Emotion and Exercise

I have been trying to write this post all week but life had other plans. So here I am, 10:19pm on Tuesday night, almost 2 days late. I don’t care what comes out; this is straight from the cuff. I’ll proofread later.

Let's face it, sometimes the world sucks! We get pissed off and we have to express it. But more often than not we can't express it properly due to professionality, proximity, or the immoral nature of the ass kicking that's brewing in your fist which would be wholly unethical to act upon.

Don’t play, we all feel it. It’s inhuman not to.

We have to validate these feelings and express them constructively. While we all want to feel happy all the time, the fact is we're too human for that, despite what infomercials for "happy pills" will tell you. We feel a wide range of emotions as part of life and it's not normal (not human) to suppress frustration, anger, rage, or discontentment. Get in touch with, feel it, let it flow over you. Stop pretending that you don’t feel it, that it’s bad, or that it can only be destructive.

Now grab that barbell and let it out!

Take off in a sprint and let it out!

Start exercising and let it out!

Constructive expression of negative emotions is the most basic step of human expression in exercise. We are emotional beings and thirst to express a wide range of emotions. Anger is easy because to get it out, we wanna yell, slam things, throw things, etc… Deadlifting time baby! Grip it and rip it! Let it out!

Emotions are a valid form of energy that is generated when our personality interacts with life. Our brain sends electrical energy firing down through the rest of our body that expresses itself in a variety of ways. This energy begs to be fully expressed when felt, and when done responsibly can promote growth and good technique. You may have a great technical lift but if there is no emotion behind your movement your lift will be stale, mechanical and limited.

Feel the force of emotions circulating inside you. Imagine if you could harness that energy for growth and positive change! You can, and exercise is a fantastic way to get in touch with it.

Long before we had language, or even thoughts, we were young babies and we felt the world around us. We sat staring out into the world with open eyes and everything we sensed imprinted on us a “feeling”. We lived in a state of immediate empathetic connection to the world around us. We didn’t codify the world through words. The color red wasn’t “red”, the color just made us feel a certain way. It wasn’t until much later in life that red got a label through words.

Eventually everything was assigned a word to better understand it. Gradually, the “feelings” of things began to fade away and all that is left now is the words. Without even realizing it, we’ve become mechanical, mundane, logistical and passionless with the majority of our everyday life.

Being emotionally connected requires honest non judgmental insight and a love of the present moment. Taking yourself out of the moment from self-conscious feelings or judgemental thought processes kills the honest chain of feeling-to-expression that needs to occur in order to release emotions properly.

The longer emotions go unexpressed, the more they build up inside the body; like a dam waiting to burst. Unexpressed sadness, rage, anger, depression, determination, jealousy, etc… all end up overflowing somehow in a great tidal wave of expression. Mostly in part because we, as a culture, believe expressing negative emotions… no.... FEELING negative emotions is bad.

Change that right now.

You don’t have to numb your emotions with pills.

You don’t have to run from your emotions with distractions.

You don’t have to hide your emotions with self control.

You don’t have to get blitzed drunk to express yourself honestly.

You are human, you feel. Feeling is normal. Expression should be instantaneous with feeling so that it is open, honest and transparently real. Expression should be done with the intent of letting go of the emotion. Constructively letting go of the emotions can be done through exercise. Tempering the technical level of your exercise (i.e. movements, lifts, skills, workouts and competitions) with the proper emotional energy creates an extremely high level of kinesthetic awareness leading to mastery of technique and honest understanding of the self.

So, as fitness practitioners, we must be charged with the responsibility of maintaining an emotional connection to your movement in order to supercharge your technical skill level and bridge the connection of mind-body-spirit. Ignoring emotional content leads to escape from the moment, and that is bad. Emotions tune you in to reality.

Take your emotional connection to the next level, and turn a squat, pushup, pullup, deadlift, etc… into an expression of your being. Be it determination, confidence, strength, presence, gentleness, subtlety, arrogance, unawareness, sadness, joy, bliss, wonderment, amazement, focus, etc… Your goal is not simply feeling the emotion internally, but expressing it externally with great passion for the present moment. That’s how you can use exercise for mental and emotional health.

Expression baby. It’s a legit domain to cultivate.

So crank up the ‘tallica, grab a barbell and get the ‘metal out once in a while. It’s healthy.

Your Homework:

Continue to:

1. Play; both inside the gym and outside.

2. Learn new skills or continue to master known ones (or both!)

3. Grow tall at least once a day for 5 consecutive minutes.

4. Perform core workouts daily.

5. Get breath!

6. Wake up!

7. Perform the 10 minute Squat test regularly!

8. Visit stillness in movements to master them.

9. Master the three basic functional movements!