Welcome

You have arrived.

I’m delighted that you are here.

Here and now, at the beginning of something new.

You are here for a reason.

Maybe you’ve noticed that certain tasks of daily life have become just a little more challenging.

Maybe you want to increase your strength in order to play with your dog, haul bags of compost around the yard or go on a spontaneous adventure.

Maybe you’ve witnessed your body shape change, you’ve lost muscle and gained belly fat. Maybe you have persistent aches and pains that you would like to resolve. Or maybe you’ve had a health scare that has prompted you to take action on your own behalf.

Maybe you’ve heard that strength training promotes health in every system of your body. Or maybe you just have a sense that your life in general would be better if you were a little bit more fit.

These are all great reasons and all things that strength training will positively impact. In fact, I can’t think of any aspect of your life that strength training can’t or won’t enhance.

Whatever brought you to this course, it’s important that you hold your reason for being here in high esteem.

It’s also important that you acknowledge the depth and vastness of your reason. There is always more below the surface, more meaning to be found inside your initial impulse, something richer and more interesting than anything you can write and check off your to-do list.

In my over 2 decades of working as a movement instructor and strength coach, I have found that when we look for the reason beneath the reason (beneath the reason, beneath the reason, beneath…) what we ultimately find is a desire to honor and enjoy the body that we have been given. It is the desire to be as present and awake to our lives as possible for as long as we possibly can.

Developing a meaningful relationship to exercise is about much more than aesthetic appearances, more than athletic performance, more than the numbers we collect and the data we track, even more than our health ultimate outcomes.

Developing a meaningful relationship to exercise is an act of devotion.

Whenever you choose to engage with your body, you choose to engage with the very nature of life itself. 

As you move through this program, you will encounter your agency and witness clearly your ability to affect your material world. You will see your balance improve. Tasks of daily living will become easier. You sleep better. If you continue with the program for long enough, you will see new muscle tone and denser bones. You will literally be building and transforming your physical body.

At the very same time, however, you will encounter your limits. There will be things about your body and the circumstances of your life that you are powerless over. You will find some shapes unchangeable, some numbers unbudgeable. You will feel the limits of your humanness. You will regret your past. You will rail against your fate. You will feel disappointed. You might even despair.

Developing a consistent relationship with exercise means engaging with your body. Engaging with your body means encountering both the mutable material world and the unbridled mystery of existence.

To partake in an exercise program is to partake in a sort of practical magic.