Happy Monday to You!
I hope you all had a lovely weekend.
I had a busy, but fun weekend working with clients and some film work in the office.
THURSDAY
Angie Lustrick just opened her new store in Riverside where she will stock quality meats and other healthy essentials that aren’t so easy to come by (Learn more about Angie’s World at: https://www.angiesworld.com).
Vidya and I drove down to see her new location and hang out with Angie for the afternoon.
While visiting Angie, Vidya, Angie and I created this piece of art together.
We had great fun doing it together. I was a bit cautious because these girls are such good artists, I was afraid to put my scratches on paper with them.
Can you feel which aspects of the drawing came from Vidya, Angie, or myself?
FRIDAY and SATURDAY
Friday, my Zero-Force coaching client Jason Pickard and his trainer/coach Csaba Lucas came to spend some time with me at the house doing some life coaching work together.
As you’ve probably concluded by now if you are a regular visitor to my blog, I regularly use art as part of my life coaching process.
Art therapy is very effective for me as a coach because it gives me easy access to a client’s subconscious mind.
Art therapy also opens their right brain hemisphere. The right brain functions are very connected to what Daniel Siegel, MD refers to as implicit memory. Implicit memory is the memory of all of our feelings.
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By interviewing my clients about their life and life challenges, I can combine interview techniques with artistic exploration to find where their explicit memory or the memory of logical sequence of events (left brain) and implicit memories were not effectively linked.
The separation of implicit and explicit memory often happens when we are in situations we can’t understand or rationalize.
The result is often that feelings and responses to the feelings we have come flooding in at times when we least expect them to.
This can result in a variety of reactions that can range from stressful relationships with people (that unknowingly serve as triggers), to changes in our eating behaviors or our desire to love and care for ourselves, to name a few.
By combining dialogue about challenging events with artistic exploration, I can carefully weave the rational (explicit memory) with the irrational experiences contained in implicit memory.
Each time we make a step forward in weaving the sensory information with the rational/logical information that can often be gained only in retrospective analysis, the individual becomes more whole.
I’ve been using this approach on myself for many years and it continues to bear fruit for me and my clients.
Jason’s coach, Csaba Lucas is a very skilled trainer, coach and life coach. He’s studied with me for a long time; Csaba was in my first group of Canadian C.H.E.K Practitioners all the way back in about 1996 and he’s continued to grow and improve his skill set every since.
I love working with Csaba because he’s very willing to get outside help so he can best support his clients and learn from the experience gained when he brings in other experts.
In the photo of Jason here, you can see what he looked like before he started working with Csaba.
If you compare that photo with the pictures of Jason below with me and Csaba in my garden, you will get first hand evidence of what a skilled trainer/coach can do for anyone willing to change!
This is the piece of art Jason, Rory, Csaba and I did after harmonizing together. We changed “OM” for some time until we were all in harmony and function as one being.
Then, without any plan, we just began to express ourselves artistically. This is what we look like together as one combined expression on paper.
I love this one! Me and some of my best friends creating together. What a great way to express our love for life and our friendship together.
You might try it with your family or friends. It’s amazingly fun and healing.
This is Jason’s first piece of art we did in our coaching session.
After he finished it, he put it up in the window in my kitchen next to the table where we do our art. I looked up and saw the sun shining through it and thought it looked really cool. This is what I saw.
As an art therapist, I could give you a long reading on this piece of art, but for fun, why not look into it with an unfettered mind and see what it offers you?
Jason really enjoyed this piece of art he created with us and I encouraged him to take it home and frame it.
Here you can see his art beautifully tucked into the seat next to him for the jet ride back to New York. Pretty cool ah!
This is Csaba’s art piece. It has a lot of symbolic representations in it.
Csaba was raised in Eastern Europe and has a beautiful, grounded perspective on life. I can see that in his drawing.
Csaba and Jason are currently training to participate in a persistence hunt. This is where you literally run down your dinner in a very remote location. This requires extensive mental and physical training.
Jason was consulting with senior C.H.E.K Instructor Chris Maund, who is an expert at all aspects of endurance training and decided he’d like to take Chris with him on their persistence hunt.
I’m sure Chris would love to participate because this is his kind of event and he’s got the skills that will really help dial Jason and Csaba in.
These guys are very alive! Great fun to work with them any chance I get. Jason always follows my coaching to the “t” and the results he’s achieved are very impressive.
We had a great day working together as a team and Rory Mullin was helping me with the coaching that day too so they got a double benefit.
SATURDAY IN THE ROCK GARDEN
The day dawned sunny and warm. Here you can see Jason and I beginning our day of rockwork together.
We cleared out a few existing stacks to make room and free some of the bigger rocks; Jason loves the BIG ONES.
Here you can see me rolling the base stone into place.
We always start rolling the big ones until we are warmed up enough to safely lift big stones. Lifting stones is MUCH more challenging than anything you’ll do in a gym and you can definitely get hurt if you rush into it.
Here you can see Jason putting the third stone in place. I had to giggle because Jason LOVES going for the biggest stones he can get his hands on.
There were times when I was worried he may hurt himself because lifting stones is very tricky.
Unlike weights in the gym, or a load in a box, you can’t easily determine where the center of gravity of a stone with odd shape is. This results in the stone rotating, slipping, or being very heavy on one arm relative to the other.
Carrying a stone with an oddly placed center of gravity can be very stressful to the bodies stabilizer system.
Mix that with uneven ground covered with sharp objects like rock shards, sticks, and thistle burrs, and you’ve got an exciting event!
I can only say, “Csaba, you trained him well!” Jason’s lifting technique was excellent and!the man is as strong as a Rhino!
In fact, he’s got the nickname “Rhino” and it suits his full-speed ahead approach to getting things done in his very productive life.
Here you can see us resting after putting our sixth stone up.
Every one of the stones you see there ranges in weight between about 225 pounds (bottom stone) to a bout 130 pounds (top stone). Even taking turns choosing and putting these stones up was a grueling workout.
Jason and I took a rest break at this point because from here on out, the stacking gets very tedious.
Any wrong move lifting a heavy stone this high and the whole stack goes over in a flash!
This is our seventh stone.
Even though we took a rest, it took everything I could muster to carefully place this stone of about 130 pounds on top of the stack.
Well, as it often goes in a rock garden, I tipped the whole stack over trying to position it.
We both looked at each other with boyish grins and knew that this meant we could do it all over again.
Jason’s ride was showing up in about 40 minutes so we had to work diligently considering it took us a few hours to get to the point where I blew the stack over.
As you can see here, we were able to rebuild and conclude our new stack together before Jason’s car arrived to take him to the airport. We actually rebuilt the entire stack in less than half an hour.
We shuffled the stones to create more stability on the second try and it came out great. That big white stone second from the top is a footprint about the size of a quarter.
It took me longer to balance it than it took us to build the rest of the stack. Jason put the crown on our new Stone-Buddha.
Here you can see Jason and Vidya celebrating the finish of our day together. Csaba had to be home Saturday, so we missed him for the rockwork. But he was there in spirit!
In the evening Saturday after Jason headed home, I got the art bug again.
I often feel my wife’s presence inside me and am very aware of how hard she works. Her mind is like a super-computer that juggles so many people and business issues that it boggles my mind.
I drew this picture of the energy field in and around Pennies head. Can you see me looking in on her?
HEALING EXERCISE – RHYTHM SWINGS
Here you can see Vidya performing what I refer to as Kettlebell Rhythm swings. I use KB rhythm swings to:
– Activate and harmonize the biological pumps of the body, which are the diaphragm, abdominal wall, and pelvic floor.
– Harmonize the breathing rhythm with the movement of the body. This brings the body and mind together as one functional unit; very needed in most people!
– Harmonizing the hormonal system. Particularly good for females with menstrual imbalances.
– Strengthen the postural and stabilizer muscles. You’d be surprised how hard it is to hold good dynamic posture after about 20 reps.
– Improve people’s balance.
– Improve people’s work efficiency and enhance their sense of pace.
– Improve coordination.
To do this exercise, you need a kettblebell or a weight you can comfortable swing between your legs.
The load should be light enough that you can complete 30 reps with good form (about 50-60% 1RM).
The form is basically that of a deadlift, but you are swinging the weight so posture should stay optimal throughout the movement.
The kettlebell should be swung such that it just reaches a momentary pause at the top, directly overhead. On the way down, you let it swing between your legs as you squat down.
The key is to not let the KB hit the ground and to go as far into the backswing as far as you can without your back rounding.
For experienced lifters, the back can be allowed to round to gain specific conditioning of the ligaments and fascia of the back.
The body and mind can usually be effectively harmonized with three sets of 30 reps on a 1:00 rest period.
Most males want to grab a weight that is too big for them because that’s the nature of testosterone. After one such set with a heavy load, they usually find that testosterone alone isn’t enough for the task!
It doesn’t matter how strong you are if your body is out of harmony.
In fact, strong athletes that are dis-integrated often injure themselves because the inner-forces of muscle action aren’t balanced, often resulting in tendon and joint inflammation, and eventually, injury.
This exercise can be done daily provided there is no residual soreness from the previous session.
If you are getting soreness from your previous session, it usually means you chose too big a weight for your current levels of strength-endurance.
This exercise is very helpful to mothers and people such as gardeners, painters, construction workers and all who do repetitive bending and lifting work. As a meditative exercise, it is medicine for anyone!
Well, that’s my update for today.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog today.
Maybe seeing Jason’s body before meeting a C.H.E.K Practitioner and after will inspire you to hire a C.H.E.K Practitioner to help you get clear on your dream and get vital again!
You can find a C.H.E.K Practitioner near you by going to www.chekconnect.com and looking in the locator system; there’s a tab on the home page.
If you want to work with Jason’s coach, Csaba Lucas, you can contact him through his web site.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
