When ‘Grounded’ Becomes Heavy

The other day at the gym, I asked my gym buddy Meghan what I thought was a rather offhand question: “Can you do a pull-up?”

The reason I thought it was offhand is because I thought I already knew the answer.

“Yeah, I think I can only do about five.”

Five??? She can do five pull-ups? I can’t even do one! I was only asking the question to receive confirmation of my own inability. I had simply assumed a pull-up was an impossibility that came with age. Granted, Meghan is younger than me, but still... five?

“Why, how many can you do?” she asked.

“None. I can’t even do a single one. You can really do five?”

To prove my point, I walked over, reached up to the bar, and hung myself from it like a piece of meat in a butcher shop. I was fully demonstrating my inability to pull myself up even the tiniest bit—hanging there like one of those 1970s office posters of a kitten that says “Hang in there.”

Meghan walked over, jumped up, and did a quick 4.5 pull-ups.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Not quite five.”

Now my mouth was hanging open, perfectly mimicking my body on the bar. “Really? How did you do that? I can’t even do one.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “It’s really mostly mental.”

So, I walked back over. This time, I jumped up to the bar, mimicking her approach. I still couldn’t do five pull-ups—heck, I still couldn’t do one. But the difference? This time I didn’t just hang there like deadweight. This time I actually pulled myself up. Not a lot, but an observable, noticeable amount.

“See!” Meghan said. “You can do more than you think!”

Mic drop.

When I first demonstrated how completely I could not do a pull-up, I realized something. I had hung there, limp, allowing all of the heaviness of my body to sink down toward the floor. Pure resistance. I was acting out my own assumption. The second time, when I jumped and used that upward momentum to carry me, I didn’t reach the bar, but I lifted myself noticeably higher.

Was it really all just mental?

Then it hit me.

I spend so much time in my horse-riding life trying to “find my deep seat”—that grounded, meditative sense of being rooted down into the saddle and the earth—that I had forgotten a basic truth of life: sometimes, you just need to jump.

Once I recognized it at the gym, I began to see it everywhere.

Lately, when I lift myself up into the saddle on my horse, I’ve noticed I groan a bit as I mount. It’s as though there is a heavy, default gravity working against me that I’ve just accepted as fact.

Is it mental? Probably. Is it physical? Of course. But is there something more? Yes.

It made me wonder: how often do we do this to ourselves?

I’m guessing you don’t all drop into a deep seat on a horse or stare down a pull-up bar every day. But how often do we focus on one good state of being to the absolute detriment of its opposite?

We think we always need to be grounded and centered, but we forget that at times we also need to be nimble and buoyant.

We think we need to be calm and collected, but sometimes the situation calls for being active and unapologetically powerful.

It reminds me of the modern obsession with “self-care” being defined mostly as lighting candles and taking bubble baths. Sometimes self-care looks like waking up at 6am and going to the gym. Sometimes self-care looks like saying no when everyone else wants to hear a yes.

One of my favorite “horse people”—the general category I use for the amazing humans I’ve come to know through my deep dives into the equine world—is somatic coach Jane Pike. She suggests that we fall into this exact same trap with our nervous system regulation.

It can be easy to think that “calm” is always the correct answer. But Jane points out that we aren’t actually looking for a permanent state of calm; we are aiming toward a flexible nervous system that is able to respond appropriately in the moment.

Sometimes that response will be gentle and quiet. But sometimes it needs to be active and powerful.

The same is true in our work with horses. If we are trying to approach a horse to halter it, then we want an energy that is calm and grounded. This energy says, “Come toward me, I am safe.”

But if that same horse is galloping full speed right at us? Well, in that case we want our energy to be big and powerful and authoritative — an energy that says, “Stop. Stay Back. I am big and powerful!” It is not just one or the other — it is an energy that responds appropriately to the situation.

Thinking about it now, I have to laugh at myself hanging there from that gym bar. I was Eeyore to Meghan’s Tigger, sighing, “See? I have too much heaviness” while she Tigger-like bounded up to the bar. I was confusing deadweight for grounding.

As for the pull-ups?

Gravity only wins if we give in to our resistance. Finding a deep seat is a beautiful, necessary anchor—but when life asks you to step up or change your trajectory, the most aligned thing you can do isn’t sinking down. It’s jumping for the bar, pulling with everything you’ve got, and seeing just how much of your own weight you can actually lift.

P.S. If you want to start building that momentum with the community right away, we are gathering this Sunday June 14 at 10am pacific for our monthly Take the Reins session. It’s a perfect, accessible way to step into this work. You can sign up here.