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Are you an athlete?

If you answered no, pay attention.

I work with a lot with skiers (and boarders). Skiing has been marketed in many ways- as a wild party, a family-get-away, a fun hobby, as recreation, fresh air, a way to enjoy friendships, exercise- all great things.

Yet when people come to me hoping to improve their ability, all this marketing is bad, bad news. We seem to forget skiing is also a sport- a difficult, fast and intense one. If you want to improve, here’s my advice, you have to first and foremost see skiing as a sport, and yourself as an athlete. Same goes with golf, mountain biking or any other “hobby” you may have.

The key to making this shift is: first get out of your head. The mind will try to figure it out, analyzing “what does that mean- to be an athlete?’ Trying to understand will waste your time.

The shift has to be in your body. You must feel like an athlete. As the athlete, notice: How do I move? What am I aware of? How do I react? Only when you feel something in the body, is it learned.

Then: with the mind still out of the way, transcend even the body and just BE the athlete. Go skiing as the athlete and the rest will follow, and follow quickly. There will be no need for lessons, you’ll find you possess all the wisdom and intuition necessary to improve.

And it won’t take 20 years, either.

There are four different energy sources- I like to call them 4 different intelligences, that you possess. If any of these are not allowed space you are not operating at your full capacity.

The first intelligence is mental. Your brain. Your capacity for judgement, analysis, reason, understanding. In America and the western world, this kind of intelligence is worshipped like a God. You may build a shrine to your capacity to think and be rational, and consider your analytical abilities the path and the way to brilliance. In sports, people argue “sports are all mental” because it seems your mind can solve any problem. Indeed your mind is a great tool, but if worshipped alone can also become your greatest weakness.

The second intelligence is Physical: The Body. Often seen as merely a life support system for the mind, or a junk yard for repressed emotions, this intelligence is an often an under utilized resource. The senses lie here- touch, smell, taste, hearing and sight. The body has memory, you no longer have to think to walk- it just happens. The heart pumps blood without thought. Did you know if brain dead, a woman can still create a baby? Body intelligence on it’s own is usually a better resource for athletics than the mind. The body exists in the moment, and thus doesn’t distort reality, and never lies.

The third intelligence is emotion. Emotion is felt in the body. The mind interprets the feelings as good or bad. You can start to see how these different intelligences are all connected. There are 5 primary emotions from which all human experience is created: fear, sadness and joy, anger and the sexual. These emotions are like fuel for your life, they inspire creativity, and if they’re not allowed to flow and be honored as a wise and natural part of your life, you become severely compromised and limited in your capacity to be brilliant.

And finally we have spiritual intelligence. Every religion, practice and belief system in the world has a name for this energy: Buddha nature, Christ Consciousness, The Divine, The Tao, The Now, Enlightenment, Collective Consciousness and on and on. In sports we call it the Zone. If you’re reading this, that means you love sports, and likely the most oft way you have a direct experience of this state is through your sport. You can feel this energy, and you can be it, but you can never understand it. A glimpse of The Zone feels so good because suddenly, if only for an instant, you are connected to the truth. Perhaps it feels like eating a great meal, or like coming home. Then it’s gone and you wish it would come back. The more you practice, the more often you’ll glimpse this intelligence, the more you can be it.

You do live in an infinite world. Please don’t limit yourself to just one type of intelligence. Find a way, any way, to nurture, honor and listen to not just one but all of these, and you will be unstoppable.

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Click here for Poster for Sun Valley camp

Plus here’s a link for info on the event: http://www.zenergyatthunderspring.com/events/Ski_to_Live_2012.pdf

This may surprise you, but discipline, perseverance, setting an intention, drive, the will; all those celebrated states usually taught by sports coaches, are completely outdated. Same with goal setting.

Here’s why. I remember having to perform a difficult ski photo shoot while still recovering from an injury. I wanted to maintain status and sponsors so I “sucked it up” “did it anyway” “refused to give up” “pushed through the pain and fear.” Sounds powerful right?

Such willed effort is fine in a pinch: I skied great that day, but here’s the problem: doing something I didn’t feel like doing was the first step toward future burn out and ultimately resenting my sport.

There’s a better path.

Let’s say you don’t feel like going the gym but force yourself to go anyway. Sound familiar?

Picture a hose. All day long feelings and experiences flow through that hose. In this case ‘should I go to the gym?’ shows up. Next comes ‘no I don’t want to!’

Now picture you’re a corporation made up of 10,000 different employees. The mind is one of these employees. Throw in determination or a fitness goal and the mind becomes very clever at suppressing any employee who gets in its way, in this case; ‘No I don’t want to.’

She puts duct tape over ‘No’s’ mouth and throws her down the basement stairs. You trot off to the gym feeling victory over perceived ‘negativity.’

The mind does this enough times and guess what? The employee of ‘No I don’t want to’ isn’t taking the abuse quietly. She isn’t dying in the basement. She’s fighting back, plotting, building strength, having to do her job in a covert, pathological way and will even scream now in order to be heard.

Your hose is now kinked, and a war has started. You are now at war with your self. And you can’t see it because it’s being carried out in your subconscious.

But you can feel it. Repressed experiences and emotions remain in our systems and run our lives covertly, sometimes for decades or even lifetimes. They come out in the most disruptive ways- straining our relationships, causing injury, showing up as disease and body aches. They pinch off the possibility for happiness to enter. Over time you become burned out. All because the mind and the will refuse to be intimate with anything negetive ot working against a master plan.

What if, instead you had a consciousness practice, where you could first see how the mind and all her buddies act as slave drivers. To see it is to stop it. Stop that war. In today’s evolutionary world, next you welcome your emotions and experiences as they flow through the hose, and this way your mind instead sets you free.

What would you do with that freedom? Could you just listen to the wisdom of each moment as it flows through the hose, rather than crack a whip?

If I could go back and feel that pressure to ski injured over again, I would have honored fear and pain instead, and chosen my ‘No.’

How about you? When you think you should go to the gym and ‘No’ shows up, would you let her be this time? If so, she’ll only speak for about 15-40 seconds before she’s gone and another employee shows up.

It might even be this time: Yes.