Extreme Hardness and Extreme Flexibility: Survival Basics

I saw this NYT article, "Why Are Americans So Fascinated with Extreme Fitness," making the rounds on FB yesterday and actually reposted it because it spoke to something that I have been reflecting on for a while: overexertion and how this reflects the dominant culture's push for constant self-improvement and glorification of hyper-individualism as a trait to be striven for and celebrated.

Then, a couple of hours later three of my colleagues lost their jobs and a quarter of our small association staff were gone. They had middle class dignity and job security on Friday--all gone on Tuesday after the "holiday" weekend.

I had posted the following nuggets from the NYT article:

"For the most privileged among us, freedom seems to feel oppressive, and oppression feels like freedom."
 "Like the idealists and extremists who founded this country [i.e. the USA], the modern zealots of exercise turn their backs on the indulgences of our culture, seeking solace in self-abnegation and suffering."
 "Why can’t we suffer and sweat together, as a group, in a way that feels meaningful? Why can’t someone yell at us while we do it? For the privileged, maybe the most grueling path seems the most likely to lead to divinity."

After the developments at my work, I am rethinking  my post. Yes, it was a clever way to talk about an issue that is just starting to get traction. But I think there is more going on.

Extreme fitness is one response in the face of neoliberalism's demands for extreme worker flexibility, its demands to accept uprooting and ungrounding as a matter of course. It doesn't give you a second chance--it hacks off and moves on. This inherent instability and lack of basic dignity for the worker of the 21st century leads to a desire to be in control, to feel like you can weather the jungle out there.

Where does this leave modern postural yoga (MPY) and its bias toward opening and flexibility?
I think extreme fitness and glorification of flexibility in MPY are two sides of the same gory billboard.

Some of us react by building a shell from which we sometimes poke our head out, but mostly rely on the shell to bounce off the hardness of life. Some of us react by adopting an attitude of malleability. The more gumby, the better. The more like a rag doll whose legs, arms, torso and head can be arranged in knots that would make the distinction of its parts unrecognizable. Both are way to feel in control of one's own flesh. Both are survival training. Both are extremes. What about everyone else in the middle? You harden in some places, you loosen in other. You decompensate, you lose the natural turns and twists that you developed in utero that kept you resilient and largely pain free.

As much as we are asked to be hyper-responsible, we are also asked to trust that the universe knows best. That it is there and holding you no matter how shitty it gets. That it is all for a good reason. That you have to go with the flow. That if you are ever more flexible you can almost ensure that you stretch yourself out so thin that you become part of it all.


All of these responses do not create space; they take it away. All of these want you to believe that you are a king of your own destiny. But by definition you aren't. You aren't a 100% responsible, despite what the dominant narrative would have you to believe. As Matthew Remski says, karma is 1/3 your actions, 1/3 the actions of others around you and 1/3 randomness such as a flood, a mudslide or an earthquake.


In the face of massive labor dislocation and insecurity in the 21st century, the need to feel in control of one's own politic body is vast and reaching tipping point levels. The search for extreme fitness or extreme flexibility is a sign of not enough grounding. When you have no sense of stability, you either think you need to be more hard core or you think you are stiff and therefore need to stretch. Extreme fitness is combat training, a literal interpretation of survival. This morning, I was listening to a story about Wendy Rogers, a candidate for Congress, and one of the first 100 women pilots in the U.S. Air Force, who was training her 3-year-old grandson to do pull-ups because, she said, these skills need to be instilled from a very young age. Extreme flexibility is survival training too, but by disintegration. Because you feel so not in control that reaching more and more extreme ranges of motion becomes a way of feeling in control, of pushing against a boundary that says that you are you and then there is the rest. But maybe by breaking that layer of separation, the issues of the body politic become your issues and your issues become the issues of the body politic and dissipate.

The other day an Economist article called economic growth in the US and UK "healthy." I wrote them a letter (I will let you know if they publish it):

Sir - In your leader article, "Weaker than it looks," you called growth in the UK and US "healthy." One cannot call economic growth healthy if inequality is increasing or if the mean GDP per capita is much higher than the median. Growth is healthy only when it is balanced and sustainable, and allows everyone to progress with integrity, if incrementally. Growth in the UK and US is healthy if you are willing to call cancerous growth healthy.

My former colleagues are left to take advantage of the healthy growth and hope to recover in an era where extreme hardness and extreme flexibility are both required for survival. Something's got to give.