CST and "I'm not athletic"

[Connie Brown]

Sometimes when I share how cool CST is, I get back "but I'm not athletic,
that looks like it is for athletes."

What would you all say next? It is SOOO not about that.

[Jrichardson]

"Athletes, for the most part, exploit their talent. This, on the other hand, nurtures your talent. That's why the people doing it look like athletes."

[Scott Sonnon]

Superb, Jon. Your comment reminds me of the old saying that great runners aren't trying to race - they just love to run.

I've encountered this fear of athleticism most often with women, but also with men coming late to fitness, or socially stigmatized into believing they were "uncoordinated." These individuals convince themselves to believe that because they don't have "muscle memory" they are some how incapable, ineffective or less advantaged than those who were "athletic" in their youth.

But those with an 'athletic' background don't have any advantage that those who have not... Because athletics only amplify the innate physical vitality with which we're encoded genetically, and from which we vibrate during our youth.

I suspect it is the MENTAL and EMOTIONAL, not merely the PHYSICAL, which is the real skill, which one can only develop throughout life. Physicality... is given to us by Divine Providence; whereas emotional control and mental toughness must be learned. In other words, we are born encoded with the instinct of PLAY, but we are not born with emotional and mental preparedness.

We are taught socially to view 'athletics' as synonymous with physicality, but this 'athlete' ideal was only an ancient Greek concoction (and in general defined by the immature masculine archetype of the 'warrior' - often called the 'hero.') The hero rises to the occasion; the warrior is already there... in every action every moment.

Although branded 'ancient', this concept is relatively recent, only millennia old. 'Body as explorer' - this playful creature we are - existed for millions of years in our DNA as a survival skill. Just look to the rest of nature to see the effectiveness of this behavioral trait.

One we CANNOT "un-learn" but only suppress through very diligent work (stress, fear, trauma and anxiety). Stress, fear, trauma and anxiety attempt to 'bind' that higher level of vibration. CST seeks to 'unbind' what lay innate (and SEEMINGLY inert.)

I don't want anyone to carry this unproductive belief that a life without athletics deprives you of a needed 'memory'. Your 'memory' goes back much farther, and much deeper, than any athleticism can ever hope to approximate...

Athleticism only SIMULATES play, and often poorly at that.

This is what will change in the "fitness industry" - maybe not immediately, but most assuredly eventually... Through our work, and the work of others like us.

[rbibbs]

I'd say "I'm not either". Nobody with enough vision to get a driver's license could argue that point with me in good faith.

What to say next depends some on who you're talking to. Nothing is going to convince everyone. Some will use the "not athletic" line as a dismissal/defense. They're 'not going there' pretty much no matter what. Some can be reasoned with. They may have already found out that keeping healthy and active is a competition sport, and at some point we're all athletes.

Can we make teammates out of spectators? We can try.

[Connie Brown]

Hmmm. On the emotional side.

I wonder about the emotionalism being learned. Or does this get into male-female differences.

Is there a parallel: emotional bound-flow where through trauma,
amnesia, constant bracing, we lose touch with our innate emotional knowing.

There is one more fear/dislike in this saying "I am not athletic."

It is more a dislike - never athletic because never wanted to be. Like how I would rather do just about anything (or sit on the couch) than run or do yoga. Or I have heard people just not want to hang around with "athletes" if all the talking was going to be about sets/reps/PRs or other boring stuff or worse, making fun of people who don't like talking about sets/reps/PRs or team games (or running or yoga).

So when I am standing on my hind legs and saying "but with CST you are talking endless exploration! it is fun!!!!" there is blankness instead of "getting it."

[Scott Sonnon]

Is there a parallel between our 'transformation' in freeing ourselves from trauma, stress and fear? Absolutely. I suspect the process to be identical. However, what we store and release (emotionally) tends to be different. Men find it harder to gain this freedom because we're not predisposed to appreciate and understand emotional behavior. So we hold it in and gut it out... reinforcing the trauma, stress and fear.

I've had to craft an entire presentation embedded with the warrior ethos to even give men ACCESS to this approach. And often many 'trauma incumbent' men chastize CST as "cult-like" and even "sissified" because of their perception of and abhorence of 'softness' - even in the face of a litany of injuries and illnesses. The 'industry' has convinced them that injury and overtraining are just "part of the game."

Think of it this way. One of CST's primary goals physiologically is to help people move from tension to relaxation - to release the residual muscular tension which if unchecked progresses into sensory motor amnesia and then on to chronic stress ailments, illness and finally diseases and death.

Men are HIGHLY RESISTANT to relaxation of this sort, because the discharge of tension exposes us to a different emotional landscape with which we're biologically predisposed to appreciate - and which socially (especially in this "industry") we're told is apostatic to the "goal" of manhood.

As a result, I developed an approach, even a "strength training" tool which ostensibly demonstrates that only by moving to complete relaxation can one generate maximal and enduring tension (the Selective Tension Principle). This Trojan horse strategy allows CST to 'get in' to their beseiged encampment of tension. Once they "let down their guard" enough to realize the trauma, stress and fear impeding their performance and canibalizing their health, they begin to create high-performance, healthy lifestyles.

I don't find that same difficulty with women, who appear to be biologically predisposed to appreciate the necessity and benefits of moving to relaxation. In actuality, I often find it more difficult to help women believe that they can generate, and then achieve, maximal tension.

[Cam]

As long as one inhabits a body, he or she is an athlete. We are all athletes, whether we recognize it or not. In fact, daily life itself is is the supreme athletic endeavor. Breathing, walking, climbing the stairs, carrying the groceries, mowing the lawn...all acts of gifted athleticism. Everyone has to perform these basic tasks on an everyday basis. However, very few recognize how amazing these abilities are until they can no longer perform them.

CST is a unique system, because it develops in the seeker a deeper understanding in even the most mundane of day-to-day tasks (in addition to expanding the overall scope of physical expression). CST helps us to LIVE better. The pursuit of movement sophistication is not merely for the sportsman, but for anyone interested in more efficiently utilizing the amazing body that they occupy.

-Cameron

[radiantkd]

Ok, ok, so you have provoked me into comment :-)

So you say, we are all athletes and if we don't feel that way, it is an emotional block or a mind set, perhaps a *belief system*...

I wil respectufully disagree on this one. When I was little, I was active but not coordinated. I rode my bike, I swam, but I did not do team stuff nor engage in formal athletic things.

I got older..I pursued intellectual stuff, emotional stuff in a vigorous way. I was not drawn to body things. My entire family is VERY athletic. They all play serious volleyball. My exhusband goes to the senior olympics in volleyball. But I didn't play because what I wanted from my body it did not do.

Ok, so when I see these bodies of martial artists, I gulp and think, *oh help, I asm a middle aged, sorta tubby highly motivated couch potato.* But if Connie can do it, I will try. Connie shows me the ClubBells. it is electric. I LOVE them.

Then I get the book. This is not natural for me. But I am studying it. I draw circles around the wrists so I can *see* what to do. I draw a chart to follow the movement. Now, LOL, I am only working on the park so far.
Then I do the swing. (I am sorry I have not mastered the names) I get it.
The clubbells create a feeling. My body will follow the motion.

Coach Sonnon tells me that it is silly to think I do not have cellular memory of being athletic. That encoded in my DNA is a big memory of movement. I buy this. I am willing to reframe old beliefs. I will repattern.

But I have not been kinesthetic for a life time. LOW kinesthetic skill. Factual. No charge on it. No emotional block. I just have to activate it..but it does not happen by willing it to be, LOL. But I am not an athlete yet and that's my story and i am stickin to it <grin>

Kathleen

[Scott Sonnon]

Kathleen,

It's an honor to have you here. What you're doing in biochemistry, behavior and nutrition has already changed the personal account of my life history. For that I thank you deeply.

I only hope I can contribute as much to you from the perspective of physicality. Allow me to offer a few morsels from the motor science geeks.

Uncoordination is learned. Every act is an act of conditioning. The body adapts, makes something repeatable and then progresses... whether that's atrophy or hypertrophy. Fortunately, it works both ways, so we can change at ANY moment from ONE new choice.

It's impossible to have low kinesthetic sense. It's merely a receptor. You've been kinesthetic your whole life, and not one experience is lost or wasted. It's impossible, if you're animate. The only confusion we have is with our awareness of our internal senses, our conscious refinement of that awareness, and our stamina in directing it in every moment.

You will surprise yourself with the speed of your development, simply because your obvious level of attentional strength cultivated throughout your personal journey.

"Athletes" tend to be riddled with injuries, preconceptions and exercise-reinforced trauma. It takes a great deal of time, if ever completely compensated, to help someone with extensive conventional physical training "clean the slate." This is the FIRST principle of CST: non tabula rasa or "no clean slate." Everyone 'arrives' at CST with harmful patterns of behavior, embedded tension and 'forgotten' movement capability.

Lastly, and most importantly, one who has had little to no "athletic" activity will experience the most amount of dramatic improvement. For instance, working with a professional athlete, I'm very happy to see a 2-3% enhancement of performance. However, in the case of someone who has not been very physical, they can expect a 30-35% improvement within the first 3 months.

I look forward to your contributions to the forum, Kathleen, seeing you next week at your Radiant Recovery Ranch, and our collaborative work in the future. You have such a great deal to offer all of us here at RMAX. Thanks for joining and jumping in "the swing of things." :lol:

[radiantkd]

I am game, Coach Sonnon :-D

hey, I have been reframing it since your first comments, LOL.

and I am even thinking of myself as a warrior with a million years of practice.

I have not hit myself on the head, nor bonked my ears.

My cells remember something, that is for sure. :-)

Kathleen

[rbibbs]

Grab ahold Kathleen. Our histories sound parallel. You can always be the best 'you' that it's possible to be, prior 'athleticsm' notwithstanding. There's "then" and there's "now". Vive le difference!

[Connie Brown]

...Men are HIGHLY RESISTANT to relaxation of this sort, because the discharge of tension exposes us to a different emotional landscape with which we're biologically predisposed to appreciate - and which socially (especially in this "industry") we're told is apostatic to the "goal" of manhood.

...

I don't find that same difficulty with women, who appear to be biologically predisposed to appreciate the necessity and benefits of moving to relaxation. In actuality, I often find it more difficult to help women believe that they can generate, and then achieve, maximal tension.
Hey Kathleen great to see you!

So if being able to move freely between tension and relaxation is the ideal, are these male and female resistances from the same cause? ie, to move to the "opposite domain" is to risk getting "un-gendered" (unmanly or unwomanly) which is threatening to survival (of self if nothing else).

when really, to integrate both is what we want.

[bob_stra]

Sometimes when I share how cool CST is, I get back "but I'm not athletic,
that looks like it is for athletes."

What would you all say next? It is SOOO not about that.

In your very best Yoda voice rasp: "You whill be.... YOU WhILL BE!"

[radiantkd]

ok, I have been thinking about this all morning. I am trying on thinking of myself as a warrior, :-). Fluid, strong, centered. From the inside out. My body feels different.

I think I never connected to the idea of athlete because it holds no interest for me. I want to hike, to bike to do stuff. I want to feel safe.. I think that is a big one for women.

Really, I want to be an REI super model for a gorgeous, silver haired woman who kicks butt in the wilderness. That THAT image makes me motivated, LOL. better than saying I do not want to slip in the tub or have a hard time getting out of the car.

Ok, I am making up a chart to track all those numbers. You guys got me hooked. reps/sets/intensity. perceived difficulty. I have to learn the language first, LOL. I need to know what, how many times, in what time period and how pooped I get. And, for fun I will be recording my after the fact muscle soreness because that tells me how well the ole cortisol is squirting in there.

Mostly, I am having fun. And fun means DOING it, hooray!!!

Kathleen

[Chuck Kechter]

Hi Kathleen, welcome to the forum.

You wrote:
I am trying on thinking of myself as a warrior, . Fluid, strong, centered.

Something I've noticed over the years, is that a lot of folk have a "vision" of in their heads as to what signpost words mean (to them). Warrior is one of those words that has a lot of social, cultural and mythic (maybe three ways to say the same thing) overtones. You yourself used fluid, strong, centered. If we poled the tribe we would get many more "power" loaded--(and I'd bet money on)--mostly attribute-based--words from them to add to the ones you've already used.

But, In fact in the course of history most "warriors," were (and are) just people. People that believe(d) in something so strong that they had to act on their conviction. For every known "hero/warrior" there are thousands--maybe millions--that performed admirably under the most adverse conditions imaginable. While these folks don't have a high name recognition, they do have the "right stuff." As do you. As does anyone that moves through life with conviction, and the idea that they and the world can be a better place today then it was yesterday.

What I'm trying, in my long-winded-way to say is that "warriors" are people just like you; mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, that do the best they can with what they have, continuing their personal evolution, exploring the world around them, as well as their inner most selves, working to refine their capacities while stretching for their higher potentials.

And this:

Mostly, I am having fun. And fun means DOING it, hooray!!!

Is the most important part.

Chuck

[radiantkd]

Hi Chuck,

Yes, I believe that regular people can be true warriors. In fact, I think one of the markers of the best warrior is a lack of ego that means creates a way to travel through life without being marked as such.

But thinking of myself this way changes my own expectations. Do I have a cause? absolutely...a life purpose that feels guideed and intention. Am I obedient to guidance? yes.

But stepping into a body which serves that is new for me. Learning *balance* in the physical is a big deal. Just learning to hold those clubbells in a park position perfectly has provoked me into some mighty new ways of looking at myself. It is funny stuff like that. Unexpected and joyful.

kathleen