Mind Body Integration through Nei Gong
This topic has become one of the areas of focus for me in the past year and it continues to bring surprises, challenges and wonder. I’ve spent a lot of time learning to reconnect with my body, my heart and go into the blockages and areas of tension and holding in the organs and my energy body. However, the mind cannot be left behind from this path, and while so many people I come across are too in our minds when we then go into the body, it has to be done in parallel, not seperation, so I’m understanding. So how do we re-train the mind? This process takes time, that’s one thing I do know. And the steps are varied, non-linear and hard at times, especially if like me you jump from practice to practice and tool to tool a bit more than the traditional perspectives might recommend. Recently, I’ve been feeling as though my mind is clinging on, it finds solace in attaching to daily stresses, in a low level of anxiety, finding ease in work, emails and even exercise at times. However, without this letting go and surrender, we will generally stop our potential, cause suffering and block our capacity for ‘Ziren’, or our natural state. The question remains, how do I not do? I’ve trained my mind diligently to do everything throughout my life, but you cannot do surrender. So this letting go has to be come from somewhere else, or something else. A trust in the Universe, in God, in a path, teacher, a process. Without doubt, I have taken positive steps towards this integrated state of natural harmony, or Ziren as the Taoists call it, but I am not there and at times it’s really stressful when it feels like I’m going in the wrong direction. Currently I am trying to remember, be gentle and not necessarily reach for some intense external tool to help, but ‘allow’ it to happen within. Allowing has become my mantra lately, and after coming across Damo Mitchell’s Nei Gong course, I feel I am finally ready to allow myself into a deeper commitment towards my own undoing.
So, FTP?
One of the lessons from my Ironman 70.3 race was that I’m not especially strong on the bike. My heart rate based training was challenging to follow on my cycling training, and although I enjoyed the rides a lot, I’d never even thought about FTP1 and so never really pushed super hard on the bike. So this week I’ve signed up on Zwift and did my first Ramp Test, which is kind of like a VO2max2 test on the bike in terms of how it’s structured. I didn’t expect great things and when it was all said and done after 20-25 minutes, my FTP was 242. Not amazing but on the plus side lots of room to improve. With my next target race on May 15th, the Herbalife Olympic distance, I’ve downloaded a 4-week FTP building program on TrainingPeaks to see how much I can improve my FTP in a fairly short period. These rides are going to be tough, mostly done inside on the trainer but the work should yield some results. I raced this race last October and finished in 2 hours 36 minutes after no swimming, and being sick a week before, so my real goal is to try and do better than I did then, with a loose goal of 2 hours 25 minutes, seeing as I should be healthy going in and have more fitness both on the bike and my run, plus going aero in my new POC Cerebral helmet 🏊🏼 🚴🏼 🏃🏽
After learning about Ryan Hall via The Drive podcast with Peter Attia, I’ve been following his journey and found this amazing and inspiring old training video of his, in honor of the Boston Marathon coming up…
This week’s MEP Compendium ♾ ♾
Recap from my first Ironman 70.3 on April 2nd in Oceanside ( Link )
📺 Loved this documentary, Free to Run, about the early days and growth of running culture in France and America ( Link )
🔊 Speaking of Peter Attia’s podcast, this episode with Iñigo San-Millán, Ph.D is great and dives in deep on Zone 2 training ( Link )
Since getting into cycling the last couple years, I’ve grown to love listening to The Move with Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie and Johan Bruyneel, looking forward to their Paris–Roubaix recap ( Link )
Super impressed by Brain Dead’s project with Oakley and becoming their R&D division ( Link )
📖 Getting back into King, Warrior, Magician, Lover in men’s group3, such an incredible and rich resource for self discovery and growth ( Link )