That's the question, or theme, of this week.
So what are the pros and cons? I don't psychically feel like physically becoming that brawny. Truthfully, it'd be such a departure from my natural morphology for starters, but the amount of meat consumption necessary the complete an appropriate protein profile would be just ridiculous. On a moral level, the plane from which all of this emanates, I would be considerably uncomfortable taking responsibility for that level of animal sacrifice. I just think I'd find it quite obscene to attain a physique comparable to more muscular depictions of the Batman.
More wraith than man. Bare-chested love god? Again, a compelling case could be made that lothario's like Russell Brand manage to maintain the mantle of love god whilst being more yogi than beefcake. I'd somewhat like to make a deal with myself, whereby I trade in heavy-lifting and serious weight gain in favour of a Zen warrior holistic, a regimen of aikido and hatha yoga.
30 year's in to life, your body's demonstrated it favours the legs and aerobic system over your top half, arms and weight training. Bodyweight stuff is great. But if you're Batman - let's say you - were to focus in on an aspect of oneself outside of the mind, what would YOU do?
I'd combine the no-mind i.e. mushin, with the body. I'm in the practice of push-ups, and will resume barbell-based weight training, and perhaps even get a pull-up bar, once am home. You've nominated targets for sustainably developing that.
But my instinct would be to combine the soul with the physicality, approaching them as One. I do feel that's represented via the disciplines of both yoga and aikido.
My only reticence with aikido is finding a dojo am comfortable with. The dojo is East Village was superlative. I would actually be open to driving to the Belmore Rd dojo a couple evenings a week. Perhaps even the Doncaster Bikram studio. I think it worthwhile to try other disciplines of yoga. Experiment with studios. I think an investment of both time and money would serve you excellently.
So something is forming here. I'd like to identify an aspect I'd dearly like to cast in relief here. The attitude toward this discipline - it must be Japonais. It cannot be Americano. That is my precondition. If you go gung ho Americain, it'll destroy you. That's the way of steroids, if only figuratively.
It's clear to me that if I follow an American approach, it simply will not be sustainable. The only sustainable path, I hope, is the Way of Zen. I must pursue that, even in my yoga practice, albeit originally a practice originated in the Indian subcontinent. Bikram yoga has always been a good fit for me when practiced through the lens of wā, the Nippon word for 'harmony' and a synonym for The Land of the Rising Sun itself.
Aikido would be a way to formalise your focus of Zen also.
So it's clear and hopefully offers a sustainable path of personal, physical and spiritual. development.
This Batman film cultivating in both yourself and Joseph's head is increasingly taking on an anti-American twist for you. Or should I say a path which washes over the USA, ignoring it, as a stream passes over the rocks as a metaphor of Zen, like a passage from aikido's missal, The Art of Peace.
If you take the Way of America in your training, it will be unsustainable. It will be your folly, your downfall. This Batman film is morphing in to "your Godfather", a tale about America. You know deep down, you want to see this film spark the demise of the United States of America. To put its hegemony to the side, ignored thereafter, whatever nominal power it retains. It's power in the spiritual collective will be an abstraction, it's claim to sovereignty in the minds of a populace within and without evaporated. A community no longer willing to imagine such a community.