Separate tension from force. Developing strength does not imply generating tension. If we lift a heavy box without having strength, if we are stressed by a situation, or if we spend the whole day in front of the computer without moving with our head sunk between our shoulders, it is likely that we generate tension and therefore wear at a muscular level, but also at an energetic level. We accumulate fatigue.

When we practice, the idea is to accumulate strength, not fatigue. Collect, practice after practice, a little more body awareness, breathing capacity, muscle strength, joint flexibility, ability to focus, communication with our body. We could say that the combination of all this in the right proportions results in strength.

If the joints are stiff, the muscles are tense and we breathe badly, we need a much greater effort to do anything. That's why when I think of strength I like to imagine not only the development of muscles, but a combination of resources that work intelligently, a sum that results in strength.

And what I find even more interesting is that, if we take strength in this integrated way, we can think of it not only as muscular, but also as a capacity for focus, or emotional support, or tenacity. And, depending on what we want to underpin, the rest becomes available. For example, if we are in fact looking to develop more muscular strength, our breathing, capacity of focus, emotional energy, joint flexibility will be fundamental tools to go where we want to go. Bring strength and sensitivity closer together, not further apart.

Have you registered which part of your body has more strength? Would you say that your emotional structure is strong without detracting from your sensitivity? And your thinking? How do all these variables interact in you? Let's practice! To perceive ourselves, to support what is necessary, to think of strength as the development of our potential.

Separate tension from force. Developing strength does not imply generating tension. If we lift a heavy box without having strength, if we are stressed by a situation, or if we spend the whole day in front of the computer without moving with our head sunk between our shoulders, it is likely that we generate tension and therefore wear at a muscular level, but also at an energetic level. We accumulate fatigue.

When we practice, the idea is to accumulate strength, not fatigue. Collect practice after practice a little more body awareness, breathing capacity, muscle strength, joint flexibility, ability to focus, communication with our body. We could say that the combination of all of these in the right proportions results in strength.

If the joints are stiff, the muscles are tense and we breathe badly, we need a much greater effort to do anything. That's why when I think of strength I like to imagine not only the development of muscles, but a combination of resources that work intelligently, a sum that results in strength.

And what I find even more interesting is that, if we take strength in this integrated way, we can think of it not only as muscular, but also as a capacity for focus, or emotional support, or tenacity. And, depending on what we want to underpin, the rest becomes available. For example, if we are in fact looking to develop more muscular strength, our breathing, capacity of focus, emotional energy, joint flexibility will be fundamental tools to go where we want to go. Bring strength and sensitivity closer together, not further apart.

Have you registered which part of your body has more strength? Would you say that your emotional structure is strong without detracting from your sensitivity? And your thinking? How do all these variables interact in you? Let's practice! To perceive ourselves, to support what is necessary, to think of strength as the development of our potential.

Adaptation, habit, learning, plasticity allow us to reinvent ourselves for survival, whether biological or intellectual in a broad sense (I am referring to the capacity to make our thoughts, points of view or decisions more flexible when we seek agreement with other people).

We can see adaptation in how we become accustomed to the weight of clothing on the body, in the way we incorporate new cultures or routines. These are changes that can occur unconsciously or consciously; sometimes to keep up with the times, and sometimes to achieve what we want to do or to become who we want to be.

First it is learned, then it is repeated and becomes a habit. By sustaining it over time, that profound change takes place: plasticity, transformation. Once something has been learned, it remains available as a resource, ready to be activated when we need it. Think, for example, of the ability to concentrate.

There are tasks that require very little attention, but others require 100%. If we do not invest that energy, we may not achieve the expected result, or we may take much longer to achieve it and spend more resources than necessary.

Habit and learning also apply to concentration. We can learn to focus the mind when we wish and to abstract ourselves from what is happening around us, to generate a state of full concentration.

You can start training your concentration without the need for it to be useful at that moment. As a game. Choose a moment of the day, it can be at your desk at work, and fix your gaze on a point in front of you -an image, a mark on the wall or an object on the table-. If you see that you get scattered, change the object on which you are focusing. Hold the exercise for a couple of minutes. You will notice how the environment begins to blur. Once you have trained your abstraction capacity, it is time to keep your attention on the chosen point.

In this way we train our mind and thinking. And when the time comes when you need more attention and concentration, the habit will already be in you: your head will know what you are proposing and will follow your game ;)

It seems a polar wave is coming. Yesterday winter began. Today it rained, the sun came out, it got cloudy, it was cold, it was nice. A lot of diversity throughout the same day. If my decisions / plans had depended on the weather, I would have been a kite at the total mercy of stimuli. And if I had ignored my surroundings, I would definitely have had a bad time.

July, which is approaching, brings multiple themes, such as the weather today. It is my turn to write about freedom and discipline; Meanwhile, the furious wind of the beginning of winter blows, gets between the trees and to that clear climate of unease, which is sometimes experienced on Sundays, is added that of the restlessness of the wind, of what can apparently be, in the same way, kind and hostile.

I feel before this subject as one who sits before a small fire that shelters. In part it was because of this sometimes unthinkable duo —freedom and discipline— that years ago, one day, I decided that I wanted to teach the DeRose Method. It was the combination of those two things that I didn't know it was possible to put together. I call discipline, in my case, the ability to build anything: paint a picture, run a school, write a book of poems, sustain a bond, train something consistently (beyond the weather). I call discipline the sum of little bricks that give existence to what we want to carry out. And freedom, the way we build it. Without that reaching the point of subduing us. Being able to build, create, carry out projects, relationships, life itself without it being at our expense. It seems obvious, but it is not. That is why it often happens to us that, even doing what we like, something is not being as we wanted. And not because everything has to be as we want, far from it. But sometimes we have that clear feeling of being aware of more, that what we want to do so much is occupying places that belong to other things, even that it has lost its course and overflows everywhere.

I thought that freedom and discipline permeate the way we train in schools, but also our way of teaching, working and building. Not because we always do well, but because it is a variable that we take into account when making decisions, I would almost say when doing anything.

Discipline brings us the possibility of building. Freedom, to establish a bond with what we are creating, whether individually or collectively; a loving, considerate, powerful, channeled and therefore lasting bond. I don't know if you've ever wondered how freedom and discipline coexist in you, but know that they are a great duo and, when they go hand in hand in a project, they unleash unexpected potential.

Many times when I teach I think about how much easier it is for us to force than to relax. We understand much more clearly how to tense the muscles than how to ask the body to let go. And this applies to training and also to everyday life. Our body, by default, reacts to certain stimuli by generating tension, whether we are stressed about something or we are working under the air conditioning feeling cold and doing nothing about it. It is likely that the shoulders look for the ears as if they wanted to keep them warm and at night we are with a total contracture.

Learning to decontract is an incredible tool that in addition to making us rest better and feel better makes available an extra energy that was previously invested in tension. Let's get down to business, **how to channel relaxation?

1- Breathing is a great accomplice. It is interesting to concentrate (bring the attention) on that area that is perceived as tense and as we exhale, try to gradually release the muscles.

2- Observing our body habits also adds up: Do we breathe in an abdominal or high way? Are our shoulders relaxed or tense? Are our hands loose or tight? I don't know if you ever paid attention to that detail, when you clench your hands you tense your arms, neck and jaw. The jaw can't be left out of this journey; relaxing the mouth and the forehead also contributes a lot.

3- Register the situations of tension and generate a conscious change, in the environment if possible and, if not, in the breathing (making it deep) or in the body (decontracting the shoulders, hands, neck...).

There are infinite things to talk about and deepen on this subject, just the other day I was thinking about something specific that I would like to share: to the extent that one learns to decontract the body and therefore to relax when it is not necessary to generate tension, this can also be applied in life, start to keep track of the moments in which unnecessary tension is generated and try to let go a little, channel the relaxation.

In this day and age when we receive such a large and constant stream of stimuli and are thinking about so many things at once, it is sometimes difficult for our brains to understand what we want to have an idea about, insight or, the sometimes called, wow moment!

1➡ Define the issue and dial it in.
Which of all these thousands of things we are processing simultaneously are we most interested in? Once we have the answer it is a matter of giving it a priority place in our world, as if among all the thoughts this one is marked with a highlighter.How do you do that? With time, place, intensity and affection. That is, giving it priority and daily in our mental agenda, taking advantage of the moments of more vitality and lucidity to think about it. And finally approaching this idea with the energy of enthusiasm for something that matters to us.

2➡ Give room for the idea to emerge and write it down.
It is important to know that for an idea to emerge it is necessary, as DeRose would say, to reverse the flow of perception and stop bombarding information from the outside in. This can be done, for example, by training concentration on a simple image such as the image of a sun, for a few minutes, trying not to disperse ourselves. This also develops our ability to focus, in this case, allows new ideas to emerge, that is, to make room for them. And at that moment it is important to have a notebook at hand where to write them down (here an important detail, better a notebook than a cell phone, that just by opening it already proposes us a thousand new ways to disperse and probably leads us to lose that beautiful and incipient idea that was being born).

3➡ And finally, as Picasso used to say: Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.