“To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.”
- Marcus Aurelius
The most convincing and important reason to consider adding meditation to a training regimen is that it's difficult. All activities in your life that are challenging overlap in a way to make you a stronger and more complete individual. Mindfulness meditation involves sitting still and paying close attention to your breath and the sensations that arise in your body. It may not sound all that challenging but I assure you, if you have never tried to meditate before, just 10 minutes can be excruciating. Whether it's trying to ignore an itch on your leg or simply attempting to detach yourself from your thoughts, the mental struggle is real and in some ways, truly tangible.
Even if you are not a runner, mediation has many benefits and a growing trove of scientific evidence suggests the practice can help with mental ailments from anxiety to depression. It's probably reasonable to assume that many runners and other athletes suffer less from these mental illnesses than non-athletes due to the positive effects of exercise, but adding in another de-stressor to your life can't hurt.
Furthermore, I find that my meditation practice benefits my running in specific and direct ways. For one, I don't find that meditation and running are all that different from an experiential standpoint. Though one is done seated and the other requires dynamic movement, both are often a battle with one's own mind to continue onward. Especially toward the end of a race or in the middle of a difficult workout, I find my experience meditating incredibly helpful to be able to detach somewhat from the thoughts telling me to stop, and simply focus on whatever sensation might be present in my body. Often while running these sensations are ones that would typically be thought of as unpleasant, but the meditative valence that comes with experience can turn pain and suffering into rewarding and positive feelings.
Meditation teaches you to embrace a sensation. I typically meditate 10 minutes a day and find that I derive great value, even from such a short practice. During those 10 minutes, I'll often go through some period of time where it feels like my thoughts are assaulting me and all I want to do is stand up and distract myself. But I don't. I breathe and I get through the discomfort and the practice of doing so has a stress relieving and relaxing effect on my mind and my body. In addition, being able to push through that mental discomfort in such a focused and purposeful way, gives me another tool that I can use while running to both embrace and detach from suffering.
The phrase "embrace and detach" sounds odd to me even as I write it, but that really is what is happening as I meditate or when I am suffering during a run. In my last race, the Ouray 100, there were hours long periods where I was in what is termed "the pain cave." The pain cave is a flow state in which all the sensation you feel is pain. It may sound unintuitive to people who haven't experienced it, but the pain cave is actually the place at which one should be aiming to arrive during the latter stages of a long distance event. The pain cave is the reward for the work put in prior to your arrival in this famed mental locale.
The reason the pain cave is so rewarding and feels like an achievement in and of itself is because it is composed of pure experience. In meditation, there are moments like this in which there are no thoughts troubling your mind and one can just sit and enjoy the sensation of the breath, or of the slight tingling on one's face. But it's difficult to achieve these moments of bliss and even harder to stay in them. When you reach the pain cave, however, the overwhelming sensation is forced upon you and you can either choose to embrace it or you can collapse.
It's reasonable at this point to wonder, how does all this talk of the pain cave relate to why I think you should add meditation to your training regimen? Well I did not learn that the pain cave was actually a desirable destination until I started to meditate. It did not occur to me that moments of pure sensation, whatever that sensation might be, are valuable in and of themselves simply because they lack the intrusiveness of thought. Meditative bliss is a time in which human beings can feel most alive and in tune with themselves and the Earth, and the pain cave is actually a version of that state. I'm sure one can appreciate the pain cave without meditating, but I found mindfulness mediation extremely helpful in getting myself to this realization.
To conclude, meditation will add to your overall well-being because of its stress and anxiety reducing qualities. Furthermore, the challenge of overcoming your mind and your thoughts and just sitting still will give you a technique that can be used to overcome suffering while running, adventuring, and dealing with daily life stressors. I'm not normally one to place value on "ancient wisdom," but philosophers for thousands of years have found the practice of mediation useful and I am certainly a believer that there is something to it.
If you desire to start meditating, I would suggest beginning with guided meditation. I typically like to meditate in silence, but at the beginning of my practice and still relatively frequently, I will use the Waking Up App to guide me. If you would like to try out Waking Up, which has a wonderful beginner's mediation course, please email me at kilianrunner100@gmail.com and I will send you a link that will give you a free month on the app.
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