Hardcore kindness

Returned to working on my deep stance the last few weeks. Last year I built up to 7 minutes. Coming back at it again I'm between 3-4 minutes, fresh.

This evening I sat three times: 3:30, 3:00, 2:50 (probably 3-5 minutes between the sits). I'm proud of myself because each time I stayed there for a more intense sensation in the legs. The last one I got to the legs trembling and tingling phase.

In college I treated it as a flagellating thing, chastising myself for my weakness whenever I whimpered to myself about stopping and standing, and the usual perfectionism jazz.

In the last 5 years, I've become more interested in grace under fire;  Be it a  deep stance, an impending deadline, or an argument: the psyche has similar responses to stress; cultivating kindness as things get tough is meaningful because it's easy to be a grouchy fuck when your back is against the wall.

Things that are helping me the most in being kind while I feel the burn and get those gainz:
A tip from Paul Linden's (he's amazing, and hosting a bodywork and embodiment seminar around 7th July - go go go!) centring method, which is mighty powerful, is to have a "smiling heart".  Something I got from Tom Weksler (a self-described traveling teacher, he's got an astonishingly deep practice in many things; acrobatics, stillness, martial arts, dance, also go learn from him :) ) was imagine the tension flowing out to the extremities; it's like spreading lumps of butter evenly on bread.¹ And finally: even full breaths with a complete exhales, because I've noticed if my chest and stomach is tight, I don't reflexively exhale fully, and it peters out with some gas still in the tank, so to speak. So when I'm not freaking out too much, I try to gently, but clearly exhale fully. I got the mindfulness on breathing from Systema.²

Tough training, particularly approaching physical or psychological limits is a way to experience the acute stress response, and get a " taste of trauma." Using the opportunity to cultivate gentleness and compassion, instead of irritation and frustration is invaluable, because it'll become easier and more reflexive to be that way when the shit hits the fan for realz.

In summary, kindness practice offers a wonderful layer to tough training sessions.

+++++
¹Bilbo shout out!
²yes, yes, I'm doing a lot of namedropping. Because it makes me look good. But also, it's marvelous how different and the same ideas can come from different people and influences... I'm a strong believer in redundancy hearing the same thing from different sources is a wonderful indicator of an underlying principle or a hypothesis being correct (it's never a certainty, but independent corroboration is sweeeet).