I’m
curious about the bump that happens in my own mind when I get into the car
after a CrossFit WKO. I notice it every time, today with opportunity to
see if words come for this now-traditional part of my day.
I don’t notice
a shift entering into the gym, though I enjoy entering the gym, entering into
the chit-chat and general hilarity that can be 8 o’clock CF circle-the-WKO, a ‘happy
hour’ of a healthy sort. (Today’s bemusement was around ‘mullet’ haircuts, apparently
becoming all the rage again with teens today).
The
thing I notice is the bit of a mind-jolt when I get back in my car to drive
home, or in this case, to the coffee shop for a blog-writing and ‘check-in’
treat for myself before a long trip. I feel this every day when I’m
leaving the gym. I don’t feel this other places. What has felt expansive and
fluid lands back into an enclosed space, a drive into the day’s work and home tasks.
What has opened me into the day, with a gentle pace and then deepening
intensity, is complete. My body lands into a comfy chair, sometimes with heat rising
in its coils, feeling good and smiling inside. My mind seems to bump into
something, something connected to the ‘outside’ containers of my life—work,
home-tasks to get done, tending to the needs of others for the next several
hours. (Most of which I love and am blessed to live and breathe into…).
The
sacred-outer work that I do brings me this noticing in terms of ‘circle.’ A
habit of mind-body in circle differs from most other contexts in which I move,
share my being. Traditional environments like school and church do not gather
in circle-way form, even if the chairs are placed in a circle or a committee/meeting
gathers around a conference table. In these more square or triangular ways of
gathering as human beings, there are clear authorities—teacher, pastor, priest,
boss, chair—whose leadership and role govern the spaces or determine delegation.
Hierarchical and a bit top-down, some more than others. In contrast, the archetypal
energies of Circle invite more equanimity, more participation and co-creation
without anyone in the ‘center,’ ‘at the front,’ or ‘being responsible for the
meeting.’
CrossFit
does have a coaching structure, of course. You can observe a ‘top-down’
or hierarchical and competitive structure in some gyms/boxes. But the general
ethos in the box I know best is delightfully collaborative and co-creative. The
preptime before the WKO is a series of small conversations with the coach of
the hour, discerning and sometimes debating the weights, the movements, the rep
counts to achieve deepening intensity AND collaborative timing. Your own
mindbody is invited into this flow, making decisions ‘under supervision,’ I say
with a smile. I really need supervision, both to protect my own body and to be
gentle with myself inside. This is a value of having a smaller-size ‘box’ than
some I know in the area. Your own mindbody journey can expand, in a safe and
bounded way. I suggest for myself what feels do-able and challenging both, and
I can be playfully challenged to increase the difficulty or confirmed in what I
feel inside. Again and again, as the days move. I grow stronger and stay
engaged in an expansive mindbody way because of this dynamic.
So
perhaps what I can say is this CF box lives thoroughly into a circle-way
wisdom, with a great sense of humor about the paradoxes of CrossFit
(communal/competitive, athletic achievement/deepening fitness…). Participation
and co-creation are valued, which allow an expansive play-space, with good
challenge to keep getting stronger. Relying on the resources of community to
hold and to encourage.
The
competitive drives in many of us can play in more fierce ways, with those who
want to. I love to see some of the more seasoned athletes push each other,
drive movement beyond what they’d do if they were on their own. A recent series
of a ‘burpee race,’ for instance. A race I did not need to participate in for my
own burpees, but a race I could enjoy in them so very thoroughly. Optional. Invited, as
your own mindbody desires to play…or not.
Which
preserves this expansive, encouraging, playful space in my own mindbody. When I
get into the driver’s seat of my car, put my bag and water in an easy place to
reach, I bump into the confining habits of mind in the settings of
my outer world: the body-dissociated faculty colleagues and pastor-types so intent on
the needs of others or of their own minds that they become surprised when their
bodies give out on them in illness or injury; the verbally-oriented,
heavily-embodied writing-women I get to journey with as we ‘get circley’ with
one another in our writing practices aimed to help us live more consciously. (And
by heavily-embodied, I do not mean ‘weight’ or ‘body-size’—I mean women
carrying painful histories of body-shaming, abuse, guilt, refused grief, self-denigrating
voices, etc.); my own home, which can be rife with anxiety-deferred though
controlled, a space often body-avoidant and emotional-food-focused… I love and
serve in each of these spaces AND…
I get
back into the car, again and again, aware of how expansive my mindbody is because
I’ve spent an hour in a circle-way community, built around fitness, led with
passion for ‘just show up,’ ‘just get better,’ as I get to define it. A signal of circle-way. I get to
experience the expansiveness of my own mindbody, with distinctive gifts for the
world around me. I remember it more throughout the day, because it’s been less
than 24 hours since I was last there, feeling myself expand inside.
This is
one of the reasons I am such a frequent participant, to a bit of awe from my husband and some others in my life. I care less how my body
looks, though I'm practicing receiving compliments (which I tend to deflect and not receive very well). I love how good I feel inside. But I thrive more and more, both inside
and out, when my mindbody has room to play…play a LOT.
I notice the distinctiveness when I get in my car. So...how to live that expansive playfulness into more and more of my world(s)...? Listening...
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