Oh, Mastery - Having a Free Attentional Focus in Cooley Yoga with Bob Cooley

This event is open to all ages, abilities, and levels of experience.

The only prerequisite is an interest.

This is a great way to be introduced to Resistance Flexibility.

About Resistance Flexibility

The Genius of Flexibility introduces the Resistance Flexibility™ (RF) training of Bob Cooley. Resistance Flexibility advances and unites physical therapy, yoga, personal training, psychology, traditional Chinese medicine, and Genetic Personality Type theory.

Resistance Flexibility is a unique, hands-on modality used to develop athletes and performers, rehabilitate the severely and ordinarily injured, and help people of all walks of life achieve their goals. Based on an original biomechanical and energetic analysis of the body and personality, RF achieves unprecedented results.

Course Objective

This workshop is designed to introduce participants to the concepts, principles, and practice of RF. This includes basic self stretches, basic assisted stretches, and an introduction to the physiological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual upgrades that RF can facilitate.

This course includes lots of physical activity, but you work at your own pace. Variations are taught for every exercise allowing people of all ages and abilities to fully participate.

Preview of Concepts Covered

This course will teach you new concepts about flexibility such as...

• Inflexibility is not caused solely by tense muscles, but by the dense fascia and/or scar tissue that has accumulated in and around the muscles.
• You must continuously resist and contract a muscle while lengthening it in order to exceed the tensile strength of the accumulated dense fascia which results in immediate increases in flexibility and strength.
• Most of the increases in flexibility occur when the muscle starts in a position where it is as short as possible and then lengthened, not at the end point of the stretch where the muscle is already fully elongated.
• The flexibility of a muscle is not just limited by its own health and ability, but by the shortening capacity of its balancing muscle group.
• It is commonly thought that simply weight training a muscle increases its ability to shorten, however, the ability of a muscle to shorten is dependent on its resistance flexibility.
• Range of motion does not equate to flexibility. True flexibility includes the health of the tissue and the muscle's ability to continuously and fully contract concentrically, eccentrically, and isometrically throughout that range. Extreme range of motion is often an indicator of hyper mobility potentially leading to instability and damage of the joint structures.
• Stretching is not just a physical activity, but has direct and predictable associations with the physiological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual parts of a person.
• Stretching is not just a solo activity. Maximal results require the participation of others through assisted stretching.
• ...and so much more!

Certification Precursor

This is a great workshop to take before attending a certification course, which provides a deeper learning experience.

You decide what you want to do. Then, this idea of what you want to do directs you to pay attention to different phenomena inside and outside yourself. This teaches you how to master the activity. You don't get to decide what to place your attention on. Instead, the idea directs your attention. We have a representative mind. You dwarf the rate of your learning if you try and direct your attention. It takes three years to master something. Legs, arms, breathing, and then idea is the order in which mastery happens.

This concept is contrary to what most everyone is taught about the mind-body connection. People are taught that they can control their attention and place it on any number of great ideas – fools gold. Often in most forms of physical training, the teacher suggests to you what to pay attention to. But there are 10,000 things to learn in order to master any one thing, and every one of those things is "up" for a person to learn at that particular time and place. Be where your attention is, whether it is inside or outside, and you return to learning at the rate of a child.

Example: Each day I self stretch. As I begin a stretch I do each day, I return to having my attention to where it was the day before. Then, it either stays there because I have more to learn, or it moves onto something else. Sometimes my mind stays on the same thing for but a moment and then moves on, and other times it stays on the same thing for months. My memory is very much hierarchically stacked based on when I learned the aspect of something I am trying to master. Characteristically, I review by paying attention to the things I learned previously before moving onto new things. Some days I can learn many new things and on other days I learn one new thing. The number of things is not a measure of my learning rate but instead the value of any one thing I am learning.

People need to know that their bodies naturally resist the moment they begin to elongate a muscle. It even happens if they are asleep (I have Resistance Stretched people while they sleep). This resistance is initially manifested involuntary, but can also be used voluntarily by increasing that tension and resistance when both self stretching or when being assisted. Whether or not a person is conscious of this involuntary resistance does not determine whether it happens or not, but it does determine if additional tension can be corralled to increase the acceleration of the results.