The Pleasure Chronicles: The MOD WOD
Pleasure is still rolling off in waves from my body. I have arrived at the perfect place within my fitness career. My whole life has rotated around sports, athletics, diets and body images. I’ve gone from heavier to too thin and back again more times than I care to share. I’ve padded down dusky, shadowy roads of starvation and self-deprecation. Ego and the innate warrioress fight inside pushing me forward and down ways to always WIN no matter the cost. At some point time in a warrior’s career comes the moment of collapse when their body is no longer on top, and a new warrior takes his place. What of the warrioress is her path different? I would say yes. It mimics the internal descent of Inanna and collapse that we as women often experience as our version of an existential or midlife crisis. The male version is external seeking validation with sports cars and younger women, and the female version is an internal collapse. That moment when the weight of the world becomes too much or in this mini-story the weight of a barbell become too much. We turn inwards until we feel ready to re-emerge.
My own hormone laden changing body has been hiding in shame from the light of the day for two years now during the pandemic. Descending far into my shadowy parts and facing each demon of shame, guilt and grief head on as they have come to visit in my cave. The thing about descent myths though is this: she always resurrects because on the third day: she rises again. She is stronger and more knowing, wiser and free. On this day I know I have begun my ascent. I started crawling out of my cave to join the public c****fit class again at the gym my husband worships at and we’ve been members of it for more years than I can count. It’s been a rocky relationship from my perspective as I went from a 20 something year old there who got some rocking abs to a freshly turned 40-year-old whose body knows better and is full of love dips and curves. These types of classes do something to your ego with their level of competition and hustle culture appeal. My thirties were a time of deep evolution and so the love-hate relationship developed between myself and this type of push past it mentality. I didn’t want to grind or push my body past the breaking point anymore. My body was demanding reverence and worship. My body wanted me to know her deeply and feed her and exercise her well. She didn’t want the whip to be on her back, or the man to be in her face jeering at her and telling her to work harder, to be a good girl and so I continually retreated and hid from the gym.
That however was no better as hormonal weight and the lack of release built up. Walking just wasn’t enough for my fighting spirit. So, what was it that she wanted? What would draw her out of her cave? The most beautiful mantra gifted to me by a friend is the medicine that she needed to heal enough and bring her back to the surface:
“I found God within myself and I loved her fiercely …”
I swallowed her mantra whole and it allowed me to drop back into my body and face those closet demons and re-emerge. If you are divinity in body would how would you treat your own self? As a woman or a warrioress I experience life more fully through the lens of this type of embodiment and when I turn the love lasers or swords that I often wield in my life towards all of those that I love so dearly inwards then revolutionary things happen. I begin to find pleasure again within myself and I move through life in a way which is fueled by an ecstatic relationship with self. So, what does this poetic waxing I’ve been doing in this little musing of mine have to do with the gym or the class that I took today? Why is pleasure still rolling off my body in waves? Well, I’ll tell you.
Today’s class was a grueling one as most c****fit classes are and I shamelessly modified every single movement. I’ve been going long enough to know how or one could simply make the ask of an instructor. I moved through the workout at a pace that pleased my body. She felt stretched and fit and exercised but she didn’t feel sick or have a heart rate out of control. My level of movements even after more than ten years of coming and going to this gym were not what they call RX, they weren’t even intermediate, they were beginner and my body loved them. I set such a wild and free pace that during one of the repeated runs I noticed I had hit the pavement alone. I was so in my body and so in myself and enjoying the present moment when I felt the surge that I’ve come to know. The cultivated experience of pure pleasure. Sure, I was sweating and running but I had the perfect BHAVA moment, which are those moments where you are completely and totally at home, in body and in bliss. They are often reminiscent of your most favorite childhood memories in those spaces where you were completely joyfully ecstatic before the complicated world told you who you had to be or how you had to act. In this particular moment the sun was on my face, the breeze was tickling my cheeks and I was suddenly running again in my childhood fields. I was running just to run because of the sheer pleasure I had taken in running wild as a kid with long and skinny legs and I was fully experiencing it. There was nobody I was competing against. Not a soul in the ten person class was running near me and I was able to have this experience of in the body pleasure, with joy and ecstasy coursing through my veins because I had listened to my beautiful body and she had guided me into this pace and place. It was the perfect run. It was also the last running part of the class and all that was left was 25 burpees.
I was still so internalized and smiling as I did them it took me until number 20 to realize what was happening. The man, the ego, the patriarchal challenge had reared its head and I noticed a tall man matching my burpee pace and shouting at me to go on. Had he been there the whole time? I realized absent mindedly he had in fact been there the whole time and I shrilly laughed to myself because I had been so deep in myself I had not noticed. It was the universal challenge to this pleasure centric moment, it was a choice. Do I let the ego take hold and his shouts in or do I resist? I noticed my body had naturally responded to his conditioned call and picked up speed and I was matching his grind only to grit my teeth and establish a boundary. I slowed my pace again and forced him to match mine. I ignored his shouts and I finished with a cat like feeling of self-satisfaction and joy. I had just completed the most perfect workout and I call it the MOD WOD. It is the pinnacle of my next spiral in life as I strive to live in a way where I will not allow the man shout in my face and draw me back into unnecessary competition. I will live in a way that is so unshakably joyful inside with boundaries policing my perimeter that others will want to meet me there and I will allow them if they are worthy. They will meet me inside of my ecstatic flesh and bones and we will have the sun on our faces, wind at our backs and childhood memories of joy in our hearts. Meet me inside at the MOD WOD. May we all be filled with pleasure.
by Tara
