Open Sesame
Non-judging – that turned out to be pretty easy. Having spent nearly a year and a half working on this skill I seem to be making a lot of progress. I’m not really sure if I am non-judgmental, but I know that I am certainly a lot less self-judgmental. So much less, that it seems like I am just accepting myself. I wonder if self-acceptance is a judgment in itself. These Zen things tend to run in circles, perhaps that’s the point. Non-naming – so by not naming, I just chill and let everything flow through me and watch. That’s pretty easy for an endurance athlete (I think) because that’s the main benefit of my mantra of movement (be it swim, bike or run). So what did I notice? Well, I saw that I don’t really have any clear emotions. Emotions are just names for various states that I pass through on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis. Upon closer examination of these states – I saw that they can easily be described as either “open” or “closed”. I may have managed to find a door to the source! Or, at least, “my source”. What is open? Open is relaxed, open is accepting, open is happy, open is honest, open opens my breath, open clears my eyes, open makes me want to lick the world’s cheek, open is power. What is closed? Closed is tension, closed is fear, closed hurts, closed closes my breath. That was the first hour of the ride. I’m learning to think in the aero-position (a good sign for IM racing). Anyhow, I kept considering and was feeling very open and pleased with my mini-insight (in a non-naming, non-judgmental sort of way – ha ha). Going with it, I realized that I am never truly open or truly closed. My mind seems to be a dynamic place, moving from place to place based on internal and external stimuli. The way the stimuli impact me is based totally on my perception of them – they don’t have any implicit meaning in themselves. I am the only person who gives them meaning. Even the meaning that I give them seems to change from moment to moment. So, rather than open or closed – I seem to have two states – opening and closing. These are two sides of the same coin. I found this pretty interesting as I rode along (now climbing and off the bars). If you read my race report about the Kona Half IM, then you may remember my feeling about wanting to hug the world. I explored, “open” and went deeper into the sensation. Difficult to explain how to do this – I just moved inside myself while expanding that sensation outwards. Moving it first within my body and then extending it outwards to everything around me. It felt very good and I noticed that I was holding 1-3 kph higher than usual without any increase in perceived effort. It seemed to me that breathing was quite beneficial to this opening and it reminded me of my yoga. From my yoga, I’ve noticed that I seem to have learned to open while closing. Allow me to explain, have you ever stretched yourself into a position when you start to feel a little sick in your stomach? Maybe I stretch a little more intensely than you do (or perhaps, I am releasing more pain!). Anyhow, when I am working in yoga, I get this physical sensation that is very similar to my experience of fear, anger, hurt, pain – all of these emotions manifest in a similar physical experience for me. The only difference is the context, and through the context I assign their classification. But it is really the same thing that I am experiencing. So, through yoga, I am learning to move through the physical sensation (call it a discomfort but it doesn’t hurt – it is just a feeling and in some contexts I interpret it as hurt). My yoga teacher gave me a few weird looks when I told him about this. I kept saying that I felt like I was going to chunder – but it wasn’t that. I just didn’t have the words to express my feeling. I was simply feeling a sensation that feels like closing. In yoga, they call that “energy” – I was feeling the energy of the position and in breathing through the energy, I am learning how to move that energy. I am willing to bet that the same skills apply to any sort of energy that we face. Now I was onto a serious climb – 30 minutes of solid work then a wicked fast descent then a turnaround and return to the top. I’ve changed my gearing this year and it makes the climbs much easier for me. (39/25 on 700c if you are interested). So – there appears to be another step after my mediation on opening and closing. Again these are just descriptions of what I am feeling. Taken to the next step – it is just energy (physical or mental). Closing emotions prevent energy from moving so it “pools” in my body and gives me those sensations. Tension, stress, illness – perhaps these are all stored energy? In that case opening emotions share energy and move it around the body. This makes a lot of sense to me. Taking this new code, one of the most open forms of energy must be love. Just think what we will all do to share in the love of another. Just think about how that love can make us feel. Alive, awake, invigorated, open. Physics says that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. However, in using my new emotional vocabulary, it would appear that opening/releasing energy has no “cost” to the person releasing. Perhaps the world merely reflects an equal amount of energy back. In that case, physics would still hold, we just don’t understand how that energy is flowing back to us. Anyhow, this is the first insight from my tasks on self. This led me to some personal insights on athletics, alcohol and sex. More later.
Cheers, |