for-the-love-of-adventure
#4x4x48challenge
It’s still sinking in - I did it! 48 miles in 48 hours on power naps only, since Thursday night… This challenge is organised by David Goggins, ex- navy Seal, ultra runner and world pull-up record owner. I actually think it is the perfect challenge. If you can’t run, you do something else for 4 miles, or at least do the equivalent time of working out. The challenge is a mind game more than anything, a test of determination, willpower or just game-on-ness! You don’t need to be super fit to do it but if you are it will still challenge you.
I loved it, I may do it again and I recommend it to anyone wanting to see what they are capable of… if I’m capable of 48 miles in 48 hours on no sleep without breaking down, then who knows what I can do? What about you - what would be a real challenge for you? What would make you feel superhuman if you did accomplish it? And what effect would that feeling have on your life?
The Why
I’ve been thinking about why I run; especially why I run when I don’t feel like it or when the weather is bad or why I run up big hills over long distances. Sometimes I feel tired or lazy or cold or it hurts to keep going. Sometimes I wonder if I should stop, if I’m pushing myself too far or if the drive to continue is coming from an unhealthy place.
Yoga, but probably not as you know it…
A Yin practice is great for releasing tension and building strength in ligaments and tendons. So, if you have chronic tension, back/neck/shoulder pain, very ‘tight’ joints or an old injury then Yin is an excellent practice for you! Static stretching isn’t always the answer to tightness because a lot of this ‘tight’ feeling isn’t due to contracted muscle fibres as we usually assume. If you suffer from stress, anxiety or are fatigued, the slowness and depth of Yin will probably be extremely good for you.
Befriend your brain
Do you make New Year Resolutions? Can you remember any?! Have you ever kept one? I don’t make resolutions but I do love the chance to sort of reinvent, draw a line under something and consider what I might want to do differently. Actually, I think that ‘objectives’ is a better word - ‘resolution’ sounds heavy and difficult and stern…
Yoga - what is it actually for?
Next time you practice yoga notice your mental state before and after the practice - it’s very likely that you’ll see a difference. A yoga practice can be as simple as paying attention to your breathing pattern for a few minutes or a single pose, like Downward Facing Dog that irons out the creases in your body after sitting.
Why Wild?
A superb opportunity to acknowledge and loosen our hold on the ideas we have about ourselves and what yoga is - at least for an hour or two.
Taking yoga to a different environment gives us an excuse to shrug them off for a moment; perhaps allowing us to experience both the asana and our bodies in a new light.
Just do it.
I really think the waves saved my mental health - no negative emotion lasts long when you get in really cold water! It’s virtually impossible to think about anything whilst in the water and when I get out I feel superhuman and simultaneously calm and grounded
Get a lungful of this…
Deep slow breaths are commonly known to bring calm and focus but faster deep breathing while running for example is also beneficial - we may even still feel calm despite working hard as we’re co-ordinating heartbeat and breath and getting enough CO2 in our blood (yes - we need enough of it as well as O2).
Training as adventure
But what would happen if every ‘workout’ you planned was slightly different? Instead of focusing on getting faster you just planned a different route that appeals to you for whatever reason? Instead of focusing on heart rate you designed yourself an attention grabbing challenge?
Beyond balance!
I’m so tired of hearing about balance - life-work balance, it’s all about balance, inner balance.
Balance exists and it is important - walking a high wire over NYC for example!!! It might also be desirable - running a ridge, doing a yoga pose, surfing a wave. And in less physical terms, the avoidance of extreme views or expression in order to respect others. But this idea that we must, at all costs, seek balance in our lives seems dangerous to me.
We risk abandoning our ambitions and dreams, our creativity or instinct for exploration and those aspects of ourselves that make us individual.
So, I’d like to propose we stop talking about balance as a general concept and start thinking about play instead.
NO PAIN NO GAIN?
No pain no gain, right?
Ingrained in language and culture, we’ve absorbed this phrase as a kind of motto, a truth. How does that little phrase make you feel?
For some of us it’s ok, we like the fight, we accept the challenge and we’ll go through quite a lot if the end is worth it. For others, it’s a red flag; pain is bad…
I did some research into the science of pain while I was forced to rest and found some pretty shocking things. Firstly, we now know that pain is a message to the brain not a sensation.
Are you an athlete?
“Anybody can be an athlete. Athlete to me is a mindset - how I’m gonna prepare for the workout, how I’m gonna execute the workout, how I’m gonna recover from the workout. That could be for your first 5k or that could be for the Olympics. What makes you an athlete is how you prepare for and think about and get through it. Not because you have some sort of elite status or physical stature.”
Why so many top athletes practise yoga
NBA athletes, The New Zealand All Blacks, footballers, swimmers and boxers are all at it…but why? Surely they wouldn’t waste training time on something which is still in the very early stages of scientific research? The truth is that there aren’t all that many properly reliable and conclusive studies about yoga to draw on, and yet more and more athletes are practising.
Out of your mind
after about 15 seconds you get a kick of adrenaline and you look at the beauty around you and start to feel awesome. It’s a kind of re-set for the mind through the skin. I literally feel my body waking up and taking over