As an exercise approach I enjoy weight training, it fits my personality well. It is active, you push hard, you stop, you rest and then you are at it again. No long pauses, no waiting. There is intense discomfort at times, but it is ceases as you “push” through the difficulty. But today I was doing an extreme stretch video where I achieved difficult positions and held them for what felt like incredibly long durations. I began to fixate on the discomfort that was being created in my body and wishing I was anywhere but there.
The gentleman on the tape kept repeating; “Breathe through the discomfort, breathe through the discomfort.” I began to do this, in fact, I began to breathe into the discomfort. It was hard, I was straining, not knowing when it would end, when he would release the held position, or when my muscles could relax.
I began to reflect into my personality, noting how I am better at pushing and resisting than allowing and letting go. I guess in some way it gives me a sense of power and control. With weight training I know I have only two or three more reps until the pain will stop. I know when I can push for one more and still survive and I know when I am maxed out and must stop. But with this stretching I had no control, the power that this training required was very different to what I was accustomed to, unlike weight training there was no definitive point of failure and for some reason this was much harder for me to endure.
Once I started to breath INTO the discomfort things got easier. I began to relax into my body, I stopped fighting the pain and I was able to achieve higher levels of flexibility and patience, I was no longer ‘anxious’ for it to end.
While holding my positions I was wondering about life’s painful places, those places that we’d rather push through aggressively, quickly, even if it caused intense discomfort, because our main desire was for the distress to be over.
Would we be better served to breath into these uncomfortable places? Might we learn deeper lessons as we soften to the possibility that we can stretch and allow life to unfold with its purpose? Could we maybe begin to flow and soften so that life did not bounce off of us in such a harsh, painful way?
My question to you is how do you exercise (your demons)? Do you run from them as far and as fast as you can? Do you push the heavy weights and relationships of life away and feel more powerful for doing that? Do you walk slowly talking with your friends again and again about your life circumstances? Or do you get quiet, gently stretching, asking your body for more flow, more movement and more flexibility?
All forms of exercise are good and all forms of exercise serve a purpose. Perhaps the key is in knowing when to push, when to run, when to communicate a problem and when to be quiet and patiently stretch, asking yourself for more elasticity, greater tolerance and flow.
