⚫️ Start with the Body - SIX CORE IDEAS (part 3)
Here’s a reminder of the Six Core Ideas behind what I am building at GymnasiOn.net.
Here I will cover the third idea:
“Start With The Body”
To see a more in depth look at the other ideas, you can go to GymnasiOn.net/six but I want to make it clear that the point I’m making is about far more than just basic health and fitness routines.
I’m trying to look at the deeper, more complex aspects of wellbeing by exploring what health means from all different angles. Instead of relying on the overly safe and convenient modern world to teach us the best way to live well, we look to the Real World where things are dynamic, and growing.
Even though it’s hard, we become healthier by experiencing things that reflect this reality and allowing it to change us and change the way we see the world.
We can start doing this by very simply eating meals made up of both plants and animals (which I call “Green Face meals”). This gives us an opportunity to connect to the ecosystem of processes that surround us.
We are both direct hunters that eat animals
and meandering gatherers that eat plants.
Eating in a way that honours both sides of this reality joins us to this perpetual living cycle; activity, and actuality moving into exploration, and potential, generating everything you see in The Real World.
This is just one example of how understanding ourselves, each other, and the world starts with the deliberate experience of life in a physical body.
Because EVERYTHING you do in The Real world is done with your physical body.
But it's more than just flesh and bones. It’s how we turn our ideas and concepts into objects that share in our existence so we can connect with them in reality.
In this way, your body is an expression of you who really are. When you learn to take your body through change, you also learn how to transform yourself in less obvious ways.
Sometimes we can think our problems are just in our minds - as if difficulties we have thought and talked ourselves into can be solved best with even more thinking and talking!
It’s easy to forget that our mental software runs on animal hardware. Your brain, your head, your heart, are all things we talk about in an abstract way but these are actual physical organs… Chimpanzees have them, dogs have them, elephants have them.
And like a rider on an elephant, our highly sophisticated thinking mind rides on top of a big dumb animal that has big dumb physical needs.
You wouldn’t use words and concepts to inspire, convince, or threaten an elephant into doing things. You use physical barriers and simple rewards. So it’s probably a good idea to start in the same way with your animal body.
If you want to do something with your body, you have to start with the body.
It’s much simpler and easier to see measurable effects when we deal first with hunger, sleep, strength, nutrition, etc. before we worry about the stories we believe.
I call this Elephant Training.
We start with the body where we can actually see if things are getting better or worse without having to create narratives that are easily manipulated and mistaken.
Often, by simply dealing with something in a physical way first, we can find that we have also been able to heal and develop mentally and emotionally. Problems like procrastination, self-belief, low mood, social anxiety, fear of failure, imposter syndrome, burnout, and indecision can make us avoid doing things in The Real World with our real bodies.
We might have experienced difficulties in the past that are informing our actions negatively. Too often these problems are treated in the absence of any new experiences that would teach us to act in a new way.
The simplest, safest, and best way to give ourselves these experiences in the modern world is through repeatedly moving the body in uncomfortable ranges against resistance while eating foods and organising our sleep and work to allow this to be done consistently.
In other words; Routines, Diet and Exercise.
I like to think of human beings in three key ways:
Your mind that thinks
Your body that takes action
and your emotions that feel feelings
All of these aspects are YOU - they’re not separate - but by looking at human beings in these three ways, we can understand how the mechanisms interact so we can work with them, bringing them into alignment instead of working against them and letting them fall into disarray.
The body is like an old car. The back wheels are the emotions that drive you and the front wheels are the thoughts that steer you.
The way we see the body going is an expression of the direction and drive of your thoughts and feelings. But the body of the car also connects and orients the wheels. Without the body aligning to the road, the wheels just drive blindly and all over the place, taking you in all different directions.
So here are three ways we can make sure the body, the mind, and the emotions are all aligned and moving in a direction we actually want to travel …
Work towards a goal: If you have an idea in your head of how something can be better about your situation or your lifestyle or your body, let that motivate you to try and turn that idea into a real thing you can experience. Too many people have the idea and do nothing real with it.
Learn by doing: You can read a book, you can visualise, you can explain and write things down. But if you haven’t done something in the Real World with your physical body, you haven’t actually learnt it. There’s nothing wrong with having book knowledge and academic ideas, but real knowledge comes from doing.
Listen to your body: With so much technology being developed to track our biometrics, we can kid ourselves into believing health is about reading a graph on a screen. By outsourcing this to yet another machine, we lose connection to the Real World. One day we will be sold a watch that tells us when to urinate! You don’t need more abstract data that is unconnected to anything you actually care about. You can tell when you’re feeling healthy and fitness is about more than numbers.
In the gym, we face challenges and learn about how to react to them in a way that keeps things moving in the right direction. The things that we learn by achieving body goals teach us lessons we can use in all aspects of life. We grow stronger, not just physically, but in how we think and react to difficulty.
The benefits of building muscle are not just about looking good or being strong or becoming more capable and longer lasting or being able to eat more without gaining fat (even though these are great benefits!)
By gaining muscle we learn how to live life fully. Everything you do in the real world is done with your body by contracting and lengthening muscles to create action. If muscles don’t do this, nothing is truly done.
Therefore a muscular body has undeniably experienced The Real World.
Getting fit and healthy is the most immediate way to participate in something real. We do hard things that create growth and transformation towards something we desire. In the gym we can do this in a way that is gradual, casual, safe, low-stakes, and fun!
You might think you already know this because you understand it abstractly after reading these words.
But you don’t really know it unless you experience it in your body.
Start there.
Do you feel like your thoughts, feelings and actions are working together in alignment right now?
Do you have any examples from your life where taking physical action instead of overthinking and worrying has helped you push through problems?
Comment below or send me a message.
My handle is @GymnasiOnUK on Youtube, Twitter, Substack, and Instagram.
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See ya!