Running As Meditation
Running As Meditation
For a large part of my life my main source of physical activity--and my main excuse to leave the house for something that wasn’t work or school--was running. I’ve put in at least 14 miles a week since I was 15. As I’ve developed as a person and as a runner I’ve added new dimensions to my training in order to allow myself to train better, recover faster, and decompress more effectively. Two pillars of that recovery and decompression practice are yoga and a great stretching routine. This pursuit of muscle relaxation, relaxed breathing, and mental clarity led me to meditation.
I primarily practice Transcendental Meditation--a form of silent meditation originally practiced in India that aims to promote a state of relaxed awareness, stress relief, creativity, and efficiency through a higher state of consciousness. The idea is, if you think of your life as an ocean with waves tossing and turning, to sink for a brief time into the depths of that ocean--where everything is calm, dark, and still--in order to allow for mental rejuvenation. Restarting your brain like you would your computer would be another good analogy. Meditation practitioners also tend to have higher levels of serotonin--a hormone that stabilizes mood and allows the body to communicate with itself more effectively.
When running I typically listen to music, audiobooks, or podcasts, but occasionally I like to run in complete silence. It’s oddly freeing, and it makes me feel powerful to know that I can conquer 5-10 miles with no distractions. I’ve often noticed that I have a similar feeling after running in silence as I do after meditating. When I examined them more closely, I found quite a few similarities. In both activities I primarily focus on my breathing depth and breathing pattern. In Meditation I repeat a mantra, and in silent running I do a similar thing but counting steps 1 through 5--every five steps. I wanted to find out if this overlap was coincidental because of my behavior or if the brain chemistry aligned also. It does! Exercise--but especially running--causes the brain to release not only serotonin but also endorphins (a pain relief chemical that also causes euphoria), norepinephrine (a hormone and neurotransmitter that promotes wakefulness and memory retention), and dopamine (a vital neurotransmitter that helps you feel pleasure, think, plan, and focus).
Exercise provides these benefits regardless of whether or not you listen to music/podcasts/etc. during your workout, but for folks who want to get an even greater response from their body--or for folks who don’t have loads of time and need to do two things at once. Try running or working out in silence where your breathing is your primary focus and you just count steps and/or reps. Running can be meditation, and It might change your life.