Thank you for being here.

This newsletter is best enjoyed with a few deep breaths, and a nice cup of something.

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CONTENTS of this e-mail:

1. A movement - to have some fun while building stronger feet and happier hips.
2. A story - a throwback to being 19 and receiving a diagnosis.
3. An update - something cool that happened this month.

A Movement

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There comes a certain point in all of our pain or rehab journeys where we have to let go of the should's, and just work with what is. Just because a movement feels great for someone else, just because everyone raves about the benefits doesn’t mean it’s for you, because of where you’re at right now.

Just because you've been able to do "x" in the past, doesn't mean you should today.

And the sooner you attune, the faster your progress will be.

You need to know how to move your hips in a way that feels safe, supple and strong… and the only way to do that is to explore them, gather info and take note. Gently exploring which ranges you have and which ranges you don’t. You need to do it in a way that is deliberately limited enough for you to enjoy flirting with your edges. Where you can experience necessary discomfort and occasionally even "low level, healing pain" without fear of serious pain or damage.
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So, standing on one leg like this is a great constraint to have. You know what balanced feels like. You know what ready feels like. And equally, you know what it feels like when you’re out of position. Being out of position is a unique individual thing, right? Because if I can get into a weird shape, but actually I feel safe, supple and strong, well then, the alignment is great. For me.

By learning your hips — what they can and can’t do — what they like to do and don’t like to do — and exploring your boundaries... You can develop a strength which is innately wired into efficient movement. Your strength will come from balance. It will come from the intention to be at home and ready within your own body.

Through play and exploration, with a clear intention to know yourself so you can better serve yourself, you’ll become your own teacher and find ways of moving that work. And I think that’s the whole reason we move in the first place.

If you need any help implementing this, come to Warm Buttery Hips!

It’s an online workshop, tomorrow 6-9AM AEDT (that's Sydney time).

It's $75.

Or free if you're an Attuned Member ($65/mo cancel anytime).

I'm going to share a simple, elegant system to love-up those crusty hips and build some relaxed, free-range strength.

(if you can’t come live, sign up for the workshop anyway and you'll get the recording).

A Story

The surgeon held my scans up to the light board and proceeded to inform me on how my future would look. I guess I should have believed what then told me. But for some reason, I didn’t.

He had mountains of evidence, a white coat, a fat watch and a wall full of degrees. He’d seen thousands of people, and read studies on thousands more.

Down came the verdict, and with it wafted an authority that I couldn’t quite question and couldn’t quite hold in my hands. Hard stats to say I’d probably need a bone shave on the good hip, and a hip replacement on the side I’d already had surgery on. And the cherry on top? Osteoarthritis in both sides.

“See that? That’s the deterioration of your hip capsule.”

I was 19. It blind-sided me. I expected some info, not a fortune-telling. How could he be so sure? Could he see how fit I was? Was I that different from other young guys? What had I done wrong to be so fucked, so young?

It doesn’t make much of a difference, he said. It’s not uncommon, but it’ll get worse, and there isn’t really anything you can do.

I was looking right at the scans… but I didn’t buy the story. It wasn’t compatible with my values or experiences. I was dealing with an evidence-based shrine, built on a pile of shaved-off pieces of femur, surgical sutures and melancholy memoirs, built by every human wishful and naive enough to settle for victimhood. This mediocre answer was a pill I couldn’t swallow. I would not line up to sacrifice my agency to the modern medical monolith. Yes, I would listen to all angles and think critically, but no, I would would not trust that surgeon more than I trusted my own heart, mind and gut, even if I couldn’t yet explain why.

"If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic."
- an excerpt from the brief flash of the warning screen at the beginning of Fight Club.

Ten years later, I was moving and feeling better than ever.

I repaired my body, regained my confidence and reclaimed my humanity from that statistical bonfire, I now I could explain why I didn’t walk that path:

1. I trusted that objective facts could bear no sweet fruit without the soil of subjective experience.
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   My process was scientific. Just not sterile. My evidence came from real processes of training, moving and overcoming — and the idea that this real-world experience should be taken less seriously than studies was laughable. We are free agents, co-creating with the known and the unknown. If we aren’t aware of the limited scope of studies (the findings of which often aren't repeatable), we'll turn into evidence-based-idiots. Experts in the artificial. Not in the real.
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2. I trusted those whose results needed no dressing up in white — people who had built skillsets necessary to create the conditions for, and become the essence of, true, cause-based healing.
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   They could show techniques themselves, or demonstrate them on you, rather than "know" a lot while virtue signalling with via the accolades of equally limited individuals. My teachers often didn’t have as many formal qualifications because they were too busy doing the fucking thing to write a paper about it. They were ahead, wasting no time proving themselves to people. People who would never understand, because they'd built a career in an office, not through their own bodies.
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3. I trusted the long game — the path of learning and growth, rather than the path of disempowerment and victimhood.
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   Too many people choose the slow strangulation of victimhood rather than the kind confrontation of accountability. Truth can sting like lime juice on reef rash... but if you choose victimhood, you are choosing not to heal — it’s that simple. The easy way is a loop. The skilful way is often simple but confronting. There is a path out of suffering. It's beautiful. What's sad is seeing the loyalty some people have to their impotence.

Like any incredible relationship, the one you cultivate with your body takes time.

When your partner says something that triggers you, you don’t just put on earmuffs, drug her or have her tongue removed. You encourage dialogue — and nobody else can do it for you. Buy into this next step of your journey now. Once you’ve started, there is no rush to finish, because the process of feeling safe, supple and strong in your body is the most rewarding thing.

We still live in a world where the norm is medical/pharmaceutical intervention which either numbs, distorts or dismembers the body's faculties. All simply because the body is reflecting a truth about our psyche and culture that we aren't ready to stomach.

Those of us who choose differently will be outliers in the beginning (or even spend our lives on "the bleeding edge" of change) but as the system morphs towards a more integrative model, we will pave the way for “outstanding” to become “normal.” And as with any relationship, or system... It doesn't evolve when you want it to. It evolves when you stop needing it to, and decide to pursue change for you. You either lead the new, or resign to the old.

What I learned from all this is pretty simple and profound.

There is no potential for true healing without rigorous experiential science and loving, caring intent.

Those in medicine who have the technical skill, specialisation and the healer’s heart are absolute treasures, and even more so because the culture / system around western med can be so egocentric, disembodied and “top-down”. It’s easy to have faith in it until one day you’re desperate, needing and expecting to be helped, and you personally experience how limited it is. Too much compassion fatigue too, because the people doing the medicine are themselves dis-regulated and run-down. No approach is wrong, when used in the right context… but we rush through the context and go straight for the fix, often too invasively, too soon. Of course we do. The whole system is built on reactivity. Fear and profit. Fear and profit.

It has drifted far from the pure, exquisite study of natural principles. Hippocrates would be reeling. Socrates would probably be condemned to suicide, again. Diogenes would be pissing on the sliding doors of these institutions (IYKYK).

I'm not entirely different.

There have been many times I haven’t listened. I've reacted to my body. I even had a flare a couple months back. Gotta be foolish to become wise. Otherwise we're just well read and pretending we get it.

Thankfully I've scraped through the consequences enough times to end up with a much clearer “ear” for when my body is talking, and what exactly it is asking for.

Now, every decision is an opportunity to honour that relationship.

And I'm proud of how devoted I've been to this, despite massive pressure to fold at times.
With every decision to attune to myself, it becomes more my default, and I feel less fear and more knowing - in my bones.

An Update!

Despite the fact I've been literally spamming it on my instagram (stretching my self-promotion comfort zone), apparently not everyone realises the Attuned Membership has launched and is ready for you.

This has been a really exciting (yet relaxing and aligned) project for me, because it's giving me the same thing it gives the members:

Consistent, measurable progress via beautiful, stable, slow-burn energy.

To sense deeply, move powerfully and create freely.

The reason so many of you aren't making better progress is because you're still stuck in the go hard or go home pattern. You try to narrow yourself in to these really specific hectic short term goals rather than introducing the variety and fun that would make you way more consistent over a period of 5-10 years.

You might not identify with that, but if you look at the actual patterns in your life... there's probably not as much play, joy and creativity permeating your "show-up-every-day" identity as you'd like.

Stop rushing. It's meant to be savoured.

If you actually manage this, you'll be un-fucking-recogniseable in 2 years, never mind 5-10.
(and yet you'll be more you than ever)
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I obviously get it. That's why we resonate.
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But I'm likely also a number of steps deeper into the process, because it's literally my life's work and I've been fully immersed in the study, living practice and teaching of it for... let's just say. A while, despite my ever-youthful sex appeal ;)

​Check out the membership if you're looking for all the know-how delivered in simple, actionable steps.
With support from me, plus an insanely tuned-in collective of individuals who share our values!

Jack