This is a follow-up to the “Will Power” post I wrote some months back.
Because of the nature of my life, I regularly hear the people that I connect with speak about enjoying the journey, living in the moment, being present, etc. And these words, as great as they are, are just that, words. When faced with difficult life situations one finds it hard to embrace the now when the now is kicking you in the face, or maybe in a worse spot. LOL Basically, easier said than done.
I bring this up to touch base about the challenges I had when I wrote that previous post and how I’ve fared so far. At that time, I felt cornered with the amount of issues being felt in my body as I had recurrent injuries and noticeable discomfort muscularly that developed in rapid succession. These experiences began to weaken my mindset even to the point of considering various systemic debilitating neurological disorders that matched some of the symptoms I was feeling.
Now, throughout this recent period of my life, deep down inside, I still harbored a semblance of belief in myself and even though this belief was so faint at times to be practically unnoticeable, I still knew that one way or another this was an opportunity for me to learn. Learning is what the journey is all about. It is the process of taking the worst out of any situation one encounters and turning it into an experience of knowledge. Some might say I was overthinking the issues I was having and I will not deny the hypochondriac in me, but that is my personal learning and in that process I was able to recapitulate, with the help of my sister, of my maternal grandmother and mother’s own preoccupation with thinking the worst of physical illnesses. You see, this is part of the learning I took from the challenges that I faced and still face in some ways. Shifting the focus from feeling hard-done-by to looking for gems of learning in any situation is what constitutes embracing the journey. With each step, and as one gains proficiency in any task, we get more fluid and able to make life’s challenges more about experience and less about being a victim of circumstance.
Now I have a deeper respect for life, for my body (as I learned more about it, how it works, what works better for it, and how to love it more), and most importantly, respect for my Self, and if you ask me, this is what life is all about.
Thank you for reading and my wish is for you to also find that heart in your life, the passion that fuels your drive. And remember, Life is not a problem to be solved, but a journey to be enjoyed and experienced…..
I wanted to share a great quote that I came across as it states how I feel right now in my journey. Sometimes when we are discouraged and feel that we have gone ten steps back, in reality we have gained so much and learned even more. So, Today, Here and Now is where we are suppose to be, and today, I encourage those who feel they have lost time to remember that it’s better late than never and to continue working towards your dream 🙂
Lift the knee, keep the arm carriage tight and close to the body
Life is dynamic! As runners, we forget sometimes to stop and smell the roses. Here I’ll introduce you to one of the most widely used running drills and touch base with the heart of the matter.
One of the most basic and best ways to improve running performance, no matter if you are a sprinter or distance runner, is to warm up properly with dynamic drills that will not only prepare your body for the following exertions, but also develop proper running form and methods for a competitive edge. In this post, I’ll briefly and concisely cover one of my favorites and the staple of my warm up routine.
Apropos, all of life is interactive, interrelated and interdependent, so one cannot fully separate one part from another. This being said, with physical exercise comes mental, emotional and spiritual one layer overlapping the other seamlessly blending with each other all throughout our life.
In the beginning there was…
Running track since the age of 10, I’ve been exposed to many different types of drills and exercises that help warm up the body and condition your system for high level exertion. But, doing dynamic drills with your 8 and 4 year old around really takes the dynamic to a new level. LOL It’s so easy to get caught up with wanting to finish the task one forgets to connect with life that is happening all around them. For a father, this is especially true in respect to his kids and wife.
In the video, I show you the basic movements of the A and B skip, a staple of track/running warm ups everyone should add to their routine. The most important is, for the A skip, to lift your knee high and keeping your arm carriage (your arm swinging motion back and forth) tight and close to your body in a relaxed manner rocking back and forth bringing your fist up to your chin and down to your pocket – think chin, pocket. This is done with a light and easy skip forward. The B skip is similar adding a kick out as the knee lifts to its highest position.
This is just the face value of what you see. The world isn’t what it appears to be. What am I thinking as I do these drills? How am I interacting with my children? Am I rushing to finish to get to my run and hit a new PR or am I living in the moment embracing all that life has to offer me? I can tell you, and you might be able to notice, that in this video my face is a bit scrunched. And honestly speaking, I was a bit frustrated with my boys at the time. And you know what, my boys had nothing to do with it! It was my fixation on finishing! Finishing what? All roads lead to nowhere as the final act of life is death.
I have my moments where I listen with every fiber of my being and in this sense get in touch with such a poignant feeling that I am in a state of utter peace. This is what I call unconditional love in action. Being fully engaged in the moment and connecting with the unseen forces that our mind isn’t able to comprehend primarily because of its computational nature. The mind can and will only work with data it understands and this means it works with known areas. The unknown aspects pertain to the feeling side of life and can only be perceived from being wide awake in life. These moments are fleeting as its a lifestyle and once again the goal mentality creeps back in.
Goal mentality. I do believe its perfectly fine to have a goal, something to work towards, as life would get rather boring if we just moved through day by day with no hopes, dreams or aspirations. However, my qualm, and here I am speaking from personal experience, is the mental expectation that something should be a certain way and when those expectations aren’t met a person feels hard-done-by and misses the gem of learning involved in the experience.
Start where you are at
Your life starts now!
All of us, can do nothing other than start where we are at. This means, at this very moment you are exactly where you need to be in life. Sometimes this fact is hard to deal with considering the challenges we are facing. But life never gives us challenges that one cannot handle. I’ve heard this for a very long time and have used it to spur me past very hard battles. Recently, the shit really hit the fan and I felt hopeless for sometime with even the power inherent within this phrase not doing it for me. I asked my wife what she felt this saying means to her. And she said that if life gave us a challenge we could not handle then, effectively, this means our death. That’s it then! So, if we are still alive then we do have what it takes and will find a way if only we break free from any expectations. Breaking free from expectations boils down to not holding life to any idea that is contrary to our fate. As hard as it is to understand, each of us has a unique expressive purpose that needs to be unfurled through the process of our life. I will cover more of this subject matter in future posts as it is an area many people find difficult primarily due to our social conditioning.
Improvement
So how can we practically improve our running form? Isn’t this the gist of my post? Yes it is! 😉 And the method is learning to feel ones way forward. This is easy if we release all of our expectations and goals detaching from any hold on life and enjoying the ride. By feeling the wind as we move through space and time, feeling our legs hit the ground, focusing our attention on each movement as we perform them, one will begin to get a manner of control of their life simply by being alive. It is so simple yet very powerful. In my experience, one swings back and forth between being fully in the moment to being caught up in goal orientation, but the more I pull myself back towards myself I feel a greater sense of peace and success, and, in the end, this is all that matters.
