I love stretching. Love, love stretching. When I do it, I can feel myself getting taller, stronger, longer; the yin of recovery to the yang of lifting, or running hard. I feel everything connecting, the loop closing, and my body and self becoming more open.
I remember learning something in gym class at some point when I was younger about the different types of physical fitness, about the picture of composite strength, and learning that conditioning aspects like balance and flexibility are, also, strength. Not just displays of brute force. Huh, I thought. I liked that. I thought about it, and I internalized it in a great way. In stretching, I feel myself getting stronger.
I remember being younger and seeing a bridge sway, or some tall pole, maybe both, whatever it was, and my engineer father explaining that this had to happen, from a physics standpoint, for the structure to remain—not just strong, but remain there at all. How unexpected. It was the opposite of what I felt like should be happening, and it was what needed to be happening.
Flexibility in flow, flexibility in surrender, flexibility in bending to see a new perspective, in stretching out of a comfort zone, in reaching for change.
Flexibility is strength. I’m more flexible than I’ve ever been, in a lot of ways, and I’m proud of that. Because I stretch every day, in some way, and I’ve felt the change. I feel stronger than I’ve ever been.