The Empowerment Zone

I am an earth baby (Taurus to the core), but having a geologist in your life means that two things are for certain: you will never be far from rocks, and stating "facts" requires quantification.

This is The Three Sisters Range in Canmore, AB (photographed by yours truly)

Seriously though, a lot of the recent visits to mountainous territory have been photo escapades and visitor galavants. The more time I spend in the mountains, the more I realize how worthy they are of all the many references they merit in metaphors. Climbing a mountain requires well, climbing, aspirations, commitment, strength, belief, rest, respect and lots of snacks. So really, I can see how, on many scales, climbing a mountain requires a lot of the same thing (on a micro scale) as leading a meaningful life. In fact, I climbed my first post-injury summit today with Manski (did I mention that I've been cleared by my sports medicine doctor and even been hiking a few times?!) and thought about this all along the way.

But you know what doesn't seem to get as much press? The descent. Getting to the top is tough, don't get me wrong, but where you really find yourself tested is on the way down. You have to find the balance of control and relaxation to avoid slipping/falling and this allows for a greater measure of respect for what is involved in the slow descent toward the ground.

I'm entertaining the possibility of another drawn out metaphor here...

I was chatting with my sister the other day and we were talking about how easy it is to talk about being balanced when you cannot have what you crave, but that the true test of balance is in how you use/misuse item X (in this case, exercise) when you are granted unfettered, unlimited access. For me, this has been the challenge of late. I climbed to the top of Mt.Stress Fracture and conquered its summit; I went to physio three times a week, did my rehab exercises every morning and stuck faithfully to the allowances and restrictions on exercise. Getting the news that I was cleared, I was on top of the world. I felt all of the momentum of my rehabilitated body pushing me toward swimming, yoga, hiking, walking and weight training and that's when I realized how easy it would be for me to go tumbling back down that road toward injury, if I didn't respect the way back down the mountain. Manski is great for reminding me not to overdo it, and to take rest days in between my activity. The temptation to just get out there and express my physical self is overwhelming sometimes and because there were restrictions on it, I now feel an intense desire to walk or be active in each moment of the day to make up for lost time, to walk for the sake of walking, to get my body "back on track". Then it hits me (not unlike an avalanche - to comply with the metaphor) that I don't need my body "back". To have "back" what I used to would erase all of the wisdom and peace that injury allowed, and the body before my injury was not nearly as well-loved (although that's still a work in progress) and respected as this.

So what's this all about? What am I trying to say? I can't presume to know any one else's story or to know what's best for anyone but myself, but I can say this: movement is a powerful thing. How and how often you chose to express it is up to you, but know that like the time capsule it is (and our modern western unilinear notion of time is a bit of a buzzkill in this department), the body, like the clock, ticks forward. When I see elders on the mountain, it's then that I realize that the image of health isn't in the body, but in the respect we grant or deny it.

Reading other inspiring books, blogs and articles motivates me to believe that I am empowered and changed for having read them, but the real empowerment zone is the real-live space in which we make the choices that change us.

It's too easy for me to go back to my old ways, to work on getting my body "back into shape" after this long exercise hiatus. I don't want that. Before I got married, I made a promise to myself. I told myself that I would not deny myself any food or experience in order to change my body for my wedding day. I didn't and I think I looked pretty darn A-OK on my wedding day. Today, after (I admit) some digression from that promise, I am reclaiming that promise and rather than looking to change my body, I'm going to hand it back the reigns to tell me what it needs to be the best it can.

The empowerment zone is so easy to miss - and yes, it might seem like an esoteric concept - but it's exactly in those moments when we can chose to be better that measurable (yes, quantifiable and qualifiable for all you empiricists out there) empowerment happens. I think that, at times, empowerment means stepping away from a second piece of cake when you're already full, but in other cases, it means stepping toward it so that you can fully participate in life with some measure of self-love and self-trust, but having the requisite amount of trust in yourself to know which choice feels better. I'm taking that pledge to myself - not to build a better body - but to build a better self and to let my body be the expression of that, in the way that its wisdom sees fit. That doesn't mean that I won't push myself hard when occasion permits, but instead of working toward some archetypal way of eating or moving, I'm working toward an acrhetypal way of being me.

Any takers?