The Uprising
Be strong to be powerful.
Be strong to be useful.
Be strong to be helpful.
Be strong to be resilient.
Be strong to be loving.
Be strong to be peaceful.
Be strong to be agile.
Be strong to be balanced.
Be strong to be enduring.
Be strong to be brave.
Be strong to be supportive.
Be strong to be tenacious.
Be strong to be coordinated.
Be strong to be proud.
Be strong to be confident.
Be strong to be human..
Be strong to be you.
I joke about training for the uprising to “smash the patriarchy” but here’s a little secret: I’m actually not joking. I’M. NOT. JOKING.
The uprising I am talking about is not a revolution in the historical war sense. It's literally a movement... of our bodies. Let me explain - I first called on my clients on November 9, 2016 to train with a renewed purpose to be a stronger version of themselves. I was not calling for yoked out beefcakes to come with me to F some S up. What I was talking about—what I am STILL talking about—is all of us rising up as individuals to move and to train with purpose so we can live our lives with purpose and become stronger versions of ourselves. THE UPRISING.
Simply put, we, as a culture, are losing our humanity… and I mean this in the way that it means “kind” and “empathetic” but I also mean it in the way that it literally means to be human—and I believe the latter directly impacts the former. Here is what I know: our bodies are meant to move and do work and we evolved to live in a community where each individual survives based on the work of the others. But our “progress” has stopped us from fulfilling these necessary human requirements: we don’t need to move all day anymore to complete survival tasks—I’ll bet you can go an entire week (month?) without ever having to get up off of the floor or reach your arms over your head—and, while we still depend on the work of others to put food on our tables and clothes on our backs, we don’t actually have to interact with any of those humans to get those things. We have forgotten about the human community element of our own survival.
This has to stop. We need an uprising against the neglect of our own humanity. There are two parts to the uprising and I believe, if we all commit to the tasks, our world will be a kinder, healthier, more cohesive and collaborative place to live. I would go so far as to say truly all our troubles stem from a neglect of those two evolutionary components of our humanity:
PART 1 of the uprising addresses the first evolutionary requirement: we are meant to move all day in a variety of ways, with periods of rest throughout the day (most of us do the opposite now). This is non-negotiable. Even if you are not “a sports person” and you prefer curling up with a book, you must move your body often in order to function well and be healthy. You may hate it now but your body will learn to crave what it was designed to do. And you are worth all the health and well-being this commitment brings. When our bodies don’t have opportunity to move in all their intended ways throughout the day, they stop functioning as well—YOU stop functioning as well. Yes, you may be able to complete tasks associated with your job and drive your car, but we lose the capacity for physical and emotional work all the way down to the cellular level. When our cells don’t move, they reduce their work capacity and become numb, which leads to us being less self aware and less able to perform the very tasks that make us human.
Somewhere along the line we stopped caring about ourselves enough to prioritize our own health and humanity. I will repeat: You are worth it. You are worth feeling strong and capable of completing tasks without compensation or pain. You are worth the resilience and tenacity you build through physical training—overcoming obstacles gives us pride in the best way. When you are proud of who you are you are powerful enough to endure uncontrollable changes. Yes, there has been an “uprising” of sorts spurred from the recent political climate. Despite the outcome of the 2020 election, the world terrain will remain uncertain for awhile. You deserve a strong mind and a strong body to weather the changes. But the uprising goes beyond politics—you deserve health and confidence regardless of who is in office.
Your friends and community members also deserve for their neighbors to be healthy and strong. The journey to believing you, personally, are worth health and strength and fulfilling your own humanity is a tough one for many of us, but what if I also told you that your commitment to your own humanity is important so you can be there for other people when they need you? This is PART 2 of the uprising. When you are strong for yourself you are able to be strong for others. If you need to train with a purpose beyond yourself, train because you know that when we are able to work through challenges it gives us a greater ability to empathize with the challenges other face. Train because you want to be someone in the community who helps others, who is useful to others. Would you rather help pull people from the rubble and build sandbag walls after the earthquake or be physically unable and require the assistance of others to secure your safety? This is an extreme example but it’s not an unfair one. At the very least, we know there are folks who are differently abled that will need assistance during these times. Be there for them. A gentler version is just to treat your life and your job as important to someone else’s survival. Find ways to draw these connections if they are not as obvious as a teacher’s or a social worker’s or the president’s because they are there. You are an integral part of someone’s experience, even if you have never met. You are important. You matter. And your community depends on you. We each deserve for the other to be at their best. PART 2 of the uprising is using your newly found literal humanity (move, do work, be an interdependent member of your community) to engage in humanitarian (kind, compassionate, working to improve the quality of life) efforts in your own community. When we fulfill both of these in evolutionary synchronicity, we are each capable of great things.
Now, my call to action: Get out there and do it! Move all day in a variety of ways and train with a purpose. Make a plan. Get stronger. Move more. Be better. Love lots. You will still be you, just a more human version of you. And that is what we need right now: More humans. Fewer monsters. THE UPRISING!
