Fighting is your worst enemy, allowing is your best friend

When I was living in San Francisco I had started a new exercise system called Bar Method. It was a workout system developed based on ballet and dance. Before I tried to go to gyms and tried to follow group classes but until I became a member of Bar Method I realized that I never did a proper exercise.

This studio was only dedicated to this exercise, there were only 20 women and teacher were watching everybody very closely, exercises were very hard and I also realized that all the exercises I did before was for nothing.

We were using our own body weight and teacher kept telling us that the real work starts when muscles start to ache and burn. That's how our muscles change apparently. I never knew this, none of the gym teachers had told me this. So when I was exercising I always stopped when my muscles started to ache and burn.

With this my new knowledge I was trying to stay in the exercise against all pain and burn, teacher kept asking us to FIGHT against this burn. Oh yeah I was actually very successful in fighting backed up by very aggressive music. At the end od each painful move I was even screaming to relive myself, like I was just out of a war. My body had great benefits with this exercise, I loved it. But I was in pain both mentally and physically.

One day our teacher told us to relax our faces and I realized that MY FIGHT my fight was putting lots of stress on my face. I was trying really hard, struggling and you could see it on my face.

Then I started to have doubts about this exercise. At one side I was trying to do something good for me and on the other side I was creating lots of stress.

One day out of nowhere I had an inspiration. Instead of fighting with the pain as if it was enemy I decided to accept it.

I JUST ALLOWED PAIN TO BE THERE

At the end pain I was feeling was something very helpful for my muscles and it was a feeling of change of my muscles.

It was not my enemy, it was not hurting me but my brain judged differently. My brain decided that it was my enemy.

Before I even did not want to feel the pain, now I was feeling it but I was dealing it with fight as it was my enemy

When I changed how my brain judges this pain, something shifted in me.

Yes I was feeling something , physical pain, but it was not something bad anymore.

I felt it with joy, my brain stopped fighting it. We all became a team.

My face, jaws and shoulders were all relaxed.

I did my exercise with peace.

Look at our lives

All our perceived enemies are there waiting for us to receive them