Conscious fitness:

Reconnecting with our physical potential through self-love and self-respect

Personal and Team Coach, Clemencia Montero, explains how working out can have a positive and a negative dimension and how by adopting specific habits we can encourage the progression of sport towards the awakening of consciousness.

When you think of working out, what is the first thing that goes through your mind?

If it is not a pleasurable sensation, perhaps it is because you have been connecting working out to achieving something (an aesthetic result, losing weight) and not about really enjoying your physical capabilities and the pleasure of MOVING.

On a strictly physiological level working out causes three things in our body:

1. Calorie burning: These calories are obtained first from blood glucose, then from glucose stored in the liver and when this is all used, the body begins to obtain its energy from accumulated fat and muscle mass, it begins to “eat itself”, in a process called autophagy, using the available reserves. Obviously, living in a continuous process of autophagy is not as healthy as using “temporary autophagy” to get rid of extra fat is, because excess lipids in the body cause a lot of diseases.

2. Muscle, bone, and connective microdamage: This is not necessarily negative because when these fibres or tissues are repaired, they increase in size and the whole becomes stronger.

3. Release of hormones of pleasure and wellbeing: It is well known that physical activity, from moderate to vigorous, causes a torrent of hormones to be released that generate pleasure and a sense of well-being, which at the same time can become an “addictive drug” leading us to the dark side of sports practice.

In conclusion, working out can always have a positive and a negative dimension. The positive dimension of fitness is congruent with the natural dispositions of our being, but the negative dimension, the one that makes us obsessed, insecure, addicted, and willing to sacrifice health to achieve arbitrary goals, is a direct result of our ego.

Do we want to train hard for the intrinsic pleasure of bringing our own body to a stronger, faster, or more flexible version, or, because we want the applause, recognition, and “medals” that the EGO seeks?

And it is at this level of consciousness that conscious fitness arises, which seeks to awaken in you the genuine intention to make a profound change in the way you interpret sport and the relationship with your body and make you aware of how and for what you have been training. Whether it is for the ego and its derivatives (aesthetics, low self-esteem, fear of aging, etc.) or in search of the well-being that produces a reconnection with the true nature of human evolution - the development and strengthening of our physical abilities along with the development and strengthening of our cognitive and emotional capacities.

There are specific habits that encourage the progression of sport towards the awakening of consciousness:

• Train for the simple pleasure of moving. Experiment, do different things, try different disciplines.

• Slow down. What’s the rush? Let your body and not the clock set the pace.

• Learn to savour the details - what is yourbody feeling? What happens when you start to work out? The body has a rich and varied language that we have ignored and oversimplified.

• Don’t set routines or goals beyond the evolutionary and emotional principles of wellness. Live 100% in the present and be aware of your body’s needs today, not in the achievements, times, or medals of the future.

• Train from the evolutionary instinct that pushes us to live in constant transformation and improvement of our capabilities.

• “Nothing remains, everything changes.” Trying to prevent things from changing, like preventing aging, or staying at an exact weight, is like trying to cling to a “safe zone,” and self-love does not arise from attachment.

• Practice fasts, not just food fasts to accentuate the autophagy that is so much talked about for physical health, but also informational fasts to refresh your capacity for introspection outside of the daily pollution of cognitive saturation.

LOVE YOU TODAY. Nothing you can cling to will make you genuinely love yourself. From love there are no attachments, desires, conditions, or attempts to change things as they happen.

Clemencia Montero

Clemencia Montero is a Personal and Team Coach, she specializes in Conscious Fitness and Conscious eating. She is a Belief’s specialist and the Creator of the TOMMA program, for body and mental reshaping. She is also a Content creator for digital platforms and a SHE Ambassador in Belgium. instabio.cc/ClemMontero