Where Can We Go from Here?

If you train at my gym, you know about the white board where I list the week’s workouts.  In the bottom portion of this board I like to place inspirational quotes, little notes to myself and my clients to help carry them through their workout and the rest of their day.

For the last couple of weeks the board simply read, “You are awesome.”

That’s one I will eventually need to make permanent.  I’ll dedicate some area of wall space and have this painted onto the wall.  It’s a powerful message, one we don’t hear often enough and, even when we do, are slow to accept.

Over the next few weeks I will be cycling through a number of quotes and ideas I took from my weekend in Sacramento.  Chip’s  ideas have a lot of meat to them (Sorry, Chip–he’s a vegetarian) and deserve to be explored and given time to digest.

His central theme from the workshop and one of the driving forces in his training methodology is, “Where can we go from here?”

Simply put, this is the essence of exploration.

“Where can we go from here?” is a crucial step in the expansion of our movement capacity.  It’s the question that allows us to push boundaries and explore possibilities.  It removes the blinders of “I can’t…” and opens us up to ‘What if I…”

Each day we ended with a game of “Where can we go from here.”  Chip began the game by starting us out in a position, the first day it was simply standing, and then going around the room asking us each, one at a time, to modify the position, take us somewhere else, the next person would then modify the new position.

What followed was a fascinating exploration of movement and flow that was spontaneous and alive.  It was the perfect cool down after a day of working out and helped our bodies relax and let go of any residual tension left over from the working phase of our day.

Of course it shouldn’t be lost on you that this is also a perfect metaphor for life.  Exploring the possibilities shows you just how free you really are.

Don’t like your job?  Look around you.  Where can you go from here?  Look at your options, we all have them, too often we assume we don’t or think that the ones we see are too uncomfortable to consider.  Through the exploration of movement we learn places we once thought uncomfortable can actually be very comfortable, once we learn to relax into them and breathe.  The same can be said for your life.

Movement involves the interplay of the opposites, tension and relaxation.  Comfort is achieved by finding the perfect relationship between these two concepts in your body.  Your life involves many different interplays, polar opposites working in coordination.  Comfort in your life comes from the harmony or balance of these opposites.

Comfort in your job comes from the right balance of effort and reward.  How you define these terms is entirely up to you.  Reward could be your paycheck or the satisfaction of your work itself, a combination of the two or some other reward entirely.  It’s up to you.

Finding your own personal harmony that’s up to you, too.  Being able to explore, to consider, “Where can I go from here?” is essential to finding your own balance.  Continuing to ask that same question will help you maintain it.

My gym is a dojo.  In traditional martial arts, the hall or space where the art is practiced is called a dojo.  It’s a sacred space, a microcosm of the real world, where the battles of life are explored in practice, under controlled conditions and in safety.

My gym is the same thing.  Through exercise, movement and play we explore our struggles on all levels and gain a greater sense of our own strength and possibility.  “Where can we go from here?”  is the driving question that open us up to our own potential.

If any of this excites you, if the opportunity to explore your own awesomeness thrills, or even scares you, consider joining our two day workshop, July 28th and 29th.  Together, we can use the dojo as a launching pad to discover many of the possibilities of where we can go.  What do you have to lose besides, fear, insecurity and immobility?

Celebrate yourself, become the strongest version of you and join us.  For more information about the workshop and to sign up, Click HERE.

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