So! I have to apologize for a bit of a delay on these posts. But as it turns out… I got sick.
Yeeeessssssssssick.
Now the irony of this was:
1. I haven’t been sick in 2.5 years. Literally. My longest stretch so far. Yet I got through far more intensive, high stress, no recovery periods than where I am at right now.
2. I was not only training with plenty of recovery (well, in the world of Shane, I could probably always use a bit more sleep), but I was also getting outside more than I have in awhile. Plenty of fresh air and Vitamin D.
3. I tightened up my eating further, truer to what I do best on seasonally at this time of year. Tons of water. Really hitting a bit of a reset button.
4. I was feeling great!
5. Because everything was feeling good, I was about to do a 3 day run of clubbell training (instead of 2) to get myself back in synch with the guys that are training with me here on the ground (they are on a slightly different sched).
On the first of those 3 days, I wasn’t going to be getting my training session until later. But I woke up that with a bit of a scratchy throat, which seemed odd, since there had been no signs of anything feeling off. As the day wore on, it seemed to stay relatively consistent, but not worsening, until the early evening. In the past I’ve used training sessions to effectively “burn up” whatever may be trying to take hold. This is different for everyone. Conversely, based on how I feel I do the opposite and it works as well, so you have to have a level of awareness as to the signs your body is giving you (which takes trial, error and a conscious effort to pay attention to the nuances, to develop. Which also means not taking that which hides the symptoms).
But by the next morning, the throat was full blown (with a day later my nose leaking like crazy and I could feel the drain of energy in my body). “Okay, I’m sick.” Could be a tough one to accept, when not only has it been 2.5 years, everything was rolling great, but you’re right in the middle of this round of Clubbell Mass Evolution with a whole group of others who are training along with you.
“NO!! I can’t. This can’t happen. Not now! I’ll ignore it. I’ll push through it. I’m tough. I’ll show the “sick” whose boss. Okay “sick”? You hear that? Because I can’t get sick right now. I’ve only got 4 weeks of this. 2-4 days is alot of time off. It’s too much! I’ll lose all my gains. How am I supposed to make any progress if every time I hit the 2 week mark, I get a visit from you? Huh? Okay? Okay? Please. Please don’t make this too long. I’ll be really good. I’ll get my sleep. I’ll eat my fruits and veggies. I’ll drink my water. Pleeeeease…”
The thing is this is a part of the process. For many of us in the early go of it, we will face this more often than not, causing frustration and discouragement. But really, it’s not some unseen foe trying to stop you in your efforts to take the quality of your life up a notch. Or a sign that your goal is too insurmountable, so you might as well give up. It is a sign of the forward progress you are making as you push through built up “layers” that have accumulated over time.
Two common reasons for getting sick along the way are:
1. You are pushing beyond what you are currently capable of sustaining (meaning the work being put in outweighs the recovery required for it that you are unable to attend to). Body says, “Ease up. It’s either too much or something’s out of balance.”
2. You are clearing blockages that have been storing for some time and essentially “detoxing” as they are being cleared.
Being aware of which it might be can help you adjust accordingly as you move forward. Be mindful, however, it isn’t always just physical. We are whole beings. Mind, body and spirit. These aspects of ourselves are interconnected and effect each other immensely. That’s a big reason why I use our pursuit of physical fitness as a vehicle for connecting and developing our inner gifts just beckoning to be unleashed. Because it’s all connected.
So in sorting out what may have caused me to fall ill out of seemingly nowhere, I took it one step deeper.
Many sources refer to the throat as being the channel of our expression and creativity. One resource I like (as it hits the nail on the head pretty much every time) is the appendix in “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise L. Hayes. And do you know what it says about what the probable (emotional) cause of a sore throat is?
“The inability to speak up for one’s self. Swallowed anger. Stifled creativity. Refusal to change.”
Wouldn’t you know it, what I really struggled with this last year was that sense of stifled creativity. Not making the change I needed to make and thus finding myself feeling “stuck in limbo” between two strong forces in my life, affecting my ability to express myself fully and share as freely as I normally do.
While I’d been actively working all year to finding the balance, discovering and learning what I needed to along the way, to address this struggle and the obvious signs it was giving me for the changes that needed to occur, it wasn’t until this last month that I made the key shifts that I needed to really help move through this particular “layer”.
Along with that, the last two weeks of fully immersing myself on the other side of that layer, incorporating new patterns for myself, writing every single day on the blog as a part of this “Train With Shane” series we are doing and very diligently connecting the quality that stood out to me as the one I had to focus on for this round of my training: Trust. Trust in myself, Trust in the process, Trust in the path I must continue to follow, Trust in the signs guiding me along to fulfilling the greatest service I can provide to all of you.
Thus, the blockage was being blown wide open. A major detox occurring.
It’s no wonder my throat exploded out of seemingly nowhere!
But that’s just it. It wasn’t out of nowhere.
When our energy gets low or we should fall ill, don’t begrudge it. Don’t get angry. Don’t throw your arms up in despair. It is a sign. A sign that you are in fact making progress.
That you are daring… Daring To Evolve!
Shane.
Thanks Coach, good essay, very timely, thanks for the encouragement!
Hope all is going well Peter!
Great post Shane, I had a big dip in energy early in the week but pushed through workout a but yesterday for workout B I seemed to have had an abundance of it. Had a graet workout and pushed a bit to much but it just felt right.
I think I’m in tune with how my body feels and will back it off when needed. I will say again these programs give me such a great base core strengh and warm ups cool downs its made my running training so much better. But depending on when and how much i run I do need to modify the timing of this program, I’m still getting the same number of workouts in but just to make sure i’m getting the right recovery in.
Hope your feeling better!
Cheers,
Scott.
Ps going this Saturday to load up on some seasonal fruits and veg at our local Farm Market.
Once we get into that space, where we consistently train in a manner that we remain really aware of how our body feels (which tracking our days according to No/Lo/Mod/Hi days helps accelerate significantly), we have a much better sense of when we can push and when we need to pull back. And that doesn’t always fall on a predetermined schedule.
You’ve been training super consistently in this manner for the last year, and using your training to augment your chosen activity. I have no doubt your level of sensitivity to it (meaning how sensitive your senses are to knowing when you can adjust up or down) is going to a deeper level.
And that sensitivity naturally moves beyond just the workouts, beginning to “take in the data” of what else is going on in our life and the overall impact that has on the overall picture.
Unfortunately, training with this level of awareness is not common, YET! Something we’re really trying to cultivate here. It’s incredible the number of people who say they DON’T want to remain present while they exercise. They want to shut off (because they are stressed in life) and not think at all. Ironically, training with that mindfulness, allows us to turn everything else off, thus making stress release more effective.
Keep up with that recovery! We can train as much as we want, so long as we can put in the recovery to match. You certainly seem to have that in hand!
This is an interesting concept. I’ve always felt that emotions (especially bad ones) would seize up my body. For the past few days, I’ve been having a sore throat as well, not able to shake it off and looking at your definition, I’ve been going through some swallowed anger and frustration, especially on the work front.
So, this is cause of meditation and really work of figuring out what is bothering me and work on solving it. I am also seeing this frustration affecting in other aspects of my life: procrastination, sleeping in, etc.
I’ll work on this and get this cleared! Thanks Shane! This was timely indeed!
That’s great Alain! I’m glad it connected in such a timely way. Yes, our emotions are hugely connected to the state of our body. We just look at the world, galaxy and universe around us. EVERYTHING is interconnected. There is not a single action or event, that doesn’t have some effect on something else around it. We can look at that on that large scale in nature or bring it in to something smaller, such as our individual being.
An example I love, as it relates to physical fitness and performance is actually top level athletes. The reason i love it is because the pursuit of high level performance in athletics is generally viewed as very scientific and approached in that manner. Consistently, it is said what separates those who can’t make that jump to the top tier and those that excel, is the mental game. They use alot of visualization.
Coaches continue to speak to visualization actually being just as, if not more important, than the physical. And what are some of the benefits the athletes are getting through this visualization? They are overcoming fear, releasing anxiety, flipping frustration on its head, connecting to calm, etc. They are addressing potential inhibitors (negative emotional impact) on their physical well-being and thus ability to perform at greater capacity (as part of the whole package, because again, it’s all interconnected).
But it never really gets thought about (or at least not talked about) in the sense of our emotional well-being and what effect that is having on the rest of our current state. And if it’s having that effect, why can’t we reverse engineer what we see happening to address it in the opposite direction? Physical gives us a signal. We take a moment to reflect on what that signal could signify as being off in our emotional state, which leads itself to looking at why we feel that way, which leads to addressing what is effecting us. The effect of which then reverberates all the way back to improvement in our physical state.
A process you have just applied Alain!!
Certainly not linear or the only way, but an additional means in which to improve the quality of our life, which we all desire.
Good on you for taking advantage and all the best with clearing that up!
Hi Shane,
so you caught a cold, huh? Actually I’m relieved because I was worried things could be worse if they kept you from posting.
So you caught some pesky virus, huh? And making people sick, that’s just what they do for a living. I’m not sure they care about our soul searching 🙂
That said, I agree that there are emotional, physical and/or psychological factors why we get sick from them one time and just don’t at other times.
I like your interpretation, and that you take such events as primers for deeper learning.
What I find dangerous however would be a tendency to “blame the victim” in case of disease and suffering. (What did you do wrong to bring this onto yourself?)
Sniffles Happens! But I do feel your frustration with it, I just don’t think you deserved it 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts my man! Yep, flu that ended up konking me out for a couple days. While an effort for me when it comes to this, took the few days to just do nothing and allow for the reset to occur. Recovery comes in all forms and we are each better at different aspects than others. Always a work in progress. ;D
“…making people sick, that’s just what they do for a living. I’m not sure they care about our soul searching.”
Haha!! Maybe not (or…?), but perhaps those other factors are what set us up to be more susceptible for the virus to come in and do what it does, providing a potential trigger for us to ask “Hey, what else is going on at the moment?” more often than we think.
I totally hear what you are saying and definitely appreciate the perspective. We can sometimes make things “heavier” than they need to be, when just being able to say “Yup, I’m sick. Let it do it’s thing and move on.” What’s interesting for me, having this being reflected back to me, is the realization that I’ve been using the approach in this post for so long that it’s not actually a heavy process for me. It’s much more of an exciting discovery when I can make the connections and sort through them.
Now, you’ve touched on something else here, that I think is very interesting:
“What I find dangerous however would be a tendency to “blame the victim” in case of disease and suffering. (What did you do wrong to bring this onto yourself?)”
It brings attention to the role “perspective” plays in how we interpret and thus address all that we experience in our lives.
I totally agree with you. I think it WOULD be a dangerous tendency if we were in a habit of “blaming the victim” for their disease and suffering. “What did you do wrong?” “You brought this on yourself.” “Boy, if you are this sick, you must have really messed up.” If people held or adopted this perspective, it would certainly not promote an environment for healing to occur. If anything it would make us feel worse about ourselves, increasing the severity of the disease and suffering we are experiencing, while at the very least prolonging our recovery.
Now, what if instead the person who was sick was not a victim? Being a “victim” is a space that many of us fall into of our own accord. It puts external forces at the source of and in control of what happens to us to which we are “powerless to do anything about”. It can leave us feeling helpless and beyond, to actively not taking responsibility for our lives because “… it’s all THEIR fault for why I am where I am.”
So, what if we as the individual that is sick is an active participant in our own healing? And not just on the level of “okay, I’ll go for my daily walk and take these drugs you’ve prescribed me.” But an active participant in a really significant way? How empowering would that be? What kind of a difference would that make in the process to recovery?
And to feel like you have a tool to help seek out what might be at the source (not to the exclusion, but rather in addition to the specific physical factors)? Because, while it often takes a sounding board (friend, family, mentor, guide) to help bring to light things we might not be seeing initially, since we can never be truly objective of our own process (that’s where that perspective thing comes in again), we are really the only ones who know what’s going on with us. If we are willing to take the courageous step it requires to stand naked before ourselves and truly honest about where we are at, all that is required to adjust, shift and evolve lays right there in each of us. Then it’s about finding the tools and resources that help us bring that information to the surface and action it.
Now of course, while embracing this type of approach needs to come from us first, it makes a difference having the same from our support system and health team. Which it feels like is what you were speaking to (correct me if I’m wrong). The potentially dangerous tendency for others to blame us for our own disease, or us to view others in the same light.
Interestingly, one of the most significant qualities to taking this step for ourselves and in our view of others (and others with us) is Compassion. It requires a level of Compassion to accept the sick/disease we have, the place we are in and to not judge it. From there, we can then begin to seek out and unravel the potential answers that are the keys to improving upon our current condition.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts Winfried! Set off a whole series of “Hmmm?” ‘s and Huuuh…” ‘s. : )