I used to look at the holiday season as a collective madness wherein at the same time every year most people went on a frenzy of spending and consuming in which killing lots of pine trees played an important role. Gyms had shortened hours or even were closed on some days. I mean, what if the 25th was squat day?!?
Now, many years later I have come to realize that I was peeing into the wind; that from Thanksgiving to the first week of January is a time for hibernation and recharging-of Mind, Body, and Spirit.
BODY
For me spring throught fall this year involved quite a bit of heavy physical training, teaching and travel-- including some trips with major time zone changes. I pushed hard and progressed well, and now it is time for my training to focus on recharging and laying the foundations for future growth.
After several months away from it, I've returned to the site of my rucking training at Bluff Cove, only now I do it un-weighted for forty minutes for speed in my Vibram five-fingered "barefooting" shoes instead in boots with a fifty pound weight vest for three hours. There's been lots of work re-opening hips and re-establishing alignment and core strength (long, international flights in steerage class don't help!), re-establishing aerobic levels, a squat cycle of one day a week with another day a week of sprints and football/lacrosse type agility, and so forth. Today Cindy and I started a Bikram Yoga class together. (Bikram is done in a room heated to over one hundred degrees-how utterly perfect for a season of hibernation!)
MIND
I usually do my squat routine at a gym on the beach in Hermosa Beach called "The Yard". Last week when I was there we were in the midst of several summer-like days in the mid-eighties. The Hermosa Beach pier is but a block and a half away and so I walked to its end. With the warmth of the sun on my skin, good waves for the surfers, and a school of nervous mackerel made skittish by a couple of dolphins, the feng shui was quite nice.
I sat there a while shirtless in the warm glow of the afternoon sun and entered the altered space. As we get older, we begin to notice how where we are is a result of what we have done with where we have been. So, how on earth did I get to where I am? Tis a mystery to me! As the line in a Grateful Dead song says "What a long strange trip it has been!"
SPIRIT
Often we seek simultaneously to become both more purposeful in how we live and more humble about thinking that we know what we are doing. In my humble opinion, whether we realize it or not, ultimately for all our plotting and planning there comes the time to put our Word to something and, as Juan Matus would say, to "act with abandon"... and turn it all over to our Creator. Vaguely remembering a line from a movie, "Things will work out. We may not know how-that's the mystery of it."
So in this season of hibernation I wish you some time to rest and recharge, I wish you some time to reflect on where you've been and where you are going, and I wish you time in connection with the Consciousness of our Creator.
The Adventure continues!
Crafty Dog
