Highlights from The Roots of Sport→

Unless you are a part of the niche sport of cricket, this is likely the first time you are hearing of Mike Brearley–professional cricketer, writer, and psychoanalysis. Two of his books are on my current reading list–The Art of Captaincy and On Form.

Brearley himself is an inspiration figure, described as having ‘a degree in people,’ he took on the helm of leadership and captaincy, not just for his team but for the community that he wished to see. He did not shy away from speaking his mind and taking a political stand against apartheid, and wrote extensively on the value of sport.

Recently I came across this incredible article On The Roots of Sport, penned for the British Pscyhoanalytical Society. As I try to pull excerpts to highlight I am resisting copy-pasting a sizeable chunk, so I highly recommend giving it a read (5 minutes).

On The Value of Sports

“[Through Sports] the child and the adult have to learn to cope with the emotional ups and downs of victory and defeat, success and failure. They – we – gradually manage to keep going against the odds, to struggle back to form, to recognize the risks of complacency. We have to learn to deal with inner voices telling us we are no good, and with voices telling us we’re wonderful. In sport the tendencies to triumph when we do well and to become angry or depressed at doing badly are often strong; we have to find our own ways of coping with them. Arrogance and humiliation have to be struggled against, whilst determination, proper pride and good sportsmanship are struggled towards. “

“Sport calls too for a subtle balancing of planning and spontaneity, of calculation and letting go, of discipline and freedom.”

” …having disciplined ourselves, having set ourselves according to the situation of the game, we then have to let ourselves go, trusting to our craftsmanship, skill and intuitive responsiveness, without further interference from the conscious mind. “

” The moments for the sportsman when body and mind are at one, when we are completely concentrated and completely relaxed, aware of every relevant detail of the surroundings but not obsessed or hyper-sensitive to any set of them, confident without being over-confident, aware of dangers without being over-cautious – such rare states of mind are akin to being in love. They involve a marriage between the conscious control mentioned above with the allowing of a more unconscious creativity through the body’s knowledge. “

On The Value of Movement

Frederick James Wilfred, 1955

“For those to whom sport doesn’t appeal, it seems futile, pointless. They remember hours of misery at compulsory school games on cold sporting fields. They were perhaps physically awkward, and picked last.

Yet every small child, before self-doubt, and invidious comparison with other children, gets a grip, takes pleasure in his or her bodily capacities and adroitness. […] Walking, jumping, dancing, catching, kicking, climbing, splashing, using an implement as a bat or racquet – all these offer a sense of achievement and satisfaction.

[…]

Moreover, this development in coordination is part of the development of a more unified self. Instead of being subject, as babies, to more or less random, stimulus-response movements of our limbs, we learn to act in the world according to central intentions and trajectories. We begin to know what we are doing and what we are about.

On Sport vs Play

“Sport proper starts to emerge when competition with others plays a more central role alongside the simpler delight in physicality. ‘I can run faster than you, climb higher, wrestle you to the floor’. “

On Competition and Human Nature

“If human beings were not combative no one would have invented sport. But if human beings were not also cooperative neither team nor individual games would have come into existence. “

“The Latin etymology of both ‘rival’ and ‘compete’ reflect this fact: rivalis meant ‘sharing the same stream or river bank’, competens meant ‘striving together with’, ‘agreeing together’, as in ‘competent’. “

Sport & Self-Expression

” For many people otherwise inclined to be inhibited or self-conscious, sport offers a unique opportunity for self-expression and spontaneity. Within a framework of rules and acceptable behaviour, sportspeople can be whole-hearted. Such people – including me – owe sport a lot; here we begin to find ourselves, to become the selves that we have the potential to be.

You Did Not Wake Up to Be Mediocre

Every morning I wake up to the quote above my head, painted on to my ceiling, that says “You did not wake up to be mediocre.” I think we all need little reminders to think and be bigger than the smallness that the tedium of life can force upon us at times. When I first came across the above image, it immediately resonated–and had me typing up my own version.

Wake up early.
Work hard, believe in yourself, and be ambitious.
yes you can make the world better.

Know who you are
and who matters to you;
Keep your priorities straight,
and make yourself a priority.

Clear your mind of the junk,
check your emotions for sanity,
and keep your head up
even when you’re leagues under.

Do what you love,
love what you do,
and stop putting off starting.
You likely will never feel enough–
smart enough
strong enough
healed enough
ready enough

Something will always come up,
get in the way.
The timing might never be ‘right’
because there is never going to be a ‘right’ time,
a ‘better’ time
than now.

– C Pontrella, 2017

I have consistently heard from others the deep longing for change, growth, love–and seen no action. Fear, the desire for security, the longing for a sense of completion before continuation, the resistance of the uncomfortable or inconvenient.

Happiness requires risk taking. It’s a risk to quit your job, to travel to new places alone, to love. You might get hurt. Heck, no, you definitely will get hurt. But it’s not safer to stay at home and play it safe–in fact, that is the only path that guarantees unhappiness.

I like this picture, and having reminders in your life to take a leap, and to look for the places where you might just be holding back.

Do this: Write your own call to action. Start with the phrase “Wake up” and write your daily reminders to take risk, love deeply, live inquisitively….

Parkour and Your Personal Power

Most people go through life feeling powerless.

We feel marginalized, unimportant, defeated by our circumstances. There is a constant sense of being ‘less than’ and not good enough, and an even stronger story that suggests we have no power in this world to meaningfully create the change we want to see. Our personal success is measured only against the success of others, and there is always someone more powerful than them, exerting, controlling.
We are victims or failures, always falling short.

We can see this mindset manifested in our lives every day as we cautiously navigate harsh office politics, struggle quietly through school, work, & test anxiety, burn out in unforgiving sporting competitions, and ruthlessly pick apart our imperfect social lives & families.

It’s a mindset that is unforgiving, and leads to a sense of depression, insecurity, and powerlessness.

We need a way to break free.

Cue: Parkour

This is why parkour has resonated deeply with so many people, especially those who regularly face stress and externally-driven competition in their lives. When you confront and overcome a particularly difficult mental or physical challenge in parkour, when you lift something very heavy, when you send a problem you’ve been working towards for hours: you feel powerful. You have a deep, direct, embodied experience of that shows you to yourself that yes, you can.

Can you recall that exuberance, that exhilaration of achievement that expands in your chest when you overcome a physical or mental challenge encountered in your practice—your jumps, climbs, and lifts? And how you are not only ready but eager for the next?

You feel strong, capable, and satisfied. You feel a sense of fulfillment and hunger. Joy.

And through parkour you can go out and feel that any time you want.

You Have The Tools

Through the practice of parkour, you begin to deeply understand that YOU have the tools and the power to overcome your obstacles & challenges by

  1. The consistent training of your body and mind,
  2.  Embracing failure as a healthy part of the process of growth (and subsequent patience in those failures)
  3. Seeking reconciliation with yourself & others in those shortcomings, and
  4. Creatively and openly seeking new paths to old problems.

…And that power you feel? It is gold. It is clean and honest. It is not the power you find through the domination and control of others, but rather the mastery and control of yourself. This personal power is more than an attitude or state of mind; it is a sense of vision, of personal generosity, creativity, and self-assertion.

These critical skills, this positive mindset: This is where the magic of parkour really happens.

Through the emergence and nurturing of your personal power and your practice of parkour, you will eventually also start to realize you have the power and ability to face any of the obstacles in your life with a similar mindset. The skills and sense of power developed originally by jumping on things can spill over into other areas of your life: work, love, family, finances, etc. If you can learn to channel that power and repurpose those lessons from parkour, you will be unstoppable.

…Ok ok. So let’s just be real here for a second.

No, the world will not change because you are doing parkour, climbing, or lifting, or whatever it is you do to get to this place. The obstacles you will face will still be real, painful, ugly, brutal, and sometimes unjust. Your boss might fire you, your work might be unfulfilling, a coworker might take advantage of you. .Your exams may overwhelm, your student debt might feel crushing, your peers will still compete against and compare you. Your family may fall apart, your lover may cheat, and your health may end up failing.  The people in your life, including those that you love and trust, may end up judging you, belittling and marginalizing you, betraying and abandoning you.

So don’t get carried away. Parkour cannot change the world.

But it can change your world.

Parkour can give you a new mindset, a deep, personal sense of power to overcome obstacles in your world—where you will be able to approach those obstacles not as fearsome walls blocking your way but rather opportunities for growth and learning. You will be prepared to face a challenge from a place of patience, calculation, self-honesty, and love: and a knowing that you willsucceed—even if it is not how you expected.

Because you are powerful. You are strong, capable, focused, in control of your emotions, and creative. Powerful is not a state of being but a way of living and thinking.

So there it is.  Finally, I understand. This is why I want to share parkour with others. This is why I took up the helm at Parkour Visions, and continue to run the Women’s Gathering and The Art of Retreat, why I helped found The Movement Creative, the Movement Game Library, and the Movement Snacks initiativeWhy I run around like a crazy person, working 80, 90, 100+ hour weeks trying to increase access to opportunities for parkour and play.

I’m not here competing with anyone. I’m here living my vision for a better world, trying to give to others a taste of their own personal power.

Because everyone should have a way of living that empowers them.I want to help them find their power.

This is my calling.

This article was updated December 2018, and originally published in 2017.

It’s Easy to Be Unhappy

It is easy to be unhappy. 

It is easy to focus on the day to day distractions while avoiding the bigger, underlying issues. It is easy to deflect and blame others, to make excuses for yourself or a situation. It is easy to take the low road, to give that person ‘just one more’ chance, to ‘wait and see’ how things play out, to sit in the safety of inaction.  

But happiness requires action. It requires rolling up your sleeves, pulling on your boots, and hiking up the mountain you’ve been avoiding–and sometimes all night, through sleet, snow, and storm. It requires thinking and work, a little risk, and, sometimes, pain.

…And it is more effort than most of us are willing to make, more risk than we are willing to face.  We would rather sit in the unhappiness, endure an unfulfilling job, live in a place we hate, stay in a relationship that is toxic, than risk being more unhappy than we already are. We are afraid to make that risk. But without taking that risk, we also have no chance at happiness.

Worse, the danger with tolerating unhappiness in your life is that unhappiness has an intrinsically infectious quality. It can start in one corner of your life and slowly seep into the rest if left unaddressed. While we can often contain our unhappiness for a time, manage it, ignore it, live with it and convince ourselves to be content, this fix is only temporary.  Soon enough it will grow to be present in so many aspects of our life that we simply won’t be able to ignore it, and pain becomes a certainty.

So, before it gets to that point, ask yourself today: 

  • What’s stopping you from being happy?  Why?
  • What big problem or toxic person are you avoiding dealing with?  

If you can’t quite figure it out the root of it all, or if you feel like you have a lot of things going on, try making a list. Don’t over think it the process. Set aside 5 minutes and write everything that comes to your mind that makes you unhappy. From there, choose the three things that give you the most stress, anxiety, or fear.

Once you’ve narrowed it down, then ask: 

  • What can I do today, in the present, to start addressing this?

Even if it is as small as acknowledging the problem out loud. Take steps today to identify the roots of your unhappiness and a map leading up and away from it. Then, tomorrow, take the first step.  

I’ll tell you right now, yes, it might not work out, You might get lost along the way, or hurt. You might end up somewhere completely unexpected or unhappy in a different way. But, without any action, there is also no hope for happiness.  

As Aristotle wrote, Happiness depends upon ourselves. 

-Caitlin Pontrella

Life doesn’t wait until you’re ready.

“Life doesn’t wait until you’re ready. While we’re busy developing ourselves, time is quickly zooming on: Favoring those who are not ready either but who want to try anyway. Who want to challenge themselves by taking chances. Who want to grow into being ready. And who aren’t afraid to look a little stupid while they’re figuring things out.

The big steps in life – the big leaps forward – never wait until we’re ready to take them. That connection you’ve been too scared to make. That person you’ve been too scared to love. That job you’ve been dreaming about for as long as you can remember – none of them are waiting to waltz into your life as soon as you’re emotionally prepared for them.

We become strong by first being weak. We become capable by first being incapable. And we become ready by first being entirely unprepared. The goal isn’t to know everything right away. The goal is to waltz into the unknown and declare yourself worthy and capable of being there. To live out the chaos until it’s clear.”

Read the whole article on Thought Catalogue

Familiarity vs Mastery: Break the “I Know” Mindset

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”— Epictetus

Want to know the biggest block to growth? These two words:

“I know”

I constantly encounter this phrase from students in the classes I teach, especially where we work on our foundational movements. I hear it from fellow coaches when discussing how to improve class experience. I hear it from myself, even, as I receive critique and feedback about the things I need to work on, and see it sometimes in my practice as I avoid working certain skills.

In some cases it’s because we think we know better, in others its because we think we know more, and sometimes it’s because we think we know enough. And while this I Know mindset might block out unuseful, unsolicited advice, it also makes us blind and deaf to information that might actually help us grow.

The I Know mindset most commonly emerges in places where we long to appear competent, superior, or one of the group. It feeds on our fear of failure and shame, as well as our resistance to critique and lack of humility. It grows in our lack of self-awareness. And it kills any hope for achieving mastery–in your movement, work, and life.

Familiarity vs Mastery

The I Know Mindset is wild.

During class yesterday we worked on our jumping. As I began reviewing good form and walking through the lesson, one student pointed out that we learned jumping last week and that they wanted to learn something new. In response, I began setting up a number of different challenges. I walked over to a rail and asked-can you jump to this and land without falling? I pointed to the steps – can you jump up these steps, 2,3,4 at a time all the way to the top without stopping? Jump and land while ducking? Jump with one leg? Precisely?

It’s easy to confuse familiarity with mastery. My student understood the fundamental elements of jumping but lacked the ability to masterfully deploy his skills across a number of situations. His ‘I Know’ mindset limited his vision.

‘I know’ is often a declaration that we are superior to practice, that we have completed the circle, that there is nothing left to learn from the knowledge we already have.

Yes, developing brand new skills can be very exciting.  It expands language, reveals new challenges, and, without doubt, can assist in helping overcome tougher physical, intellectual, and motivational plateaus.

But, if you are to truly master your movement or mind and achieve life-long, sustainable physical and mental fitness, you must be consistently developing both laterally and deeply. It requires coming from a place of constant inquiry and the rejection of the ‘I Know’. It requires constantly seeking out how to see differently, do better, create new things with old tools.

The work on our minds and bodies only completes when life completes.

Do Better

Ask Yourself: Where in your life are you saying “I Know?” What triggers it (desire to belong, to appear competent, boredom, etc)?

Find new places to test out old skills, new people to talk through established beliefs. Try different approaches, even if you think your approach is better.Take your skills and practice in a new location

You Have Time. You Just Lack Motivation

I constantly hear clients complain about the lack of time they have in a day to consistently exercise and stay healthy.

I want to be sympathetic to this sentiment but the reality is that there are 168 hours in a week.  If you work a 40-hour week (9-5) and sleep a full eight hours each night, you are still left with 72 hours.  72 hours.  Lets even subtract another 21 hours so that you can cook yourself healthy dinners and get some family time in.  And subtract another 10 for commuting (A nod to you New York, with almost an hour long commute!)(1).  Even after all that, you still have over 25 hours.

Public health guidelines only recommend about 4 hours a week of exercise in order to stay healthy (which I disagree with but…)

You don’t have time, you say? 

You’re right, what you don’t have time for is excuses.

exercise-meme

The Epidemic of American Life

Americans, especially New Yorkers, are always on the go. We race around every day to make more money, to improve our status, to catch up on our work, trying desperately to get ahead. We burn the candle on both ends, juggling family with hobbies, as we work to carve out our own little version of the american dream.

And we suffer from an epidemic of obesity and frailty. We overindulge in fast foods, liquor, and drugs.  We sleep too much or we sleep too little. We are indoors more than 90% of the day (2), behind computers and televisions, playing games, posting on facebook, and living digitally.

We feel like we don’t have enough time to exercise because we are too overwhelmed and exhausted by the mixture of financial burdens, family obligations, social media overload, and work. We fail to prioritize our health alongside all the other elements of our life not because there is not time, but because we can’t be bothered.

i spent all day sleeping and now im tired

As time passes, your bones weaken and muscles soften, and though you might be surrounded by nice things now, you also earned yourself a body that ultimately will fail you.

Mindset Shift: From Work to Play

We need to stop viewing exercise as work.  If you hate running, then don’t go spending hours on the treadmill.  If you hate team sports, then don’t go join the local baseball league.  Movement comes in many forms–it is just a matter of identifying the one that speaks to you and brings you joy.

If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you will make sure there is never any time.

We need to learn to take delight in movement, to seek out fulfilling forms of play, and to indulge ourselves.  It is not about getting healthy and fit, but being healthy and fit–enjoying movement for life, as an integral part of that life.  We need to find forms of play that we ultimately will give the same weight of importance as our work, family, and other pursuits.

For play is work of the most serious and important kind.  Physical play is where we explore who we are, where we encounter our insecurities and face our limitations, where we learn to cope with insecurity and begin to define and exceed our capacities. Play allows us to be healthy and fit without having to feel like we are working on being healthy and fit.

Playing, and living healthy, demonstrates respect for ourselves.

Do This

So stop making excuses. You do have enough time! 
Go find your form of play and start respecting your body and your self.

  • Journal: Sit down and write down your daily routine. You can do it on a napkin even. What is blocking you from finding time to move and play each day? Re-write your ideal routine, and revisit it once a year at minimum, if not each season (weather really kills my routine).
  • Find Your Play: Ditch the gym and find a new way to play (meetup.com anyone?), and keep trying new ways until you find something that sticks. Better yet, find a community that loves to move and play–its proven that your community impacts your lifestyle and behaviors.
  • Start Small: Add some movement snacks to your day (stand on one foot while brushing your teeth, take a walk for lunch, start and finish the day with 5 minutes of stretching).

(1) Partnership for New York City.  NYC Jobs Blueprint. 2013. http://www.pfnyc.org/reports/2013-blueprint-web.pdf
(2) US EPA. Buildings and their Impact on the Environment: A Statistical Summary.  2009. http://www.epa.gov/greenbuilding/pubs/gbstats.pdf

From Obstacles to Opportunities: Why You Should Learn Parkour

We all have our own map of the city in our head.  For most it remembers where our favorite places are to eat are, where our friends live, where to get coffee, where to hang out, and so on.

My map, however, remembers where the best places are in the city for an adult to play; Little dots light up across the mental landscape pinpointing locations of sturdy scaffolding and rough concrete barriers, with play-friendly public spaces, and large oak trees with branches that hang low enough for jumping on.  It records every physical challenge we’ve completed and all the ones yet to be. It knows the difference between public spaces that tolerate and ignore play and those that embrace and encourage movement.

This map is a unique map of textures and temperatures and human activity, of tested and untested public and private relationships, of enjoyment, tolerance, and rejection–and it is a map that could only come to be through Parkour.

What is Parkour you ask?

What Is Parkour?

Parkour is a discipline of movement and self-improvement that teaches one how to overcome any obstacle both efficiently and creatively, using nothing more than the human body.  This playful platform of movement encourages interaction between yourself, others, and your environment.

Traceurs, or individuals who practice Parkour, thus know the city like no other. We study textures, we grip, we feel how sturdy our obstacles are. As we walk through the city we are compelled to interact with it; running, jumping, climbing, crawling, swinging, and balancing. The mere act of walking around becomes an adventure, leading us to look for new challenges, new ways to improve ourselves.  Can I jump from this curb to that one in a single bound?  Can I slip through this scaffolding without touching the bars?  Can I balance along this rail without falling once?

And it is this type of interaction with the city that there needs to be more of–this engaged awareness, this parkour mentality. It brings new life to both popular public spaces and those leftover and overlooked. Things that once slowed movement–benches, tables rails, walls–now become elements that enable .  Obstacles become opportunity for growth, imagination, and play.  And suddenly there is no mission impossible, there is no challenge too great.

04.14.13.01_525

This playful view of the world, this parkour mindset and approach to life, is something we all once had.  At one point, when we were at our youngest, we didn’t understand the word ‘impossible.’  We believed in ourselves, we took risks, we wrestled for hours with how to get across the playground without touching the ground (it was lava, remember?).  We tested ideas and learned of our limitations.  We became the ultimate problem solvers.

As we grew older, however, we lost that unwavering resolution, that uncapped potential.  We scraped our knees, we broke a bone, our parents panicked at the sight of blood.  We were told that some problems were too hard or impossible and that either we weren’t strong enough or smart enough or old enough.  …That we never would be.

But this isn’t the truth.  This is just the world trying to tell you to grow up, to color inside of the lines, to fit the mold, to play it safe.

So I want to demand an answer: Why is this considered the right thing to do!  Why have we allowed safety to be emphasized to the point of instilling fear, insecurity, and inability in both children and adults? Not only does this obsession with safety decrease the number of real opportunities to create and engage with your environment, it also severely limits self-exploration of personal (physical+mental) abilities and limitations.

 And if we continue to place emphasis on being overly safe we’ll end up only creating the unsafe–a world where people don’t know how to confront complicated challenges or to cope with uncertainty.

As famous playground designer Paul Friedberg explains, “[Our problem is that] We want the child to be living in a padded box. [But] A child has to have the real world, fraught with challenges to overcome.”

Return to Play

So, there needs to be a return to play.  True, fulfilling, authentic play, where children and adults alike can seek out real challenges, navigate real risks, and begin to honestly understand their physical and mental capabilities. …Play through which they can really grow.

And Parkour is one of those few disciplines that can provide this holistic platform of play while acknowledging this already pervading atmosphere of fear.

Through the medium of games and challenges, Parkour encourages curiosity and experimentation, builds strength and self-confidence,  and of course teaches the value of risk and the importance of facing your fears.

_MG_4988

Furthermore, Parkour teaches creative problem solving.  A simple game of hopscotch can be transformed in an exercise in problem-solving when squares start to appear on the sides of walls, under railings, on low ledges.  In practice we learn that techniques that work in one situation may not work in another.  We are forced to explore alternative solutions, other ways over/under/through the obstacles we face, to find a way that we may not even have seen or tried.  And through this process, Parkour teaches us how to adapt to every situation, to think outside the box.

As to those safety concerns, through its practice Parkour ingrains safety.  You learn how to run properly, to jump and land without impact, to move without hurting yourself.  It teaches you not only how to assess the risks associated with any challenge you face, but how to judge it to be within or outside of your abilities.

So, forget buying expensive equipment or building one of those sterile play-structures in your backyard.  Teach your children Parkour, learn it for yourself.  With only a pair of shoes and their imagination, one can learn how to seek out challenges and games alone.

For Teens & Adults Too!

Especially, we would like to emphasize how crucial it is to teach children Parkour as they enter their teenage years.  You see, as children get older they outgrow the playgrounds they know so well.  Most  of those constructed around the country are designed for children under 12 and restrict children older. Even if there aren’t any signs forbidding play, the dirty looks of adults say enough.  ‘You don’t belong here, you’re too old to be playing here.’ Teenagers and adults alike are cast away from the only spaces their communities provide for play.

And, at a time so crucial for defining who they are, society shepherds teenagers and adults away from the playgrounds and into other public spaces, where play is no longer the apparent intention.  Rather, these public spaces and parks offer benches to watch some tourists and enjoy a vendor hot dog, a patch of lawn for a nap or cloud gazing,  windy paths that lead to no where and offer nothing but a view.  (And we wonder why obesity is an issue, hm).

Now, we’re not saying that we’re against benches and ice cream and napping on a nice sunny day, but these provisions alone clearly offer very little in return in terms of human growth.

Adults and teenagers should have as much of a place to play as children. They need to play too!  The same gains we make as children through play will only increase in complexity and magnitude as we age and mature.  Our abilities to assess risk, to problem solve, to cope with uncertainty, can continue to increase and refine themselves ad infinitum.  There is so much growth that can still be gained as we slip in to adulthood.

So Parkour provides that playground, for teens and adults alike.  It provides a world that will never run out of challenges, that has no age limitations and no skill requirements.  And if we teach children while they are young enough, they will never find themselves lost in a world without a playspace of their own.

Obstacles Are The Everyday

Obstacles are apart of every day life, whether it is climbing a wall, getting to work on time, or delivering making a presentation in front of a large group.  The lessons we can learn through play and though parkour--to creatively approach problems, to face our fears, to love and respect the people around us and the world we are in--are lessons that can be carried out through the rest of our lives, and are lessons without completion.

So we urge you to, right now, this very day, to start pinning your map with every opportunity for play, for every chance to grow. To always look for opportunities to become better than you are, regardless of whether you are a child or adult.

Do This!

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