BodyLogos Blog
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Tammy Wise
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Tammy Wise2019-02-11 14:35:312019-02-12 13:28:44Crafting Your Workouts and the Life You Want: Part 3 of The Art of Strength – The Design Phase
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Tammy Wise2019-02-07 13:20:292019-02-07 13:26:40Strength You Can Stand In
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Tammy Wise2019-02-05 07:52:052019-02-05 14:30:01BODYLOGOS AT WORK FOR YOU: Getting Clear on What You Need in your WorkplaceWelcome 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
BODYLOGOS = The Body’s Divine Wisdom
by Tammy WiseIt is a Practice and a Lifestyle outlined in
The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind
Turn Your Anger Energy into Positive Energy:
The BodyLogos Purpose
by Donia Elizabeth Allen ~ BodyLogos Instructor
Shortly after completing my Bodylogos teacher training in 2015, my husband and I left New York City to relocate and things went, as they say, a bit sideways: I couldn’t rent my condo, which I was depending on for income, my in-laws suffered health crises so my husband had to leave me abruptly, and I was hit with a health crisis of my own. Completely unexpectedly, I found myself in need of a job fast in a new city where I had few contacts, and in a state of total despair.
In response to all, I did what I have done many times in the past in similarly overwhelming situations: I got really pissed! Why is this happening to me? This isn’t fair! It made sense that I’d be upset – who wouldn’t be by unexpected health and financial woes – but tantrums have their limits. I got angry, and then very quickly, I got stuck, which was the last thing I needed to be in order to cope with rapidly changing circumstances.
How did being angry and stuck manifest?
After a few weeks of this understandable but regressive behavior, I turned to Bodylogos – to the intuitive connections the practice makes between muscle groups and their emotional components. I knew that beating up on myself was not sustainable or helpful, and that, as familiar as that may be, it was disempowering. I resolved to move my energy in a different direction.
The first few days of re-aligning with a healthy practice is not easy!
It’s amazing how quickly energy gets stuck, and then gets used to being stuck! At times, I felt like I was literally dragging myself around. But focusing on one muscle group at a time, and doing so from a curious meditative stance, rather than a judgmental panicky one, helped tremendously.
The Bodylogos technique helped me connect to my agency: to my breath, to my physical posture and mental alignment.
No, but I could trust that doing abdominal crunches would give my whole spine a wonderful stretch, help release tension I was carrying, and quiet my mind enough to ask how I felt in that moment.
No, but I could do biceps curls, and ask myself what I wanted to bring into my life (happy test results!).
No way! But I could focus my attention on strengthening my back muscles, the most protective muscle group shielding the vital organs, and ask myself what I could do to better support my efforts, to literally have my own back, rather than focus on all that seemed to be going wrong.
A few times, I stood in the gym and just shook everything out: wrists, ankles, elbows, quadriceps. I could feel that crazy anger I was carrying around release! Shaking things out physically had a mental impact: it created the relief and space I needed to begin to visualize my life’s new direction.
Pretty quickly, I started to feel clearer about things and less overwhelmed. One of the most important things I got clear about was my ability to teach Bodylogos classes, which I began doing with a small but dedicated group.
Some of the situations I was dealing with had positive resolutions (no serious health diagnoses), others not-so-much (my marriage began to dissolve), but Bodylogos helped me cope with all in a way that was sustainable and loving in its approach. I was reminded during this period that a key component of a loving practice is one that encourages people to find their agency and sense of inner power no matter how chaotic their circumstances may be.
BodyLogos can help you connect to your breath and visualize the direction you want your life to go in as well!
Get your copy of The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind today!
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