Weather Report: On Beauty

Post #13: "I Got This: The Art of Getting Grit" by Aniela & Jerzy Gergorek

If you have a copy of my book, Weather Report: A 90-day journal for reflection and well-being, with the aid of the Beaufort Wind Scale, you might have noticed two things; that you are daily invited to write or draw, 'one thing you found beautiful today', and a list of reading resources at the back. These are not unconnected.

This is a year-long project to write regularly, choosing one of the books from that list with a few wildcards too. I want to go deeper into the subject of beauty and, together with you who join me here, to deepen my own understanding of why it is important. Some of the books on the list are very recent; others are long-standing companions that I return to over and over. To me these are the kind of books that, having read them, I can gain solace simply from having them on my shelves.

The book I am featuring in this post is by the remarkable couple who are creators of The Happy Body, Aniela and Jerzy Gregorek.

I first encountered the work of the Gregoreks by accident on a podcast but there was something about the way Jerzy spoke about The Happy Body that made me take action to learn it. At the time my body was beginning to talk to me in ways that I didn’t appreciate - little creaks and groans that let me know the decades were advancing. The beneficial effects of first learning the Happy Body routine, then practising it daily were obvious to me very quickly. Jerzy speaks of the distinction between exercise and training—the former he dismisses as ‘entertainment’ while the latter produces results through focussed incremental effort, with purpose. Over a fairly short period of training with The Happy Body those creaks and groans from my body faded to negligible, then disappeared and were replaced by an increasing feeling of vitality and energy. But it was the extra dimension, the underlying concepts, that has made this such an invaluable life tool and given me resources to return to, to draw on in many different circumstances.

“The Happy Body program asks [you] to go from an average, repetitive, comforting existence to one where [you] feel challenged and alive, and suddenly visible. It asks [you] to take charge of [your] own life, make choices and be responsible for them. Not to blame or complain but find solutions within [yourself]—not only physically but emotionally, as well.” (Gregorek, p. 12)

Of course, looking after our own health is a responsibility, one that we might be persuaded is beyond us, too great a task. Too often we are insiduously persuaded to be dependent, to put our health and well-being in the hands of experts while we are simultaneously lured by ever more numerous, and conflicting, lifestyle options that very often increase the odds of developing ill-health and chronic conditions.¹ What is an individual to do? The invitation from the Gregoreks is clear; to work towards becoming a ‘master’, not a ‘fatalist’.

The modern environment in which most of us live might be far from ideal, indeed there is much that is harmful to us and other species. But change can happen when we realise that each of us can take small actions, consistently, in our own favour. My general suggestion to the clients I work with is to, ‘pick up the dumbbells’. Not to focus on completing the cycle of eighteen exercises, or on how many rounds, but simply to begin; ‘pick up the dumbbells’. With a small doable action we take our power into our own hands and almost always the rest will follow.

One of the results promised by the Gregoreks when this practice becomes a part of daily life is that of experiencing ‘triple happiness’:

“First, you’re happy because of the results: you’re more youthful and stronger. Second, you’re happy because you’re the one who achieved your goals; you’re proud of staying on course. And third, this happiness radiates out to others, increasing the joy around you.” (Gregorek, p. 32)

Themselves immigrants to the US, and lucky to escape from Poland with their lives during the political upheaval at the time of Solidarity in the 1980s, the Gregoreks draw on this experience in I Got This as an analogy for how we might choose to live. Do we behave like tourists, sampling various lifestyle options, or do we choose to become immigrants, immerse ourselves and “understand the why and how and how much, because in the end it is your life that you shape and own.” (p. 21)

It seems to me that much of this mindstyle applies beyond an individual approach to healthy living to extend to how we might take responsibility and look after the health of the wider environment, the planet on which we live. In post #8 in this series, which featured Russell Hoban’s novel, The Mouse and His Child, I noted the question about the senseless impulse to destroy beauty, which seems to be evident all around us. The interdependent complexity² of the natural world (and our own bodies) seems to raise a challenge to us in a way I find hard to express, and instead of working with it, in humility, respect and tenderness, we seem to be determined, through our lifestyles, to destroy it.

Of course, the magnitude of the issues at stake when we consider either the implications of climate chaos (already playing out in many parts of the globe), or the effects of aging on our physical bodies, can make individual daily efforts seem puny and useless. But I also know the concept of microprogression, a key principle of The Happy Body practice, to be real (and it also pre-supposes action) and it might be useful here to re-visit my post #2, on Peter Block’s book, The Answer to How is Yes.

What am I saying yes to here in this moment? I like Karena de Souza’s question in her recent Tilt the Future post: ‘What is the ‘size of me?’ The size of me as an individual is limited if I stay as an individual but who knows what may happen when I connect. I read and loved Dougald Hine’s recent book, At Work in the Ruins, and I have said yes to joining his online series, The Work in the Ruins, starting this week. Now and again I am fortunate to read something that sets me off on a trail of other readings that all have me nodding my head, say that great ‘Yes!’ of recognition. Two discoveries Dougald has led me to, and I highly recommend, are: Chris Smaje’s A Small Farm Future³ & Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s Hospicing Modernity. Dougald’s Substack is called Writing Home if any of this prompts you to dive deeper.

In the first edition of their manual, The Happy Body, the Gregoreks close with a page titled, “Finding Enough”, which concludes with the line; “There is overwhelming gracefulness in living without waste.”

Can we embrace the longer view, personally and collectively and rise to that beautiful challenge? Maybe by digging where we stand, abandoning the notion of being in some sense ‘tourists’ on this planet, and instead get to work. Like the subtitle of the Gregorek’s book, I Got This, develop the art of getting grit; ‘pick up the dumbbells’, in both the literal and metaphorical sense.

“What counts in a process of change is the doing, not the thinking or talking about change… You have to define what it is that you want to practice to become. Then just follow the practice.” (Gregoreks, p. 73)

Jerzy Gregorek discussing how ‘Choices make us free.’

1. I write this having every reason to be grateful for medical science and medical technology. There is a reason there’s been such a gap between the previous post and this one - with my thanks to, and admiration of, the care and skills of the medical professionals I encountered over recent months.

2. See my Post #6 on the aesthetics of fractals for example.

3. I have loved the term “locavore” ever since encountering the concept in Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, almost two decades ago and it’s why the title of Chris Smaje’s book immediately had my attention. Beyond the title, I suggest the contents are worth your attention too.

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