My job is pretty interesting. I meet a lot of people in a given week. But, unlike, say, a business person, I'm not just shaking hands and making eye contact, I'm seeing dozens of different people moving their bodies to their limits. So when I "get to know someone," it's in a very material way. I will not only know what you do and what kind of personality you have, but also what parts of your body are stiff, misaligned, or otherwise out of whack.
I've seen a pattern emerge over the years of meeting people in this way, and I'd like to share it with you now.
Tense, anxious students have tense, anxious bodies. Relaxed, laid back students have pliant, relaxed bodies.
Some more detailed examples. A client who is fidgety and unsure, who asks a bunch of tangental
questions before he or she has even started to move, will have an incredibly difficult time letting the correct muscle relax, or to breathe smoothly during exertion. A student with a lot of anger or frustration will often have clenched toes and a tight neck throughout an entire class, without even realizing it. An ambitious business-type person will tend to lean into exercises and overpower what should be light poses. A low key student might be good during relaxation, but give up easily when a little muscle burn is called for, and fail to get the strengthening they need. At first I thought I was just projecting my perception of people onto their bodies, but I've seen the effect enough now to know it's quite real.
The phrase I use to describe this is "Becoming your psychology."
We speak of the mind/body connection, but it would be more useful just to start saying "the mindbody". They truly are one in the same. A pattern that you are enacting in your brain will also be expressed in your bones and muscle tissue.
Because they're the same thing.
A lot of people come to me hoping for a physical change. But if they aren't willing or able to change their psychology, the physical changes will only be superficial and temporary. Put another way:
Your body will resemble the kind of person you are, not the kind of person you want to be.
Whenever one my clients has a successful outcome, it is always because they went to work on their gray matter just as much, if not more, than their flesh and bone. You can lose some weight increase your flexibility, and gain some muscle, but if you still have the psychology of an unwell person, your progress will be limited and you will slip back into your established mindbody pattern within six months.
This isn't new age mumbo jumbo about "thinking yourself well". This is all about the reality of brain and nervous system interactions. In my experience, you cannot be physically fit without corresponding mental fitness. (Note that I'm discussing individuals with normal mental health. Once serious mental illness is involved anything can happen)
The most common mistake I see are people who come to me looking for answers to their pot bellies, backaches, and rounded shoulders. They are looking for the right diet, the right stretch, the best desk set-up. They're ready to change everything, to spend hundreds of dollars on equipment and training, but they're not ready to do the most important thing; to revamp their psychology.
Want to blast away those love handles? Become the kind of person who is satisfied with just a taste of dessert. It'll work better than 3 hours of exercise a day. This doesn't mean you're the kind of person who only has a bite but secretly craves the whole pie. That simply means you haven't changed your ways at all. When you are truly content with a just a forkful, because that's
just who you are, then you have arrived.
Want to feel more limber and alive in your body? Become the kind of person who is utterly at peace waiting in a long line to pay for something. Not just miming outer calm while inwardly seething at the ineptitude of the staff, but truly tranquil. If you could manage this kind of psychological change I could have you in a deep backbend in a matter of weeks. I had one student who, after a near death experience, achieved this very thing.
For any desired physical fitness outcome, there is a corresponding mental transformation that will get you the results permanently, in a shorter time and with lower risk of injury.
Naturally, this change is very difficult to pull off, or we wouldn't be as neurotic as we are. Changing your psychology for the better is more demanding than any exercise you could do in a gym. There are a lot of things you can do to help the process along, things I'll be detailing in the next few weeks, but the first rung of the ladder is to get to know what kind of psychology you're sporting right now.
There's a surefire way to get to know who you are. It's what Buddhists sometimes call "watching mind," or the ever popular word, "mindfulness". By consistently checking in with your mental patterns, and watching as they play themselves out in their endless loops, you will have made the first step towards real change.
Mindfulness isn't a theory, it's a practice. And only through practice will any of what I've just written make much sense to you. There are tomes and tomes on the subject of mindfulness, all of which I recommend you to read. But if you've just got a minute, check out the new project
Gwen Bell and I have launched this year,
The Mindfulist. It will help you learn how to check in on yourself throughout the day, every day.
So don't spin your wheels pursuing the next fad diet or exercise gizmo. Get to work on the stuff between your ears! Start with the mindfulness stuff, it's not just talk. And check back here in the next few weeks, every other week, between posts on other topics, I'll be writing a 3 part series on the psychology of wellness that, if you've read this far, you're sure to find useful.
Who will you become this year?
Over the years I've seen a steady stream of students come through my doors literally crippled by their desk jobs. I don't use that word lightly. These people have serious lower back problems, chronic neck pain and the headaches that go with it. They are unable to perform even the most rudimentary physical movements such as a forward bend. They are injured easily, slow to heal, and so habituated to their physical patterns that they don't even realize that constant discomfort and irritation is not the natural state of the body. And to add insult to injury, these beautiful people become hunched, slumped, pudgy versions of their youthful selves.
