BodyLogos Blog
Welcome 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
My Vaccine Experience: Relax into a New Strength
by Tammy WiseI got my first vaccine yesterday.
Relieved to be half way to freedom, I left Mt. Sinai Hospital with a swift and energized stride. Off to Riverside Park to workout with my next client.
As I neared the park, about a half mile distance, I started to feel an urgent need to sit down. I began to hope that I’d beat my client to the sand pits, so I could just sit for a minute before getting started.
I wasn’t sure if I felt physically or emotionally tired. My energy level just quietly descended. Joy was still my emotional expression, but suddenly I didn’t want to move or think.
This morning I woke up with a cry of pain! I can’t lift my arm. It’s like when I got a tetanus shoot. Although I’m not sleepy, I feel fatigued, like I’ve already done a day’s work.
Resting every free moment throughout the day, I widen back to get present with myself. I ask my body what is going on? Am I OK? Is this vaccine a good thing? I want my body’s answer, not my mind’s reasoning.
I could feel my body’s nature more serious than usual. Not tense, not worried, not afraid… just serious.
Both mind and body are busy. Its attention entirely inward, not outward.
This sensation is different from feeling a cold coming on, where my mind still wants to plug into something outside myself and my body can’t keep up.
Instead, I’m aware of my mind and body working together as a team inwardly.
Between moments of quiet inner teamwork, I witness myself suddenly swimming while lying still. I feel a little queasy in these moments, it’s as if that inner team would shift to a new location inside me. Then the deliberate teamwork would begin again and the nausea would subside.
I marvel at the subtle knowing my body exhibits. And feel the most peaceful when my full attention is inward with it––where I don’t split my mind’s attention between inner and outer tasks––to align my mind’s witnessing with its regulating of my body’s know-how, to create what it needs within.
It was clear that the best way for me to maximize, support and align with myself was to relax into a new strength. Plug into this inward task, rather than a typical outward responsibility.
I realize that this heightened sense of subtle energy––mind body alignment––is an opportunity to awaken more deeply to mind body alignment.
Subtle energy, is as its name implies, subtle. It’s like a whisper. But the serious effects of the vaccine, and the work it’s asking of my life force, adds volume to the subtle synthesis of mind and body. It’s easier to hear right now.
For those who want the peaceful, self-aligned, confidence of mind body alignment. Use this heightened experience to feel your subtle inner alliance. And without judgment, follow its wisdom toward self-aligned strength.
I’ve heard that most folks normalize after 24-hours. So, I will use this day as a gift to listen to what’s inside me… to learn and recognize my inner voice more intimately.
It’s so easy to think that the body alone needs to rest for your antibody defenses to grow strong. But, from my experience, your mind and body are in this together, combining their skills to reinforce itself as a whole for the world we now live in.
Observe this day of heightened awake-ness.
Be well; stay well.