a skillful swing play

photo: Joanna Kniaź-Hawrot

When I imagine a crowded children’s playground, one place quickly comes to mind. It is children lining up to a swing (maybe that’s where we begin to chase or collective dream of conquering the skies?).

The interesting principle about this thing that many of us used to love (and many retain the feeling through their adult lives ;) is that you increase the fun – the amplitude that is – by going skilfully into the extremes. By moving the energy rhythmically, we produce what physics calls resonance – the jolly feeling of increasing the “flight time”.

I can’t help but think how this principle could apply to my life.

Can exploring extremes have some real value?

What kind of amplitudes and qualities could it affect? The amount of fun and playfulness in my life? The sense of being alive? Sustaining the movement that is a synonym of life? The ability to become more comfortable with discomfort? Increasing the range on the wisdom scale?

And is it what trying everything at least once is about?

We pretty much lean to one side of the spectrum breadth – towards maximizing safety, wealth, health, etc. I was going to add to this emotional stability, but on second thought, that is not exactly what many of us seem to be after :)

Anyway, while this is an understandable leaning, doesn’t this still make for an unbalanced life experience? Isn’t there a need for exploring two opposing forces to have a vibrant (life) force field rather than a flaccid one? Just like with the North and South Poles that create a force field protecting the Earth from dangerous staff from the cosmos. 

In many senses, we are all bipolar because we exist somewhere between two polarities. Life and death. Feminine and masculine. Love and fear. Yin and Yang. Stability and adventure. Not having children and having children :)

So perhaps, after all, we could do with expanding more towards the other side of the extremities that we usually instinctively avoid.

But, but, but, the trouble is that some extremes can be dangerous and scary places. Could exploring them  s k i l f u l l y  make them more safe and approachable? I think so.

Here are a few examples of what I would like to skilfully explore one day:

Cold showers and ice baths (the benefits really are mind-blowing).

A supervised full-blown psychedelic experience to map where the limits of my mind are (or maybe just see that there are none?)

Spending a couple of days/nights on the streets as if being a homeless person, with all its consequences (and doing it in a way that will respect people who actually don’t have a luxury of choice to switch, as I do now).

Spending a week on a darkness retreat.

Would you be up for mapping your possible territories of extremes-exploration?

This post flows with Les Baxter - Roller Coaster