Elliott Hulse

I’m ready to launch.

Elliott Hulse

My first experience with how the body holds unto a psychological experience is when I began with dynamic meditation for healing over a decade ago and I’ve been studying the work of Osho as it related to meditation.

Now, mind you at that time, I’m a fitness coach and I’m just looking into meditation for healing and my own personal growth. I was going through a rough time. Osho‘s position on meditation is that we are to still the body in order that the mind may be still.

You know when people aren’t still because you can watch them grind their teeth or tap their foot or just be fidgety, cannot being able to sit still, stand still, or even be in silence is a challenge. It made sense to me. I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder when I was a kid and I don’t like to be still physically.

When Osho describe his meditation for healing, the dynamic meditation as a way to get in touch with the movement in our body, most of it is unconscious. Getting in touch with it is the first part. Releasing it and then allowing energy to circulate and settle in the body in order to find stillness. I knew that it was something for me.

Being an athlete, I’ve always been drawn to things that are very active. So this dynamic or active meditation made a lot of sense to me and I went to New York City.

At that time, I was leaving in The Long Island and went to a workshop where we did 21 days of dynamic meditation for healing. I know you guys are familiar with it but for those who are listening, it is a very physical exercise. It’s a meditation that requires that we charge the body with breath, building the energy in the body. Almost like when you’re running and sprinting, you’re charging the body with breath but with type of charging that’s associated with the first stage of this five stage meditation is very different and it causes you to move a lot.

Elliott Hulse

That’s exactly the idea. It is to find stillness through the exact opposite. We know things by their contrast. When we get very enrolled in movement, especially chaotic, we can find that we can springboard to the opposite end of the spectrum, which is the stillness that we’re really after.

Elliott Hulse

Well, active meditation for healing led me to bioenergetics. Bioenergetics comes from Alexander Lowen who was a student of Wilhelm Reich.  This is what I spent the past several years studying and working with alongside building my fitness business and working on myself.

Wilhelm Reich was a student of Freud who was a psychoanalyst. Just like Freud, he would work with the psychological issues that his clients had but he began to notice something very different when he was working through the psychological aspect.

What he began to notice is that the person’s body, particularly their breath would begin to change depending on what experiences they had.

For example, someone began to speak of a particular abuse or fear or anxiety that they’ve had, their breathing would become shallow and the way they would hold their body changed. So he started putting two and two together and started realizing that perhaps, there’s something going on in the body related to what’s happening in this person’s mind and their emotions.

What he decided to do was instead of standing or sitting behind his client and listening to them talk while they were laying on the bed or the couch, he brought himself around to the front of them where he could watch them, watch their body, watch the way they breathe in order to get a better look at what is actually happening with an individual, and his therapy moved from just working with talk approaches to actually supporting the person in how they breathe and bringing their conscious awareness to holding their body.

He went so far as to recognize patterns in how people would hold their body and how that would translate into their posture. This is where me, as a fitness coach began to explore, why is it that some of my clients can’t improve their posture? Why do they always seem to have certain physical pains and ailments? Why do some people have very low charge? They can’t breathe heavily. Why are some people ungrounded in their breathing? It always seems like they’re chaotic.

Working with fitness clients and looking at their bodies and knowing about Wilhelm Reich’s work in character structure, I began to really pay close attention to how people’s postures, their physical strength, their physical health, their muscular system was being manipulated by what was going in their mind.

Elliott Hulse

Yeah. Once again, the body is the mind. I began realizing that my fitness routines were not only changing their bodies, but changing their characters.

Back when I worked with high school and college football players in the very beginning of my career, a skinny young man who was kind of underdeveloped and awkward comes into my gym and then, four months later, he’s walking out with a swagger and all of a sudden, he’s grades are better and he’s got more friends and girls are recognizing him.

At that point, I realized that what we’re doing as fitness coaches go far beyond just what is on the surface. We’re really changing people’s character and we’re changing their lives through meditation for healing.

Elliott Hulse

Good marketing is divisive. Anyway, one of the first things I learned as a marketer, putting everything else aside like my mission in life and vision for the world.

As a student of marketing, particularly of direct response marketing, I was a student of Dan Kennedy. It’s very helpful to have firm stances on particular topics even if it causes people to be turned away from you. Just as many people are turned away from you and the intensity by what’s they’re turned away from you is mirrored by the exact opposite. The firmer I have become in expressing who I am, the stronger my relationship to the right fans, customers, and clients.

Elliott Hulse

Early in my career I became a student of Paul Chek. He was a holistic health practitioner who in the 1990’s began teaching various forms of what you would call, “Holistic Health” to personal trainers and I became very fascinated with that when I was still in college. I was still learning. I was not a professional yet but that coupled with my thirst for inner knowing and God gave me a particular mission that I haven’t really shared with many people.

When I went into the fitness industry, it was my intention to bring holistic health and meditation for healing to the average meathead. That was my private mission and I said, “I’m going to bring these expansive ideas to a rigid marketplace.” It looked as if I was one way. I mean, like you said, if you watched some of my videos, you see the way I’m behaving or the words I’m using and the way I’m being. I’m trying to appeal to a large audience. That was my intention. My intention is to have millions of followers.

I don’t want to say I did a bait and switch because I always had this holistic approach. That’s why my videos became popular. However, at some point I decided now is the time that I got to separate the wheat from the chaff and if you’re not willing to go there with me, then that’s okay. I’m really looking forward to those who not only want bigger, stronger bodies because that’s just part of the equation. But, want to be what I call the “strongest version of themselves” and that’s a holistic approach.

Elliott Hulse

I think we alluded to it earlier. When you ask people what success is and you trace it back to, “I have a big house. I have a nice car,” and why? So that I could have a wife so I can have someone to enjoy myself with. So on and so forth and you get down to the root of it and so that they can be happy. Happiness is the root and what we’re really after.

Elliott Hulse

However, that’s not available if we’re anxious. That’s not available if we’re riddled with all kind of muscular imbalances that don’t allow us to breathe softly.

We could be happy just standing in the sun where most people aren’t available when the sun’s beating down on them or warming them because they’re distracted and they’re elsewhere. Our minds are almost like schizoid.

Elliott Hulse

Yeah, this is a lot of fun.