As I was leaving the gym today, after a training session that ended up great despite my initial doubts about it, I wanted to grasp all the feelings and the perception about reality I had in that exact moment, when I was fresh out of my endorphins state. Prior entering the gym, and also as I wake up many mornings, I feel tightness in my chest: it’s anxiety, which I’ve been living with since I can remember. I don’t know where it comes from most days, it’s just THERE. So yeah, before training today I was feeling anxious, tired, mind been going on and on with constant thoughts about things that stress me and I sometime gets in this loop where I keep thinking and I don’t go anywhere with it, and it’s so draining, because when your mind gets consumed by worries, fears and insecurities, your body feels it too. I want to unplug my brain during these times, but I’m not great at meditating, I don’t smoke, drink, take pills or do drugs, so I need to train.

What was I worried about? What consumed me? Why my chest felt so tight? It’s the Pandemic, the loneliness, the fact that love life has been delusional all these years? Why I became so good at pointing out the pains of life instead of its gifts? I am an appreciative person. I am grateful. I sit with my many plants in the morning, I look around and I know I have a lot to be thankful for, and I am, so much so that sometimes I worry I could lose it all. But that exact worry is what can sabotage me, because it could never actualize and yet it would poison me. I think we notice the pains of life because it’s like walking with a little rock in your shoe. You can walk, jump and run, but you know the rock is there! You feel it, it hurts!

Anyway. The rock can also be a pattern, a certain feeling I learned to hold on and live with, maybe a past trauma that I didn’t resolve and now I bring it along, even when I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. But, let me get back to today.

I did train beautifully. I felt great, I liked myself, I liked my body, how my body moved, how my body felt. Training is a very intimate experience. Maybe in a way it’s how I make love to myself. How I appreciate my material form, how I celebrate my materialized energy. I love the body and its immense ways of expression. Training to me isn’t that different from dancing. Training is a dance.

When I left the gym, I was aware of the drastic change I experienced in emotions before and after my session. So this is what I felt:

Physically

I was breathing better, the tightness in the chest was gone.

I felt lighter in my body, like I weighted less.

The music I was listening to sounded better, crispier, I wanted to sing and dance and keep it going

Mentally

“Nothing that worries you really is worth your inner peace”

“You make things matter more than they do, nothing matter as much,  nothing in this life is such a big deal”

(This is exactly what I thought)

My mind was clearer, sharper, awakened

I was lighter in my spirit too

I was happy right there. Walking to my car in my little shorts, with my knee pads on, holding my yoga blocks and backpack. I was happy and radiating a strong energy, I feel people could notice. I was at my strongest state, calm, the invincible me, the best version of me. Because I could see things in prospective, I could scale back my worries, making them smaller. I won them over instead of them winning over me, making me small and weak, like one of the little creatures living in Ursula’s garden (from Ariel the mermaid movie):

How I feel when my worries win over me

So it was important to take mental notes on how well I could feel after a good training session. Yes I know the body produces endorphins after vigorous training, and what I probably described is their effects. Nonetheless, it’ great to know there is a version of me like that, that I can meet every now and then. I try to train my mind now to be more of the “after training Sofia” rather than the “before training Sofia”, but it’s never quite the same. It will take time, more inner work, more reading, more journaling, but I definitely see it getting closer. This is why you can’t tell a person to “be happy”, “stay positive”,  “don’t think about it”. Those are words in the wind. It’s a process that need constant work and I’m learning it requires the exact effort: as we train the the body, we need to train the mind.

Always more to come,

😉