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Tammy Wise2022-05-28 19:21:272022-05-28 19:21:27The COVID SplitWelcome 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
Toughness Is Tension
by Tammy WiseI know when my body’s tension is leading the show. I feel insatiably reactive.
My muscles grip the need to succeed or survive. And when successful, I experience this toughness as strength.
The harder I push the tougher I get. I applaud my toughness in one moment… but judge it’s limitations in another. Problem is, I can never be tough enough.
You know those moments when, no matter how hard you try, you can’t satisfy. Maybe it was a punishing or needy parent, perhaps it’s now a demanding boss or client? Through my years of dance training my ballet teachers’ tough-love approach would riddle my body with tension. The more I tried to be perfect the more my body’s natural precision was lost. I realized, I don’t want to be tough, I want to be strong, and their toughness need not become mine.
Toughness is an internal sinewy web built on tension. It shrinks the empty spaces in our physicality; it’s like being deflated from the inside out. It misaligns us physically and misdirects us emotionally.
Our web of tension carries the weight of our life’s story. It’s been blindly woven from emotional disappointments or trauma, as well as, deliberately constructed to chase success (physically, mentally or emotionally).
The latter—chasing success—thought to be the drive that motivates you into your greatness, is often mistaken as prized ambition. But chasing isn’t a drive to thrive, it’s a drive to survive… it’s a fear-based reaction.
When the fear of failing is driving me to exhaustion I use this exercise:
The former— emotional distress—is a fear-based distraction. Emotions cause our body to concave and contort into frozen pockets that we are often unaware of. This distorts our posture and disorients our perspective, but we experience it as normal.
If confusion and uncertainty are blocking me from being my best I try this exercise:
In both these exercises you are unraveling the web of tension that lives in your compressed joints.
Strength is the flow of energy; tension is the stagnation of it.
To experience your strength’s inherent flow be still, breathe space into your body and feel strength’s force irrigate your sinews. Only then can you truly connect with it.
To go beyond surviving and thrive, stop chasing and stand in your fear!
When we do, we experience the strength we already have. We experience being strong enough!
Please accept my free video: How to Surrender Tension in 8-minutes, as an introduction to my book/3D-video package: The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind.