Tag Archives: jogging

April 24, 2017

562.Stepping out of Character

By Marlen

Or how to practically challenge the ‘I will never….’ statements

I’m currently doing things that I would not have done before, that I had said ‘I’m never going to do’ or that I was resisting to get to do not that long ago, yet upon also analyzing to what extent these beliefs were limiting me in many ways, I realized how I was sticking to certain views and ideas about myself and what I am willing to do or not as part of a religion of self, where I believed that ‘I have to stick to my words’ or ‘I have to follow through my decision’ even if these words or decisions are proven to be ineffective, rather limiting or leading myself to a form of restriction or ‘sacrifice’ within a moral view of what I believed is right or wrong to do.

An example is getting a car and learning to drive. I had been wanting to avoid doing this for such a long time and dragging this around as something I would ‘someday, maybe, eventually do’ but ultimately had not placed a time and date for it, believing that somehow I could just prolong it and leave it hanging there for indefinite time. However, I am glad that certain situations in my reality have also led me to push to get this done and saw for myself how it was rather ‘easy’ it was to give direction to these two points in terms of finding a suitable used car and scheduling the driving lessons. I had the first one today and yes of course it’s completely doing something that I had for sure feared and so resisted to do for such a long time that whatever I face as fear is only also an accumulation of all the reasons, excuses and justifications I would tell myself in order to not move and direct this point in my life, which I am definitely now aware is something that I can get to enjoy and benefit from.

Here then for example, some of the reasons, excuses and justifications I used to not learn to drive is not wanting to pollute more the world with one more car, opting to walk around for the most part, take uber rides or public transportation which I have defined also as ‘grounding moments’ which sure I can still do whenever it’s practical do so, but it’s of course cool to have an option that is a more independent form of transportation. I also got to take pride on walking long distances, to the point where I could walk to places without even taking public transportation, which is still something enjoyable for sure and great exercise, though sometimes road to get somewhere is not always walkable, weather conditions are not always suitable and this also becomes a determining factor to go out to places that are mostly nearby, which has actually been then a limitation for me to not go to places where public transportation doesn’t get to or private rides would be too expensive. So, with having a car I can then circumvent these limitations and get around easier.

In terms of seeking a car, it was also quite a time consuming situation, something that I had to not give up on and be patient about as well, it’s not so ‘easy’ to buy a used car and be satisfied in most aspects about it, so I am glad I found the one I ended up buying right when I said ‘ok I’m done, this is the last number I’m calling to’ – and a part of me also wants to diminish all of this as petty situations, nothing too ‘transformative’ or these are things that people do on a daily basis, but here I also have to consider my context and my particular beliefs that I had to essentially breakthrough – or step out of character – in order to do all of this, so I have to not go into a projection about how this might be read, because here I share the direction that’s needed to do things that I had postponed for a long time until realizing the benefit that it creates.

Another thing I decided to do is get into a short running race for amateurs on Sunday, it’s essentially a 3 km jog that I regularly do, and I managed to get a second place in it lol, it was funny because to me it ended up being a lot more considering I jogged all the way back and forth to the start of the race, so I also discovered that I can in fact jog more than what I usually do and my body didn’t get strained at all, which means that whenever I feel like I can barely complete one loop around the track it means I am most likely listening to my mind and not really being here with and as my body. Of course this wasn’t among ‘professional’ so I’m not bragging about the position here, but rather seeing how this was easy for me to do because of having been consistently jogging.

This is again something I would not have at all considered I would do in my life based on how much I would suffer to give a jog around a smaller track when being in junior high school and saying words like ‘I’m never going to run again in my life.’ For this race, I had to make a decision to participate in it, get myself inscribed which is by all means something I would not have dreamed of doing over 2 years ago when I would probably run 100 meters and start panting… it may seem easy to say to be part of a race, but again taking my context into consideration, I would always only fume about how I ‘sucked at running’ and ‘loathed physical exercise’ many years ago. However with consistency I’m about to do some 2 years of being regularly jogging without having any problems in my body with it, being very gentle as well and not over doing it, as well as continuing walking on a regular basis which I’ve done for some 10 years or so, which has also been very assisting to me, my grounding ‘get away from computer’ moment as well, a ‘me time’ walk towards downtown and yes for sure also doing it for the exercise it is. Here I also place a disclosure that many people consider jogging is not good for the body, and so it might not but that’s where I’m at right now with it and enjoying a lot the fact that I can do something I would not have dreamed of being able to do before – of course starting with small steps, practicing, just like with everything, which I now remind myself of now that I got quite into the ‘new zone’ of learning to drive, and reminding myself to be patient about these new things to learn, expansion it is!

I’ve also been painting something that I sincerely would not have done 10 years ago when I started my career, and it is funny how I am remembering more about the classes  I decided to skip many times because of how I deemed my teacher was ‘too conservative’ and that I was ‘never going to paint the stuff he wanted us to paint’ and even had verbal arguments with him where I got into one of those arrogant positions of me being all about abstract art and ‘could not care less for painting a self-portrait.’ And I just realized I kind of just painted that lol! And I am actually blushing right now in embarrassment while remembering that moment with that teacher where I almost let everybody know how much I disliked his ways and creating a belief that I also was not precisely appreciated by him, which I actually later on had to debunk for the assumption it was on my side, and also up till this day, I do regret not having gotten some basics from him, because they are in fact the kind of apprenticeship that you don’t get anywhere else, so I share this as a cautionary tale to ‘never say never’ and realize that any skills are always welcomed to be learned, because we never know when we might need them.

But in my case that’s done and now all I can do is learn those skills myself. Here simply sharing as part of those things that I said I would ‘never do’ and have kind of just ended up doing it anyways because I am also exploring different things to do and challenging what comes ‘natural’ to me and doing things I would usually definitely not do when it comes to painting.

I’ve discovered how painting or doing art is where most of my self doubt can emerge because there is not set ‘right or wrong’ ‘finished or unfinished’ type of task that I am good at – when it comes to self-creation it is a process in itself and that’s also how I’m realizing that it goes beyond the ‘final product’ as well, it also has to do with how one goes shaping one’s expression every brush of the way so to speak. And yes I also have to eat my words as well when I said I wasn’t going to paint again and do art again… well, here I am, one more to the list of things that I’ve gotten to ‘get back to’ or start learning to do or continue integrating in my life, which I am definitely enjoying because it is one of those things I do for myself and discovering new starting points for it becomes a nurturing hand in hand process with the Desteni Process as well.

Same with travelling to a particular country that I said ‘I won’t ever step foot into it again!’ and ranting about it… well, yep I can never know what opportunities may open up in relation to that country as well so, I can only eat humble pie and take my words back, self-forgive my absolutism/self-fascism that I now realize I have kept as a form of limitation which I am now very much willing to and ready to expand from.

With these few examples and others in my day to day, I am seeing more clearly how ‘tight-viewed’ I have kept myself in relation to many things in my life just because of believing that I am comfortable the way I am, but in reality it might not be so and the only way to get to know where one is actually limiting oneself or in fact doing something out sheer preference, is by testing things out and realizing that nothing is lost by testing something out, giving it a go, doing something ‘out of the normal’ which I am definitely eager to continue doing in various ways as well. It definitely seems like I am shedding an old skin so to speak and opening my horizons to something beyond what has become very normal and regular to me.

The overall point as a reminder for myself is: never say never, because we won’t ever in fact know what is ‘around the corner’ in our lives and creating these statements like ‘I’ll never drive a car’ ‘I dislike jogging’ or ‘I hate painting self-portraits’ or ‘I am never going to buy a car’ or ‘I won’t ever grow my hair back again’ are statements I made at a certain point in my life, but I’m learning to not keep myself captive within my own sentences and instead challenging myself, because to me many times it felt as if I was ‘betraying myself’ by doing all of these things, but all I’ve seen is the betrayal of opinions, beliefs, morals – ultimately a religion of self where I was not really considering all the potential situations or outcomes in life that I have to in fact be flexible about, so this is also another practical way to live the word flexibility.

All of this is of course part of walking this Desteni process where these decisions to do something and actually ‘move’ in our reality  – even more so when they are ‘out of the comfort zone’ situations – are quite supportive to transcend our fears, our limitations, our beliefs, our morals, our ‘religion of self’ and continue challenging myself this way, which is then again going hand in hand with my previous blog on ‘provocation’ and provoking myself to ‘loosen up’ some of the tight and rigid fixed ‘norms’ I had set for myself throughout my life in the past – or up to fairly recently – because hey, every day can be an opportunity to challenge these limitations.

Ok, let’s continue walking.

Thanks for reading.

 

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December 21, 2016

458. Physical Support: Sharing Feedback

By Marlen

Or What have I been focusing on in relation to assisting and supporting my physical body?

I realize that I have not yet shared some of the seemingly ‘unimportant’ points (according to my mind) that I do test out and apply in my day to day related to physical movement and support.

There’s so much understanding about who we are in our minds and how we essentially handicap ourselves through experiences that we accept and allow, that essentially we can challenge ourselves in every move, as minute as it can be, and testing this out in terms of how much we limit ourselves in our self-movement for example based on notions of tiredness, or plain laziness as in ‘leaving something for later’ when in fact, who we are as the body is always ‘ready’ and ‘stable’ and ‘running’ as in being processing and living, doing all we need to keep ourselves alive, while we are at a conscious level very unaware of it all.  I’ve taken so much of my body for granted for a long time and I am becoming more inclined to focus more on it, considering that I am one of those persons that believes ‘I am not in contact with my body’ or ‘cannot perceive the changes that food creates in it’ or ‘can’t identify the state in which my body is’ – but, lately, this has been changing bit by bit.

I’ll share some examples of testing things out more at a physical level in terms of physical support. I’ve  challenged myself for now over a year and a half to start jogging, which is something I truly thought I was just not meant to do/not capable of doing at all, and I did the whole thing of starting small, bit by bit building the condition, the consistency, the direction that is required to also get to jog which is early in the morning which means creating a discipline to wake up early and start exercising and being directive instead of giving into ‘tiredness’ or just plain laziness.  One thing I’ve recently noticed is that I had wanted my condition to develop ‘faster’ like not getting tired at all while jogging, or not getting any muscle pains after jogging or exercising – but this still comes up and in referencing these points, there is this patience that exists in developing a condition, not ‘waiting’ for a particular experience at some point around it, but just doing it, while also keeping an eye on how my body goes responding to it.

And I have been testing many things on how my body fluctuates in this condition based on ‘the time of the month’ and based on the foods that I take, based on the amount of sleep, shoes, weather… lots of things that can create a variable in my experience when exercising, though I did notice that I had been too ‘pushy’ at times with doing it every single day and even if noticing that maybe I’d like some ‘day off’ in some periods of time, I just didn’t give myself/my body this time off and so what started happening recently is that my ‘time frame’ of jogging became more, meaning I was going slower and having more and more pains in the body therefore feeling the whole jog time as a really ‘hard time.’

After I reference this experience, I realized I did ‘kind of knew’ deep inside me that: hey maybe you have to slow down a bit with doing this every single day and instead give the body a rest – but here, I imposed my discipline (my mind) upon my body in this idea that I had to do it ‘every single day’, which means I wasn’t really listening to the pain in the body related to ‘doing it every day’ and considering a more supportive schedule for it.

So, I cross-referenced this and got to consider not doing it ‘every day’ but one day jogging and one day off and so forth – and I got to see the difference quite noticeably which was a very cool lesson here to see how yes my body stands as that resilience, that ability to ‘keep going’ but, I also have to stand as that  equilibrium, that ‘measure’ where I don’t push myself ‘more’ than what I can physically stand and so also listening to/considering my physical body in this, which in my case and my physical body means not ‘overdoing’ something to follow my mind’s notion of discipline, but to Listen to my body as well and not take the pains as just something that ‘will always be there.’ And this is just the beginning of this process of re-adjusting ‘my ways’ imposed to exercising, but decided to share so as to not wait until I have walked this point for another year and a half to share the results, because I had not even shared in a blog about this process of starting to jog for the first time as part of a daily exercise routine which I still have to normalize in terms of the recent discoveries around it. Possibly one day jogging, the other day just stretching and or resting completely and then jogging again the next day, will see.

Here, it might seem ‘easy’ for anyone familiar with exercise or sports to make a decision like this, but to me, I always ‘disliked’ sports and jogging around was like a penitence in school, so it’s been definitely awesome to see how I can stand as a point of self-movement and actually MOVE as my body, to persevere in that decision as well that I’ve made which I of course have to admit hasn’t always been ‘immovable’  as there’s been full weeks I haven’t gotten to do the jogging wherein the reason can vary – the time of the month, some minor physical discomfort, ‘being more tired’ which has to do with the mind entirely and so sorting that aspect out –  but I also don’t judge myself because that only creates a pit of regret of which is difficult to step out, but instead simply make a clear decision at night ‘going at it again tomorrow’ and so, live the words: do the waking up in the morning, start with stretching and then off we go to the track in the park. This is one seemingly simple ‘discipline’ but, it has assisted me quite a bit with pushing my own beliefs and boundaries on having a ‘bad condition’ or ‘not the kind of body that is suitable for running’ or ‘having a weak heart’ and all sorts of beliefs I also contributed to build throughout my life, which I mostly fueled in order to escape physical education class lol, and other social situations like going to hikings and things like that because I believed I would not be able to endure it, which was yes also a case but probably had to do with developmental years or something.

So, this has been also a process of testing out my ‘endurance’ in my body. I also continue to test out what foods work for my body, and definitely more than interested to learn to read my body more, to become more physically aware because I had neglected myself quite a lot in giving more value to the mind and not at all to myself, my body, the substance that is here as this whole ‘thing’ that allows me to breathe, live and be here, that one constant ‘companion’ as me that continues to stand and breathe and do all of its processes regardless of how I might feel in my head… and this is something to acknowledge and honor as the physical body and so, it’s been a commitment for me to not follow the usual trends where people ‘grow older’ and start also growing bigger, but instead to challenge that to a point that is suitable for my body and within this learning to honor and care for my body, not for appearance sake, but to be ‘fit’ as in functional, in good health and condition which is an inner and outer process that I can give to myself and can relate to the time and process it takes to cook meals for myself that I can enjoy, that I can also do for my partner and both have been paying a lot more attention to this whole health aspect for the sake of considering our physical body, which has been very supportive.  I see this as a ‘no brainer’ to focus on as well in my day to day living.

Another point we’ve been testing for probably half a year now is to massage every day, yep! I always saw this as impossible like ‘yeah come on, how can that be done!’ but fortunately my partner is quite the diligent man when he proposes to do something, so he’s been quite directive in this mutual support and making the schedule/time for it, even in times when it’s been one of those ‘long days’ we might shorten it to a back massage instead of a full body massage, but needless to say that this is also a daily test for me to see ‘who am I’ and ‘Where am I’ while massaging and it’s been really great to see how there was a ton of resistances to move to do the massage, of course! We like to receive isn’t it? But when it came to me, man, I did have to push myself until we continued to discuss this presence that we have to be and stand as while massaging, not focusing on ‘something else’ but moving, moving as the body, as that support that we want to give to ourselves as each other. So, this consistency in daily massage has been yet another awesome physical point of support to develop consistency, to the point where it is only now I’d say becoming a lot more physical and ‘natural’ if you will to do so, to make it part of the routine of the day which also proves that doing/building/creating something in physical reality and making it ‘the new me’ as ‘our new nature’ takes time.

Massaging has also been extremely supportive in terms of the relationship, having that moment to come together and assist our physical bodies and definitely has assisted in those days as well where there were moments of disagreements or misunderstandings where that becomes the physical point of confronting each other and in essence walk a forgiveness and laying out things clear while massaging and wrapping up the day in that decision to support each other in the massage. It has also been a great way to initiate sex as well, which I’ve also found out many times I still get the notion of ‘naaah not now’ but I also then have been testing this point of physically moving, physically making that decision to express and voilà, it works, absolutely. And these thus have been moments where I have been definitely applying myself in deciding ‘who am I’ in these very physical activities that I would usually as per habit  still bring some laziness or procrastination around it.

So these things are one of the more ‘physical’ aspects in my process yet have had a clear support to myself, my body and in this case my relationship as well since we are both on the same track when it comes to assisting our bodies, learning how to eat better and I have to say that I have learned a lot from his consistency and diligence in his own routines and ways, which I take as an example to do the same and stand equal to what I see he’s being capable of following through with. So, it’s a great set of pointers to integrate to one’s relationship as well, physical activities and physical body care, along with obviously the mind processing that goes with it, very, very fulfilling and assisting ‘real time’ with real challenges that sure, can be met with ‘resistance’ initially but the trick is to keep breathing, keep ‘going’ and that’s where I’ve seen how I can stand as these words that the physical body represents to me, which is for now very much geared in this self-movement and pushing some previously-imposed boundaries/limitations onto myself and so my body.  This awareness and process at a physical level is also only one of the outflows of walking the Desteni Process where one does not only integrate realizations at a mind level, but is then able to live them through at a physical level in the seemingly ‘small details’ of our day to day lives. I’m forever grateful to have done this rotund change in my ‘lifestyle’ with this process Sonrisa

Thanks for reading.  

 

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