C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

 Happiness Sucks and the Zen Way to Contentment C.S. sitting on his zabuton as he prepares for meditation I once read of a study dealing with music and happiness.  The study had two groups of participants listen to a composition of classical music.  The first group was told to simply listen to the music.  The second group was told to listen to the music and to try to have the music cultivate a sense of happiness within them while listening.  Afterwards, both groups were asked how happy listening to the music made them feel.  Interestingly, it was the first group that said they felt really happy while listening to the music.  The sense of simple bare attention, without attempting to alter the atmosphere through "being" happy, was enough to create happiness without effort. We live in a culture - and this is especially true if you're like me and deal with the "health and wellness" community - that is in the middle of a "happiness boom".  But the trut...

  Nothing Special: Everyday Zen and the Art of Lifting In her seminal book, 'Nothing Special: Living Zen' by Charlotte Joko Beck, Beck writes, "Beyond the meditation cushion, where do you ultimately find the profound clarity, presence, and simple joy of Zen? Where it has always been - in everyday life, whether it's raising our kids, working in the office, or even cleaning the house." Or, I might add, in the simple joy and surrender of lifting weights. There's nothing special about lifting weights, not really.  It's a very simple exercise.  Pick weights up, put weights down, repeat - that's about it.  Of course, its the sheer simplicity and very Zen-like nature of lifting that does  make it special, and therein lies its true worth.  And after doing it for a length of time, it simply becomes something that one does, but also something that one cannot but  do. Some posts ago, I wrote something very similar to this on the Zen-like practice of lifting weigh...

  Throughout the course of my lifting career, I've tried quite a few programs, putting them to the test where the "rubber meats the road" so to speak: the gym.  I've had some misses (Mentzer-style H.I.T. training would be a good example) and I've definitely had surprising successes, such as Sheiko-style training programs, which - when I looked at them on paper - I thought there was no way in hell his programs would work.  But, much to my surprise, I got stronger (and bigger while eating hardly anything) on a Sheiko program. Matthew Sloan warming up for a big deadlift session. I've often had success, too, with programs that are wildly diverse.  I built a lot of muscle mass with one-bodypart-per-week programs when I was much younger - more than 25 years ago!  And I've built an impressive amount of strength using very high-frequency training.  When I squatted and deadlifted well over triple my bodyweight in competition, I used HFT - Sheiko, Smolov, and my own...