09 Jul The Tour de France, Meditation, and Healing? Yes, They’re Connected.
[from Safely Embodied Ezine published July 9, 2010]
Both the Tour de France and healing take motivation, determination, focus, and commitment.
Training in these qualities will give you the strength and fortitude to move more easefully through healing trauma and attachment issues. It will probably be one of
the hardest things you do.
Meditation: Training the Mind
Any training of the mind is difficult, whether as a meditation practice or as an athletic endeavor. Healing your history requires the same kind of training, focusing the mind on what you want instead
of being pulled into the overwhelming distress of the old, learning to relax a nervous system charged with anxiety, hypervigilance and numbness.
Healing means remapping our negative, often non-narrative templates into more adaptive and satisfying ways of living.
How do to this seemingly impossible task? We need to break down the components into more manageable baby steps.
During the past week I took the opportunity to sit with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and then join him for dinner at someone’s house. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
is a delightful meditation teacher whose joyful nature, and his book The Joy of Living, have inspired many people to live a more satisfying life.
I thought of you many times.
One of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s delightful characteristics is how he simplifies meditation, making it accessible. [I posted a video on my blog about Yongey Mingyur talking about how he worked with his panic attacks.]
As with all meditation teachers he reminded us of our motivation and how important that is in changing perception.
Why are we doing something? What is our intention? Our motivation? We can ask that of ourselves as we heal.
Why are you healing? Why do you want to get better?
The first, and perhaps obvious answer is often getting rid of the suffering. In that stance we’re almost looking backwards in life, running away from the demons, wanting to get away from what hurts.
What if we shifted our motivation to choose to go toward something? To allow the flourishing of who we could be.
If you’re anything like most of my clients your first response is one of disavowal, disbelief that good things can happen to you, that no one will love you, that you will always feel stuck, in pain, distressed.
Lance Armstrong and The Tour de France
This is where motivation is essential and where we can draw upon the inspiration of peak performance athletes like Lance Armstrong, the seven time winner of The Tour de France.
Last year he came back after four years of retirement, 37 years old, older than the rest of the pelaton, but with motivation, intention, determination he came in third overall. That’s after riding 3600 k’s (2,200 miles) over three weeks and enormous mountain ranges.
Lance is riding again this year. This year he says will be his last.
I’d encourage you to watch, perhaps you’ll like the sport, but more importantly look for the determination, the absolute focus that it takes to ride so intensely.
It’s the metaphor for healing trauma
You’ll see it in the eyes of the riders as they focus on riding up the mountain or the focus on going downhill through hairpin turns at 50+ miles an hour. You’ll see riders fall, get physically hurt, and get back on the bike riding on.
Any of us going through difficult times need this kind of motivation. Last week I sat with a client whose binge eating has created enormous suffering. It inspired a post, and video clip, on my blog.
Baby steps.
That’s part of what it takes. Taking one small step, training our mind to follow where we want it to go.
You’ll see that in the Tour. The riders are tired, hot (or soaking wet) but they don’t give up. The next mountain is in front of them. Like the children’s book, The Little Engine That Could they
press down the pedal, shift the gears, and keep spinning the wheels.
There are times when you’ll be doing just that. You don’t want to keep moving, you’ll doubt you’ll be able to feel better, you’ll question whether all this work and all the money you’re spending will ever make a difference. It will.
Keep pedaling. You’ll get there.