Walking into Douglas Heel’s Be Activated Level 1 workshop alongside a bunch of other unsuspecting health and fitness professionals, I was totally unprepared for how amazing, controversial and utterly life changing the next 2 days would be.
Having watched hours of video footage of past presentations and heard first person accounts of the impact of his work, I was expecting improvements in my own mobility, strength and performance – but the level achieved was phenomenal. After just 60 secs of hip activations, so intense that I was reduced to sobs under Douglas’ hands, I achieved a physical goal I’d been trying years to master – flat-to-the-floor middle splits.
In 16 hours with Douglas, each as confronting, overwhelming and astonishing as the last, I’d had almost every concept of human movement and functional anatomy challenged. From the very foundation of the initiation of movement, through to how to actually activate my lagging and uncooperative glutes (hint: if you’re not looking to the back of your neck for answers, you’re looking in the wrong place), Be Activated, purely and simply, made sense.
Perhaps the most unexpected change was what I experienced psychologically, as the physical and emotional trauma I’d encountered through life was literally wrung from every tight, sore, obstinate muscle in my body. Walking out at the end of day 2, I felt more powerful, mobile and connected to my body than ever before, and more positive, weightless and aware than I’d been in years. Be Activated Level 1 promises to change your body- and it will- but it also has the power to change your life, if you’ll let it.
Alisha Smith, Network Magazine Australia, May 2015
