Athletics and the Mind
The health of the body is also the health of the mind. The inverse is also true: the health of the mind is the health of the body. The one to one relationship of psyche and soma is explained further in the Body-Mind Equation. Athletics gives us a window in which to examine this further. In this entry I will use meditation, massage, and long-distance running to explore the nature of that connection.
Long-distance running is a kind of meditation that strengthens both the body and the mind. The energy it takes for the mind to hold a thought tightly is energy wasted when you’re running. It is wonderful to combine a running program with massage. When you let go of tightness held in your muscles, you also let go of thoughts. Winning the mental game of running helps you to with the physical game. Adding massage can make a major difference to both.
After running for a while, your body just knows what to do. You no longer have to concentrate on every step, every turn, every dodge. You can leave the worries of your life behind, get outside, and enjoy your run. Once you’re on your way, your mind becomes free to look at the other runners, the scenery, or the way that an elderly couple holds hands. Your mind looks for a place to land. This is the first new level of consciousness that comes with running.
The instructions for meditation are really quite simple, and always come back to placing the mind upon the breath. As you run past the old couple holding hands, you may begin to imagine that they are in love. You suspect that they were probably high-school sweethearts, judging by how natural it seems for them to be together. It is not an unreasonable assumption, but is completely your own fantasy. You remember to focus on how you’re moving. Running has brought you to a second level of consciousness.
When a muscle becomes too tight, it hurts. Muscular tension can be held in the body for years, and eventually the body hardens and changes to accommodate it. Massage is often used to help muscles release tension. When muscular tension is released, emotional issues can surface. For example, after releasing tension from your lower back, you might find that financial challenges seem less like burdens and more like reflections of your inner strength.
Having passed the elderly couple, your mind looks for a new place to land. Once again, you focus on how you’re moving. You bring your mind back into your body, where you find that you are enjoying running. You feel good about yourself, and love the sensation of being healthy. You are motivated to continue. You have arrived at a third level of consciousness.
Searching the body, a massage therapist can find where tension is stored in the muscles as knots. When you apply enough pressure to a knot, a kind of “overload” signal is sent to the brain. As the brain attempts to release the muscle, the muscle cells start to twitch rapidly without moving the muscle as a whole. Simultaneously, the mind becomes focused on releasing the muscle. And when the muscle is released, often so is a negative emotion or resistance to something important.
As you continue running, you begin to feel random pains in your body. It might start with your shoulders because that’s where you carry tension. It takes a lot of energy to carry that tension, but it won’t go away until you can focus and let it go. The only way to get past it is to focus on releasing the muscle. Eventually, you can get the pain to flicker away and enable the muscle can move freely again. Running has brought you to a fourth level of consciousness.
As the massage therapist moves a thumb along the length of the muscle, tissue that makes the muscle stiff and brittle gets broken up. With the right combination of nutrients, rest, etc., the muscle will become “buttery”. Then when the massage therapist moves a thumb along the muscle, it seems to part like water. The muscle is still there but it is suppler, can repair itself more easily, and functions better.
Once the kinks have all been released, your run becomes much easier. Still, some of the elusive ones try to come back. Now you focus on the ease with which your body moves. When they arise, you let them come and go but you continue to rest your mind on the fluidity of your movement. When you need to, you focus on belaying their detrimental effects. You have arrived at a fifth level of consciousness.
Almost every bone in a supple, healthy body can be felt with the fingers. There is no pain in experiencing touch. The muscles and other tissues easily move aside like water, and allow the fingers to pass. Your muscles are only tense when it is necessary, rather than clasping onto feelings from the past. You body has become clear, and so has your mind.
On a good run, your body also becomes clear. Thoughts no longer slow you down by taking up energy, and you move with natural grace and rhythm. Your shoulders carry joy, and every cell in your body is energized with life. The mind abides the basic goodness in you as well as in the world. Here then, is a sixth level of consciousness.
These six levels of consciousness are also found in texts on meditation. For those who have experienced both, there is absolutely no mistaking them. Running and massage can be used not only to strengthen the body, but also the mind.