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Body Logos2010-07-27 21:49:532017-10-31 20:35:44A Beach Workout that works for the BoardroomWelcome to the BodyLogos blog. Here’s where you’ll get your dose of alignment and balance with grace. (Sign up here to join 1,000 other blog subscribers.)
Redefining Strength
I want to change our perception of strength. Strength is the ability to meet resistance and influence an outcome without compromising ourselves. And we already have it.
Strength is not an attribute; it’s a state of being. Gladiators, bodybuilders, and football players demonstrate strength through brute force, sheer willpower, muscle mass, and relentless pursuit. But we’re also quick to identify dancers and martial artists as strong. Their medium taps into a sense of vulnerability, balance, alignment, controlled power, and grace—but no one can deny their strength. Strength may look different on each of us, but it is an inherent part of who we are.
You are not weak by nature; you are stronger than you think. Your strength is not something you need to kill yourself to gain—it is already within you, waiting to be excavated. The key is to stop chasing something you already have and tap into it, so you can manifest that strength in your everyday life.
Because we don’t think we’re strong, we approach resistance with the idea that we’re not enough. We throw everything we have at it and push past our physical, mental, and emotional limitations. We see strength as domination, but it’s not.
When you learn to listen to your body’s divine wisdom, you cultivate a sense of where your body is developing tension instead of standing in its strength. You end the vicious cycle of unrealistic expectations, injury, and self-criticism and learn how to consciously embrace responsible growth. You stop compartmentalizing your strength into emotional, physical, and mental pieces and operate from the strength of your being at all times.
You learn how to align yourself with gravity—instead of working against it—so you can channel your strength to meet life’s resistance. As you meet resistance with equal parts power and alignment, you transform tension into strength
As in the sword dance above, the power lies in bringing just the right amount of force—not too little and not too much. By meeting the sword’s weight, I meet gravity. I am tapped into a larger source of energy, free of tension, and discover a strength that is wholly and uniquely mine.
About Tammy Wise
The Measure of Reverence that Transformed Love
by Tammy WiseIf I knew then, what I know now.
A foundation of trust is what we most crave as children. With an alcoholic father and narcissistic mother, that craving was never nourished and a foundation was never laid. I’m sure I’m not alone in this alternative foundation.
The way this played out in my story is, uncertainty always plagued me in matters of love. “I love you” were words that floated through my senses with no anchor, no meaning beyond a pleasantry, no sense of knowing if it was true.
Recently, a measure of reverence has begun to build a foundation of trust within me.
A reverence toward the Universe co-creating my life, with a mystical deliberation, has deepened.
A trust that, what unfolds in our lives is in our best interest, even when it seems otherwise. And, the consequences that unfold when we don’t listen.
After my mom’s recent heart surgery, I brought her back to her senior home exhausted and exasperated. The surgery was unsuccessful. I tucked her in bed, shut out the lights, and made sure her roommate was OK in the dark so early in the day.
“Oh sure,” she says with a big smile, “I’m fine.” With relief, I gave her a big hug and said, “I like you so much!” And we shared a giggle of reciprocal gratitude.
A few weeks later, when my mom had recovered, she had the opportunity to repay the kindness. And more than this, repay a karmic debt. (if you believe in such things?)
Gut pain had mom’s roommate crying out in the night. Mom ignored the cry’s believing she was just being dramatic. In the morning, mom found her dead in her bed with, what we later learned was, a twisted colon that caused septicemia.
In my youth, mom had made the same nighttime turn-the-other-cheek decision, when my dad would leave her bed and slip into mine. He’d been arrested as a pedophile and she had two young girls in the house. She never once got up to check on us! (Here lays her karmic debt.)
This time, someone ended up dead, due to her inability to extend herself toward others. And, though she felt guilty about having done nothing, she showed no ability to feel concern, empathy or love when it was needed. Not then; not now!
As I see it, the Universe has provided multiple opportunities for my mom to learn important life lessons about acts of love. Each opportunity becoming more dire to coax her into taking action. She may not be listening, but I am.
I see now that her inaction, or inability to act out of love, is NOT due to MY unlovability. It’s due to HER love-abilities, or lack there of.
My reverence to the Universe—my mom’s roommate being a central part of that—for repeating history for me to learn, has transformed me from the inside out. It has given me a foundation to trust love.
From a giggle of reciprocal gratitude to sharing the words I love you with my partner, I feel a stir of deep deliverance. Because it’s finally anchored in being lovable.
A measure of reverence, toward something bigger than my story, transformed the consequences of my story. Thank you dear Universe. Thank you dear roommate.
How has your reverence for a world bigger than your own shaped your life?