Softening and Striving

This past week I started a bootcamp that begins at 5:30am. Everything about this is quite different from how I have been living my life the past couple of years, ever since the pandemic began. Exercising early, pushing my body and mind in ways that I haven’t been, remembering the competitive side of myself haven’t been part of my repertoire.

My life in Jackson was different in regards to fitness than it has been in Boulder. I skinned up snowy mountains to ski down, went regularly to my beloved personal trainer and lifted kettlebells, climbed the Grand Teton. It was a little more embedded in me, this pushing of my body and mind to achieve outdoor pursuits and goals in the gym. When I moved to Boulder something shifted. Partly the overwhelm of so much choice of workout facilities, the lack of accessible backcountry skiing, and just the overall bigness of this town shifted my identity in regards to exercise. I love the trail-running in Boulder and do make it out occasionally for the world-class climbing that exists here, but there was an internal shift that felt softer, quieter, a little slower.

This softening is a gift and has allowed me to open up in new arenas of life. This relaxing and letting my nervous system and body slow has been rejuvenating and important as my art business stretches in new and exciting ways. But recently, I have felt sadness around my lack of drive, wondering if it is my age that is shifting the way that I feel about exercise and personal movement challenge. Hence, the early-morning- when-it-is-still-very-dark-out bootcamp.

And boy, does it feel good to reawaken this part of myself! This part that likes to sweat, likes to see if I can lift harder or move faster than the session before, this part of myself that feels a bit primal and a little more wild. I need this energy as much as I need the softening. They can both co-exist together and truly inform one another…in fact, I am noticing the blending. It is like when I am painting and the tightness starts to take over the piece, a restriction that feels tense in my body. I know I have to soften and make a bold choice that brings more openness. Similarly, when everything is too loose, too all over that place, a firm decision has to be made to bring the painting into harmony. The darkness needs the light, and the lightness needs the dark in order to be seen.

I am relishing experimenting with the mixing of softening and striving, the typically feminine and masculine energy, and how this unique concoction is mine and mine alone. Can you pinpoint in your life where you are softening and where you are striving? Do you label one better than the other (I know I can fall into this trap sometimes)? Where do you feel both in your body?