Every Practice Is a Living Process
Recognizing the ebb and flow inside the context of each practice
*For editing’s sake, the written word is not identical to the video and audio….
One of the interesting things about language is that it tends to shape perception, then in turn, perception continues to shape language, as they move back and forth in this relational dynamic with each other.
I wanna bring your attention to a feature of the English language, in that it's very noun-focused and it tends to relate to most of what it encounters in the world as a thing.
It's also interesting that in a lot of tribal and indigenous cultures, there's a lot less focus on the idea of things.
In fact, in some of the indigenous languages that I have encountered and that I have from good authority from people who actually know those languages, there's an understanding that things don't even exist because they don't have a word for “thing”.
Everything is just a force or a process, which is fascinating when you think about it, especially when you look at how modern Western people, speaking an English language…
…tend to relate to a lot in our world as things.
It's difficult to speak the English language without being very noun-focused or even refer to something, without saying thing. See what I mean?
So within that, I want to bring your attention to how a lot of us tend to relate to practices, as we tend to fetishize a particular practice by turning it into a thing instead of a force or a process. We can extrapolate this to any number of practices across any domain.
So if we're playing the violin…
If we're practicing Tai chi…
If we are weightlifting or even if we're doing a set inside the context of weightlifting…
All of these tend to get related to as a secular bit of some{thing}.
Whereas if we were to begin to relate to each of these dynamics as forces and as a living process, it would drastically change how we approached (at least internally) our practices.
I'm gonna use weightlifting as an example initially and then I'm also gonna talk about meditation, in order to give a nice polarity of two distinct types of practices. When we are thinking about weightlifting, we refer to weightlifting as a thing. It has its own secular dynamic… which can be helpful and can also not really encompass the totality of the practice at all.
If we approach the whole dynamic as a process, then we can show up to each exercise and not get stuck on notions that it has to be perfect, or that it has to be a particular way.
If we relate to every set as a process, then we can allow ourselves to recognize the ebb and flow inside the context of the set.
So for example, if a person is doing a set of squats…let's say they're gonna do something like five, six, or seven squats with a particular weight, they pick up the weight and they do the first squat. Well, now that initiates a process. The next squat in the set can be more refined and smoother than the last one, and so on.
And so as we are progressing through the set, we're recognizing that there is a process emerging that will peak… It will hit a crest inside the set where that movement (if we're focusing on quality) is just getting better and better and better….and then of course at some point, it's going to trail off.
How do you relate to your process? Is it one where you want to end in the peak, where you want to leave more energized? Or is the process degrading over time because you are aiming for failure?
Each is a process and each is also a different type of process.
The same thing could be said about the overall warm-up, workout, and cool-down. It's a process and we can expect a process to be different from moment to moment to moment. It's ever-changing.
A lot of people get stuck on trying to replicate the same session over and over and over again and get really granular about the details, or they just disregard the notion of the process altogether… and they just go in there and hit it as hard as they can.
And both of those lose the nuance of the overall practice, especially when you realize that you can't ever replicate the same movement twice…. the exact vectors, the exact muscle dynamics, the exact metabolic elements of a particular movement only occurs once. So if we understand practice as a living process, it changes the dynamic.
The same is true with meditation. A lot of people think of meditation as a thing that you do…that you sit down and you're supposed to be able to meditate. Instead of recognizing that when you first sit down to meditate…
You're not going to be in a state of deep meditation right away.
There are often thoughts that intrude.
There are different layers of discomfort that might show up.
There's resistance that could happen.
But when we realize that meditation is a process and that the process {is this engaging} with the different layers of sensation or thought or emotion… and then refocusing on the object or process of meditation,
over and over again…
until the process, like a wave will peak (possibly multiple times in higher and higher successions) eventually allowing you to enter into a deep state of flow and connection to the meditative object or process of focus.
When we recognize that meditation is a process, then all those elements that we're discussing are a feature and not a bug.
When we show up to practice and we are not necessarily feeling it so to speak, if we recognize it's a process, then we can slowly open the system and move it towards where we want it to go.
Then we could touch that place of deep engagement with the practice, let that peak state create a cascade that changes us and then phase out of the practice. Now, what's awesome about that too is that the practice itself then teaches us about how to engage more deeply with life.
Because once we recognize, as I've talked about many times, that life is the practice, then we realize that life is a living process, as is every single practice.