Futomomo pain
Futomomo pain is a big one. Most of us hate it. Some of us cannot live without it. 🙂 I’m often asked how I deal with it, but I don’t really have any tricks. What I have learned instead is how to meet the pain: to soften rather than fight, to let the intensity move through me, to shift my attention and, above all, to trust that my body can find its own way through the experience.
Is that all you can do?
“Is that all you can do?” Sometimes we bring this question into ropes without ever saying it out loud. Something harder, something new, another form, another challenge. But what if nothing new is needed? I could be tied in Gote for the rest of my life and still experience something different every time. Perhaps the practice is not to seek more, but to anticipate less – and become more available to what is already there.
Trying too hard
Autumn arrived quietly on our street, with yellow gingko leaves scattered across the grey asphalt. Walking through them one morning, I found myself thinking about how much we are always doing – in ropes, relationships, teaching, learning. We push, force and try to make things happen. But what if sometimes the way forward is not to do more, but to let something go?