Fourth Form of Madness

I recently restarted personal training because my employer is generous enough to offer this service to it’s employees (even contractors) and I love to support generosity! Other than that I actually immensely dislike the training itself. It involves running and, as a fellow employee pointed out, I run like a wounded hippo. I think his exact words were “Wow I thought with your yoga and all that you would be a really fast runner but man you are slow slow slow!” It’s true I’ve alway been at the back end of a pack in running and throughout my high school years would ensure that I never had to compete in running events. One year I specifically scheduled a foot operation to fall over the carnival period so I could do nothing but barrack from the stands waving one crutch in the air to egg on my fellow classmates. Yep avoidance behaviour started very early in me.

So last Monday, I find myself running up and down the city concert house steps. The chorus in my head is screaming “Give this lunacy up”! Then I am lunge jumping, push upping and burpeeing all over the place. All the time the training is screaming at me “Get those knees up, get that chest down to the ground, go deeper in the knees, come on sprint beat the person in front of you, beat them”. I did point out at this stage, so as to spare her vocals, that I’m a yogi, I’m not competitive and I definitely don’t care if someone runs, jumps, lunges deeper than me, but this was to no avail. I admired her persistence. And I admired mine as well. Even though I was the slowest and probably the least conditioned to it, I persevered. I was reminded of one of our neighbours from a few years back who was a captain in the military police who advised me that the only way she got through the tough physical component of her path was by putting one foot after the after and so on.

So I did this. I kept plodding along even though I was the shade of a beetroot and I was a tinsey winsey bit concerned I might be on the verge of a heart attack. I began to watch my thoughts, my resistance, my avoidance, I watched myself work up to a eminent dummy spit and then let it all pass over. I was reminded that your free to think anything but you don’t have to act on it. This is the beauty of the freedom of thought and it’s a far greater beauty than the freedom of speech. Life can push you in all sorts of directions and it will, and your mind will always chase after it, but the rest of you doesn’t have to follow, the rest of you can just keep putting one foot in front of the other, or as I like to say, taking one breath after the other.

So back at work as I sat at my desk in all my beetroot glory, I scheduled in Monday and Wednesday lunchtimes for the continuance of my training sessions. I’m looking forward to working with the trainer and the rest of my fellow employees towards more aerobic fitness and building stronger work relations. However, what I am most looking forward to is the continuing work with myself, my thoughts, my reactions and resistance to become aware how I have chosen to construct this side of myself. Wish me luck, I’m going to need it!