I wasn’t… pretty…

Limbs shaking, heart pounding, vision blurry.

Sweating switching from hot to cold.

Throat rasping for air.

And there are 3 more rounds to go.

This is me during Tabata sprints. And during emotional vulnerability.

Neither is pretty. Both (damn it) are necessary.

Why?

Well, Tabata sprints, a form of interval training with which I entered a love-hate relationship, are a very uncomfortable means of expanding your work capacity by pushing you to failure very quickly.

They’re brutal and effective — at building capacity and character. To do them properly you really have to Be Here, present, feeling it, especially when the protective parts of your mind want to get you the hell outta there mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Cue inner dialogue (with a lot more expletives than I’ve included here) “I don’t know if I can do this… youcandothis youcandothis youcandothis… I really don’t know if I can do this… come on you can do this gogogo… but I didn’t eat/sleep/dress/think well, and I really don’t feel well… F*CK IT! Throw up if you need to but you are NOT giving up — GO!”.

Pleasant.

Originally designed for Olympic skaters, and using 8 rounds of effort, if done properly you’re likely not to get to the 8th round.

Not for the faint-hearted. Literally.

So again, why do this?

Because to be ‘fit’ is to be ‘fit for a task’. You have your skills. But you need stamina to use them.

Think of your own skillsets, and what happens to you when you tire?

In martial arts I think of skills like bullets. If you don’t have the capacity to fire them, they’re useless. “Oh yes we have a nuclear bomb. But no, erm, no we forgot to build the ability to launch it. Ah.” So the greater your work capacity, the greater your ability to use your skills (hit and not get hit). The more tired you get, the less able you are (and the more hit you get). So yes, I chose HIIT over hit. And I used the mantra:

‘Today I will do what you wont, so tomorrow I can do what you can’t’.

It’s powerful, it worked for me. But as you can probably feel, this kind of competitive comparison doesn’t do much for non-ego-driven connection.

Which is a shame….

…because a couple of years ago a big change took me away from that kind of training. Now that my task had changed, I could change, but I had no idea into what. So, I framed the time as ‘experiments in ways of being’.

Over the last year this involved stepping into a zone I didn’t know I had — my emotional Tabata zone.

Specifically it’s been about (un)certain kinds of vulnerable authentic connection… not my strongest skillset at the outset.

It has not been pretty. But it has been pretty wonderful.

I‘ll cut to the chase: I was in a messy place

Therapists talk about people having a map of the world: unique to each of us it sets our reference points for How Things Work and The Way Things Are.

On mine, emotional vulnerability was not ‘the road less traveled’ but ‘that continent waaaaay over there shrouded in mist with a big warning sign “Here be Dragons”’ [ahem, Don’t Kill your F*cking Dragons]. That’s not to say I’d never been there. I had. And I wasn’t going back. So much was that my stance that this land was now more like something out of a David Attenborough documentary:

“And as we …explore…this landscape of …vulnerability, full of…” (you get the idea. Thank you David, you may step down now)

…full of what, Eve?

OK, full of my curiosity, and also wonder, but most awkwardly fear of what I’d find there — ‘pathetic’ versions of myself I really couldn’t bear to be or be seen as being. I didn’t know when I’d stumble into this emotional quicksand.

Of course in the midst of the uncharted craggy hills and valleys, I was meeting the wildlife — feelings, thoughts, images, worries. And they were troublesome: especially because now I was paying them attention.

And I do mean ‘pay’ because there’s a cost in getting acquainted with them. Is this really how I feel? Really who I am?

Previously I would cut off awareness or do things despite of them (via my zone of “F*ck you, I’m doing it — on my own — anyway). And this had worked, mostly. But not here. Turns out you can’t really say f*ck you to someone and stay positively connected with them. Who knew? So not having my standard responses made me feel like a) I didn’t have the necessary skills for my current circumstances, and b) I wouldn’t be able to get back to being that lovable kick-ass version of myself.

The further into this territory I went, the more my emotional and interpersonal skills were breaking down, because I was at the limits of my capacity for vulnerability. Like the 7th Tabata interval, I was wobbly, couldn’t see what was right in front of me, couldn’t hear what someone meant, and often felt like I was about to throw up.

And whilst stumbling on the way to another face-plant I realized that vulnerability is like fitness.

And I needed a rest.

So having worked to the far edges of my emotional capacity, I made time to recover. Just like our bodies get broken down through exercise and are built up during rest, my vulnerability-capacity underwent a few rounds of growth.

I’m now more fit for humanness and better at being kick-ass having spent time being those kinds of vulnerable— not just with myself, but with someone else who had the skill and grace to be around me whilst I was stumbling.

That’s, err, lovely Eve, but can this be done with a little more ‘style’ than you managed?

I’m so pleased you asked. Yes. Via three things. But first a question:

When do you wimp out?

I know. Provocative. Wimp out, opt out, drop out. In other words: when do you fail deliberately?

Tabata sprints are surefire ways to get my mind to find reasons not to step up or out of my comfort zone. I get it, it’s its job to protect me from my fears.

For some people they’re afraid of failure. If I try I could fail then it’ll prove I’m not good enough.

For others they’re afraid of success. Which people can find difficult to comprehend. “You’re afraid of succeeding? Oh boo hoo… That’s a problem I’d like to have.”

Well, to my surprise I did have it.

Because in my mind’s logic if I can do it then I must always do it. Or beat it. Every personal best became a daily benchmark. Anything below best = failure. This means getting trapped in relentless pressure of having to keep meeting or beating your best. The more you try the more exhausted you get and so the less able you are to achieve anything close to it. Which is of course a recipe for burnout, a feeling of never being or doing enough, and an ever deepening feeling of hopelessness as there is no way out of that pit.

I was in class once and a teacher I admired was watching me do a task. I knew and I deliberately failed. “Go back and find out why you couldn’t do that last bit” she said. I already knew why. Because what if I succeeded? Then she’d expect more from me and I didn’t know if I had that. If I succeed now at this known task then I might fail later at an unknown one. And if I fail now in a way I can control then I don’t need to tackle that unknown scary future thing.

Before I understood this dodgy logic, I stated this necessity of always meeting or beating my best to my therapist, to which she said “uh, that must be exhausting.” Yes. I was there looking for help because I was exhausted. And I was failing. And I was surprised it wasn’t her logic too. So, if it isn’t hers then…it doesn’t have to be this way…?!

So in this new ‘experiment of being’, I didn’t engage in deliberate failure. And I didn’t set personal best benchmarks. I just let what was happening in the land of vulnerability happen. It wasn’t easy or pretty or expected. And yes I did find pathetic and I also found elevated and elated. And I survived pathetic. I was awkward. And I was human. And I’m doing it again.

So, back to the three key things for graceful connection — be it to your self, someone else, a goal, a way of being, I suggest…

Firstly. Boundaries

Along with compassion, imagination, and patience.

Please note the point I made at the end of my little adventuring story: I shared it with someone who had earned the right to be part of it.

Q1. Have you developed a track record of trust and integrity? They need to have earned that privilege of your ungraceful tripping, sweating, falling, and clambering back up again, and you can judge that by how they conduct themselves around you and others. (Check out Brené Brown’s work for this)

Q2. Are you sure you’re not asking them to rescue you? You don’t get to be rescued, you get to be accompanied. If part of you is wanting them to heal you (“See, I couldn’t do it alone, you’re my hero!”) or hurt you (“See, I knew I shouldn’t have opened up, that proves it, I’m closing off forever!”), then step away.

Secondly. Perspective

They say experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. But there is an experience you do want. You want to know you can get up.

If you have a powerful negative experience and develop the skills and capacity to get over it then you know you can deal with anything. Any fall. You know you can get up. That makes taking even the most frightening steps more possible — once you’ve rested and repaired and grown.

Perspective is a superpower: if I’ve done that, I can do this. That doesn’t mean I immediately have the capacity to do a thing, but it means I can find it within myself to do that 7th interval sprint to develop it.

Take love and brokenheartedness. The latter is what you don’t want, right? It’s the experience you get instead. Good. Why good? Heartbreak tells you it’s the end of the world, you’ll never be loved again, never meet anyone as good as… you know this script. And you know it’s a lie. Because you’ve heard it before. You know the feelings are real in that you’re feeling them, but what they’re telling you isn’t real because it isn’t true. So you can choose, with greater grace, to love again, knowing you can deal with any outcome.

Esther Perel states that sex isn’t something you do, it’s somewhere you go. It’s the same with vulnerability and love — love for and with a person, activity, goal, way of being… Do you have the heart to go there?

I know, because I have the heart to go there together and to leave there solo.

So do the sprints. Get uncomfortable. Get into unknown emotional landscapes so you get lost and excited and wonder what the hell that is growing over there, and think about staying, and get homesick. Stumble – please! And allow other people the grace to be ungraceful too.

Thirdly. Skip the martyrdom

Talking about creativity, Elizabeth Gilbert references the martyr and the trickster. The martyr suffers for their art: “You’ll know I’m succeeding by how much I’m bleeding”. And the trickster: “Yeah, go right ahead an’ bleed, while you’re doing that I’m gonna play, oh and run off with your lover…”.

The trickster didn’t come here to suffer but to transgress what you think are your limits and what your identity ‘means’ you can and can’t do, feel, or be.

So choose your attitude. Vulnerability and connection, like inspiration, do not promise you anything. They will call to you, and you can leap, but the quality of the landing is never guaranteed. And if you get hurt they will still call to you and remind you of the potential, the fun, the possibilities of joy, of so much more, of aliveness. And one day you’ll feel rested and repaired enough to say “Oh go on then, yes, let’s do it again!”

So play. Explore. Rest/repair/repeat. And remember, vulnerability doesn’t always have to be so bleatingly earnest.

Sometimes it’s about it being hard. Sometimes it’s about it being easy.

There’s the type of ‘doing’ vulnerability where others see you shaking. And there’s the type of doing where you claim your unwavering voice and you own what you’re doing. The cost? You disown the disclaimers that staying in your fear gives you. “Oh I can’t because [insert choice of low self-esteem here].” No, n-uh huh. Not now. Not today. We all have the option of falling over. Today we own our rising up.

So, no. I don’t think I made it to the 8th round yesterday. And I’m back out again today. Throwing down. Or throwing up. It doesn’t matter. It’s time for the next thing that makes me feel unreasonably and irrationally nauseous. And I’ll keep building heart and it’ll keep not being pretty.

But f*ck pretty. I’ll take living pretty awesome instead.

Thanks for reading. If this has been helpful to you then feel free to let me know. And if you found it interesting then please feel free to share it so other people can find and enjoy it too.

(Originally published on Medium in 2017 https://medium.com/@eveparmiter/a-different-kind-of-cardio-3bb741144cfe )

Image from Pexel