The CrossFit Open is the Misogi of the West. (and now the world)
What’s a Misogi? Misogi is a Japanese ritual. It generally involves making the pilgrimage to an icy waterfall and standing underneath the cold water, symbolizing intense purification.
Most of us will never make a pilgrimage to a waterfall, but anyone can walk into a CrossFit Gym, raise their hand, say “I’m in,” and let their life and their family’s lives be changed for the better.
Crossfit Gyms are lifeboats. We’re scooping people out of the ocean of misinformation around disease, nutrition, and what it means to live with vitality. We’re not doing it with legislation and pills. We’re putting barbells in people’s hands. We’re arming them with a list of poisons to avoid at the grocery store. Poisons that people whom they trusted in their government taught them were ok.
We’re uniting them in a movement.
The CrossFit Open is where all of this work culminates. Millions of people will take the most elegant solution to Western disease, armor it with community, crank up the music, and live louder than big pharma and broken institutions told them was allowed.
We’re not doing this thing one time to make a statement.
We’re doing it every. damn. year. until the tides turn and health becomes the rule, not the exception, in our culture.
If you’re new to CrossFit or the Open, you’re probably excited and nervous. Good- years of conditioning are peeling away. You have my permission to be nervous, scared even. If you’re on the outside looking in, take note. When the health and quality of life we deserve become something we’re skeptical of and fear, we’ve been under the influence too long.
We’ve been stuck inside the bottle, and it’s time to come out, read the label of what we’ve been taking, and choose something better.
So, if you’re thinking of trying CrossFit or the CrossFit Open…
This is not me telling you, “Go do it.” There are millions of us already on the other side, probably in a pool of sweat but all smiles, hoping for you to experience what you’ve been missing, possibly your whole life.
This is me walking into your feed on a leg that shouldn’t work, attached to a scarred body healed from maladies that Western medicine couldn’t fix but CrossFit did, raising my hand and saying,
“I’m in. Join me.”
