Today we’d like to introduce you to Frank Yang.
Hi Frank, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
It all started when my mom made me practice the violin at the age of 5. I practiced 2 hours a day, every day for the next 20 years, and ended up majoring in classical music. But my mind was on the fine arts (filmmaking, photography, sculptures, and installation) fitness, and philosophy.
At 14, I aspired to be a cheetah, the fastest animal on the planet. So I began sprint training. While looking at sprinters’ physiques, I discovered that function and form were identical, so I started benching, squatting, and deadlifting until I could bench 2X my body weight, squat 400 lbs, and deadlift 500 lbs raw. I also hit a 40-inch vertical jump, exceeding the NBA average of 34 inches.
This quest for speed and vertical jump capabilities led to projects focused on strength, power, and subsequently, bodybuilding. The physical aesthetics project of sculpting the meat suit went hand-in-hand with the mental aesthetic project of molding the most philosophical, creative, and artistic mind, which then gave birth to performance art projects like playing the violin on the street in my underwear.
All the while there was an ongoing filmmaking project documenting every other project in an infinite loop that closes on itself like a cosmic snake biting its tale. All of the above gave birth to the consciousness exploration project, and through the practice of meditation, all of my interests converged into one symbiotic unity – Athletics, Aesthetics, Awakening.
Everything I was doing was fueled by 2 fundamental questions all human beings have asked.
1. Who/What am I?
2. WTF is this? (The Nature of Reality).
I consider life to be an ongoing process of transcendence: pushing the layers of mind, body, and reality to the edge of their boundaries. And then taking a quantum leap into the unknown until everything collapses into a singularity that manifests all of existence.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There hasn’t been much of a struggle because I’ve always done what I loved and never resisted resistance. I have always had very clear visions of what I wanted, so even moments of struggle were part of the flow.
Finding the Middle Way between intention and surrendering, effort and effortlessness, everything is perfectly aligned. There isn’t a sense of separation between you and the universe to feel otherwise. Everything is “simply unfolding on its own” without an individual observer or a sense of agency.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I coach fitness and meditation and make videos that combine bodybuilding with spirituality, sculptures with photography, and philosophy.
On the coaching side of things, my specialty is combining fitness with spirituality. I look at contemplative practices as “going to the gym for the brain”. I call my coaching service “Contemplative CrossFit”, using only techniques from various ancient spiritual traditions and customizing it for the modern mind in the digital world.
My art can be described as an interdisciplinary stream of consciousness. I have been documenting my life with a video camera and making vlogs before the internet was invented. My work evolved into performance art when I combined classical music with bodybuilding, installation with painting, photography, and sculpture. Since I find the moving image to be the closest representation of how the mind constructs Reality, I use filmmaking to weave all the different mediums together into a seamless Whole.
I also encourage people to document their spiritual gains the way people document their fitness journey. If you want to dissolve the separate self into the Infinite, you gotta “love the ego to death”.
I documented my awakening journey from beginning to end, explaining and demonstrating rigorous meditation practices, recording myself going on long silent retreats, and the breakthroughs and insights I experienced in real-time.
Some of the visuals I create with the 360 camera are a means to “transmit” the perceptual shifts in moment-to-moment experience as a result of my practice to the viewer.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk-taking.
To be honest, whether or not I’m taking risks isn’t something that I think about when I make decisions. When the mind is at its most Natural State, everything is fluid, spontaneous, and in the moment. Decisions simply appear out of nowhere and make themselves through the course of the least resistance.
After all, dualities are transcended, when there is no longer an individual entity apart from the boundless presence, emotions that are associated with risk-taking like fear and doubt vanish, and “risk” becomes just a story we tell ourselves. Another conceptual label we attach to the ever-changing never of reality.
Operating under this Realization makes everything you do more efficient because everything is infused with awareness. Whatever needs to be done gets done all on their terms at the precise moment. Every sensation is the perfect manifestation of itself, and every moment is synchronicity.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.frankyang.wtf
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/being_frank_yang
- Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/BiggerStrongerWeird
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/digitalairair
- Youtube: http://www.YouTube.com/FrankYang
- Other: http://www.Linktr.ee/FrankYang
