Frank Forencich > Quotes

“Warning: Before beginning an program of physical inactivity, consult your doctor. Sedentary living is abnormal and dangerous to your health.”
― FRANK FORENCICH, Exuberant Animal: The Power of Health, Play and Joyful Movement

“The way out of the drama triangle, as many spiritual teachers, therapists and coaches have suggested, is the creative orientation. This is where we exercise full responsibility and accountability. In this, we become artists and activists of our own lives, and focus our attention on the changes that we’d like to bring into being. As we move beyond old habits of blaming, complaining, excuses, and wishful thinking, life begins to open up. This becomes a world of opportunity, power, and freedom.”
― Frank Forencich, The Art is Long: Big Health and the New Warrior Activist

“Enlightenment doesn’t happen just once; enlightenment comes when we enter into a practice of doing it continuously. In other words, enlightenment is a verb.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“the ultimate point of our practice is to live the journey of life more completely. The goal is to experience the Beautiful Adventure of life in all its richness and wonder, to develop an intimate relationship with the totality of the world, the universe, the cosmos.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“The simple fact is that all forms of movement make us healthier.”
― Frank Forencich, Exuberant Animal: The Power of Health, Play and Joyful Movement

“When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied. Herophilus”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“We are witnessing nothing less than the emergence of a new educational paradigm, one that’s Copernican in scope and influence; the field of training and education has been blown wide open. When we couple the discoveries of modern neuroscience with the transformative practices of Eastern tradition, we come to the conclusion that almost any quality of mind, body or spirit can be sculpted by practice. We may not be able to change our hair color, but when it comes to the really important qualities of our bodies and life experience, it’s all there waiting for us, open to modification and refinement through beautiful training and practice.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“Life teaches that the measure of the value of any human desire is in direct proportion to the risk involved in its pursuit. To live meaningfully is to be at perpetual risk.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“Every movement discipline, from the most meditative tai chi practice to the most explosive gymnastics, tends to promote health. Almost everything “works” to some degree. Personality and preference have a lot to do with our choices and our success, but ultimately, it comes down to the actual doing. That’s why more and more public health specialists advise us to “Do the thing that you’ll actually do” and “Do something that you love.” Try a bunch of disciplines and when something turns you on, stick with it.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“Be an opportunist: Keep your eyes open for gaps in time and place where you can move your body. Seize the moment. Make stuff up: You don’t need to know specific routines, traditional postures or biomechanically-correct exercises. Start with some reaches, some pushes, pulls and steps. The right way is the way that feels good. Bend your knees: Your legs are powerful pumps. Use them to promote circulation of fluid throughout your body. Do some squats, take the stairs. Bending your knees helps to integrate the entire system. Reverse gravity: Many hours at a desk and in the car will deform your posture and pull your upper body towards the earth. This wreaks havoc on your upper back and neck. Counteract this tendency with intentional anti-gravity movements: stretch, reach and move toward the sky. Extend your back and adopt a posture of exuberance and vitality.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“John Ratey put it in Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, “There is a direct biological connection between movement and cognitive function…exercise is the single most powerful tool you have to optimize your brain function.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“Health is an intricate combination of diet, exercise, stress, culture and personality. It is also very much a product of sensation. The way that we absorb sensory information has a profound impact on our physical experience.”
― Frank Forencich, Exuberant Animal: The Power of Health, Play and Joyful Movement

“Today our minds are almost entirely free to choose whatever sensory experience we can imagine; we can and do innovate to our heart’s content. But the price we pay is excruciating. For those who suffer with crippling anxiety, depression and disordered attention, living apart from habitat will never be a path to health, performance or spiritual happiness. We need our habitat to make us whole.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“Knowledge is vital, but the true mark of mastery will lie in the way that you bring that knowledge to the ground, into the actual living of your life.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“Mark Twain said it best: “I’m an old man now, and I have known a great many problems in my life … most of which never happened”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“Physical experience is the groundwork for our journey. There is nothing sophisticated about this; the challenge is raw and primal. This is the basis for all of our arts and disciplines, all of our knowledge and our skill. No matter your profession or place in life, your body is your primary source for your everything you might want to do in life. This is where it all begins.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“In recent years, biological scientists have described the profound disconnect between the deep history of the human body and the reality of life in the modern world. This is often described as the “mismatch” hypothesis. All animals, including humans, are best suited to a certain range of environmental conditions. When there’s a match between an animal’s genetic heritage and its environment, that animal is likely to remain healthy. But if the organism is forced to live outside of its normal range, in an “alien” environment, it will suffer stress and ill-health.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“There is a contradiction in our desire to be secure in a universe whose very nature is fluidity and movement...If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet, it is this very sense of separateness that makes me feel insecure. In other words, the more security I can get, the more I shall want...”
― Frank Forencich, The Art is Long: Big Health and the New Warrior Activist

“Some typical guidelines: Show respect for people, process and place. Exercise responsibility and mindful attention. Be on time. Participate fully and stay for the duration of the session. Everyone works with everyone.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“This is where we find the classic rookie mistake. That is, we confuse achievement and process. At the beginning, we are quick to focus on externals, especially the carrots that are dangled before us as incentives. If we practice long and train hard, we’ll get the award, the attention, the recognition, the bonus, the lifestyle or the security. But as we mature, we find ourselves wondering if maybe we had it all wrong. The thing that really satisfied us was not the incentive, but the engagement.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“Today, many of us experience a profound sense of duality. The body is a vast, dark and mysterious unknown. It’s not to be trusted; it’s treacherous, traitorous and unpredictable. Anything could bring us down: a genetic wild card, an environmental toxin, a renegade organ, hormone or neurotransmitter. According to this view, we are mere victims of our physiology; things can go wrong without warning and we have no control. For others, the relationship with the body is adversarial. The body must be beaten into shape, tamed and brought to heel. We exercise like demons, living the belief that the body must be pounded into condition with endless sweating, suffering and pain. If we let up our efforts for a day or a week, we’ll degenerate into obesity, sloth and disease. Alternately, we abuse our bodies with all manner of substances and behaviors, trying to punish it for sensations, emotions and motives that we don’t understand or know what to do with. For still others, the primal relationship is marked by apathy and ignorance. The body is something far away; it’s a foreign land. We don’t know what it’s capable of and we don’t much care. As long as it gets us to work and back home at the end of the day, we’re content to leave it to its own devices. If something goes wrong, we’ll just take it in to the shop and all will be well. We’re not even curious about what it is or what it might become.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament

“Our brains are wired for a moderate number of human relationships, but today our social circles have shrunk to almost nothing and simultaneously expanded to include vast numbers of faceless individuals. To make matter worse, human communication is being degraded at a ferocious pace by electronic devices. The human brain and body evolved for social contact and communication in real time. In a normal, face-to-face human relationship, the entire mind-body participates in communication; posture, gesture and tone are vital for complete understanding. The actual words represent only a fraction of the total meaning. By disembodying the communication process, we make promote anxiety, confusion and alienation.”
― Frank Forencich, Beautiful Practice: A Whole-Life Approach to Health, Performance and the Human Predicament