From Machine to Mystery: A Journey Through the Body
For the first 20+ years of my life, I approached my body the way one might approach a machine that needed optimization. I worked on it—lifting weights to build muscle, running to improve cardiovascular fitness, adjusting my diet to achieve certain outcomes. This mechanical approach served me well for years. It got me through high school feeling strong and confident, carried me through my first Ironman at 24, and sustained seven years of what I thought was optimal health pursuit.
But somewhere along the way, during those long hours of solo training—10 to 30 hours a week running and cycling—something shifted. The rhythm of movement began tuning not just my body, but my mind as well. What started as working on my body gradually became an exploration of working within it, and eventually opened doorways to working through it.
The Mechanical Approach: Working "On" the Body
When we work on the body, we treat it as an object to be improved, fixed, or optimized. It's the approach most of us learn first—calories in, calories out; stress the muscle, it grows stronger; run faster, build endurance. This perspective sees the body as separate from our essential self, a sophisticated biological machine that responds predictably to inputs.
This isn't wrong. The mechanical view has given us tremendous insights into physiology, nutrition, and human performance. It's helped millions of people lose weight, build strength, and improve their health markers. When I was 12, cranking the radio in that backyard shed with Mario, Luis, Juan and Aaron, lifting heavy things in interesting ways, this approach was exactly what I needed.
The limitation of working on the body isn't that it's ineffective—it's that it's incomplete. It treats symptoms and metrics while missing the deeper intelligence that flows through our physical form. It's like learning to read the dashboard of a car without ever listening to the engine's subtle communications.
We don't throw this aspect of the body out. We need to continue to attend to it, though the importance shifts. A baseline of generative physiological living is often the starting point for many clients—healthy sleep patterns, judicial use of caffeine, movement that serves rather than depletes. All of these factors contribute to our emotional well-being, as well researched and established by luminaries such as Lisa Feldman-Barrett in her book, How Emotions Are Made.