is pain the path to presence?

the present might be painful if someone bought you some knives for christmas and you cut yourself all up due to overzealous gift unwrapping...

Today’s workout was in zone five.

Zone five for two minutes means pedaling my bike on the trainer so hard that everything hurts and I’m gasping for breath.

Here’s the deal.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I’m using instructions and having some faith that in any new learning, the mistakes will kick my arse enough to slowly grind me into some sort of order.

Today’s ride involved getting my heart rate up to zone five - 90 - 100% of my maximum heart rate for two minutes then getting it back to zone two before hammering this out five times.

And I don’t like zone five. It’s tough to stay at that level of exertion for two minutes.

Eventually though?

I’m learning how to build my heart rate up - right up to about a hundred and seventy beats per minute!

I just push a little more.

But then?

It takes a full two minutes to bring it down around a hundred and twenty per minute.

I spend a lot of time focused on my breathing. With mental effort, I focus on my breath and looking for tension - working a few g…