Over Labor Day weekend I went to the Shambala Mountain Center in Colorado. A friend of mine had just been to SMC this summer, and I was actually looking at yoga retreats when the retreat title "Running with the Mind of Meditation" caught my eye. I had just started running again the month before. After 10 months of intensive yoga teacher training where all of my spare time was spent doing yoga, thinking about yoga and studying yoga, I was happy to add a different but familiar practice to my life. I have always loved to run, but because I don't think of myself as an "athlete", I limited myself as far as what I thought I could do. At the same time, I tended to overdo things, so then I would get frustrated and stop running.
My main goal for the retreat was to find out how I could make my yoga practice and my running practice overlap more (and thus save time - ha), but more importantly, I wanted to make sitting meditation part of my daily routine. I haven't had time of late to go to one of the meditation centers in the area, so I started going to a couple of yoga classes that start with 20 minutes of meditation. Lately, I haven't been able to make it to those classes, and my sense of feeling burnt out from a year that has been all about training has increased. During the retreat I found myself sharing that I started my yoga practice over 10 years ago by setting aside 5 minutes a day for practice. It struck me that I could start to develop a meditation habit in much the same way. It also helped that in a yoga teacher forum, someone recommended the "Insight Timer" phone app, something so simple that would never have occurred to me. The timer takes away the need to look at a clock, and the chimes are less jarring than an alarm clock. I think that the key to developing a regular practice of anything is to find what works for you and your daily life. It simply won't work if you think you should do something that works for someone else. I used to be "too busy" to meditate, and now funnily enough, I find that meditation gives me more time.
A couple of the themes of the retreat were being gentle with oneself and bringing the mind of meditation into any activity. Sakyong Mipham, the leader of the Shambala lineage, started the Running with the Mind of Meditation retreats, and he talks about how nothing can replace a sitting practice, and yet the more we practice, the more we can bring the mind of meditation into anything we do. We started the day with breakfast in a big tent (one morning it was actually 32 degrees!), and then by 9 we would meet in the meditation room. After some sitting meditation, we would do a walking meditation, and perhaps a breathing exercise, with some discussion and/or a lecture. In the afternoons we had some free time - I spent mine at the Great Stupa each day - and then we would meet up in the mid-afternoon for yoga, walking meditation and discussion groups. We even had a form clinic where we did drills. Running incorrectly was especially fun. At one point someone pushed me to the front of our line, saying: You are going to be first, K. Accept what is. She cracked me up, and yet I still hear her voice. For so long I have resisted going to the front, for I have too long believed that calling attention to myself might make someone else feel bad.
The teachers were wise and charismatic in individual ways, and they made sure to connect with us as real people, thus not allowing us the time and space to put them on pedestals. After giving us form tips, one teacher said that if we are running in a way that works for us, to stick with that, for none of us are running "wrong". So often we label our experiences good and bad, rather than sitting with our experiences, and we teach our children to do this by labeling their behavior.
I found the running during the retreat difficult, for we were at 7800 feet, and now that I am home, running has become easy and even joyful. While in the mountains, I kept my water bottle (thank goodness I remembered to get one at the airport!)on me at all times, often throwing in a packet of Emergen-C. There is something that always draws me to mountains, a theme that has always been in my life. I wonder if that is why I feel like such a nomad. Mountains were even my theme for my yoga teacher training practical, so it's really no wonder I found myself in the mountains a couple of months later. The mountain air actually cleared out my sinuses!
We did one 30 minute meditative run each day. There were a number of marathoners in the group, so a group would go running early in the morning to get in some extra running. For me the 30 minute run was enough. We would start with an incline that went up about 500 feet, and I would struggle for breath during the first mile. By the time we reached the Great Stupa, I had to walk up the steps. At first I regarded this as a failure, until I saw it as an opportunity to do a walking meditation. Someone had mentioned that walking around the Stupa 3 times can correspond to 3 principles, such as thought, speech, and action - a concept I often work with in my yoga practice. So I started walking around the Stupa 2 times, and the 3rd time represented action, so I would resume the run at that point. The last part of the run would then become effortless somehow, even on the final day when we ran farther. On the last day I had dish duty (guests can volunteer to help the staff), so I had to run fast if I was going to have any time to eat. I don't know if it was because I was with the faster group, but I found myself on an unfamiliar trail. Even though I don't run with a watch, I used to think it helped me to know how much longer and farther I had to run, especially in terms of how far I was from home. So there I was, quite far from home, and I couldn't see the main buildings. I could glimpse someone's red cap and decided to just keep running.
I was challenged to recognize the difference between competitiveness and comparativeness. Because I didn't think of myself as an athlete, I didn't think of myself as competitive. When I think about how I have been struggling with confidence as a yoga teacher, I realize that I have been comparing myself to my yoga teachers and finding myself to be unworthy of the privilege to teach yoga because I never had any intention of teaching where I also practice. I want to teach at risk kids. And yet I am beginning to understand that this is a lesson that I need to learn. Yoga teaches us that we are each doing our own practice on the mat, and it is not about what anyone else is or isn't able to do. One's practice is never perfect, for now matter how good the pose may look, a teacher can still come and give an adjustment to bring someone deeper into a pose. One day I found myself running near a couple of the "fast people", and it challenged my expectations in such a way that I had to let go and just keep going. Perhaps they were running slow, which we had been encouraged to do. It was a meditative run, after all.
Another concept from the retreat has stayed with me: unconditional confidence. We often base our confidence on external affirmations and achievements. One of the teachers shared about how his father never gave him any praise no matter how well he did because his father didn't want him to get a big head. How often do we expend our efforts to get the approval of others, while withholding approval from ourselves? Often, when you live in the presence of alcoholism as I have, you measure yourself against the damage. Unconditional confidence means that even as we strive to do our "best", we refrain from judging our experience to be good or bad. Growing a heart for the world involves self-love. Someone asked the Sakyong if it is selfish to run, and he said that it depends on your intention. Doing something good for yourself like running does benefit others.
Now I am working on running my best race - with myself - and I am learning to let go of my conditions for being confident. Recently I spoke to a friend of mine who is preparing for a half marathon. She said that she wants to do her personal best, and I asked her what that meant - if it meant in terms of time, pace, weather, feeling. She had been basing her assessment of each run on her time. And then she said that her recent personal best wasn't her fastest - it was how she felt that day. I am finally understanding that my best runs (as well as the work/family/friendship paths I travel each day) are when I run from the inside out and not the outside in.
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