Calming the Mind: How marathoners can benefit from meditation
Jim Martin, a veteran marathoner and attorney from Boulder, Colo., has a “monkey mind.” Perhaps you do, too, with thoughts, ideas, musings and reflections constantly flowing through your head like detritus whipping about in a windstorm. Or, like a monkey, rattling the walls of his cage.
If so, you might want to start a meditation practice. Not only could it calm your monkey mind, it could lead to significant improvements in your running — and your life, say Martin and other runners who have incorporated meditation into their training regime.
“It gives me a way to focus,” says Martin, a 2:34 marathoner who began meditating while recovering from a bicycle accident suffered while at the Falmouth Road Race last summer. “It also gives you a sense of ‘now.’ It takes you to the ‘right now,’ which is what you want from your running and training.”
Martin’s newness to meditating was evident during our interview, as his monkey mind was busy answering his cell phone and sending text messages regarding his latest real estate deal. He was, however, much more tranquil than in past years.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche has a different story. His monkey mind — if he ever had one — vanished long, long ago. The 3-hour marathoner is the author of Turning the Mind into an Ally and Ruling Your World, and one of the world’s foremost meditation teachers. He is head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage, and exudes a confidence attractive to all who are fortunate enough to run with him or hear him teach at the Shambhala Mountain Center (shambhalamountain.org) about 30 miles northwest of Fort Collins, Colo. Through the efforts of Shambhala, a worldwide network of meditation centers, meditation is becoming more and more mainstream.
Even while he is running up or down a mountain trail or training for his ninth marathon, there is a center of stillness to Rinpoche (an honorary term meaning “earth protector”) that appears to keep him deeply rooted to the earth even while he floats across the ground.
During “Running with the Mind of Meditation” weekends held yearly at the Shambhala center, runners from across the U.S. (and other countries) gather to run, practice yoga and meditate, which, as newcomers learn, is not a disassociation from your mind and body, but rather a way to connect to your inner self.
“What surprises some people is that meditation is very much a body-oriented discipline,” says Jon Pratt, a 2:40 marathoner who helps facilitate the events. “It is not about leaving your body and entering some celestial realm. It is about relating to the here and now which we experience through our five senses. So in meditation we learn to let go of our thoughts and come back to our body.”
Marty Kibiloski, a fellow competitive masters runner from Boulder, started dabbling with meditation in 2005, following a trek in the foothills of the Himalayas. He isn’t quite to the level of Rinpoche, but he knows the benefits it has for runners.
“The value of meditation is having a calm state of mind,” says Kibiloski, a 2:23 marathoner and successful businessman. “Most marathon runners, myself included, are very driven and have something to prove to ourselves and others. Having a greater understanding of our motivation and our abilities leads to better training and execution or race-day performance.”
Other benefits of meditation include sleeping better, cultivating calmness in your demeanor and adding a zest to all you do. According to Pratt, runners “are more inclined than most people to be contemplative, to want to explore their inner experience as you do when you meditate. And to engage in an activity that is as repetitive as running takes discipline and focus. These qualities are also essential to the meditator. So runners seem to have both the natural inclination and skills to be meditators.”
Pratt is fast enough to break 3 hours for the marathon, and skillful enough to teach meditation, but it was not always like that.
“In my early years of running I would intentionally daydream to avoid experiencing boredom or pain in my body,” he says. “It wasn’t until I began meditating that I actually began to learn how to run within my body. It may sound silly to say I was running to disassociate from my body, but to a large degree I think that is what I had been doing. The practice of meditation has brought freshness into my running.”
How did meditation do this? Because when in a “meditative mind” we can be more “fully in the moment and fully in our bodies,” is how Pratt puts it. “I am more relaxed and more joyful. When I have this attitude, every run is a new and exciting experience.”
And so in the end, running and meditation can combine to lead us to a more satisfying life. Adds Pratt, “Running and meditation are perhaps the most energizing and ultimately, joyful, activities in my life. Bringing them together is about as good as it gets.”
Michael Sandrock is the author of Running with the Legends (Human Kinetics, 1996).
Reproduced with permission from the May 2009 issue of Running Times. For more, visit www.runningtimes.com.
