X's and O's

Categories: Blog Mar 08, 2015

Have you ever heard that football is a bunch of X's and O's? Or have you ever received a letter from some one that was signed with X's and O's after their name? These are two symbols that are often used in our daily lives. X can mark the spot, it can attract attention, it can symbolize a kiss, or it can proclaim censored! O can circle an error, represent a hug, or proclaim failure or emptiness.

We often used these two letters, or symbols, to represent ideas, treasures, place holders, values, or substance. In this post, I would like to use them as symbols for our design. If you look at your body, if you were to stand with your feet wide and your arms stretched out towards the sky, you would see a shape similar to an X. Notice that the center of an X is solid, there is no void there. Likewise, your center, is meant to be solid, without a void, or hollow. Your body is an X, and it is meant to be solid in the center.

Now, look at an O. It is indeed hollow in the center. There is nothing in the middle. Many of us, though we are shaped like X's, are actually more like O's. I'm not talking about obesity here, though obesity could be a symptom of what I'm actually getting at. I'm talking about many of us are hollow in our centers. There is no "core" to our bodies. Our X is not connected by a solid center.

We are meant to have a solid center. It is this solid center that keeps us our limbs "tied" together and it is this solid center that keeps us resilient and strong, or able to enjoy life with strength, health and vitality. On the flip side of that, if we do not have a solid center, if we are hollow, our bodies are not nearly as resilient as they should be. Without a solid center to transfer force, without our limbs being "tied" together, we could end up fragile, stressed out, overweight, apathetic and empty.

We are meant to have a solid center, to be like an X. So how do we do that? Is there an exercise that can restore our center? The answer is "yes", and it is also absolutely crazy.

The best way to build a strong core, a core that connects your body and ties you together, is to simply breathe the way you were made to breathe. Breathing with your diaphragm, pulling air to the bottom of your lungs, reflexively builds your inner core. It gives you a solid center.

Isn't this ridiculously simple? And even too hard to believe?

Weight training, ab exercises, kettlebells, yoga - none of man's inventions for fitness can build a solid center. They can help reinforce the solid center, but if there is no center, they can only reinforce a "hollow". It is breathing, with our diaphragm, that is the design intended to keep us solid in our centers. Every breath you take is a breath that was designed to not only give your body oxygen, but to also give your body strength; from the center out.

Again, we were made to be an X, not an O. We are to have substance and not emptiness. One of the best things you can do for your health is to remember how to breathe. This simple, child-like, action of pulling air down into your belly, is one of the most essential physical actions you could possibly make. And, you should be able to do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, breath by breath.

If you haven't been breathing down in your belly, if you have been breathing up in your chest and neck, spend 3 minutes a day practicing pulling air down to your center. You did this once as a child, and you can remember how to do it again as an adult. It could very well be the best "exercise" you've ever engaged in.

Oh, be honest, if you did receive a letter signed with X's and O's, you know you were always just wanting the X's. You would settle for an O, but it was the X you craved, it had more substance, more impact, more meaning. Life is about X's. Be one.

Tim
XOXO

Ok, I never sign my letters like that. But Dani does...

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