Atheletic Performance – A personal perspective
By now most of you have a sense of the fun I have with this work and the dimensions I take it into, professionally and personally, with both focused attentiveness and a spirit of play.
For the past 9 months, I have enjoyed working with several athletes who seek to optimize their performance with Polarity and “whatever it is that I do”. This has actually prompted me to go to a health club and work out myself. (“Like attracts like” and I like working with athletes, so I thought I better be one myself.) My goal is to have the energy and health that I had at 30 as I celebrate 50, whenever that may be.
Since November I have regularly enveloped myself in the consciousness of a gerbil and worked out on a cross-trainer machine with great zest and vigor. And though my fitness has improved, I have maintained a pretty consistent cycles per minute. I marvel at those hard-bodies on machines next to me who seemed to move their legs with such fluidity and ease as I chugged along, r-o-u-n-d and r-o-u-n-d.
Last week I studied “The Art of Structural Balancing” with Phil Young (received lots of structural work in the learning process) and a had session from Phil the last evening of the course in which he “unwound my hips from my legs.” Interesting concept, I thought as all my senses were put on notice to discover what the implications of this could be for my experience in this body and possibly for any clients with whom I found myself unwinding hips from legs.
So off to the gym this morning, into gerbil mode, and away I went… like the road runner in a cloud of dust! I am sure that my legs were just a circular blur. The machine told me I had gone from my usual 129 cyles per minute to 192 cycles per minute at the same resistance.
What an experience! I burned 25% more calories, went 30% further in the same time period and hopped off the machine feeling like a spring chicken, grinning right down to my toes. I am sure that if my yankee blue blooded up-tight puritanical soul could flow my being into fluidity, that I would find myself dancing like a jamacian mama to reggae music in the main street of my home town.
This is my ode to the health building, revitalizing potential of polarity!
Salut
Carolyn Dewey
July 14 ,1999