What makes you, You?

I spend a lot of time sitting with that question.

Are you you because of your name, your title, your job, your accomplishments, the number of kids you have, how you spend your day, what sort of good person you are, the car you drive, the size of your bank account?

And if you’re not you because of those things, then what are you because of?

It’s a real mind-twister.

Up until now, the evidence I’ve compiled for who I am has come from looking around at both…

“I need to get in shape first. You know… before I start… I need to clean up my act, stop drinking, eat better, start doing some basic exercise… and THEN, THEN I’ll be ready.”

So let me get this straight…

What you’re saying is that you’re going to start doing something that you haven’t been successful doing in YEARS, something that has resulted in your decline in health, mobility, strength, and general aliveness slowly and consistently over the past THREE DECADES. You’re going to “succeed” at this first… and THEN… THEN you’ll be ready to begin?

I heard this over and over again as a gym owner.

But it’s not limited to a conversation about health and fitness.

It’s EVERYWHERE.

Consider ANY area of your life where you are lacking ALIVENESS. Career. Relationship. Family. Friends. Job. Where things aren’t…

Up until very recently, the exploring and adventuring in my life have all been in the physical realm… mountain biking, snowboarding, skiing, mountaineering, whitewater kayaking, outrigger paddling, rock climbing, trekking, orienteering, surfing, adventure racing.

A little over a year ago, I discovered a different sort of adventure… this one doesn’t even require leaving your living room. It’s an inward adventure, an exploration of the mind, heart, and soul… of consciousness itself. And access to it is through the use of conscious-altering medicine. My preference thus far – magic mushrooms also known as psilocybin.

Friday night was one such journey. A sacred medicine ceremony with three of my best friends and two guides (also called sitters).

The adventure began with a small dose of MDMA – a heart opener. The process of allowing the medicine to “do its thing” can be challenging for me. It takes a while (as much as 75 minutes), and waiting for…

Monday
There is nothing like back pain to bring you into a state of total despair.

I was just standing there. I was looking into the bathroom mirror getting ready to bend over to grab my shaving cream, brush, and bowl from under the sink. But I hadn’t started to move yet.

Out of nowhere, I felt this crunching movement in my lower back on the left side, somewhere around my glute/sacrum. The movement occurred completely on its own. It was creepy… like something or someone was in there with a light jackhammer, jostling things around without me having anything to do with it.

Right after that, pain. Not terrible as I had expected, but pain, nonetheless. It wasn’t debilitating. I finished shaving.  And I decided that I could do some mobility work on it… so I spent time on my vibrating foam roller, hung upside down, and used my psoas release tool on it.

And while none of these things brought relief, I felt pretty okay.

Went for a hike with the family. The walking actually felt good. Mobility for the spine.

Tuesday
No better, no worse. I changed up my morning routine and went for a 30-minute walk instead of my usual 5 min walk/15 min run. I also skipped yoga for the first time in about 3 months. Status quo…

I’ve been really committed to my morning routine now for over a year. I haven’t missed a morning of meditation in about 450 days. And the number of days I’ve missed at morning walk/run or twenty-minute yoga session I can count on one hand.

That means that in the past 15 months, I’ve walked/run over 700 miles and done over 150 hours of yoga. Not a lot when looking at it day-by-day, but quite a bit in accumulation.

My morning routine does a few things for me:

It jump-starts my day, getting me started off on the right foot and in the best possible mental, emotional, spiritual space.
It gets me “in the game” from the very moment I wake up. To get all the elements of my morning routine in before I have coffee or get my son off to school, I have to be present, focused, and willing to keep all other aspects of life and its distractions out of view. This is a great practice of focus for me.
It mobilizes my spine (walking), jump-starts my energy systems, circulatory system, and metabolism (run). It creates length and flexibility in my muscles, joints, and tendons… and trains my focus and balance (yoga). It connects me to my higher self, God, and the Universe, and helps me create space from the constant barrage of thoughts generated by my mind (meditation)

I’ve gotten so good at it over the past year, that I rarely miss… even when on vacation or traveling….

Enough is enough. My brain is FULL. It’s full of important stuff – busy keeping track of all the ins and outs of running a business, keeping life organized, working with clients, and getting things done. I must say, does a pretty good job of keeping it all organized, most of the time.

But when I use it for these things, it occupies itself with mental activities that are all lower level tasks, easily organized on paper, in a calendar, or in a system. And… this gets in the way of creating space and time for far more meaningful and important tasks – creativity, expansion, spiritual growth, and simply being present.

While I’ve known this for years, I’ve never come up with a reliable system for holding the massive amount of information I need to keep track of as well as read, watch, learn, and process every day.

It’s not for a lack of trying…

It might be hard to tell from the picture above as it looks a little creepy… but it’s a shot of ME walking backward, dragging a sled with 90 pounds of weight on it.

Have you ever gone for a walk in your neighborhood, but instead of walking forward, you walk backward? The looks you get? Crazy! I can only imagine what people are thinking… there goes that kook!

In 35 years of training for sport and fitness, I never once considered walking backward… and I definitely never thought I might be dragging a weighted sled on my driveway, at night, BACKWARDS!

But that is exactly what I’ve been doing.

Why?

About 3 years ago I injured my right knee. A meniscus tear. It required surgery. As a bonus, I also had a “Baker’s Cyst” behind the knee courtesy of the fluid draining from the knee. Not painful, just really irritating.

I tried a lot of things to improve it over the past three years. Nothing has worked…

I started a project 3 days ago – building a new bookshelf.

I built in my head… out of black iron pipe with wooden shelves. I planned on making the first shelf low/high enough that it could function as an alter for my meditation/spiritual practice.

I didn’t draw it out on paper – doh! Instead, I decided I’d keep it all organized in my head (with a little help from notes in my iPhone.) Massive mistake!

I planned on it taking one day, Saturday, and thought worst-case scenario, it COULD run into part of the day Sunday.

Of course, there were things I didn’t consider… like I really didn’t know what height I wanted the alter and the other shelves to be. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might have to tinker with it and BE with it so that the position of the alter and shelves FELT right. And because changing shelf height meant swapping out little pieces that are screwed together like iron Legos, I had to make multiple trips back and forth to Home Depot…

Music has a magical way of opening up my heart. I wonder… is this for everyone, or just me?

This morning as I was meditating, this song came on. I don’t actually know the name of it, as it’s on my meditation playlist that has hundreds of songs on it that I listen to regularly for meditation. And since I’m listening during meditation, it’s not like when I hear a song I like, I stop meditating, pick up my phone, check out the name of the song and click the like button!

So this morning, when this song came on, I could immediately feel it touch something inside me. It was like a direct connection to my heart and soul. Suddenly tears started to flow, from just a trickle to a full-on sobbing. For no apparent reason.

And it felt soooooooo good. So healing. So welcome. Something between sadness and joy. It was…

Up until about a year ago, I didn’t have any reason to question reality.

I knew that a tree was a tree, a car was a car, and yes, another person was, well, another person. I KNEW this. No one had to tell me, convince me, nor did I even have to think about it. It was MORE than just fact, it was direct KNOWING.

But about a year ago, I went on a journey into a world that I never knew existed. One that has been right under my nose since the first day I was born, but that I had no capacity to see or experience.

The journey, or sacred medicine ceremony as I call it now, took me into the far reaches of consciousness and gave me an experience of things unlike anything I had ever known. Beliefs that I’ve always had about myself, ones that I knew were generated in thought and self-judgment but that were always very real and present each and every day (I’m not enough. I’m not worthy.) that just got obliterated while…

Finding the balance between self-discipline and self-compassion can be challenging. The question I ask myself when in the moment of deliberation is, “What SERVES me most right now?”

Now, at 5:15 am, it can be very easy to tell myself that being compassionate is what serves… “Go ahead, Andy, hit snooze, stay in bed! After all, the sleep/rest will do you some good.”

And while that might be true, it could be a self-manipulation (aka. lie).

My ego will do just about anything to keep me safe. And at 5:15 am, being safe means staying in bed. Period.

But I also know that staying in bed will definitely NOT serve me (unless I went to bed after 11:00 pm the night before – and maybe not even then).

How do I know that?

Well, if I don’t get up at the time I committed to the night before, when I was of sound mind and judgment, then I won’t have time to give myself…