biofeedback technology just to tell us about how our body is feeling, because we can’t yet tell for ourselves.

If I’m being honest, I’m talking about myself here.

I’m still recovering my sense of true physical hunger. Most of the time I still have to intellectualize whether I should eat or not because I’ve lost the ability to hear a signal so fundamental for survival. Sometimes when I do feel real hunger it makes me feel nauseaus and I have to stop and tell myself I’m ok. I’m not perfect, I’ve got an over-cooked meat-body, too.

Why is it so easy to lose the ability to feel our bodies?

Because this need to fit in pervades all aspects of our weird societal structure.

And if we can stop feeling the subtle messages from our body, the ones that say, “Rest!” “Eat!”, “Don’t eat!”, and “Don’t trust that guy!”, we can ignore the uncomfortable sense that we’re going wrong.

If you could choose not to ever feel wrong again, wouldn’t you?

But in denying the feeling-body, all we can do is conform to an expectation that was never originally ours. If we could feel this bullying as it was happening, it would hurt! And who wants to feel hurt? Not me.

Better to pretend its not bullying at all. Better to stop feeling. Ignorance is bliss.

Hello meat-body.

And your meat-body is very good at getting shit done at your expense.

Your meat-body brings home the bacon

Most of us would rather not admit we willingly dismiss our bodies in order to focus harder on our work, make money, and survive. Especially right now, in COVID days.

Most careers rely on our minds to get shit done at the expense of our bodies.

The mind and the feeling-body can rarely coexist, not without deliberate training. It’s freakin’ hard. Just try it: Do some algebra or some other intellectual task, and pay attention to your breathing at the same time. Maybe you can do it… I can’t.

The benefit of using the mind from a meat-body state is that we can get sucked into it work-mode so intensely that it feels hella productive.

In fact, we feel pretty great! Great that is, until the feeling-body speaks up one day- Shit, you have a herniate disc and it hurts. How the heck did that happen? I didn’t feel it coming.

That’s because you’re steak. Steak doesn’t thave feelings.

Alas, even when the feeling-body starts to speak, we don’t want to hear it. We mean to do right by our body, but we instead we silence it with exercise to “fix”it so we can go back to being steak + mind.

But lack of exercise wasn’t the original problem for the meat-body. The source of the probelm was that we were not paying attention to our feeling-body.

Is the solution to not listening just to yell louder?

Tempting… But no.

Layering stretching and strengthening on top of a body that cannot feel is like shaking a crying baby. You get the result you wanted- silence, but then you have to deal with the devastating consequences.

Exercise is not the fix, because “doing” isn’t the solution for not being present.

Tenderizing an over-cooked steak doesn’t make it any less cooked. It just pummels it. But it feels productive to do something, doesn’t it?

Bringing feeling back to the meat-body

When we are stuck doing and attaining- exercise, career-focus, fitness goals, etc- instead of feeling, we are taken away from being in a body that can feel.

Feeling should be a natural state. Imagine a toddler just developing its senses. All feeling all the time.

But for most of us, feeling is something we have to train ourselves to do again. It becomes a “doing”, and we risk going wrong, yet again, by making “feeling” an output, instead of an input.

In my work with people, and in Liberated Body, this is where we begin: Using movement as input first, output second.

We were all born with the ability to feel our bodies, but somewhere along the way we were told there were more important things than our sensory experience.

We must remember the feeling-body. And only by this alchemical rememberance, overcooked steak can be transformed to its original, raw state.

Non-verbal communication requires a feeling body

So what’s the use of a feeling-body anyway if we can get more shit done by ignoring it?

Life has such sensory richness the meat-body cannot come close to knowing.

Do you know the depth to which the body can feel and communicate beyond the mind?

If you don’t know what I mean, you are probably steak.

What if just being was the ultimate attainment? So rich. Such a joy just to inhabit. What if that was enough?

This transformation from steak into a feeling body is the embodied revolution, and it’s better than chocolate cake (but try telling that to the mind).

Our pre-frontal cortex is great, but…

You are more than a steak with a PFC.

The rest of this blog post is locked for members of my Move With Monika online movement education platform…

If you’d like to read more, and Move With ME (Monika), you go here to join in the fun.

There’s this place between input and output called stillness where I never allow my body to go . 

It’s a shame because between input and output everything exists. 

It’s the space between cause and effect. 

Between thought and reaction. 

It’s where I can feel.

It’s a space of possibility. Pure potential.

It’s where I give myself fully to ground and gravity. 

And its also the place I use input and output to escape, because I’m too afraid to go. 

This place called stillness is part of physical mastery. And paradoxically, we have to work to attain mastery stillness.

But its a nuanced kind of work that I don’t know if I can explain well.

Think of it like this: Most people think that mastering something is an act of doing. Or trying. An effort.

Anything we can attain must be through an effort to get it, right? 

This is perfectly fine in many areas, like strength training, or improving movement capacity in some regard.

There’s even an inspiring song (and movie) about it:

But with stillness… Not quite the same effort.

Just think to the last time someone told you to relax, which is what we tend think of as stillness.

Someone tells you, “Try to relax”.

What did you just do? You TRIED. You put in EFFORT to attain a state of relaxation. In all likelihood, in your best effort to relax you succeeded only to tighten and compress your body. 

The challenge is that in stillness there is no reference to tell you that you’re doing it. When you contract something, you feel it in the spot you’re contracting. When you are doing nothing, however, what do you feel, and where do you feel it?

I actually don’t have an answer to that because I don’t do enough nothing to feel what nothing feels like (if nothing can even have a feeling…)

What is the reference point for non-action? If we are the one being still, what moving thing gives reference to us?

Stillness is when the world is still moving, and we are just there in it. Not moving with it or against it, just there in it.

Stillness it not felt as an effort. Which is supremely unsatisfying.

It’s not felt as something acting, tensing, straining, contracting, or doing something effortful, in a particular location in your body. So what is even telling you that you’re there? How can you tell that you’re still?

Maybe this is one reason why stillness can be so scary: It’s like you’re not even there… We’re so used to being the point of reference based on input and output.

So when you hear “Try to relax”, it’s not your fault if your default is to tighten your body. 

I’ve been trying to find better words to describe this state of stillness. It’s a place where no effort is required to be. Nothing coming in. Nothing going out. 

I think its so hard to describe stillness because for most of us the brain structures to comprehend it don’t even exist. And we can only understand that which we already have the neural structures to understand…

The Taoist concept of Wu Wei comes to mind: Action through non action. Doing through non doing. Stillness as a state consciously attained through an intention to not act. 

The best way I’ve come to understand stillness, as thing for my body, is as a deep surrender to gravity. A act of non-resistance to it. Letting it bear down, pressing me to the Earth without fighting back.

Most of us are fighting back. We don’t want to surrender. We don’t want to feel helpless in our non-action. 

In fitness and rehab we are taught exercises to “fight back”- Anti gravity exercises, spine extension, standing with “good posture”. I even teach these exercises. And to do them can bring a sense of power and sovereignty: We will not be pushed down. We are strong. Fuck you gravity.

But oh, if you let yourself go to this place called stillness without fighting you’ll feel the pure power that is there What if you could just be in that power without using it? Just in it.

I tried. It was unsettling.

To lie in raw, unused, undirected power feels dangerous and out of control. So instead of lingering in it, we direct it into a protective action, or “productivity”, or business (aka laziness). 

This is why stillness, as a practice, is part of physical mastery. Its how we learn to exists beyond doing. Its where we get to be with our personal power and feeling it’s surge without expending it.

That is, if we don’t escape how chaotic and weird it is.

I was out walking a few days ago and the insight hit me like a ton of bricks: I don’t ever allow myself to be still. There’s always some input I’m taking in, or something I’m doing as an output. 

Not that this is bad… But something’s missing, living that way.

Inputs and outputs are like ducks always coming and going on a pond, creating ripples on the surface so there’s never quite enough clarity to see through to the bottom. See there are actually fishes there. Maybe a rare turtle or some other treasure.

When I’m always using an input or output I avoid stillness and so I can never see what’s really there. 

And in so doing I’ve learned not to trust my body. I’ve never learned to be with it without having to force something in or do something active with it. 

In blocking my stillness, I also block feeling my pain, hunger, emotions, and fatigue. I don’t get accurate sensory information.

Food, information, music, coffee, manual therapy- Inputs I use to alter my state from stillness to analysis or distraction.

And exercise is the main output I use to control what I will allow my body to feel, which is preferable to letting unpredictable and uncomfortable feelings come over me.

And these keep me from experiencing me as I am, as a still pond. With treasure at the bottom I’m missing.

If I’m being honest, I realize I’m just using these inputs and outputs to avoid being still. 

For example, I say, I’m going out for a walk to be “still”, or to “be with myself”. But I’m walking, which is a doing. I’m listening to music, which is an analysis and a distraction. I’m not being still, I’m just pretending. 

I’m not saying you’re doing this. But I definitely am when I look closely.

I laughed out loud as I realized that all the things I call “stillness” are really just me fooling myself. Escaping stillness with something that looks sort of like it.

Even when I sit down to meditate, I’m actively trying to hold a posture (an output). Or I’m meditating on a concept- An input, an analysis, a distraction from a still state. 

Well shit.

And if I’m being really honest, I realized that the number of minutes I spend being truly still in a given day is less than 30. But probably less than 5.

But all life can’t be in stillness. We’d be such easy prey that our biology won’t allow it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a valuable place to visit more frequently, when it’s safe.

So I decided to try (there’s that word “try”, crap) to find real stillness. 

I lied on my back, and said to myself, “Be fully with the feeling of ground and gravity”. And just wait…

For what? 

That’s the problem… There is no “what”. Just wait. 

But then what the fuck is this supposed to accomplish?

After a minute or so I had the urge to get up and write down all the thoughts (pretty thoughts) that were coming in, because it felt really important that I “get” something tangible out of this. But that would be an output.

I had the urge to move because I was restless. I was the literal embodiment of 100 impulses to do something more instantly gratifying. Anything to escape. 

Boredom. Feeling useless. Feeling like I’m wasting time that I could be DOING.

There wasn’t anything bad happening. But without reference of something coming in, or something going out, I had no reference for who I even was. 

Maybe that’s the point… To dissolve.

Something about it was liberating. Also extremely uncomfortable. 

I lasted 10 minutes. 

I think we’re always balancing inputs and outputs to try to feel like we exist. To sense we are the reference point of our lives by whats going into it and what’s going out.

Right now, as I type this (output), I’m drinking a coffee (input). 

Later, I’m going for a walk (output), and I’ll listen to music (input). 

Then I’ll go work on my pull-ups (output), and eat some dinner (input), while I probably watch Downton Abby (input).

But what if there was a less effortful balance that existed in the space between input and output? I think I would truly like to visit that place more… 

And so I want to leave you with the question, should you like to reflect on this yourself:

How are you blocking your stillness with inputs? 

And how are you blocking your stillness with outputs? 

What would it feel like to exist referenceless?

I’ve been reflecting on what role movement plays in my life, and what goals I have for it.

Not just, “what goals do I have for my body?”, but “how do the goals I have for my body help me live a life of mastery, seeking truth, and sharing my gifts to others?”

What am I hoping to get out of each time I deliberately carve out the time to participate in the physical area of my life, through movement and exercise?

In movement, as in every area of my life, the concept of MASTERY predominates. So, what does it mean to put in work in the area of physical mastery? 

Let’s first talk about what mastery is not.

Whenever we use exercise or movement to uphold an image of ourselves that is tied to our sense of identity, this cannot be mastery. If I am to use myself as an example, I often use exercise to control my body size, or to feel productive while I procrastinate doing something else. This is not mastery. It’s feeding my ego.

But mastery implies not just doing what is easy and doing the thing we know we should do, but don’t want to, because it doesn’t come naturally. Or we find it boring, or because through it we have to face something painful we’d rather not admit to (like that I care far too much about how my body looks and not nearly enough about what it can do).

So, what’s the easy thing you’re doing? And what’s the hard thing you’re avoiding?

If I’m being honest, the easy thing for me to do is make time for movement everyday (for some people that’s the hardest thing!). The hard thing for me to do is to engage with movement from a place in which I’m not using it to punish myself for eating too much, or to avoid doing something (like my taxes), or out of a need I feel to look a certain way (thinner, always thinner, and more toned). If I fess up to these motives, I actually find I have no desire at all to exercise. Like, what’s the fucking point anymore??

And this realization fucking sucks. It hurts like hell to confront because if I admit to it, then I have to question everything I think I believe about why I’m exercising in the first place. I have face how my movement practice is me lying to myself.

And then I have to ask, am I ok with not being in my personal integrity when I exercise? My answer is, no.

But therein lies my practice of physical mastery.

My personal embodiment of physical mastery demands that I suspend everything superficial and exterior I use exercise for, and then, despite my disinterest, do it anyway. I commit to myself that I will try to feel what its like to move from this disciplined place with real awareness of intent, and not from my default appearance-driven compulsion, or fear of getting fat.

What seems to happen is that physical mastery first exists in the mind, and then manifests in the way it shapes the body. Just as laziness first exists in the mind, and has equal potential to shape the body.

So… What does your embodiment of physical mastery look like?

Here’s what physical mastery, in a movement practice, means to me:

Physical mastery means moving with complete awareness. Being clear on our motives. Moving with attention and intention. Attention of intention. Mastery is feeling empowered from within, not trying to exert power over your body, like it is a battle to win, or a problem to fix. 

Mastery is pure enjoyment of your physical being. The joy just to have a body. Not because it is already perfect, free from pain, or performing to efficiency, but in spite of it’s imperfections you find reason to delight in it. You find reason to celebrate taking ownership of its needs instead of shirking them.

It’s the knowing that your movement practice is an embodiment of delayed gratification. The knowing that the reward of your work today will come with a delay. Stay cool.

Mastery means seeing your reality, seeing the facts about your body, and deciding to act on what needs to be done, instead of ignoring problems and exercising just to numb out.

Mastery is understanding how cause and effect is at play: How everything you’ve done up until right now is reflected in the way your body looks, functions, and feels. No longer being blind to how past injuries- ones ignored, overlooked, and untreated- are affecting us still, today. And then instead of getting depressed or feeling helpless, seeing this fact simply as untapped potential.

Mastery is not pushing through pain, but bowing to it. Respecting the body’s occasional (or frequent…) demand for rest is an act of respect and strength, it does not show weakness. From this place of self-respect you do what needs to be done, even if that means doing much less, or much more, or just something completely different than you’re used to.

Mastery is not giving up on yourself. Not ever believing that your body is in a fixed state. It doesn’t mean you can stop working on your body, but that you recognize that the work is never done, yet you take delight in working anyway (a client once asked, “how long will I need to do these exercises for until I can stop and just get back to my regular life?”, to which I reply, “how long do you intend to live?”, and do you really want that “regular” life back?)

Mastery is choosing not to be lazy. Doing the hard thing, which sometimes means just showing up, and sometimes means auditing your motives, and sometimes means taking a rest day.

Mastery is birthed in the awareness that when you are doing what is right for your body, it is right for your mind, your spirit, for every other area of your life, and for everyone else in your life as well. It makes your movement practice an act of selflessness (so you can drop the guilt or feelings of selfishness at taking time for yourself).

Mastery transcends attainment of any goal: Getting out of pain or performing better at a sport, improving your posture, losing weight, or getting stronger. Mastery is at play when you achieve these results simply as a byproduct of your intention to do something for you because you care about you, not what anyone else thinks of you or what you think you should do.

Mastery is when your goals are your own, not hijacked by society, your parents, or your friend group. Mastery in your movement practice is when your goals, motives, and values are aligned. Embodied.

For me, physical mastery comes alive when I recognize that I only have this one body to live my life through, and the degree to which I can enjoy my life, share my gifts, and be present, is proportionate to how well I nurture it. Sometimes this means doing higher intensity training to boost my energy and resilience, and sometimes it means lying on the floor for an hour because I’m spent. Honouring this daily flux is one of the hardest things because it demands that I listen.

And mastery is the ongoing inquiry: What more can my body be for me? What is getting in the way? What am I blind to? How can I move with more enjoyment? How can I cultivate health and purpose through my movement practice? What I’m doing now… Would I be able to keep this up forever?

So take a moment before your next training session, yoga class, or jog, and reflect:

How are you embodying physical mastery, right now, in your movement practice?

What is the driving motive for exercise? Is it to attain an external goal, or is it an inner transformation?

Just today’s humble thoughts from your self-appointed body mechanics detective and physical mastery guide…

I had a moment yesterday when I was out for a walk, and it was the first beautiful, spring-feeling day we’ve had in the past week here in Toronto. In that moment, which lasted for just two footsteps, I felt a pure joy at just having a body that I could go for a walk in. It had been a while since I’ve felt that.

And something in me rejoiced with the inward cry: “THIS IS IT. This feeling is WHY you keep working on your body! And don’t you forget it” (for the record, I’ve already forgotten it… And was reminded only when I went back to revise this bit of writing…).

I think this is the ultimate “why” to embody, the longer those of us with a movement practice, practice: We keep working on our bodies so that it becomes like a receptacle into which joy can come. We do the work so we can get our bodies into a receptive state.

And developing this receptivity can only come to be, if you’re not using exercise as a crutch. 

However, this feeling lasted only for a measly two steps- maybe 2 seconds. And then I went back to walking and being lost in my thoughts, back into my grocery list, instead of basking in this inherent delight of my body that had come without my even forcing it. 

You see in that moment I realized that I didn’t need anything else to feel that life was a blessing, it was this feeling in my body. My body was a blessing that I was living my life in.

But years and years of deliberate hard work needed to happen for that moment to come. And the payoff? Two spontaneous seconds of gratitude. Doesn’t seem like a good payoff, does it… Kind of a pitiful return on investment, when you do the math.

But yet I persevere, because maybe tomorrow I can extend that to four seconds, four joyful steps. If I keep doing the work. 

So I want to ask the question: Is there something your are using exercise as a crutch for? Or to put it in other words, what is the current demand you’re feeling from life that you feel exercise can fulfill?

Is exercise just a means to an end? Or is done with the awareness that this is the disciplined action that needs to be taken because you can no longer deny how you body’s baggage, pain, stress, and lethargy are holding you back from a natural state of ease and celebration? Its a bit of a subtle distinction, but you can feel it if you tune in. 

For me (and maybe some of this will ring true for you as well) the demand I feel for my body is that I must keep working to understand it better, work to keep it pain free, keep it strong and resilient, and work to respect it.

I feel the demand that I practice loving and trusting my body more, and use my movement practice to actualize that, not to escape into exercising as a means shape my body to an image that society will recognize as acceptable. Sometimes this means the demand is to just REST (I’m feeling that demand for deliberate rest today…).

And I know that this demand is bigger than me.  As I do my work to support my body, peeling back the onion layers of strain, pain, injury, and all the times I failed to listen to it, I know I will be able to better understand and assist the bodies all whom I serve as a body mechanics detective.

The reality is that life is constantly going to knock us off course. And there is not one other area of life in which we don’t need our bodies to carry us. In our work, relationships, studies, leisure time… We need our body to show up for us, and the degree to which we can thrive in any other aspect of our lives cannot surpass the degree to which we’ve first attended to our body’s needs. 

So maybe you’d like to sit with these questions today:

What is the current demand you’re feeling from life that you feel your movement practice, or exercise program, can fulfill?

And how might you be using exercise as a crutch, a means to an end, or an escape? (what’s the hidden motive?)

Can you see a way in which this time spent tending to your body could manifest to support you in another area of life? 

How is developing mastery over your body going to help you live to your highest values, not distract you from them? 

Just my humble thoughts about physical mastery, for today.