Lately I’ve been doing Pure Barre. Which as the website describes is a workout that combines ballet, yoga and pilates. Which I think is a gross understatement. Because whatever the hell it is, it’s way harder than any of those things.

It’s a workout that focuses on completely engaged muscles that move in tiny increments, and that burn burn burn for an hour straight. I like it because it makes me feel strong. I hate it because I’m miserable for about 50% of the time, in particular, during the thigh exercises.

Last week I was in class and I hadn’t been in awhile. And the instructor called for a chair position, which is basically when you stand straight against the ballet bar, pull out until your arms are straight, rise onto your “highest high heel” tippy toes, and sink down into a seated position until your thighs are parallel to the ground. This might be ok if that’s all you had to do, but they throw in some other fancy moves like squeezing a ball and tucking your hips to the beat of some top 40 song (Britney!).

About 15 seconds into it, my thighs begin to shake. Like…earthquake kinda shake.

And this is usually the part where I want to stop. To give up. Ease out of my chair position. And I swear these instructors are mind readers because just as I’m about to stop my “lifting and tucking” so my thighs will stop shaking, they say something  like…

“Embrace the shake ladies! It means that your muscles are changing” and “You can do it, keep going”  and “bikini season is coming up…let it shake.”

And I’m all like…”damn you instructor!! Can’t I just cheat out of it? Why you gotta be all talking right to me??”

And almost always, if I do embrace the shake, if I let it be there, the pain subsides. I can sink lower into my chair position. And by the time I’m done, I feel a sense of pride, knowing that I pushed through something that was hard.

And of course this got me thinking of life. So many of us are afraid of pain. Afraid of the things that feel “hard”. Afraid of that we won’t be able to make it (through a Pure Barre class or through life…in general). And because of this fear, we want to give up. Stop what we’re doing. Come out of the chair pose.

But simply coming out of it and stopping it prevents us from the change we seek, whether it be slender thighs, or that life we’ve been dreaming of. Our inability to push through the hard times prevents us from getting what we actually really want. We think we can’t go any further, but we’re always stronger than we think.

The only way to truly have change, is to do something different than you’ve ever done before. So the next time you feel your thighs shaking in Pure Barre class…embrace it. Let it be there. The next time you want to quit because things just aren’t working out the way you want them to, keep going. Embracing the shake is the only way. You WILL get through it. And what’s on the other side is everything you want.

And that is a Wildheart Life. Embrace. Keep going. Push through. You got this.

What kind of shake do you need to embrace right now? What are you facing that feels like you just can’t keep going? Share in the comments below.

XO, S

P.s. If you enjoyed this post and you want to be a part of the Wildheart Revolution…make sure you sign up for my mailing list HERE.

P.p.s. Make sure you get in on my Facebook action. That’s where the party’s going down.