Avoidance & Strength Training

The process of avoidance is a major contributor to many obstacles (please note, I'm saying "many" and not "all" obstacles). Avoidance stands at the genesis of many obstacles and remains a central part of the functioning of many other forms of obstacles that can emerge in strength training. So, with regards to obstacles that do have some relationship with avoidance, here are two useful questions: "What is it I'm avoiding?" and "Why am I avoiding?" These two questions form a first step that is useful for reflecting and inquiring into yourself. It should be noted, there's a very good chance a large part of your conditioning is structured precisely so you don't see the truest answers to these questions. The answers and insights holding the most validity and authenticity are likely to remain hidden. And while you may consciously be invested in understanding these questions to the fullest of their depth, unconsciously you're likely to be heavily invested in not revealing what it is you're attempting to uncover. So as you're exploring and inquiring into the "what" and "why" surrounding your avoidance bring curiosity to what is being seen as there's almost always more hiding. Step two is asking, "How do I avoid." Once you've got a general sense of what it is and why - granted your general sense will have varying degrees of truth and authenticity - you need to understand just how it is you avoid. This insight can then be used to directly change your dynamic of avoidance. What and Why are important self awareness questions to answer for yourself on an ongoing basis; however, they lack a pragmatic thread that is activated when you inquire "how is it that I am doing this?" Once you know "how" you are making something happening, you intuitively will have an understanding of how you can do something different. With the insight of how you're avoiding comes with it the insight into how you can engage yourself and your life differently. Strength training can be used to work with avoidance in the following 2 ways, which work together synergetically: 1. Awareness Let's start with Awareness, or your capacity to see. Strength training is a rich venue for you to witness your historical conditioning. By looking at how you strength train, why you strength train and what you do and don't like to do you'll see the perfect microcosm of your life. Simply put, every single pattern that governs your life as a whole will manifest itself within your training. It is a microcosm for the macrocosm of your life. By finding what you're avoiding in your training, you'll be simultaneously uncovering, rediscovering and witnessing that which you avoid everywhere else in your life. So if you're at all interested or curious about yourself, your greater potential as a human being and you'd like to explore the further reaches of your body-mind I suggest taking up the intention of seeing your avoidance patterns while you strength train. Taking this intention is critically important as it is the starting point for bringing more awareness into your training. This intention - the intention to simply see - is the foundation for the second part of our equation. 2. Embrace Embrace, as I am using here refers to your ability and capacity to engage with the present moment. Embrace is how your body-mind engages and enacts into the dance of manifestation - whether you've got weights in your hands or not. Fundamentally you showing up here at all - in this precious moment - is an act of radical embrace for your own body-mind's dance of life. At a very fundamental level your body-mind's embrace includes avoidance on some level. Seeing your avoidance with awareness is just a first step in your training. Now you must work with how your body-mind engages your avoidance. The instinctive reaction is to get rid of the avoidance; however, this is just laying more avoidance on top of avoidance and only results in more inner struggle, thus further obscuring the truth and freedom that resides within this knot. Instead of trying to get rid of the avoidance, your most skillful move forward in most situations is to consciously connect with and embrace the very activity of your avoidance. Deeply connecting with your largely unconscious avoidance patterning will place you in a ripe position to profoundly deepen your own self understanding. More importantly connecting with your avoidance is an act of immense strength - the strength to heal the split between the splitter and the sense of self that has been split. By fully embracing your power to divorce, disown and avoid you naturally settle into a position of more authenticity and strength to truly choose a new course of action. Bon Voyage! ~Rob