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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
Aging into Physical Grace
by Tammy WiseAge is often the excuse for having less physical or athletic potential. But as we are witnessing in the Olympics, mindset overrides physical performance. And for the aging, emotional intelligence is your greatest asset to manage mindset.
How often do you hear, from yourself or friends, “I used to be able to do that!”
This is a statement that could be said with personal pride and joy, or with self judgment and defeat.
We all have the choice to appreciate what we’ve HAD, or reject what we HAVE.
A critical difference between young and old bodies is how they respond to injury. Young-body injuries are typically acute breaks that heal quickly. Old-body injuries are often wear and tear chronic conditions that heal slowly.
Of course, this is a very general comparison. But under the surface of most injuries is this basic truth. And, it’s often experienced as going up or down the ladder of life.
When we climb the ladder of life there’s a lot of Creating Forward and Determined Power energy eagerly motivating our mindset.
• Creating Forward sparks the heart’s potential to FLY.
• Determined Power drives the body’s fight to FLY.
When we descend the ladder of life there’s a lot of Suspending Judgment and Coming Home energy delicately comforting our mindset.
• Suspending Judgment GROUNDS you in the moment.
• Coming Home GROUNDS you in yourself.
We’re either preparing to fly or grounded!
But what if we change the visual?
What if a hierarchy of life replaced the modern-day ladder. A sacred system that deepened our connection to living and allowed potential to shape shift, rather than a mere rise and fall from grace.
Take walking, for example. Our first steps are celebrated when we traverse from one pair of outstretched arms to another. No one teaches us how to walk. We simply power ourselves through. And everyone values us for it.
And so it goes in life. We power ourselves through until we get injured or are taught another, more effective, way.
Experience—age, time, wisdom—teaches us to value what it takes to fly, what it means to ground, and what is empowered by standing still. This holistic capacity offers choice, so a right-for-you life can be crafted. Maturing out of powering through, to right-for-you, is emotional maturity.
For some Olympic athletes, this meant not attending the opening ceremony. Right-for-you adjustments are made at every age. It is a sign of maturity. Thinking that it’s only when you’re old, that limits infringe on your choices, is not only false, it’s misleading.
Considering your limits doesn’t take you out of your potential—doesn’t make you less than your younger self—unless you decide it so. It simply shifts your connection with it. Emotional intelligence is having appreciation for the journey and having the courage to make right-for-you choices along the way.
Learning to walk effectively through life takes a lifetime. First you connect to your own weight, then you connect to the weight of the world, then you connect to a universal weightlessness.
• Universal Connection deliberately stands STILL.
Stand in your potential. Know when to fly. Know how to ground. And be still, so you can hear the deep guiding voice within you that lives for your potential.
All bullet point references are reflected in my upcoming program: The Art of Posture. I look forward to walking “deliberately”with you soon!