Sports / physical exercise

Putting together ones life with the modern world.
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Heith
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Sports / physical exercise

Post by Heith »

Having never been what one could call an athletic person, it took me years to find a sport that I enjoy doing. Now that I'm totally hooked however-

I don't recall we've ever really discussed the topic of the benefits of physical exercise, although I recall Jiva mentioning something of the sort a long time ago. Everyone of course is familiar with the saying healthy mind in a healthy body, but I think that most regular people consider this simply to mean that if one is physically in a good shape, they won't get so depressed. While this may in some cases be true, it seems to me that the actual benefit of having a body that doesn't tire so fast helps in occult work, especially if one engages in trance work, which takes its toll on both our mental and physical self.

I've noticed that aside from the benefits of being stronger physically of course help in every day tasks, simply because I can do more, as well as giving a feeling of being more independent, because it feels that I can cope with more stuff on my own- be it simply lifting heavier things, being able to do the heavy bits in gardening more efficiently, or simply because I feel stronger and surer in my body as I prowl the world of humans. In short it makes me feel surer of all of my abilities.

It's been a while since I tried to fall into a trance state, simply because I've had no reason to do so, but I believe especially coming back from a trance may seriously be helped when one's shell is stronger. I've also noticed, being tied to the Red aspect, that I get really restless if I don't get to do my chosen sports for a few days. To channel these energies can be sometimes a little challenging, as my body starts to feel somehow messed up, and I get very tense and argumentative. I understand that the Red aspect is very much a vivification thing, and a brethren on the black path, for example, might feel a total opposite. I would be very interested to know of your experiences, and practices in combining exercise with occult work.
Kenazis
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Re: Sports / physical exercise

Post by Kenazis »

For me, the physical exercise (and mental exercise = meditation) is essential part of my life, my being. The benefits are multitude. I see human being as (at least) complex of body-mind-spirit where everything has an effect to everything else. so, what you do to your mind, you do in some extense in your body and vice versa. My approach to "sports" is holistic ascending training. Holistic = strength, endurance, flexibility and speed. Ascending = trying always to go farther than before. As my view of spiritual path is holistic, the physical training is part of it in itself.

But to give few "concrete" examples: Training for years, almost every day (feeling like training or not), pushing (almost) always over the comfort-zone has strengthen my willpower and dedication more than anything. These "qualities" can be used for everything from profane to occult activities. Also when your body is strong and healthy, you are also mentally/psychically stronger, you have much more energy to do what ever you do (sounds wrong, but when you train more you have more energy to use), you almost automatically start to eat and sleep better that also has a positive effect to everything in your life. One of my favourite physical exercises is long distance running (usually 15km to 30km). In these long runs I often think about variety of things, make plans and solve problems. Very often I'm thinking about occult/philosophical topics. When you run alone couple of hours in the middle of nowhere, sometimes your thoughts go very odd places.
"We live for the woods and the moon and the night"
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Heith
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Re: Sports / physical exercise

Post by Heith »

It's very true that the more one exercises, the more energy they have to do all sorts of things. I believe this has something to do with our physical "container" becoming stronger so it can contain more energy. And of course, that energy needs to flow, or one gets mentally stagnant.

I've often wondered about running as you are not the first one from whom I hear of being able to adopt a alternate mindset after running for a while. My chosen sport requires short bursts of explosive energy, after which I rest, and then try again, so I can't go on for hours non-stop. There have been a few times when I've entered a good flow and my body seems to know what to do on its own, and moves and problems that were previously really hard just kind of fall into place.

It's humorously very correct, this
Kenazis wrote:Ascending = trying always to go farther than before
as my chosen sport is a type of climbing.

I think for me the challenge lies at the moment in daring to do stuff- I'm always very conscious of avoiding injury my hands or fingers, because if my tendons get wrecked, for example, I can't work (or climb) for months. And because of this fear, I sometimes chicken out of things, especially if I feel pain in my fingers when trying to climb certain types of holds.
Abhavani
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Re: Sports / physical exercise

Post by Abhavani »

My personal relationship to sports is a very profound one.

Up to the age of about 28-29 I hadn't practiced sports of any kind, but eventually it became mandatory to start taking care of the physical body as I started to get seriously ill. So clearing my then prevalent habits and building a new routine around discipline, effort and determination obviously made a drastic change towards the better in my well-being. So my relation to athletics is about nurturing, healing, repairing and constantly tuning the health and functionality of the physical body. Every single day is different, so only one kind of activity doesn't apply to everything in the long run, so I have a somewhat wide range of activities that I've found both enjoyable and beneficial.

I'd like to always pinpoint the importance of breathing, and there are many ways to develop the breathing capabilities. Jogging in the nature where there's lot of green, doing slow-paced vigorous vinyasa yoga, and various breathing exercises, swimming, gymnastics, martial arts etc. all have their unique positive effect on the functionality of the lungs (plus the heart of course). All this has had a calming and strengthening effect on the mind and mental health too, so eventually along with the body getting slowly to better shape, I started to enjoy reading, writing, listening to music on a much deeper level. This is also when meditation and ritualistic practices started naturally to become a part of my daily life. Mainly hatha yoga (used as a broad term here) has became a real passion for me, and today most of my thoughts and free time is spent with yoga, one way or the other.

A healthy, radiant body is the foundation for spiritual life, and personally, I'd say my biggest spiritual awakenings have followed after I awakened the carnal body back to life first.
Kenazis
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Re: Sports / physical exercise

Post by Kenazis »

I forgot to mention barefoot running. That is something magical! I heard and read from many different authors about the benefits of barefoot running. First I was thinking that it was mainly a load of crap (you feel the earth and connect spiritually etc.). I have never been the kind of person that "feels the energies of nature" (and I never liked much to walk barefooted when I was younger), but I must confess that there is something very different when you are running barefooted, where the rubber and other material of the shoe is not blocking the connection between the skin of your foot and ground. And also your technique becomes natural and better automatically. It was my plan last autumn that I would not stop my once in a week barefoot runs, but I moved in another location, so I decided to take a winter break (I stopped october, not yet started again, but soon).

Ps. Climbing is something I've been thinking a lot in my life. When I was child, I was always climbing everywhere. The urge to do that haven't vanished.
"We live for the woods and the moon and the night"
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Nefastos
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Re: Sports / physical exercise

Post by Nefastos »

Personally I have never enjoyed any physical exercises. In my youth I bicycled a lot, & it was certainly a part of my occult life too, but the point was not of physical exercise, but rather getting by my own to places that had a certain subconscious meaning or correspondence to my expanding world view. Physical place, instead of physical body, has always held the most profound meaning to me. I still enjoy walking very much.

Every reminder that I have this physical body at all feels like irksome nuisance, and only because of that I do the minimum to keep this body healthy, in hope that it will leave me alone to my more preferable things. One could perhaps think sex as an exception to that, but I also consider sex to be more energetical than physical thing, even though it often is a physical exercise also. I consider myself as kind of vital & energetical person, but that vitality lies in linga sharîra (etheric physical body) rather than sthûla sharîra (visible physical body).

My respect to all you brethren, who even while being spiritual people & having your focus in the non-material, can still work so close to the physical & understand its worth better than I do. I think this is one of those things where it is so obvious how my one leg stands upon the old systems rather than in the new covenant, which transcends the body/spirit -dualism.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Heith
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Re: Sports / physical exercise

Post by Heith »

I was waiting for your astral input to our physical exercise topic, Nefastos. Thanks for sharing a differing opinion, it's nice to read also from those who don't agree or observe differently.

I've noticed that as my mind often feels a little chaotic and overworked, perhaps as I work in close contact with the Red aspect and have a temperament that somewhat matches it, it helps me to calm down and think when I am physically tired. Or rather, it dims that five different voices and opinions always rampant in my mind into a single one- at least for a while. I believe the reason why some people so clearly benefit from physical exercise in their occult work and some feel that they don't, might be because we exist on different stages and levels of advancement. This thinking would require on to believe in reincarnation or, that one may live through so many different stages of development during their life. Having said that, I would like to add that I don't think that such things appear in a linear fashion, as I think our work is that which requires thousand lives lived, and while in my current form I undergo the temptations and challenges apparent to this era and my being, in another time, perhaps I was, or will be, differently aligned on questions regarding physical, spiritual or mental exercise. This doesn't of course exclude that said things would happen simultaneously, as I don't believe in a fixed timeline. I'm not sure if any of this made any sense, it was a little bit difficult to write. I apologise for my language skills which are still very much lacking.

EDIT: added a sentence
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Jiva
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Re: Sports / physical exercise

Post by Jiva »

Basically, if something’s physically hard work and repetitive (rowing and weight lifting in my case), then I kind of fall into varying degrees of ‘trance’ (or whatever), especially if I'm listening to some repetitive ambient/folk/krautrock at the same time. In some ways I suppose it’s similar to being drunk: an hour passes in what feels like a few minutes, random ideas occur spontaneously etc.

I suppose I’m kind of lucky in that I have a ‘man cave’ – my weights, rowing machine, guitars and books are kept in the same room – so if I feel like dipping into a book halfway through working out then I can. Or, if I’m lifting weights and I notice a book on a bookshelf, I might remember something particularly interesting, or link one concept from one book to another, and so on.

On a personal level, I’ve participated in some sort of sport all my life, so when I don’t exercise or eat (relatively) healthily then I just feel tired and incapable of doing anything. Unfortunately, in the past, I’ve been an idiot (or sometimes just unfortunate) and have loads of old injuries that still affect me today and probably always will, but accepting this has been a valuable learning process in itself.
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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Heith
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Re: Sports / physical exercise

Post by Heith »

Jiva wrote:Basically, if something’s physically hard work and repetitive (rowing and weight lifting in my case), then I kind of fall into varying degrees of ‘trance’ (or whatever), especially if I'm listening to some repetitive ambient/folk/krautrock at the same time. In some ways I suppose it’s similar to being drunk: an hour passes in what feels like a few minutes, random ideas occur spontaneously etc.
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm able to get from drawing. It takes some time to get the hand automated enough so I need not think very much when I'm filling areas of paper, and then the mind is free to roam. I notice same kind of thing comes from any repetitive physical task.
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Einheri
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Re: Sports / physical exercise

Post by Einheri »

Heith wrote: ...I think that most regular people consider this simply to mean that if one is physically in a good shape, they won't get so depressed. While this may in some cases be true, it seems to me that the actual benefit of having a body that doesn't tire so fast helps in occult work, especially if one engages in trance work, which takes its toll on both our mental and physical self.
I think you're right in both meanings.
At least I have noticed the physical condition to help me with mental and physical 'shape'.
Of course It also helps the occult work and way of life.

I don't count myself as athlete maniac, but I like getting in shape mental and physical ways.
At the moment I have a training season going on, towards the autumn, when I'm supposed to get up in a MMA cage again. (After a two year break ).

Jiva wrote:Basically, if something’s physically hard work and repetitive (rowing and weight lifting in my case), then I kind of fall into varying degrees of ‘trance’ (or whatever), especially if I'm listening to some repetitive ambient/folk/krautrock at the same time. In some ways I suppose it’s similar to being drunk: an hour passes in what feels like a few minutes, random ideas occur spontaneously etc.
I think this goes similarly for me... even that I prefer black metal most of the time, as my training music.
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