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Monday, April 9, 2007
I am Strength
Dr. Jack Barnathan
There are 200 golf courses in South Korea.
There are over 17,000 golf courses in the United States.
Despite the difficulty of playing a full game
of golf in this tiny country, South Korean golfers won almost one-third of the events last year on the Ladies Professional
Golf Association (LPGA) Tour! How is this possible?
Lets address this amazing feat by repeating an old story.
A young tourist walking down 57th street in New York City was obviously lost. He steps up to the first elder that appears
to be a native New Yorker and asks, “how do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
“Practice” came
the reply from the older gentlemen. “Practice, practice, practice!”
It is because they do not
have enough golf courses in Korea that people who want to play the game are force to use driving ranges and putting greens
– over and over and over again. Practice, practice, practice – until their foundation skills in the game
are superior to others.
It also makes us wonder how much energy do we apply in describing, visualizing and practicing
endlessly that which we truly should be, as opposed to what we’re not? How much of our day do we focus on what
we don’t like and think about it over and over?
If you think all day “I’m overweight and I have
to lose 10 pounds” you’ll get what you’re programming over and over again. You’ll continue to
be overweight. And with that constant negativity we inevitably send ourselves into a bleak downward spiral.
The philosopher said “you are what you think about all day long” and today we have neuroscience to back that
up. Just this year Dr. Douglas Fields of the National Institutes of Health published a groundbreaking paper in the journal
Neuron proving this once again. His study demonstrates how repeated action wraps myelin around a nerve like insulation
around an electric wire over and over with each repeated act. Thus making the nerve’s conduction of its message
more effective. Practice, practice, practice and your myelin will get you to Carnegie Hall – center stage.
“It’s hard to fail, but it’s far worse never to have tried to succeed.” Theodore Roosevelt
Just how long do we avoid the things we truly love because of fear? Fear of failure or fear of not being good
enough to deserve that which we imagine ourselves to be.
Can we say with total confidence, “I am strength”?
Can we proclaim that which will make our work not only successful, but a joy?
I attended a lecture by the famed
author and minister Marianne Williamson. During her talk she stated emphatically that once you go after that which you
truly love with all your heart, soul and might, then and only then everything changes. In her words: “Go
for God, and all the other garbage just falls away. “
But first we have to understand that:
Strength
is nothing if it doesn’t set you Free.
If strength is of the ego it will keep you in chains. It will
be all about arrogance instead of eloquence. Strength must be more than just your looks. Or how others react to
you and your “outside”. How many of us have the courage to let our strength be developed for a purpose greater
than ourselves. More than the ego.
Muscles mean nothing if not used to uplift others.
You have
a purpose on this planet whether you want to accept it now or realize it when you’ve used up your life (your opportunity)
and it’s too late.
The Fitness & Sports world, along with its associated multi-billion dollar
industries are focused on “nutrition” more any single item. It’s where they make all their money.
Magic, shiny pills to take away all the bad, burn fat, help you sleep, make you big and strong, run faster, jump higher and
help build healthy bodies in 12 ways…
Yet consider the following fact:
By the end of this day
37,000 people, mainly children, will die of hunger
or the effects of malnutrition.
Gives a new meaning to
the word “nutrition”, doesn’t it.
What if we focused on using a part of our strength to
feed the hungry? To lift up others in need. Imagine if the world had an image of Personal Trainers, Chiropractors,
Physicians and Athletes as the people who led the way in using food to heal, rather than sooth the ego or fill our wallets.
Just imagine…
No one screams louder on their deathbed than those who are suddenly face to face with eternity
and have come to the final realization of all the good they could have shared with their strength – but it’s now
too late. They focused instead upon their ego. Or, held back because of their fears. They kept themselves
in prison and now have to experience the horror of regret.
There is no benefit to anyone if you keep your
gifts hidden and cover your light under a bushel. Why are you hiding your abilities? So others won’t feel
threatened? This helps no one.
We need to live without regret because we’re too busy building
our physical, mental and spiritual strengths – and most important, sharing them enthusiastically with those we serve.
But, I am afraid…
If we let fear creep into our mind and form an endless loop, reinforcing with
every repetition, then we are lost. I am afraid. I am weak…I am not smart enough… I am less than.
And too often these ideas of failure were not our own! It might have been placed there by a teacher, parent
or peers who meant well, but permitted too many of THEIR fears to be forced upon you.
The good news is you need
not carry them any longer. You can thank those who may have tried to help but didn’t totally succeed (notice the
positive way in which I worded the above? There’s a critical reason for that). We can now move on and reprogram
ourselves to a new way of thinking.
You have two choices only. Negativity or Possibility? Choose wisely
with every word you speak. Yes, every word you speak.
Only 20 years ago scientists were quite firm in their
certainty that the brain was “hard wired”. This means that you’re born the way you are born and your
brain is what it is going to be from birth. No real possibility of change. One part of the grey matter is for
the bicep and another area is for wiggling your toes. No variations were considered possible.
Not until 1984
when Neuroscientists at the Silver Springs laboratory realized that one of the apes they were studying had managed to overcome
a paralyzed arm by “re-wiring” his brain. Areas that were not in any way “wired” from birth
for these roles helped our simian athlete regain ability.
In short, the brain sensed the loss, and found
a way to adapt.
To radically change. The brain boldly proclaimed it was more than a prisoner of its birth
or injury. It still had strength to apply creatively across the cortex. It wasn’t satisfied with the label
“I am disabled” and instead revealed it’s true potential. The brain made the emphatic statement:
I AM STRENGTH
We have the potential to become whatever we wire our mind to be. There is a difference
between the “mind” and the “brain”. And now that scientists are finally accepting (what Tibetan
Buddhist Monks have realized for 1000 years) that your mind – your conscious thoughts when programmed into the Brain,
can create new signals. New thoughts and even new abilities.
This signal is not wishful thinking. Or
wishing, at all. It comes through focused repetition. The mind needs to know first that YOU know who you are.
What you are and where you want to go. And the way to clearly communicate this to your mind is through focused repetition.
And if you’re going to send a message to the brain over and over it helps if it is something that you’re
thinking about all day because it is important. Something your passionate about. Something bigger than you.
It is a purpose or reason for being. It is your mission.
Repetition alone is just wishful thinking
unless it’s backed by fierce emotion. You have to love this thing you are thirsting for. You have to place
desire behind it like a drowning man craves air.
Can you say with total confidence and certainty who you are?
What you are?
The great “I am”.
“And God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.
Here is what you must say to the people. Tell them, ‘I AM’ has sent me to you.”
Exodus 3:14
The Lord in speaking these words knew exactly who he was, and tried to instill in a frightened, stuttering Moses the
same “I AM” certainty so he could lead his people from bondage to liberty. Isn’t that what every Fitness
Trainer and Doctor lives to do? To liberate. To teach that Fitness = Freedom.
Meditation is one powerful
form of focused repetition. Teaching the brain through your conscious mind (get the difference?) that new, power-filled
thoughts can become new actions and reactions. Strength instead of Fear. Love instead of Hate. Growth (of
both the Spirit and the Soleus…) instead of decline.
In Tibet there are Monks know as “Lungum Runners”
who meditate while running miles and miles through the Himalayas during snow storms, with no apparent stress. They’re
even energized by the experience! We are equally amazed when a monk demonstrates, through meditation, that he can slow
his heart rate down from a normal of 72 beats per minute to a slow, steady 40 beats per minute!
And yet when earlier
today a member of our team, multi-sport champion Nicki Giguere, texted me a picture of herself on top of a mountain in Vermont
that she just ran up, in snow shoes, during blizzard conditions, she had a big smile on her face and proclaimed in the message
that it was the best way to spend a Sunday!
When I ask Nicki what her resting pulse is she’ll smile
and say it is also 40 beats per minute, just like the monks. The only difference is with Nicki her pulse is 40 beats
per minute every day!
The monk did it through focused, repeated input to the brain from his mind through meditation.
Nicki did it through focused, repeated input to the brain from her mind, but used her MUSCLES as the messenger through the
consistent, intelligent, repeated input of training.
Muscle Mastery can be a form of Moving Meditation.
The Squat Rack can be your alter of strength.
Go to the gym – again and again. Meet yourself
on the mat at the Dojo. Talk to your soul while running along the beach. Read and study the muscles by choosing
a new one every week and make it your own. Over and over and over again. That’s the key.
When the impatient student asked Master Tessu why he had to practice holding the sword 10,000 times before being permitted
to move to the next step, the greatest sword master of all time replied
“More and more teachings exist right
here. The sword is unfathomable.”
And so are the squat rack, the open road, and the ocean swim.
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces
toward change and behave like
free spirits in the presence of fate
is strength undefeatable.”
Helen Keller
Most of the world’s
great women’s tennis champions all come from the same small school in Russia just outside Moscow. There is only
one indoor court with a net that needs replacing and heat that is questionable at best. But ask the 77-year-old Tennis
Coach of all these women, Larisa Preobrazhenskaya how long she makes beginners work at the basics, including repetitive imaginary
games before they would ever play against another student, she’ll tell you firmly at LEAST three years! Their
brains must be trained fully before taking the next step into the complexity of competition, or it will be in her words, a
“disaster”.
“Imitatsiya – imitatsiya” over and over again. Once warmed
up she has her students play imitatsiya - imaginary games, focusing their form and reinforcing in their developing neurons
in the technique that will take them to the top. Wrapping layer upon layer of myelin over those nerves until they fire
with the precision of a champion. And champions have come from this school for years.
Most “Tennis
Academies” in our country would consider this financial suicide. In America we want to be a black belt in 8 months
and go to Wimbledon in 12. Children (and adults who can’t go 5 minutes without checking their e-mail) are too
distracted to find the inner way to perfection. They dabble in distraction and master nothing.
I recently
watched a tennis match where one of Preobrazhenskaya’s graduates, now a top ten female tennis champion, warmed up by
herself for a few minutes playing that same imaginary game she was taught by her teacher long ago. Imitatsiya. Repetition,
repetition, repetition…
That’s the secret. It’s the way to firmly establish who you are.
The “I AM” factor. If you start on a path of Mastery (any path) the dedication combined with a deep, burning
desire will lead you to your goal. There will be twists and turns along the path, but be certain that if you are true,
then the people, resources, jobs, clients, and friends you need will all appear. Serendipity will be pushing you like
angels from behind.
“What you can do, or dream you can, begin it: Boldness has genius, power and magic in
it. Begin it now.”
Goethe
See, feel, taste, read about and talk endlessly about the thing that
you adore, and you shall make it real. You will make it yours. Just wishing isn’t the secret. It’s
in letting this “magnificent obsession” of yours take you over that makes all the difference. Some of my
students tease me by saying that I always see muscles wherever I go.
They’re right. And there
is always something new for me to learn.
You can change your entire life by altering your thoughts and actions.
Act with passion and you’ll get what you program. Over and over.
“Inward calm cannot be maintained
unless physical strength is constantly and intelligently replenished.”
The Buddha
Decide
to make a statement as to who you would be. Whether athlete, student or just better person. And be THAT, over
and over again.
When you touch the mountaintop of your dreams you will naturally choose to share it with others.
And here you’ll be rewarded with an incredible joy. A teacher of mine who studied with Buddhist monks said they
called it “rapture”. The intoxicating high that comes from doing what you know right down to your nerve
cells is good and right and empowering.
And then you can honestly proclaim:
I am strength.
Join us for a lecture on Inner Strength and beginning meditation with Question / Answer Session
at Dr. Jack’s Studio on
Long Island, New York.
FEE:
One Can of Food (or more)
which
will be donated to a local Church
to feed the hungry
Talk on Inner Strength
Meditation
Discussion
Thursday, May 3rd
4:45 – 6:00
Seating limited to 15 people
to reserve your place
631-777-7800
11:40 pm edt
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