Today’s newsletter comes from a request from a subscriber. I’m not necessarily qualified to speak about exercise, but my relationship with my body has gone through many stages and hopefully you’ll find a takeaway from this brief (and personal) history.
If you follow my Instagram, you’ve probably noticed frequent posts of me with a blurry red shape sometimes near my face. Somewhere in the frame is the phrase “towel work” indicating, in so many words, that I have just completed a work out.
My relationship with exercise is on and off, but the time spent thinking about exercise is constant. Even during my off periods, I think about how I should be exercising. I actually love exercise, the feeling during and after. It is an incredibly satisfying activity to check off my list. Exercise offers both the short term and long term gratification. Honestly, what more could you want from an activity???
Prior to the pandemic, I worked in restaurants, went to HIIT classes and was always on the go. Looking back on photos of myself, I see a healthy girl. But even when I was at my most fit, I was sure that I should lose 5-7 pounds. Maybe I could have, but I didn’t need to, I was thriving. When we were in lockdown, I ceased doing movement solely for the sake of movement. All my energy went into the bakery I worked at for the first 7 months of the pandimine. After the work day I felt depleted. My body was calling out for help, I developed pain very similar to carpal tunnel: it felt like fire had replaced the blood in the veins of my hands, wrists and forearms. Instead of counteracting my depression with exercise, I turned to my safe space: food.
I know exactly why my brain does this, and it’s equal parts sweet and frustrating. Whenever I get upset, my parents comfort me with food. I can distinctly remember my mom giving Young James chocolate, eating it as I cried. Every first day of a new school year I’d be wrecked by nerves and my dad would attempt to quash them with a big breakfast. In Fifth Grade it was apple pancakes and I’ll never forget feeling my stomach turn as I tried to stuff them down, hoping it would help. After school I’d come home and watch reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond, eating half a bag of chex mix and half a bag of baked lays. I told myself I was practicing moderation by only eating half of each bag. Dinner was consumed in my mom’s bed, in front of the TV. I can barely remember those evenings, the disconnect was real. Emotionally, I needed protection, I wore extra layers of weight to defend myself from the existential dread that loomed in the periphery.
Then, in Freshman year of high school, my dad offered to take me on runs and suggested I cut out gluten. Turns out I am totally gluten intolerant, amongst other things. My chronic headaches subsided and I shed much of the weight I carried for my entire life.
In 2013 I started going to donation yoga classes every day. My parents have always had a yoga practice and it was something I was very familiar with—my dad used to try to bribe me to stretch with him when I was a teen but I would resist! After a difficult experience at community college in 2013, I decided I needed a place to process what I was feeling. I hopped on a bus, landed in the studio and let it all out. This fast tracked me into a 200 hour teacher training, in which I was the youngest student. The yoga mat became a home for me, I developed a relationship with my body through the poses. I knew exactly what it felt like to do down dog, crow, twisting triangle. It was a new place to feel good.
Times change, schedules become more crowded, cross town commutes become impossible to squeeze into a day. That studio closed in 2019, formally ending an era.
While my weight has fluctuated some over the years, it’s never gotten close to the place it is now. One of the hardest parts about my current form is actively detaching from the narrative that surrounds being this shape. I can easily tap into the part of my brain that wants to remind me how deeply lonely I was. It wants me to feel unworthy of what I currently have, which is love in many forms, a path for my creative energies and a self that I am so proud of in so many ways. The present does not equal the past, but some days it’s really hard to believe that when the tangible reality is there, ready to enforce old beliefs.
Now for the first time ever, my schedule is largely at my own hands and I have zero excuse to avoid movement. Of course, the brain finds a way to take up every last second until I couldn’t possibly imagine taking 20 minutes to work up a sweat. So I turned to two of my strongest personality traits: consistency and people pleasing. I combined those two, somehow convincing myself to continue regularly enough until it became a habit. This is where towel work comes in. The ritual of posting a photo with a little bit of mystery and flair creates an incentive to work out.
If it seems simple, that’s because it is. I’m very lucky because my friend gave me an exercise bike she wasn’t using, so I can hop on, throw on a podcast and be done. The less you have to think about what you’re going to do, the easier it is to do it. My other favorite is Blogilates. Cassey provides a workout calendar each month, so I never ever need to plan out a routine on my own. When I try to complicate or push myself out of the door to a crazy class, I feel overwhelmed. Although I used to be a self proclaimed “class girl” I don’t feel up to that level of stimulation and I’ve accepted it’s okay to feel that way.
I still skip work out days, but try to incorporate some form of movement every day. Right now my biggest focus is learning to love my body as it is now. No matter what. My past self is still within me and this is a time of healing for the little girl that felt invisible on a good day, worthless on a bad one. I want to make sure working out doesn’t come from a place of fear and self loathing, but a desire to feel connected to my body again, no matter what form it is. Connection brings wellbeing, which comes before cut muscles and defined jaw bones. It is very difficult to feel in sync with something and also hold it in contempt.
The body is divine in its own right, part of the endless circle that has no beginning and no end.
As Alan Watts describes in the introduction to Nature, Man, Woman:
“It is the concrete realizations that all our experiences and actions are movements of the Tao, the way of nature, the endless knot, including the very experience of being an individual, a knowing subject...Every movement in the endless knot is a movement of the knot, acting as a total organism, though the parts, or loops, of the knot are not looked upon as passive entities moved by the whole. For they are parts only figuratively divided from the whole for the purposes of recognition and discussion; in reality, the loops are the knot, differences within identity like the two sides of a coin, neither of which can be removed without removing the other.”
This physical form holds the spirit for the duration of its earthly stay. Giving back to the body is giving back to the vast cosmos. By treating ourselves with loving care, we set the standard for how we expect others to treat us. And how we view others is often a reflection of how we view ourselves.
We can never fully see ourselves, but we know exactly how we feel. If movement of the body can help me feel better, that's the only goal I need.
That’s all for today, I really enjoyed this reader suggestion and am considering incorporating them into Friday dispatches! Perhaps once a month answering a suggestion or a handful depending on what I get. Let me know what you think!
Best wishes,
James
Calling all moments: If you find yourself struck by a moment of complete presence, send it to me in either image or word form: momentsfornow@gmail.com.
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