The Other Side of Fever

       A few nights ago, I broke a fever several hours after going to bed with a sore throat, body aches, and a stuffy nose. The night was cool for late July, edging towards cold, as I started getting the chills just before climbing under the covers.
       In the middle of the night, I woke up freezing. Grabbing the remaining blanket and putting on a long sleeve jersey over my tee shirt, I literally crawled back into bed and started shaking. Popping my last few ibuprofens, I didn’t so much drift off to sleep as crash. Well, I tried anyway. I’m not sure how long I lay awake, shuddering with the chills.
       These were my last few days and nights at The Omega Institute. Being here for a magical month, I wanted to go out with a bang, but it was looking and feeling more like it would be a whimper. My mind was now aching as much as, if not more than, my body. What if I feel this shitty the rest of the week? What if I have to spend my last few precious days here holed up in bed? Jesus, that would suck ass. I started obsessing about that very possibility, which certainly wasn’t helping me fall asleep. Before I had a chance to completely turn over to the dark side, however, I mercifully fell to sleep.
       Waking up a few hours later, in damp clothes and damp sheets, with the last remnants of sweat still glistening off my forehead, I could tell I had come to the other side of something. But what? This physical manifestation of fever, soreness, and chills signified the welling up and letting go of something inside of me besides some sort of bug. I was, after all, in a truly magical place; Omega is a vortex of higher consciousness and personal transformation. I had been here for over three weeks and had completely immersed myself in the process.
       I’m often looking for some sort of physical “proof” that something inside of me has shifted, and the body can serve as the ultimate proof being in the pudding. It’s all connected: body, mind, heart, and spirit. If it shows up in one place, it somehow, someway, shows up in all the others. Sometimes subtly, and sometimes like a sledgehammer. Well, this constituted a sledgehammer.
       Exactly what has moved through me will make itself clearer in the upcoming days, weeks, or months. I’ve been gradually letting go of some old baggage for months now; for years if I dig even deeper. I’ve also been opening myself up to how my already blessed and beautiful life could be even bigger, better, more fulfilling, more meaningful, and more enriching. One question that I’m asking and answering piece by piece is “What do I have to give that can truly make a difference in people’s lives?”
       This month at Omega has been another big step down my path. A path that twists and turns and never ceases to amaze me, to wow me. I’m not looking behind so much anymore as I am saturating myself in the moment, as best I can (though that still proves challenging). I’m gazing at a future that’s opening up to vistas I’m only starting to embrace as truly possible.
       More importantly, I see and feel the path I’m on more clearly, more viscerally, than ever before. I have more support, both internally and externally, than at any other time in my life.


©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.  

Call Me SuperFly (part 2)

If possible, please read the part 1 of this post, Call Me The SuperFly

Insights on my experience with The Flying Trapeze...

       For the time I’m up there on the trapeze, I’m giving it all I have. And "all I had" became a progression of degrees. The first few times I flew, there was some trepidation in my take off and in my commitment to the the moves I was instructed to perform. I was doing the best I could, this being the first time in my entire life I was ever on a trapeze. But I noticed, as the weekend progressed, my conscious ratcheting up of my commitment, my engagement, my level of zest and zeal, for each flight. Towards the end, I was jumping higher off the platform with less hesitation; throwing myself with more vim and vigor over the bar to complete a move; outstretching my arms and opening myself up more when hanging upside down. I was amping up my own movements, and my own internal commitment. Both my inner and outer game got more of me. Way more of me.
       It was a very zen process. Was I more committed mentally because I was more committed physically? Or was it the other way around? My highly analytical mind actually doesn’t give a shit. It’s not important how. It’s just important that I made it happen. My body and my mind were both working together, in harmony, not fighting each other. And it felt like heaven.
       When my mind got in the way, and it did on one or two occasions for a few brief seconds up there, it wasn’t fear of falling that took me out. It was fear of failure. It was fear of screwing up and not doing the move right. On the ground, I am very familiar with this fear, and it followed me into the air. That tells me just how deeply rooted this fear is. Fear of failure is deeply rooted in most of us, in some form or another; we often only feel okay if we “succeed”, however we define success.
       On one flight, I was attempting a new, rather difficult beginner move called the phalange. I attempted it four times, succeeding twice. Completing the move successfully filled me with boundless joy and elation, and I would not trade those moments for anything. But the times I failed were when I got my greatest lessons. Because in my failures I saw not only the process which contributed to my failure, but my response to that failure. In this unique environment, it was easy to slow things down afterwards and clearly see myself and how my actions, both inner and outer, translated into results.
       When in those micro-moments my mind was over occupied with not failing, rather than being in the flow of the activity; when I could hear that voice in me telling me that “I am strong, and I’m a man, and I better get this right”, well, guess what? I didn’t. And afterwards, I was angry at myself for failing. But that anger didn't last long. Maybe a minute or two. Because my mind quickly left that space as I looked forward to my next full engagment in flight.
       Worrying about failing, and then beating myself for failing, is a way of being I know well, that most of us know well. It will sometimes even stop us from attempting something at all. I got to see myself like that just a few times during my trapeze experience, and it was highly enlightening. For it was so starkly juxtaposed with the way I was most of the time: fully engaged, not worrying about failure, and then the exhilrating high afterwards, wether I succeeded or not (although success definitely had a more pleasant and joyous flavor to it). It’s no fun living in fear of failure. And it’s ultimately not productive in a full being way. For some, the fear of failure is what drives them to succeed. I’m not judging that. I’m saying for me, it doesn’t work.
       Being in the moment is something that most of us struggle with. The trapeze showed me just how beautiful being fully in the moment - being invested body, mind, heart, and spirit - can feel. And I can take that into my life on terra firma. I can fly on the ground.

©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Call Me The SuperFly

       In college, my buddies gave me the nickname “SuperFly”, after my favorite professional wrestler, Jimmy "SuperFly" Snuka. His patented move, “The SuperFly”, was a flying leap off the top ropes, smashing down onto a prostrate opponent. I was known for doing my own version of the move, careening off of couches, chairs, cars, diving boards, you name it. Especially when alcohol was involved.       
       One of the workshops I took here at The Omega Institute was called The Flying Trapeze. It involved literally getting up on a real trapeze and doing shit thirty feet off the ground over a net. Here, I earned the nickname “SuperFly” all over again. And let me tell you. It was one wild ride.  
       The scariest moments were always between the time I started climbing the ladder and the time I actually took off. By the time I’m waiting on the platform chalking up, my heart and mind were racing like a Formula One car. Grabbing the bar as I leaned out over nothing but air and waiting for my cue to take that leap of faith, I felt like everything inside of me was about to explode outwards in a violent mess of brains, blood, and thoughts. But once I jumped into the void, I wasn’t frightened at all.
       It’s not as simple, however, as “I didn’t have time to be scared”. That is a part of it. Things are indeed happening fast once you start flying. Real fast. But remember, the mind only needs a second to go from serene to clamorous . Granted, when things are happening that fast, my mind has no time to idle, which is when it gets me in the most trouble. Climbing the ladder and waiting for the bar do not take a lot of concentration, so my mind fills itself with all the things that could go wrong up there, and all the other completely irrational fears that one experiences climbing thirty feet in the air preparing to swing off of a bar into mid air.
       Once I take off, though, an entirely new paradigm takes over. It’s as though the way I lived my life just a moment ago, The Operating System For Clint In Life, has been usurped by something all together different. I am suddenly fully and completely engaged in flying. I’m totally focused, paying attention, and bringing all I have to this endeavor. It’s like there is no room for anything else. The situation forces me to fill myself up with what I’m doing. I’m moving trough the air (maybe not with the greatest of ease, as the song goes, but I’m moving). I’m not directly attached to Mother Earth. My only tether to terra firma is a metal bar attached to a couple of nylon lines, attached to a massive apparatus of poles, stakes, and ropes. It doesn’t feel like I’m on earth anymore. And that changes everything.
       Flying through the air, not experiencing any attachment to the ground, well, it’s something I’m sort of used to. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I have much more trouble being grounded than I do soaring through the metaphysical stratosphere of my own mind, of my own heart, of my own spirit. But this is different. Way different. This is physical soaring. Not just mental. Not just emotional. Not just spiritual. This isn’t just a mind thing. It’s a body thing. It’s a whole being thing.
       And while the body soars, my mind stays grounded, focused, engaged, and present. It’s almost a complete role reversal. Usually it’s my body that’s physically grounded, and my mind that’s soaring someplace else. Now it’s my body that’s no longer touching anything but air, and my mind that’s rooting me to the moment.
      It’s a mind/body role reversal, but on a different level, on a new playing field, a whole new continuum. Life is happening and I’m in it, one-hundred-fucking-percent. For those precious fifteen seconds, I’m free. Free of the mental chatter that sometimes derails me. Free of the ground that sometimes makes me feel trapped. I’m grounded, but it’s got nothing to do with the ground. I’m grounded in what I’m doing. My full engagement in life at that moment is what’s responsible. Paradoxically, my total commitment to flying is actually what grounds me.
       Fly with me into Part Two on Monday.


©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

I Hate Yoga

       I hate yoga. It’s uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Which is exactly why I’m doing more of it.
       It can be difficult, sometimes, to know the difference between doing something we don’t like because it’s good for us (like in this case, yoga), and doing something we don’t like because it’s bad for us (like driving sixteen-penny nails through our eyeballs). When do we just suck it up, and when is sucking it up just getting us in more trouble? That’s not always clear. But some things are becoming more vivid as I draw parallels between my fledgling yoga practice and the rest of my life.
       First and foremost, I have to show up. For yoga and for life. That means I get my ass into the game, even if that sometimes means just hopping out of bed, or showing up for a class. Whether I want to or not. And sometimes, I don’t. Not so much in life, but certainly for yoga. And, although such days are very few and far between, even getting out of bed some days wouldn’t be my first choice. And I’m not talking about those days when I wake up next to a beautiful woman and all I want to do is explore the Karma Sutra. I’m talking about the rare “I just don’t want to get up” days, when just showing up at all is a victory.
       But showing up is rudimentary. Now it’s time to actually do stuff. Yoga has shown me just how resistant I can be. My body fights the poses. Part of this is because I’m physically tight. As in “not flexible”. My body is used to resistance. My workout history is primarily weight training, which is all about putting up a fight. Thirty-five years of pumping iron, without enough stretching or other flexibility based modalities, will tend to make one tight.
       Working with weights since I was fifteen has made me comfortable with resistance. I’m at home with it. On a cellular level. It’s the world I’ve trained myself to be in. I know how to resist a weight and then force that weight through to completion. In the world of barbells and dumbbells, that’s how it works. In the world of yoga, not so much. My body is so used to resistance, to fighting and forcing my way through it, that it does so automatically. Instead of flowing and breathing into a yoga pose, I fight it. I’m physically unconscious about it. Only when I remind myself, physically and mentally, that “I’m not supposed to resist this” do I gain the ability to move with the motion, with the pose, instead of against it.
       This is the way it is with my body, as I’ve become acutely aware of after doing two and a half weeks of yoga classes. There is a saying that goes “The way you do yoga is the way you do life”. So I started asking myself how often in my life do I engage in resistance? How often do I just muscle through something, attempting to essentially force it (like during a bicep curl), instead of allowing it to unfold (like during a yoga pose)? How often do I act from force in an attempt to control, instead of acting from intentional effort and allowing things to flow? Put another way, how often do I create space in my life for things to happen?
       Forcing things is a learned behavior. So it can be unlearned. And I’m not talking about doing nothing at all and just waiting to see what happens. I’m not talking about passivity. I’m talking about allowing. I’m talking about creating space within the spheres of my life where space is as much a requirement as action. Which is basically all spheres. Even in pumping iron, you have to let the weight down. You have to allow the muscles to rest; in between reps, in between sets, and then for days at a time. Space is part of the equation. You have to give your body the space it needs to grow and change. I sometimes forget that. In the gym and in my life. I more naturally focus on the force. But the space has to be there. It’s an integral, vital, indispensable part of the overall process; of growth, of change, of development, of transformation. Of life itself.
       That’s why yoga is so hard for me. It feels like I should be forcing the pose. But when I do, it just feels like shit. That’s the opposite of pumping iron. In the act of lifting, when I force the weight up, it feels good. So in a way, it’s flipping what I know, what I’m comfortable with, on it’s head.
       On the other side of this is the realization that, in the rest of my life, as in yoga, I have great capacity for flow. I have great capacity to allow, and to create space. I just don’t always see it. And I don't always do it. Especially when I’m cursing my way through Warrior One, or some variation of Twisted Pretzel Position Twelve. When I get out of my own way, I naturally create space for many beautiful and wonderful things in my life to happen. For many wonderful and beautiful things to unfold.  
       But I have to be mindful of this. I have to bring a conscious awareness to it. I have to practice it. My over arching paradigm can not be one of force. My over arching paradigm can, instead, be one of conscious effort with clear intent, followed by letting go. I can engage in appropriate action and simultaneously practice allowance. I can create both the inspired acts and the space needed for those acts to take whatever wing will be.
       I’m discovering that my yoga, like my life, is more of a dance. And less of a bench press.

©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.