This also may be god.
Why Fitness is basic and physical attributes are shiny, empty, ribbons.
I don’t believe in the value of attaining the Attributes of strength, power, conditioning and mobility.
(in and of themselves.)
It’s akin to chasing the attitude of happiness, asserting our willpower over those vices that make us feel less than whole, being “good” so that we might be regarded as “good”, as “right”, as keeping up with the standards that qualify a human being.
That’s all garbage.
Not garbage in that being good is bad, but in that being good is just so basic.
Exercise is basic.
Developing attributes is basic.
Not useless, in fact quite useful, but only if applied to something more. If your motivation for improving your conditioning is tied to an article you read, or an opinion from your gym rat trainer friend, then you haven’t considered conditioning enough to give it any of your time.
Body composition isn’t enough of a good reason.
Body composition is basic.
It’ll get a person there. Wherever there might be, possibly body obsessed, or eventually fat again when becoming bored and disenchanted with running for and running on the fumes of a shallow “why”.
Better to fall in love with the human body.
Not necessarily one’s body but THE body and what it is capable of.
There’s all the time in the world for falling in love, so better to turn our interest toward investment and curiosity. Eventually, our love will serve as a useful guide, but early love is immature,
romantic,
fickle, all feeling, no follow-through.
Investment asks for time, patience and practice.
Investment is sustainable.
And just what is our body capable of? What are we investing in?
I’m not talking about marathons, and climbing Mt. Everest.
Start simpler.
How gorgeous is the coordination involved in walking?!
I mean it!!!
Mark where the step begins and ends.
Does it ever end?!
Note the challenge in brain/body as you shift the scale, tempo, pattern. Traversing the landscape of contralateral to Ipsilateral and back again.
Close your eyes.
Cross one foot in front of the other. Reach with your fingers, lift your toes, place your hands in your pockets.
Whistle.
Be curious.
Read about walking.
Take notes.
Watch a dancer walk. A baby. An old man. An athlete.
Mimic somebody. Try on your dad’s shoes, like you did when you were two.
Leave the house barefoot.
Move your big toe.
Not curious? Too shy? No time?
Get curious!
The only thing keeping any being from advancing in anything taken on, is a depth of curiosity and a willingness to follow this thread wherever it might lead, whatever the task might be.
Ideally, this practice of being curious, translates to all that we do. (This is the purest sense of practice.)
This also may be god.
The Development of a physical practice from here, is investment of inquisitive thought, translated into action. Attributes are in service of this curiosity, never the other way around.
Start simple.
Walk. Stand. Sit. Roll around on the floor. Become enamored with these and all other mundane forms and actions and handstands will be cake.
Don’t move more. Care more. Become fascinated with all of it. Fascination will see you through.
Cry more.
Laugh more.
Skip that fucking hot yoga class, and read something instead. Let that give you a reason to move.
Allow the love of process and development to shed light on self, others and the world.
At all times.
Invest in this level of of study, analysis, passion and creativity and the perfect squat will reveal itself, as the perfect squat is the one in which you sit inside of presently, allowing your thinking and your sense of possibilities to impose upon you and not you onto them.
Be interested and aware and the self love will follow.
The attraction of an empty gym-grown attribute is just that, empty.
Our heart rate and our pump and our sweat can be misleading.
Signals can be misleading.
Curiosity is an opening.
A reveling in the not-knowing.
A celebration of the void.
Asking questions that lead to more questions.
The proper practice, the sustainable kind, the curious kind, the joyful kind is one that develops the framework for how we ask these questions, not the framework for physical development.
Physical development is for those interested in self. Its tenants are common.
(basic).
The development of curiosity is for those interested in all the nuance, all the gray, all the ebb and flow of living a life.
Be curious.