Stretching vs Chasing

Guys, this week’s preamble is really late. Like almost didn’t happen. Making it less of a preamble and more of a “post-blunder.” We’ve been on the road, the Oregon Trail. Except we didn’t go West, but East. Following the river to a place where it bends. Where the hipster lumberjacks and the blogging loggers come to a head. A place that doesn’t just look like a Patagonia ad. It IS a Patagonia ad. I gotta say, I’m sold. I subscribe.

Bend, Oregon, is a sparkly, well manicured natural wonderland.

Serenaded by babbling streams and a major artery running down the middle, called the Deschutes River. A pump system that the town latches onto to stay close to its pulse. If you ever have the opportunity to float this icy bloodline, do it. Now I know why they say “the river runs THROUGH it.”

You and your tube are not going to gently roll over it, or ride above. No, you and your low-hanging bum will get dragged along the boulders below. So by the time you reach the shore you have been chaffed down to a smooth skippable rock. Nature’s rinse cycle, except the body is still in the suit…if you’re lucky.

I think it is truly the only cure for a dopamine-driven tech-head, or an overwhelmed anxious parent, or a dopamine-driven anxious tech parent. Hours in freezing moving water without a phone. No control over your destination. It’s actually safer if you let go of the children. You’re forced to quite literally “go with the flow.” A true test of how your system responds to letting go. Challenging the chasers and stretchers within ourselves. The ones that need to know where they’re going and try to control it, and those who can adapt to the elements around them and just ride it.

The Stretchers definitely had the easiest time on the river, proving that the more you surrender and stop fighting the elements around you, the more your mind can free up and navigate effectively. When you take away your GPS and look up, you realize how much it was keeping you from seeing your actual location.

Back in January 2022, I wrote a blog about Chasers and Stretchers. It was a response to all the stretching we had to do during a time when a lot of our freedom and dependencies were taken away, and we were forced to be without our sense of norm, without a GPS—Covid times. A sense of unease and unknown that feels similar to our current political shitstorm, where personal freedoms, financial aids, and supports that we depend on are slipping away.

Written 1.18.2022

 What’s interesting is I’ve always heard the term “stretched thin” and associated it with having little stamina or capacity left. Recently however I’ve learned a whole new way of using the word “stretched.” Which is exactly what the title of Dr. Scott Sonenshein’s book is “Stretched.”

Didn’t read it of course because that requires stillness and time, BUT listened to a podcast about it.  In jest there are stretchers and chasers. Chasers are when you have the safety net of resources. Whether that be steady income, family inheritance, master degrees, ability to travel, the luxury of time, health, maybe just predictability. Resources that you’ve worked for or inherited or collected - but nevertheless acquired. When you have all the things you start to search for next best thing; the next exciting vacation destination, the higher promotion or degrees, that gold medal because you only have a silver - this is called chasing. These are the folks that are hard to shop for.

Stretchers are when you have a lack of resources and you have to stretch your imagination or the little resources you have to make up for what you don’t have. Stretchers is what you were when you had that first tiny apartment with a newborn or you started your own business or published a book with no funding.  It's the bootstrap marketing.  It’s the place we have to dig when we have to make a lot with very little. The most beautiful natural stretchers out there are children. The other day my (very bored) little one turned our kitchen floor into an ice rink, and performed an entire ice capade with wax paper and 2 tin cat bowls taped to her feet. 

We might already be assigning people we know as either stretchers or chasers. We actually all toggle between the two depending on our circumstance. But I can say we ALL became stretchers in March 2020, when we got word everything is closed down and cancelled.  We all had to stretch when we found ourselves downloading an app called ZOOM and rolled a mat out on the floor of our home to workout. 

According to Dr. Sonenshein, too much chasing can take away from the gift you have. Stretching is a unique admirable ability where magic happens. Incredible invention and solutions, even resolutions, are found. We’re forced to take risks. It’s always when you don’t have the ingredient you need in your fridge, so you go off script and use some other wild produce and spice.  Now you’ve just created everyone’s favorite family recipe.

My only class this week is Friday 7/25 at 10a. In honor of stretching, we’ll be playing with the spring and pulley systems in the studio. Stretching our capacity, pushing and pulling in unconventional ways, without a GPS or paddle, to create something magical. Then a special Pop-up class this Sunday, 7/27, on another moving body of water, the Fremont canal. I'll be leading a 45min mat class on the lawn outside Imperfetta at 5:30p, followed by a refreshing Spritz - A Schvitz and Spritz. Sign up is on Vagaro. A perfect way to celebrate balance, because after too much stretching there is snapping. That’s a whole other blog 🥴.

Excited to make your bodies sweat, smile, and stop chasing the river so you can let it run througth

XO,

Celeste