An accidental run

I accidentally ran five miles yesterday, after not running for the past few years. The perfect autumn day in Ohio was too enticing to resist strapping on my shoes and finding a trail. I assumed I would jog for a mile or two, you know, ease my way back into the sport I once loved. Surprise, my body wanted to run five glorious miles.

I would not recommend this to anyone, let alone, someone in their mid to late 30’s. But I was listening to my body the entire time and she wanted to run. It felt so joyful to be on the trails moving quickly again as this is a drastic departure from how I have been hiking these days.

This summer I did some hiking but not nearly as much as I would have wanted. This was partially due to having my dog, Trek, with me most of the time. Traveling with a senior dog slows everything down, especially hikes. I got comfortable moving slowly, very slowly. It became a gift to notice the small things during a hike and I cannot say I missed my past self who powered through most hikes to get to the view or whatever I was chasing.

So when my body wanted to run, it felt a bit unusual. Part of me still wanted to savor every little detail of the trail rather than jog right past it. Trust me, I wasn’t flying down the trail by any means, but in comparison, it felt incredibly speedy! But again, my body felt joyful with this movement.

I had the goofiest smile on my face most of the time I was running. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing out loud at moments. Unfortunately, nobody else was on the trail to witness my madness! But this experience reminded me how limited we often make our world.

For so much of my life, I identified as a runner. I ran more half marathons and trail races than I can count and truly loved getting out and running a few miles nearly every night of the week. Those days are long gone as I have transitioned to focusing on other aspects of my being beyond the the physical. Honestly, I haven’t had a consistent work out routine the past few years beyond my very gentle asana practice and slow walks with Trek. Needless to say, my aerobic capacity is not what it once was.

As little as I have focused on my physical body, I have put a lot of energy into other parts of my body. Those being my mental, emotional and most of all belief body. My belief body is the part of my being where every subconscious belief I hold lives. We all have this part of ourselves. It is often operating under the radar of our conscious life but controls so much. If you’ve seen inside out two, they illustrated this part of ourselves beautifully! (I highly recommend those movies for all ages!)

This is where my favorite term, rewilding, comes into play. When we rewild, we observe and deconstruct the constraints and beliefs we have gathered throughout our lifetime to uncover beliefs that are more aligned with our most authentic self. In short, it is digging into our belief body, sitting with what we find, no matter how uncomfortable, and then releasing what isn’t true. It sounds simple but is far from it.

This is not work for the light hearted. It is challenging work that takes us to the core of our very being. This belief body is what unconsciously controls so much of our life. I read recently that 95% of our lives are controlled by this subconscious belief body, leaving only 5% of our lives to be consciously lived!

For me, this is where yoga comes in. Yoga, the entire system, not just the physical practice, focuses so much on this belief body. I started this work before finding yoga but yoga has become my favorite tool to further excavate this space within.

But back to my story of running five miles after not doing cardio for a few years. A lot of my belief body is influenced by science. This is not surprising when you look at the path I have walked in this life. I love facts, I love research and I have my clinical doctorate in physical therapy. Of course science is a strong foundation for me.

The belief my PT brain holds is that my body is limited by the strength of my tissues, specifically muscles. To build strength, I must gradually strengthen these tissues, aka, start at one mile and work my way up over time. It’s the same belief that watches the Olympics and sees how incredible the athletes are and knows that they have invested thousands of hours honing their craft.

It isn’t possible to wake up one morning and decide to be an Olympic athlete, it takes time and effort. Their physical bodies transform slowly over time into the incredible athletes they eventually become. But then how do we explain the instances when people defy the odds and perform incredible feats of strength? Like the mom lifting a car off her trapped child. Or someone with a life threatening injury hiking themselves out of the wilderness to safety. Nobody trained for these instances, yet they could do it, and sometimes easily.

Let’s be clear, I am not saying me running five measly miles is a feat of strength at all. What I am saying is our belief body impacts our physical body more than we often want to admit. If I believe I cannot do something, I likely won’t be able to. Same is true for the opposite. If I am certain I can achieve something, I likely will. Our beliefs are terribly powerful, for good and bad.

If I believed I was too old and too out of shape to run five miles, I would have been miserable the entire hour plus I was running. But because I released the belief that I couldn’t do it, rather I decided to enjoy my body for a bit, I ran with ease. Our belief body is where those pesky limiting beliefs live. And at the end of the day, a limiting believe is just that, a belief. It is not always as true as we think it is. And shockingly, I’m a bit sore today but nothing like I expected to be.

This is not my first experience with something like this over the past year. Every time I have done a physical activity that I assumed would wreck my “weak” body, I have felt surprisingly amazing. I fully attribute this to the work I have done in my belief body. I allow these deeply rooted limiting beliefs surface so I can witness them and let them go. If they no longer serve me, I will not entertain them.

This year I’ve surfed and not injured myself. I have mountain biked and actually enjoyed it. I have done arm balances in a yoga class that I’ve never done before. And I’ve ran five miles without a lick of training. I suppose what I am saying is, our bodies are phenomenal things. What is more phenomenal is the fact that our mind is the route in which we perceive our bodies. Changing your mind by changing your beliefs, allows a change in your perception, which in the end, changes your physical body.

How cool!? I mean really! How incredibly cool! What we think impacts our physical ability. I can indirectly improve my physical health by simply learning to dissect the beliefs I hold. This sounds like science fiction but I swear to you, there is so much research to validate this. But the research is just the beginning when you look at the thousands of years of wisdom that so many eastern philosophies and religions hold on this topic. This upends a lot of my own beliefs in a very uncomfortable way. But I am learning more and more about how imperative it is to learn to meet discomfort with kindness and compassion.

The opposite relationship between mind and body is talked about often these days. When someone is having a bad mental health day, often the first bit of advice given is to move your body. Go for a walk, sweat a little, lift something heavy. Many of us have experienced how working on our physical body improves our mental health. This may be an easier way to understand how what we think, directly impacts our physical body. Just like giving our physical body some love helps our mental body, spending time with our belief body will always do our physical body good.

When we open up our belief body, to begin the process of rewilding, we will meet discomfort and pain directly. But again, these are some of life’s greatest teachers. So pull up a seat, get as comfortable as possible, and listen. Pay attention to what beliefs pop up throughout your day. Start asking yourself if they are still true. But be careful, it might just change your life.

Are the limits we think are physical truly perceived beliefs we hold? How are we limiting ourselves through our mental actions every day? I have a lot more questions than answers at this point in time but I am in awe. In awe that my body is capable of doing what it does every day, that there is far more that we don’t know in this world than we do, and that what I believe is powerful beyond my own understanding.