You know what you should do. Horse stance can help.
I’m not talking about your boss’s orders or meeting society’s expectations. You can summit those heights without horse stance. They offer carrots, sticks, and cheerleaders aplenty; godspeed.
I’m talking about that other category of shoulds. The ones that feel more important and less lucrative and practical. The ones we can’t muster enough willpower for.
Some shoulds are worthless psyops we’ve been duped into, some are unachievable, and some are just derailed by fate. But none are as sad as the worthy ones we can’t bring ourselves to chase.
We all have at least an inkling of what a sovereign human being with our abilities and perspectives should do. To put it philosophically, we know what a more virtuous version of us would do that we will not.
So why aren’t we doing it? Perhaps we’re too enslaved to the ease of not doing it. When our body or mind cries foul, we crumple like a wet paper bag. “Maybe next time, ideals,” we sigh.
Physical Training as Philosophical Training
“Deal sternly with the body lest it fail to obey the mind.”— Seneca, Letters, 8.5
Until old age intervened, the philosopher Seneca started each year by plunging into the frigid canal running through Rome’s Campus Martius
It was fed by the pure water of the Aqua Virgo, which still powers the famous Trevi Fountain — a mindboggling feat of continuity. Yet I suspect anyone restarting Seneca’s New Year’s tradition there would see armed polizia closing in, which is both understandable, kind of funny, and slightly frustrating.
Seneca, Musonius Rufus, and Epictetus insisted philosophers must train themselves to willingly do hard things if they want to live the good life. Voluntary physical and psychological stressors are high on their list, and today, those are going extinct. We’re wrapped in suffocating blankets of ease that whisper “Lie back and take it easy. Just watch the screen.” I imagine modern Romans could use a yearly Trevi polar plunge as much as the rest of us.
Epictetus calls these voluntary discomforts “hard winter training,” referencing the Roman Legions’ cold-weather drills. Musonius wants us to “accustom ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, scarcity of food, hardness of bed, abstaining from pleasures, and enduring pains.”
But why?
Modern Voluntary Hardship
This ancient advice has gotten a boost from modern research over the last few decades.
Studies find voluntary hardship and exercise inoculate humans and animals against stress and reduce their response to pain. It boosts inhibitory mechanisms and regulates anxiety by calming overactive brain circuits, making stressful situations and looming to-dos feel less overwhelming. The result is a dampened fear response, better emotional control, and increased agency via improved persistence.
During voluntary hardship, our brains are flooded with BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It boosts neuroplasticity so we’re best able to rewire our familiar patterns, which may not be serving us.
This is why we should practice positive self-talk that moves us in the direction of what we want to be while doing hard things. It ends up making hard things more palatable, or even desired. We’ll talk about this more in a bit.
The current research doesn’t give enough granularity to determine “best practices,” so from here I’m relying on experience.
I’ve experimented with exercise and deprivation for 20 years, and while minor willpower improvements and pain desensitizations result from many, only a few seem to boost my willpower across domains. That’s what we should want from “philosophy training” — domain agnostic increases in the ability to do hard things when pleasant surrenders beckon.
Why Do Some Hardships Work Better?
Here’s my theory. The best choices…
* Are self-willed and without peer pressure/social pressure. No one but us must care if we execute them. Exercise classes won’t cut it. Don’t tell people you’re doing them, as praise and respect works against us. The goal is to respect and rewire ourselves. Each hardship is a potential crucible for reforging ourselves into what we want to be.
* The best options allow us to push well past our comfort zone and physical limits without risking injury. Heavy barbell lifts won’t work, since if you get tired and your form breaks down, bad things happen.
* Simple high-rep exercises like pushups aren’t great, since they’re easy for most of the set and only become very hard at the end when we’ve only got a few more reps in the tank.
* They must allow you to recover quickly enough to do them daily, if desired.
* I’m less impressed by heat training than the ancient philosophers seem to be. I live in Texas and train outside in temps over 90 degrees for much of the year, and over 100 degrees for several months. I don’t notice any transfer to general willpower; it simply adapts me to heat. I do think cold plunges might work, but haven’t spent enough time with them to know.
* I did a lot of long-distance running in my twenties, but I find it’s not excruciating enough until you get over 15 miles (who has time?). Before that it’s often mildly unpleasant, or even enjoyable. And it’s too easy to injure yourself by running through pain. YMMV
* Although not critical, I give extra points to anything that can be scaled to the infirm and out of shape, requires no special equipment, and can be done almost anywhere and anytime.
So what fits this bill?
Horse stance is at the top of my list, with plank in second place. They’re technically physical exercises, but really psychological crucibles. Both are scalable, require no equipment, can be done anywhere and any time, and can be achieved — via progressions — by most out-of-shape and infirm people. Record holders in each do them for over 15 minutes, so there’s room for growth.
I choose horse stance because I enjoy its many knock-on physical benefits. I’ve noticed few from plank, but that might be because of the other types of training I do.
The Horse Stance
I’ve found nothing more effective than Horse Stance for boosting my ability to stay the course when ease-filled surrender beckons. It helps build a meta skill for life.
Practice daily and you’ll gain mental strength and focus. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. Every second is an opportunity to push yourself further than you think you can go. It recalibrates your understanding of what pain and hardship even look like.
So Try:
Set a timer. Perhaps thirty seconds if you’re out of shape. Several minutes if you can manage it. Every day add 5 seconds to your time.
* No distractions. No music. No podcasts. You want an intimate understanding of the unpleasantness that will occur so you can reframe to it rather than ignore it.
* Feet wider than hip distance with toes turned out.
* Squat until your butt is at your knees, or whatever you can manage. But this is not a full ass-to-grass squat. You’re halfway between the ease of standing and the ease of squatting in the worst way imaginable.
Now stay there. No, I mean, really stay there. No, I mean really, really stay there. Your mind begs you to stop. Don’t. Your legs will scream. They’re overreacting. Don’t bail. Go through till the timer goes off.
While this is happening your mind is probably spewing b******t based on old patterns that don’t serve you. Luckily, since your brain is being flooded with BDNF, there’s no better time to rewire it for future success.
That means positive self-talk.
“This is too hard,” becomes — I can do this; there’s no reason why I can’t. In fact, I’m doing it right now.”
“This is pointless,” becomes, “This is the most worthwhile thing I can be doing right now — building my agency, resilience, and ability to pursue my goals.”
The longer you hold, the more evidence you gather of your agency. Each successful day of horse stance builds proof that you can do the same again tomorrow, and in fact can do many hard things you’ve been shirking.
Every day that starts with horse stance seems to be full of me racking up wins that might have eluded me. Though it’s often the most physically unpleasant and psychologically demanding part of my day, I actually look forward to it in a way that feels slightly unhinged, and I suspect it’s because I’ve used the combination of BDNF and positive self-talk. It’s become a pleasantly anticipated pain-satisfaction hybrid.
Oh…and then there’s the physical prowess that result. Better biking, hiking, and rucking, and more graceful aging. But I’ll let the fitness gurus tell you about that.
Thanks for reading Socratic State of Mind.
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