Get a picture in your mind of a sink’s basin.
A sink has a faucet that lets water in, and a drain that lets water out.
Turn on the faucet and, in most sinks where the drain isn’t blocked or shut off, the water flows out faster than it flows in.
Add a stopper to the drain while the faucet’s open full-blast and the water level rises.
Remove the stopper and it drops.
Still with me?
How you feel at any moment in time is like the water level in this imaginary sink.
Whether you feel tore up and beat down, or you’re riding the snake on a rocket to the moon, what looks and feels like a permanent condition is the result of two forces pulling two different directions.
One fills the tank, the other empties it out.
How you’re feeling Right Now is all to do with the water level in the sink.
The water is an example of what is called the “stock”.
The faucet adding water, and the drain taking it away, are examples of “flow”.
Stock levels depend on flows in and flows out.
One way to imagine your body is as flows of energy that create stocks of bone, blood, hair, skin, muscle, and all the rest.
Energy flows in, energy flows out. Is it growing, slowing, holding steady, or going in reverse?
If you can picture this in your mind, you’ve understood Level One.
Oh yes, there is more.
Where’s the energy come from, and how do you access it? There’s a lot of depth to that little question.
How does the sink change as it gets used to having more water flow through it?
What happens if you’re overflowing with water? Or if the drain is blocked?
Don’t try to answer. Sit with the questions and notice what your mind turns up.
Stress levels, fatigue feelings, and your real energy and performance abilities are not what they appear to be.
We’re used to talking about being fatigued, being tired, being exhausted.
Being this, being that.
Being is stock, and stock is the result of flows.
Your body has to play by the laws of nature. But those laws include the laws of change.
Nothing’s quite as it appears because appearances rarely include the dynamic motion of the flows.
A snapshot of a river is nothing like standing in front of the raging waters surging past you in the spring-time floods.
That’s one of the more important pieces of advice I can give anyone trying to eat and train their way to a better body.
Can you open your eyes and see it?
Matt Perryman