Integrating weakness

Yesterday at the gym I had a wonderful breakthrough-type experience.  I’ve been adding weights to my cardio regimen which consists of treadmill and adaptive elliptical.  Running at a gym affords the benefit that one can easily add weights and upper-body motion to a routine.  Running outdoors it would be difficult if not impossible to do similar things with weights.

I prefer to do interval training on the elliptical and I actually invert the series so that during the periods of lower resistance I actually add the weights and upper-body motion thus increasing my heartrate.  Then when the cycle switches back to the higher resistance periods I stop with the weights and use it as a chance to recover a bit and check my heart rate.

Today as I was on the elliptical I experienced that my body right now is not in its most energetic phase.   It feels like I’m in some kind of yin phase.  Rather than feel bad about the fact that my body is not as energetic as it sometimes is, I accepted the yin energy as a good thing.  I did not see it as a limitation only part of a cycle that my body goes through.

When I felt a little bit tired instead of repulsing the feeling I accepted it and allowed it to just be there.  Somehow this felt like a breakthrough because I just accepted my body in the state it was in.

Later on when I was doing yoga and practicing dhyana I also sensed that yin energy.  Today gave me a chance to become aware that my body can go through cycles of varying types of energy and no matter what all energy is beautiful and good.

Everything isn’t always at peak.  The fact that there are parts of cycles when things are not peak just makes the times when there is peak energy more intense.  But all the energy is beautiful.  I felt like I gained strength today by feeling weakness, by really feeling the weakness in my arms when doing the upper body movement, and feeling the way my breathing and the state of my body and awareness were when practicing dhyana.

I think to be really strong one has to learn how to also be weak.  Not to fight the weakness but to embrace it.

If people see a person who displays strength in something, they see the person exerting and think “Wow, that is really strength.”  But a person who is really, really strong is one who integrates their weakness.