HAENA — You can’t help but notice this guy.
Handstands. Flips. Sprints. Balancing on one leg while holding a 20-foot log. He’s even doing some kind of leapfrog thing up and down Tunnels Beach on a sunny afternoon.
To most, it’s a different type of workout. It looks crazy and leaves you shaking your head and thinking you’ll stick with biking and swimming.
To the guy doing them, Felix Russen, it’s the only workout worth doing. And it’s not actually that hard. Well, it is, but with focus you can do this stuff, too.
“You have the ability to do it,” he says during a break. “You just got to breathe.”
The 27-year-old carries a 165 pounds on his lean and muscled frame. His routine goes on for more than hour and the longer he goes, the more people stop to ask him questions.
“What are you doing?”
“How are you doing all that?”
Russen, a talkative guy, is more than happy to explain.
But listen carefully. He’s not exactly easy to follow. High-energy in actions and words.
“Focus on the elemental fire and I’m cultivating the expression of explosion,” Russen says so matter-of-factly.
Wait.
Elemental fire?
Expression of explosion?
What, exactly is that?
“The purpose is to send it to extremities, to activate my core, and to hold on to that form,” he says. “It’s just breathing and paying attention to the muscles.
“The explosion comes from an energy, cultivating the energy,” Russen adds with a smile.
His words are puzzling. Is he serious or is he joking?
This man who has called Kauai home four years and the Big Island two and a half years before that, is absolutely serious.
He does seem to explode off that short log when he flips.
He holds form, still and straight, as he performs a handstand.
His legs seem to have springs as he bounds down the beach, resembling a charging grizzly.
Russen doesn’t like to think too much about what he’s doing. He just does it. If you overthink, it ruins the yin and the yang.
His usual hangout is Kalihiwai Beach, since he lives at Kalihiwai Ridge. His daily workout, a mix of yoga, improv weights, gymnastics and balance beam goes up to four hours.
“Send it with your breath, up and out,” he says, almost as if he’s lecturing a class of college students rather than speaking to one person.
Russen said he served in the U.S. Army, which he says “shredded my body, destroyed my heart, destroyed my mind, destroyed my body.”
About four years ago, he said he broke a rib because he tried a move before he was ready. His body has been mending since and is almost back to 100 percent.
Key to recovery — and to overall health — he says, is relaxation. Don’t stress. Steer clear of anxiety.
“Trying to stay centered and calm and getting out of my own way, letting my body do all the healing,” he says. “So that’s my drive, to heal my wounds.”
He’s an advocate for Ashtanga yoga, which he’s been practicing four years. Flips and handstands and splits and beach bounding have been his core workout three years.
The result?
He’s feeling great.
“Phenomenal,” he says. “I feel like I’m gaining strength. I feel like my prime is going to be at 50 years old.”
Russen quickly recounts a story of meeting a man who had a white beard, looked fit and said he was 87 years old.
He dropped and did 15 handstands.
Yes, at 87.
He told Russen when he was 62 years old, he was overweight, out of shape and ready to give up.
His secret, he said, was Ashtanga yoga, so Russen tried it.
“It changed my world,” he said.
It gave him the ability to stay centered, he says, to reach within.
“You can’t get a fiery explosion that’s healthy if you don’t have that yin energy behind it. It’s chaos, if you can’t control it,” he says.
Before he’s done, Russen reveals another aspect of staying sharp and positive: Don’t get too serious. Have fun. That’s a simple one.
“I just play. I keep my child alive inside myself,” he says, adding that he has a 2-year-old son.
“The more childlike I feel, the more playful I feel, the more I feel like myself, the more I can do the things I want to do instead of the things I don’t want to do. And it seems to work out.”
Diet counts, too.
Russen is part of a group of holistic healers and goes by a vegan diet. He keeps the food intake on the light side, about 1 1/2 meals a day, with mostly liquids and coconuts in the mornings.
“The rest of it is all herb-based,” he said
By simply changing a few habits, Russen believes he is opening up more doorways in his life.
And, yes, while those flips and handstands and Mr. Miyagi balancing acts look beyond the reach of most of us, Russen says they’re not.
Really. It just looks that way.
“It’s literally just paying attention to that energy and cultivating focus and serenity at the same time,” he says.
Energy. Focus. Serenity.
Sounds good.
