Train at the Edges, Live in the Middle

All right, and welcome back. A few months ago, I was on retreat with some other men's coaches and leaders and overall badass dudes, and one of them in particular is a very wise, very deep practitioner.

We were talking about the importance of practice and its place in our lives. And in exploring that topic, we really came to this concept and idea of you want to train at the edges, but then live in the middle. And that's really what I want to explore here today. So what does it mean to train at our edge? Well, like so much I talk about on this show, it has to do with our nervous systems.

And one of the main reasons we practice or train, and that's really to increase the capacity of our nervous system, its ability to be present and hold presence with whatever's happening inside it, inside the moment, everything around us, etc. So training at our edges, Right, Right. This is pretty obvious when we think about it in terms of just our bodies, Right.

When we're running or weightlifting, we need to actually train at a place that's just a little bit beyond our comfort zone or a little bit beyond the normal capacity, or a little bit beyond our normal capacity. Because it's in that stretch, it's in that going beyond just a little bit that our body has to adapt to be able to keep up, so to speak. And this idea of stretching or increasing our capacity, that's really what I mean by training at the edges.

So we don't want to just hang out in a space that's already comfortable for us, otherwise the growth doesn't really happen. We need to go into a place that activates us to stretch beyond our capacity to have to work a little bit harder than we're used to. And in that friction, our body adapts, so it actually gets better at doing that thing. So next time it takes a little bit less to get there.

Right. We're a little bit more efficient in the a sense. So in weightlifting, right, we actually want to lift right to the edge of the capacity of our muscles, or sometimes even to failure. But optimally, it's often right around the point of failure, but not necessarily to complete failure, that our muscles really thrive, that they get the signal. Hey, we need to mobilize to be able to Keep up. And so the fibers break down and they rebuild even stronger so that next time, okay, we can do that with more efficiency and more power.

Or when we're running, right, we have, like, a target heart rate. That's the optimal training zone where our heart is having to work a little bit harder than it normally would, but not at a total overwhelming pace. And it's in that constant stretching that it gets stronger. So that's the important thing here. When we're training at our edges, we're getting stronger. We're increasing our capacity.

Now, it's super obvious in those instances, right, when it comes to physical training. But these same concepts apply to other kinds of training, particularly those that we do in men's work. So emotional training and spiritual training. And I see this a lot when I'm doing shadow work or emotional processing or just different types of somatic release with guys. And there really is sometimes this idea of we have to go a little bit bigger than we might normally.

So if we're working with certain emotions, let's say when we're in a practice space, we may actually turn up the volume on that emotion, on that experience, to a higher level than we might normally. And this is what's key, because it's in training in that space that we increase our capacity for kind of living back in the middle. So our nervous systems always, like this metaphor, kind of like a rubber band.

When I say capacity, it's how much can we stretch? And in that stretching, how much can we hold in the moment? We can't stretch very much. We can't hold a whole lot in the moment. But the more flexible we become, the more we can kind of stretch ourselves open to be able to hold what. Whatever the energy is present in any moment. And sometimes we kind of have to fake it till we make it a little bit. So I do see this with guys I work with, particularly something like anger, let's say.

We might have to just kind of play the part for a couple seconds or minutes until that energy really starts moving on its own. And then we may go into it in an exaggerated form, so we might play with the extreme of that energy. So way bigger than we would back in the normal world, so to speak. But why we do that is because in playing at that edge, we're stretching our nervous system's capacity, its ability to hold or be present in that energy.

And then when we go back to the normal world, that capacity is with us. It stays with us. We've stretched bigger than it. So then where we Normally are feels a little bit easier, right? So it's kind of, we work harder to train ourselves for the daily activities. It's really what it means to train at the edges and live in the middle in this capacity, this ability to kind of turn up the volume on our nervous systems and hold intensity of any kind.

As we build that capacity in the extremes, it stays with us, right? It stays with us. When we're back in kind of the normal space, we never really stretch all the way back. We have that capacity with us, which then gives us a little bit of buffer room to deal with the day to day. And so Mensworth can sometimes be a little absurd, can be a little crazy in some of the practices we do because we play in that bigger space that's intentionally exaggerated beyond the normal space.

And that can sometimes feel a little weird to guys of like, well, I'm never going to act like this. But the point is we act bigger than that. We exaggerate whatever it is in the practice space. So that in the normal space it feels like a cakewalk, it feels totally easy. And what's really important about this idea of training at the edges is we also want to remember that it doesn't mean going over our limits.

And so I always like this term from the yoga world of, you know, we want to stretch but not break. So we want to stretch our muscles, but we don't want to stretch it too far where we cause injury. And that takes a certain level of practice and skill to intuit and is one of the many reasons, I think doing this work in a group or with a facilitator can be so important because someone can be tracking us in that experience. And so whether it's physical practice, things like qigong, holding difficult yoga poses, doing challenging kundalini ice baths, so much of what we see in the menswork world is about stretching our capacity and training in particular at the edges of discomfort.

Because as we learn to relax our nervous systems at the edges of discomfort in the extreme sense, training at our edge, so to speak, it becomes so much easier to be present with all the normal stuff back home. So, you know, this is literally the idea of training in a lot of martial arts or in the military or the SEALs, you train at the total extremes, so your body gets used to it.

So then back in the real world, outside of the container of training, that capacity makes it much easier to deal with the day to day. So we actually want to live in the middle, we want to train at the edges, but we don't want to bring that same level of intensity most of the time to our actual day to day interactions in relationships. What we want to bring is the capacity, not necessarily the intensity.

So we stretch ourselves in practice so that we can hold more in the day to day. Now, I do this with guys emotionally when it comes to certain feelings and sensations that we often disconnect from or don't deal with in our lives. Charged up shadow energy that we've never dealt with. And sometimes just overall capacities, what we might call archetypal energy that we can build into our nervous systems.

What I mean by that is sometimes, yeah, we'll train with the energy of the hunter. We're trained with the energy of the lover. And just like everything else we're talking about, we have to stretch. We actually have to hold it in a bigger, more intense version in the practice session so that we can have that perfect right dose in our normal lives. So we train bigger, but then we live it in a more integrated, nuanced way.

But it's in that training bigger that we actually stretch. We stretch our nervous systems, we stretch our capacity and we start to master that exaggerated form which then makes it so much easier to live the embodied, integrated form in one. Whatever it is in your life. This is a great concept for how you can make the most of your practice and your training time. Right?

Find the edge. Find that spot where you're right on the threshold of how present you can stay, how grounded you can stay, how powerful you can stay without breaking, without injuring yourself. This is not about going too far, it's just about finding that edge. What's great is every man's edge is different. All that matters is that you're playing at yours and increasing your capacity.

For a lot of people just sitting in stillness and focusing on their breath is immensely transformative and a type of practicing at the edge. Right. Can I really just be present in this moment? Can I stay totally focused? That takes training, especially these days with social media and phones and endless distraction and things pulling at our attention. In every given moment, we have to train our ability to focus.

So how do we do that? Train at the edges. We sit in a pose or posture and count our breath for 30 minutes, one hour, whatever that might be. We're not going to sit in absolute stillness back in the world. No. But our ability to then direct our attention is and stay focused, get stronger, so that when we're having a difficult conversation with someone or we're needing to deeply crank out a piece of work, we can do it.

So where are you training at your edges? And what does it look like to then bring that back to your life to live in the middle? Let me know. Shoot me some thoughts at JasonVolutionary. Mention or you can leave comments on this episode on my website. And if you want to practice in person, check out the Events tab on my website. Till next time. If you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to Evolutionary Men Apply.