“Truly being healthy – energetic fitness – is not about how you look; it’s about how you feel. It’s about making your body, mind and spirit work together as a team” – Bruce Frantzis
Imagine you’re a hose.
No, not a h– yes, that’s better, a hose.
Okay, so you’re a hose now.
(I promise I’m going somewhere with this…)
Your goal as a hose is simple:
To channel a strong, clear, unbroken current.
No clogged tubes, no weak streams, no leaky, flaccid dripping.
The stronger and clearer and more continuous the current, the better your hose-ness.
With me so far?
Cool.
I know this is a weird-ass analogy, but it’s not far off from our human reality:
You (your body, mind, nervous system, psyche, et al) is a “hose,” aka. a “channel — for life force (Qi, Prana, Intelligence, Spirit, JuJu, pick your label).
The engineering is pretty simple:
Life Force -> flows through -> You -> which flows into and creates -> Your Life.
If you’re a strong, open, robust channel, life force flows through you at full power, flooding your world with creative energy, performance, and vitality.
If you’re a weak, blocked, constricted channel — the opposite.
As they say in QiGong:
Strong, clear current = health, performance, and happiness.
Weak, blocked current = pain, sickness, and unhappiness.
Which brings us back to our topic of the week:
Training The Total Human.
When I retired from basketball, I didn’t know what to train for anymore.
I no longer had a goal, so I picked goals at random:
Bodybuilding, powerlifting, max vertical jump, whatever.
But nothing felt inspiring enough to stick with long-term — probably because bodybuilding, powerlifting, and jumping aren’t really relevant to the rest of my life.
They don’t help me perform better at work.
They don’t help me in my relationships.
And they definitely don’t make my body feel better (usually, they make it feel worse).
So, what’s the point?
Vanity? Ego? Something to do?
That sh*t just ‘aint worth it.
It wasn’t until I uncovered a deeper goal for my training…
To build life force itself — so that my training:
* Creates a strong, open, healthy body that feels absolutely incredible (I had no idea how good I could feel until I started training this way…)
* Builds world-class mental and emotional performance that unlocks deeper potentials within my work and relationships
* Fuels my spiritual development rather than blocking and/or distracting from it, the way vanity training does
…That my passion for training came alive again, and my approach to training evolved into something far more powerful.
Tomorrow, I’ll share that approach with you.
And on Saturday at 10 am EST, I’ll teach Training The Total Human live and in full, to members of The Path.
Here’s where you can join us, if you’re interested.
More to come…
– T
P.S. Big thanks to everyone who replied to yesterday’s email — it sounds like this topic is striking a chord.
But we should clarify one thing:
Training The Total Human isn’t just about physical training (lifting, cardio, flexibility, etc).
It’s about the total human — mind, emotions, body, spirit — and any training program that doesn’t integrate all of those pieces will be inherently incomplete.
So Training The Total Human combines…
* Meditation & Qigong
* Movement & Flexibility
* Lifting & Cardio
* Spiritual practice
…Into a complete system for unlocking human potential.
(which, if you like, can still be optimized for building muscle, or endurance, or sports performance, or whatever your ancillary goals are)
I’ll share more about how we do that tomorrow…
