The Discipline of Delight

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Hello Shape-Shifter,

Strength is compromised when you’re bound in tension, uncertainty, and overwhelm.

You may ask yourself:
• How do I stop the chase and stay in the game?!
• Am I doing too much or doing too little?
• Is there some relaxation/strength training ratio to follow to live in the sweet spot?
• Is it possible to be relaxed and strong at the same time???

If any, or all, of the above questions run through your head… I can help.

I’ve helped 1,000’s of people in my 40-years in the fitness industry.

As a Broadway dancer turned Tao Minister, my mind-body strength method––BodyLogos––that unites principles from Eastern and Western philosophies, creates a bridge between fitness and wellness.  BodyLogos guides people to release pent-up chronic tension WHILE strength-training. They learn to recognize their strength and influence, so they experience “relaxed strength.”

• Time Out New York voted me and BodyLogos “Best of Fitness” twice!
• Dance Spirit Magazine called BodyLogos, “a zen workout;”
• Shape Magazine described it as, “body sculpting that uses weights to enlighten you;”
• NY Magazine named it, “Mindful Fitness.”

After publishing my book, “The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind,” I wanted to create something that could implement that foundation into a guided practice, and reach people everywhere.

So here I am building a BodyLogos Fitness App that kick-starts you with the Relaxed Strength Challenge––a step by step plan that shape shifts you from ‘worn out chaser’ to ‘relaxed strength’ in 5-weeks.

Watch for tomorrow’s email with all the details on how to apply for the Relaxed Strength Challenge!

PASS THIS MESSAGE ALONG to FIVE friends who you think want to SHAPE SHIFT too! And we’ll learn the discipline of delight all together!

Embody Success ~ Tammy

 

Shape Shift Your Life!

Coming Soon… The Relaxed Strength Challenge!

A Personal Experience:

“Exercise… The first sign of struggle and I was done.
 
Stress about the world, the country, my work, was overwhelming me and I needed to do something to help myself. My health was suffering and I was having a now or never kind of feeling… I was feeling trapped and had to focus on me, on my health.
 
The BodyLogos Relaxed Strength program were not “exercises” to struggle through, they were ways to connect to yourself and to help your body… There’s no competition; there’s no pushing to do better. It’s a ‘connect to your body’ where you are now and a semi-meditation at the same time. It’s about  how the muscles work, what their function is in a purely physical way; and in “spiritual/emotional” terms, how they help you move through life. I found the talking that Tammy did engaged my brain just enough to distract it from the fact I was “exercising” and gave me something to think about then and later.”

Sherri Kendricks ~ Reference Librarian

DancerInWhite

Jeffrey Epstein Cohorts

DancerInWhite

How Sex, Dad and Dance Woke Me Up!

There have been many reports regarding sexual misconduct, sexual abuse, sex trafficking and pedophilia. Little commentary from these report’s share the actual experience beyond the victim/perpetrator dynamic.

Jeffrey Epstein’s story is no exception. Even with the stream of young women who bravely confirmed his disgraceful schemes, the high drama was created by the who’s, the how’s, and the outcomes.

An experience is felt. It may be felt all at once or as awakening layers of deadened sensation. An experience exposes feelings not scandalous facts.

My story is an account of my experience, not the facts that could accuse and convict a perpetrator. My perpetrator is dead and I seek no revenge. What I offer in this story is faith building…

Asleep only a few hours, I am awoken night after night by my dad. Hearing him enter my private space curled me up into a ball of tension. My eyes wide open under closed eyelids. Even the first time, at the age of ten, I knew nothing good was going to follow.

Then suddenly, I am plucked out of the terror, from what felt like a hand from the heavens, taking me to a place that I can only describe as nirvana––a place where the soul is free from worldly possessions (including my physical body)––a place where I felt safe, relaxed and strong.

This is referred to as a disassociated state in psychology, where the person experiences a detachment from reality, different from a loss of reality as in psychosis. My experience of this state was not one of mental scrutiny; rather, it was a spiritual awakening.

When in this surreal state I felt plugged into both earth and sky. A relationship with my energy body, separate from my physical body, was woken. My central plumb line––the body’s innermost relationship with gravity––was plugged into a relaxed stretch that carried a current of pure life force. I was infused with a spiritual strength that cursed through my energy centers.

I felt like the channel connecting earth and sky. I felt important. I felt like an integral part of the whole of Creation.

Then suddenly, I would be snapped back into my physical body. Usually dad would be gone by then. Sometime not.

My life was like a Ping Pong game. For the 3-years dad visited my room at night to satisfy his sexual need. Back and forth I would bounce, between feeling the relevance of unifying earth and sky, to feeling unworthy of the most basic parental protection.

I had no control over these disassociated experiences. Just as I had no control over what was happening in my reality. But what I gained from these experiences was twofold:

• I have clear reference points for tension and strength.
• And I can distinguish between energy movement and physical movement.

At this time in my life I started dance classes. I wanted the physical mastery to maintain the energy alignment I experienced in my surreal life in my real life. I knew undoubtedly that spirit lived through me, and the way to connect with it was through my central plumb line––my posture.

I learned to transform the static energy of tension into the fluid energy of strength. I found the quiet balance of energy movement inside the demands of physical challenge, and understood the inner grace of poised posture.

Through years of practice, the tension of my curled up body learned to elongate into a channel of life force. Gaining the mastery, embodied in my surreal life into my real life, landed me in the Broadway cast of A Chorus Line at the age of nineteen!

Posture matters. It has the capacity to break through tensions grip and transform misaligning beliefs. It rescued me from the potential downward spiral of my childhood trauma.
Your plumb line connects the essence of you with gravities force and you plug into a universal belonging that is safe, relaxed and fiercely strong.

Strength is experienced as ease-full, not tough, rough and rugged.

It has become clear to me that many of the ways we are taught to strive, prepare and compete for the lives we want are tension building rather than strength enhancing. And by relating to an end goal, in leu of being on the journey, keeps us detached from our energy body––Spirit–– and exhausts our physical body.

What I have concluded from my experience is, the aligning energy that connects our energy body (or Spirit Self) to our physical body is the energy we each borrow from the greater whole. It took trauma for me to experience the gift of spiritual belonging. Showing me that there is a sacred thread that runs through all our life experiences.

Listen inwardly and trust what feels safe, relaxed and strong.

 

To learn to access the relaxed strength found in your posture check out: The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind, a Book-3D/Video Learning System that helps you feel relaxed on the inside and strong on the outside.

Behind the Scenes of The Mind Body Adventure App

Tammy Dancing on Broadway!

The pre-launch of The Mind Body Adventure App is happening next week! Here’s a behind the scenes look at how the BodyLogos Method Shape-Shifted my prolonged tension into Relaxed Strength!

I started dance class at 10-years old. It was the great escape from a home life that didn’t feel safe. When teachers would instruct me to use my body in a way that created tension I would cringe inside. My little frame couldn’t carry any more tension. So, I would quietly figure out ways to create what they wanted, but using my own methods. By high school, I was a soloist in North Jersey Ballet Company. But my ways remained my secret.

After a professional career dancing in Broadway musicals, movies and the like, I was looking for what came next. I was fascinated with energy and figured diet would be an interesting focus. So, I enrolled in Anne Marie Colbin’s cooking school: The Natural Gourmet. I took a class called, Cooking with the 5-Elements of Tao. I was startled by what happened next…

The principles they were teaching explained my method of dancing. There were other people like me. A whole philosophy based on my way of being in my body. Taoism offered a coming home, a sense of belonging, and the validation I needed to look beyond my own needs with my method.

I immediately transferred to Tao Seminary. For 4-years I immersed myself in Tao theories and its healing arts. I’d memorize details by thinking, yes that’s how I do a pirouette, or that’s how I do an arabesque. I was delighted; and, I found the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

I want to share my mind-body strength training method, BodyLogos, with the world, which means the Body’s Divine Wisdom.

I can’t wait to share the BodyLogos Method and The Mind Body Adventure App details!

Dr. Ruth and me. Steve Friendman photo

How is Hutzpah Learned?

Dr. Ruth and me!

Where does your hutzpah come from?

Dr. Ruth made a documentary about her story last year. Here’s my short-story!

Years of childhood trauma taught me to be tough, and tension was its cohort. I believed strength was the capacity to endure hardship and pain––physical and emotional. And if I was tough enough the tension would subside.

I was wrong.

When the traumatic moments became greater than my capacity, I began spontaneously and unintentionally leaving my physical body. My experience of physical tension and self-denial would suddenly shape-shift. I’d experience my energy body as a flowing current precisely aligned between Earth and Sky. A posture steeped in self-regard that was tension-free and pain-free.

I experienced Relaxed Strength. A posture that is now my foundation for living strong––in my body.

My practice––the BodyLogos Method––is committed to Relaxed Strength. I know, first-hand, that self-acceptance and self-love––the gift of my childhood shape-shifting––inspired the current that aligned my strength with the life I wanted. And, that self-proving and self-betrayal are tensions that exhaust our strength.

Consciously aligning between Earth and Sky, and listening to my body’s tension-cry with interest, has offered me a bridge from fighting to healing, from being fit to being well, and from living tough to living strong.

It is my mission to pass on what I learned from Earth and Sky.

This is the hutzpah that has influenced my NEW BodyLogos Fitness App. It will launch next month! I’m so excited to offer a private experience for BodyLogos teachings.

Keep your eyes open for the launch details and the start-up 5-week Relaxed Strength Challenge!

 

Steve Friedman Photo

Tammy in Motorcycle Gear

A Weird and Wonderful NYC Motorcycle Ride

Tammy in Motorcycle GearLong summer treks out of city congestion balance my need for the open road. I’ve lived on a motorcycle in NYC traffic for 25-years.

How unusual to have open road around me when riding through midtown Manhattan. A summer trek right here on Broadway!

CoronaVirus has completely changed the landscape.

It’s an infectious landscape of silence and sirens. Fear-filled vulnerability has seeped into our soft tissues. The streets are near empty. A world is hiding to stay alive.

This feels weird. I’m used to feeling afraid of the world, even hiding from it at times. But, in this moment, there’s no immediate world to be afraid of. It’s surreal. I actually feel safer riding my motorcycle up Broadway than ever before.

As I continue up Central Park West, I hear sirens. Suddenly, I’m whipped back into the landscape I’m familiar with in NYC—traffic. But this time, I embrace the scene. Instead of people being in my way, I felt in their company.

My body feels like it’s riding into a gathering. My body isn’t fearing or dreading its environment. It’s curious about being together with people—having a shared experience.

This feels wonderful. I want to be in relationship with—in communion with—something real.

This is definitely not how I typically approach a NYC traffic jam!
This is definitely not how we feel approaching each other, masked with eyes down, since hit by this pandemic.

But, I have all my motorcycle gear on. No surgical mask necessary when wearing a full-face helmet!

I rode through familiar neighborhoods that day. Visiting a client’s courtyard who passed away from COVID-19, checking on houses of people out of town, and waving to doormen I used to see regularly. But nothing felt the same.

Usually my gear protects me from the world. On this day, it united me with it.
Usually my fear separates me from the world. On this day, it connected me to it.

How weird and wonderful to separate from my habit to fear. And for a moment, be curios about its impermanence, illusiveness and trickery.

Workout Warriors Take Warning

Motivation Question

7AM fitness clients are high achievers! We’re warming up in the dark and seeing our day take shape before the sun comes up.

Holiday socializing may have overflowed into the work week and made these early workouts painful. One of my high achiever’s responded to feeling over-done by over-doing some more!

Did she believe that overriding her body’s exhaustion would make her stronger?

As her trainer, I had to help her decelerate and work with willingness rather than will. The willingness to listen rather than demand; and recognize that muscle failure is not the same thing as physical exhaustion. Muscle failure challenges a restored muscle to full capacity—till it fails. Physical exhaustion is an unrestored muscle.

Fitness resolutions need to abide by the same willingness; listen and discern between physical exhaustion and muscle failure!

Meet limitations anew each day by being present. Presence offers truth to your strength training that is both empowering and humbling.

Empowering because you experience your limitations from a place of respect. Meeting your limits, not beating your last performance, is the definition of self-love. Overriding your limits is the definition of self-betrayal.

Humbling because it’s a “real” exchange. Not with what you can and can’t do, but with what you’re willing or not willing to do.

My client was willing to exhaust herself further, escalate her body’s tension and beat up her self-worth over how heavy a dumbbell was and how hard she could drive herself. The question becomes, are you willing to sacrifice yourself—your wellbeing—to feed what you think “should be” versus what actually is.

Stop thinking and feel! Train for relaxed strength, and leave the tension of self-betrayal in 2019!

Woman Lying Supine

Find Your Natural Posture

Woman Lying Supine

While learning posture’s subtle balance between surrendering and aligning, a student questioned, “shouldn’t good posture be natural––balancing attention between tension and strength is hard?!”

I felt that his sentiment should be true, but my experience working with bodies showed otherwise. So I slept on it. (My go-to place when stumped!) As I laid down that evening and felt my spine unfurl into its rightness and enjoyed my muscles’ surrender from a day’s work, it struck me. He’s right!

The precision of posture is natural—when horizontal!

Since then, whenever a client expresses uncertainty about what is correct posture, I lay them horizontal and help them answer the question from a supine position.

Gravity is a blanket that guides you to your best self.

Dog with questioning head cock

Selfishness is a Good Practice

Dog with questioning head cock

I sat on the arm of a client’s couch while she took a phone call. The call was extensive; long enough to change my training plan for her.

Rather than getting agitated, I aligned my body with gravity and relaxed into a deeper experience of Self. With each breath I could feel my emotional tension patterns unraveling.

Rather than feeling my worth in question, I aligned with our separation. I relaxed in what is, instead of what I was afraid of. Being replaced doing.

My client and I were equally selfish. While she used selfishness to take care of her business with this long awaited phone call. I used selfishness to take care of me.

Selfishness is an aspect of self-care.

 

Tammy speaks about the Power of Posture

Fitness For Living

 

You workout, yet you still feel worn out by life. Every demand, expectation and responsibility adds weight to the gravity of your day.

What carries your workout vitality into your life?

Proper posture is the energy conductor that plugs you into your strength.

Posture that is relaxed and aligned wakes up your mind and muscle’s. You plug into gravity—a universal energy Source. After all, we are an energy resource—we die. The universe is an energy Source—it’s infinite!

When posture isn’t considered you use up your energy reserve quickly. You crave sleep and food to recharge, or external stimulants to keep up. Posture extends the life of your body’s battery of life force.

Listen to this 17-minute talk, broadcast from the Gary Marshall Theater in Burbank California, about the power of posture.