BodyLogos Blog

Strength You Can Stand In

You workout religiously. You are totally committed to becoming strong!

One day your trainer, or gym mate, notices that you’re getting stronger. With enthusiasm they tell you, so you know that your hard work isn’t in vein. In that moment of celebration, I regularly witness the encouragement combatted with a “not strong enough” retort.

When nudged a bit further, you might feel the fear that acknowledging success will jinx further success. If you feel you’ve arrived, you’re afraid you’ll stop working hard at “it” and lose “it.”

While this may be a very real feeling, it’s a fear-based reaction, and not the whole truth.

What does stepping into your “it”—your strength—actually mean: looking a certain way, feeling unwavering confidence, knowing what you want in life and how to get it? Owning your strength means stepping into a definition of strength that asks you to stretch every aspect of yourself: body, mind and spirit.

Conscious engagement with your strength is necessary to define it. Strength training puts you face to face with everything you resist and on top of that challenges you in the mind-body areas in which you are weakest.

Is strength just the ability to press a loaded barbell, or does it include celebrating the doing? Does strength mean finishing in the top ten of a marathon, or does it include congratulating your opponents? Is strength measured by your commitment to training or your commitment to wellbeing?

Your experience with resistance––dumbbells, barbells, free weights, pulleys or emotions, reactions, beliefs––will be what helps you define the 3-dimensionality of strength.

Use your physical training to holistically define your strength’s end goal or you will forever be chasing “it.”

The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind, my book/3D-video learning system guides you toward finding your strength within and without.

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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

Tammy Wise is a widely respected mind-body fitness expert based out of New York City, owner of BodyLogos, Inc. author of The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind. A former Broadway dancer turned Tao minister, Tammy was voted the Best of Fitness by Time Out New York and has appeared in Martha Stewart’s Whole Living magazine, New York Magazine, Natural Health, Shape, and Thrive Global. She’s a Transformational Authors Contest Winner and regular contributor to Honeysuckle magazine and Medium. Visit her at bodylogos.com.