Touching the edge - letting go of our limitations

I'm running, and my breath is rapid and shallow. My heart is racing. My running buddy has pulled ahead of me yet again, and the chatter in my head starts up once more, full speed ahead: “You're no good at this, why are you even bothering to try? You're a failure at running, you haven't trained enough, race day is coming up and you're going to be awful at it, you're going to hurt yourself.” The physical sensations of running when I hit this point are frighteningly similar to panic attacks. I blink to hold back tears and keep running. Foot, foot, foot. The sensations, the thoughts, and the experiences eventually pass. I return to gratitude at the end of the run.

Running has been both a liberating and a painful experience for me. It takes me to places of shame and it gives me a sense of joy and an adrenaline-rush like no other. I delve right into the feelings of body shame – that I'm not good enough, that my body is failing me – and right into the feelings of exhilaration – the power of the determined mind, the feeling of “I can do this,” the chance to let my brain unwind, and the joy of accomplishment.

The flip side of the coin with coming to peace with our bodies is letting go of the limiting stories we have with regards to them. Olympic-level athletes often speak of how the biggest competitor they face is not the person they are racing against, but their own minds. One possible trajectory for the spiritual journey with the body is to listen to and accept the stories created by our minds around what we believe is possible, and then to safely unlearn these stories and get more in touch with the direct experience of what is happening as we move, stretch, and strengthen.

When we encounter something unpleasant in the process of moving our bodies, our instant reaction is often to shrink away from it. Sometimes if we're able to push at the edge, however, we realize that “unpleasant” is nothing more than a category our mind creates for uncomfortable sensations. I'm certainly not advocating for pushing oneself to a place where there is pain or damage to the body, but it is possible to investigate at the edges how our mind creates limiting stories surrounding uncomfortable experiences. As we say in yin yoga, take it to your edge and then sit with the experience of the sensation. You may be surprised to learn that you're not as small as you thought you were.