The Heart of Plank
The Heart of Plank
by: E. W. Shannon 10/12/20
I love when students tell me they can't do plank because they don't have a lot of upper body strength. Mentally I call BS while keeping a smile on my face. Most of my smile comes from remembering the three-minute plank already planned into my sequence.
To be fair, there are a few individuals who will need to come down to a forearm plank due to pre-existing wrist and shoulder issues. And sure, you might have wrist or shoulder aches while in plank, but those primarily stem from being in a static position laden with body weight. Think of the position we keep our wrists in while typing on a keyboard, plank puts those joints in the opposite position and adds weight; it's change, of course it's going to be uncomfortable. But why concentrate on the uncomfortable?
In fact, in most of life we tend to let 'uncomfortable' pull our attention. Things like the pandemic, this election decade we're in (oh wait, it only feels like a decade), money problems, other people's problems we take on, the past, the future, etc. Imagine your brain is a giant dry-erase board and you keep writing all the things, big or small, making you uncomfortable; eventually that board is going to be a mess. On top of being a mess, it's filled with a bunch of stuff not pertaining to your life in the present.
So, let’s start erasing. Like my students in plank, you can use the following tool to stop focusing on the uncomfortable. You don't have to be in plank, you can be sitting, lying down, if you're having a bad day at work you can even do it in the bathroom. (Just don't do it while driving.)
Close your eyes and start to concentrate on the smoothness of your breath and the beating of your heart. Once your breathing consists of long wave-like breaths (health permitting), turn your focus to your heart, specifically its movements. See if you can feel the front of your heart, the back of your heart, the top, the bottom, the right side, and the left side. Don't rush this, experience each side fully, savor the luxury of concentrating on yourself, try to discern what the heart is beating against, see if you can feel the different chambers moving.
Do this for at least three minutes, but you're more than welcome to make an entire meditation out of it. When you're done exploring your heart, take a deep breath and sigh it out, take another deep breath and sigh it out, and then open your eyes slowly.
And if you're wondering about those students who tell me they can't do plank, well, they do. I find no greater pleasure than, as I'm transitioning them to child's pose, congratulating them on doing a three-minute plank. Sometimes one will look up and give me the stink eye as if to say, "You bastard, you tricked me."
