Today’s post is about getting into the habit of a pair of activities I love that I would like to do consistently.
- Meditating
- Running
I feel stupid for every time I stop doing these. I forget how enjoyable these activities are. They are relaxing, healthy and require almost no money and minimal effort.
Meditating: If I had to describe the effects of meditation, it is that your soul feels lighter. A burden is removed. The burden is the mind wandering from problem to problem. By problem I generally mean small to large worries: what am I having for dinner, how interpersonal relationships are going, how to cure a rout of boredom – and especially -how to deal with some embarrassing thing I did.
This problem-solving and worry is constant, its taxing and meditating cures it and releases the brain from fatiguing itself.
What I like to do is sit down and breathe slow and deep until it becomes natural. Then I focus on a serene location and state of mind. A term I rent from a Carlos Castaneda’s book, Journey to Ixtlan is a ‘place of power.’ For me this place of power is usually one of several impactful vistas or places I’ve been to. Calming places, like a mountaintop, beach, or a river or stream. I focus on its appearance, smell and feeling. Once constructed, my mind sort of just parks there for the next quarter hour.
This ends up feeling like a mini vacation. Its nice. I come back 15-20 minutes later with a healthy perspective. I’d encourage you to try it if you have not before. I’ve found guided meditation videos on YouTube to be helpful for early attempts.
Running: What meditating does to the mind, running does to the body. There is a certain lightness in life when you regularly run. The endorphin high does not have a comedown and an cardio afterglow can last a few days.
Its amazing how quickly I get better at running as long as I stay on a schedule. The lactic burn goes away in a few sessions. The heartbeat drops from 180+ bpm to 150bpm in a few weeks, and mile times go down significantly after a few months.
If you have not tried to run on a schedule for a few weeks and your knees are in good shape, I’d recommend doing a Couch to 5k program. This is a program for the general public who have not ran much before, there is a highly active subreddit dedicated to the it that I followed when I first began. The running community is a treasure.
Also, if you are thinking about running as a long term hobby, I’d recommend a GPS watch (and a good pair of shoes). I have a Garmin Fenix and love it. You can pull some serious metrics off of it. I find I have better success in running (and just about everything) when I consistently measure progress and it gives me the tools to do so.
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