Back in the late summer of 2015, Jerry and I started the TTW project to test our hypothesis that using centering and other energy techniques would enable us to develop potential within ourselves that had previously laid latent. We spent a year playing with these techniques in the sports realm (mostly golf and tennis), and we saw real improvement. With our hypothesis thus confirmed, we began developing a program to teach to others.
And then the election happened. The world went completely out of balance, and Jerry and I both felt called to respond. Most of our work over the past two months has been in response to that call.
For both of us, it felt quite natural to write about our experiences and our responses to them, but this led to a question: what are the common threads between the work we were doing on the golf course or tennis court and what we've been doing since the election?
In two particular areas, the parallels are very clear. In both cases, everything starts with the practice of centering and exploration of the centered breath. Centering engenders a state of flow, grounds our energy into the earth, and enables us to move through the world in a more embodied state, so we can feel and respond to what's around us while lessening the distortions caused by an over-reliance on our minds' thoughts and opinions.
Secondly, in both realms, we bring an intent to use the centered state to enable and strengthen the foundation for change. In the world of athletic endeavor, centering gives us the opportunity to feel our way through the blockages that get in the way of improvement and excellence. Within the greater space of our lives, centering provides us the means to experience barriers to flow not as some vague, subconscious disquiet, but as a reality felt consciously within the body.
On the golf course, the tennis court, or the ski slope, the means to measure change is easy. We know what higher-level performance looks like in each of these arenas, and we can measure ourselves against it. But in the greater world, things aren't so simple. The breakdown in our system is so great that we're well past the point of any simple fix. We're going to have to build something new from an entirely new consciousness.
The centered state creates the space for that change. As a society, we find ourselves without a map for how to proceed. Our political history tells us where we've been--tribalism, empire, feudalism, democracy--but it's no longer clear where we're going. All we can do is open to the energy of the situation. By using the practice of centering to move toward greater flow, we can begin to find the new truths that our present situation demands.
We need to seek flow not just in the gym and the playing fields, but in all of our day-to-day activities, from the conversations we have throughout the day to the types of information we allow into our minds and bodies.
We're facing a great crisis--and a commensurate level of opportunity. We simply must seek and cultivate a state of flow. Our well-being, indeed, that of our entire world, depends on it.