Word of the Month: Magic

“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you thought you couldn’t” – rikki rogers

Plank. 

A true metaphor of all things challenging – sometimes unstable – oftentimes seemingly impossible – and yes, Magical. 

Think of it. 

At Dailey, we take this core exercise and build into it additional challenges to make the difficult – even harder. It’s done with thought, yet each one of you, whether you are a new student of TDM, a veteran of our method or someone schooled only in other workout modalities, knows that when we plank…Magic happens. 

Align

From the placement of your hands to the energy in your legs, building onward to the awareness of where your head is, what your ribs are doing and whether or not you feel your deep core muscles in both your front and back body: You are IN it. 

Take a breath. 

Feel weight bearing in your shoulders, sense fatigue in your back, understand the guidance of your teacher’s virtual support through a screen and then reset as you need when we start to layer the challenges in – to your obliques, your shoulders, your hips.

Listen. 

From a place inside of YOU there comes a force – this magical energy of powering through adversity and knowing that you intrinsically trust that this plank will be over soon and that we’ll be onto another body part, movement sequence or exercise in 90 seconds. 

Feel your strength. 

It’s that moment it took you to get to the place where you almost want to give up – but you don’t. It’s that little bit of space and chasm where you discover perseverance and then with the encouragement of your teacher, you attempt again. You commit 3 – 4 times over and over. And guess what? You complete the plank series – WITH us. 

This is Magic.

And it translates to the year we’ve each just walked through. 

Together.

We, at The Dailey Method, set our Word of the Month out almost one year in advance. Yet when “Magic” came down the pipeline for December, Jill and I both kind of looked at each other and truthfully just rolled our eyes. How do you inspire people to believe in Magic – after the year we’ve just lived? After all, 2020 introduced an unprecedented level of difficulty, upset, uncertainty, disappointment and struggle as it relentlessly embedded its tendrils deep inside each one of our stories. 

Oh – But isn’t that what plank does? 

Hence, the Magic.

We all have a plan for our lives and at some point, we each align our efforts in order to author an outcome. A million times over we adjust to the new challenges forced our way and prepare for unexpected change when it presents itself on our paths. We make subtle shifts when confronting difficulty and then find alternate ways to move in an effort to see if we’re able to redistribute stress and help ourselves towards success. We stop. We give up for a second or a few days (maybe even weeks!) but then we recommit to showing up – just one more time. We lean on friends as our cheerleaders to motivate us to try again and understand how change is the one thing in life that we are able to count on. Through it all; Life, I mean, (and plank too!) we may put our knees down but 100% we finish and there is reprieve. 

It’s true that initially, all the magical things in everyday life that we continue to celebrate when we think of MAGIC come to mind like; babies being born, a mind-blowing card trick, a loved one unexpectedly healing from a terminal illness, stars in the sky, falling in love, the sparkle on water in the sunshine and those moments where something or someone just synchronistically shows up with just what you need. Yet still, what I am left with while reflecting on the magic of our day to day is giving immense gratitude to the muscles we’ve each had to contract, the various positions we’ve had to morph into, the constant resets we’ve had to make permissible, the amount of trust we’ve been asked to haphazardly believe in, the unending support from others we’ve been challenged to ask for – all of which, undoubtedly, have been the most rewarding.  

2020 may, in fact, be parallel to the longest plank we’ve ever had to push through, yet what I know for sure is that there is no other community nor people I’d rather be surrounded by. 

We will see this forward. 

There are dreams to fulfill. 

There is family to fold into. 

Friends to lean on.

Love to have.

And if we need to plank this long a second, third, a fourth, or a fifth time, we will find inside ourselves, the same incredible Magic – again.

Yours,

Katina