A Strange Exercise With Multiple Benefits

Description

An odd exercise that develops balance, but more importantly, helps us observe our "self-punishment process". Once we see this process in action, we have a better chance of transforming it.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods

Video Transcription

okay this is like one of those one bizarre tip that's going to make everybody like you videos or something I don't know but this is actually a an exercise that I've done myself before quite a bit but I'm going to be incorporating it with the forest marks coming out to rewire the university this year because I think that this one little exercise has a lot of benefits now if I skip right to the exercise I imagine someone you're gonna click away because it just looks too strange like what are you doing I'm gonna do it anyway and risk that so here's what you do

you're gonna take both hands put them on your chest this is so you're not using them out on the side to balance and then you're just gonna lift up one foot but the key is you're gonna do it with your eyes closed

we do it with our eyes closed we should find it a lot more challenging if you start off you just lift it a little teeny bit I've lifted a couple of inches off the ground that's one thing but if I lift it there and that's too easy for me then try lifting it way up high and see if you can balance then we tend to lose our balance when we close our eyes is that any big deal well maybe not but by practicing this on both sides on different terrains you're gonna find if you try it inside on a flat floor it's gonna be much easier try it on the snow or something that has uneven terrain that gives a little bit it's gonna be much more challenging why do this okay here's all those benefits I was talking about

first of all balance is always a good thing if you're walking through the woods and we're stumbling around animals see us people see us we tend to get hurt when we close our eyes visually unless you're already blind then this probably doesn't apply to you you're you've already got this skill down but if we're seeing

if we close our eyes we lose our vision our balance skills deteriorate significantly and often I'll take people out for their very first ever pitch dark walk through the woods and it's very sobering to see how much we're stumbling around falling over things as soon as we lose that vision we lose our balance so that's benefit number one balance in the dark you never know and that's going to be called upon benefit number two is this helps to hone your in general balance if you're doing balance training you just want to get better at it what I'd recommend is that you remember to do static balance by that I mean balancing for instance on a balance beam that doesn't move it off do dynamic balance that's when you're walking or moving on something that shifts a lot so out here we use a slackline but a the average kind of fallen young tree in the woods that you're balancing across is going to wiggle too and have that same effect then make sure you practice balance with your eyes open and again with your eyes closed all these skills they are not the main benefit that you're going to get from this the main benefit is going to be a mental one because here's often what happens people will start off with this exercise and they'll get up and we'll try it huh okay that was fine ah come on

you can see what's happening so I'm certain get frustrated if I begin to get frustrated then the energy that I'm using in frustration is not being applied to the task at hand I call this our self punishment process and most of us have this operating at some level if this is operating inside of us it is going to take energy away a from learning something a new skill and B from being able to function in a real-life situation

perfect example is some of the challenges I do out here with students let's say it's it's kind of a rainy windy day and I am taking you outside on a challenge to try to start a fire with one match can you do it now if your mind is solely on the task then a your chances of success are going to go up and B even if you fail you're gonna have learned a lot because you're gonna have paid attention to the different materials you used how much attention you were paying to the paying to the direction of the wind if you sheltered your fire from the driving rain you're gonna learn a lot if my self punishment process is going on then a lot of that energy that could have been applied towards building my skills will have just gone into being stupid this is impossible why am I even trying to do this yeah a lot of times people will go out to take on a tough challenge and I can see in their eyes before they've even started it's not gonna happen they're not gonna make it because they've already decided that they are not up to the task that's self punishment mechanism that voice inside of us that says I'm not good enough I can't do this this is too tough that nothing operates and it takes so much energy from us this exercise is great because it helps to turn that process off it can teach us a different way of dealing with it here's my first way of dealing with it come on Kevin don't even know to balance here's the second way here I'm just allowing myself to make mistakes and realizing that every second that I spend with my eyes close to my leg up my skill is increasing so just doing it they're almost meditatively I don't have to laugh at myself I don't have to get down on myself all I have to do is practice the skill and keep practicing the skill and when I do that I'm trusting that my body my mind are picking it up when I go out and I try that wet fire challenge same thing if I just allow myself to do it

I concentrate on performing this task as best I can then I'm going to learn them automatically gonna pick stuff up it's that simple when when there's a real-life tough situation you know there's that time when you're out and you got you lost your pack and people are depending on you to start a fire in the rain that's when this really is going to come in because if you're sitting there thinking oh my gosh what if I fail I can't do this all that energy is going into a place that does you no good when you concentrate on that task at hand and just do it the best you can then nine times out of ten you're gonna surprise yourself it's a simple exercise closing your eyes hands in me up see what happens notice if that self-punishment process is engaged in you if it is just see if you can trust your body trust that it is learning that it's absorbing that it's building skills whenever you try anything else in life see if you can do the same thing turning that process off it's not actually too difficult sometimes it helps me to just think you know what this skill if I can get this in 10 years awesome and that relieves the pressure of performance for me it allows my body my mind to just learn a skill that's again something I learned from my wife Rebecca where she would just say you know what give yourself 10 years to get this and often it happens much faster than you would imagine try this exercise out tell me if you experience that self-punishment process where else you've experienced it in your life and if you have noticed being able to transform it shut it off whatever you want to call it how does that change your ability to learn and to perform under difficult situations thanks for watching my friends