Mindfulness for Ultra Runners
Introduction
One of the exciting things about ultra-running is it can teach us all the skills we need to successfully navigate life. On our journey, we learn to face hardships, deal with uncertainty, struggle with highs and lows, face our fears, and to keep going when it all appears hopeless. I think this is what we mean when we say that ‘running is our meditation’, it isn’t just what we do to let off steam, it is also opens our minds to life-changing insights. It can also lead to profound states of stillness in motion where we find a refuge from all of our hardships. In fact, there are even Buddhist monks who use running as a path to enlightenment.
“Endurance races are a microcosm of life; you’re high, you’re low, in the race, out of the race, crushing it, getting crushed, managing fears, rewriting stories.”
Travis Macy (The Ultra Mindset)
Mindfulness and perception training uses multiple tools (ways of looking) that we put to use in response to what is happening during a run. By learning to use these 7 tools while running, we are then able to apply them to our lives.
1. Get Grounded to Avoid Being Overwhelmed by Negative Thinking
On a challenging run, have you ever noticed how our thoughts are usually ready to give up long before the body is? In fact, when it comes to running longer distances, continuing to move forward despite what our thoughts are telling us to do is just as important as physical fitness . So why is it that our thinking seem to work against us like this and what can we do about it?
To understand why are thoughts can sabotage us, we need to look more closely at where these thoughts come from. We can have the sense that we are consciously choosing what we think, but the reality is that most of the time this internal chatter is coming from the unconscious mind.
“You’re tougher than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can.”
Bryon Powell ( Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons)
It can be helpful to look at the unconscious mind as being similar to a warehouse. It is made up of our memories, interpretations based on our experiences, and things we have heard about who we are and how the world works. There is plenty of useful content in there, but it is also full of bad information, biased information, things we have misunderstood, and assumptions that have never been tested. An example of this would be the beliefs about what we are capable of doing.
The Parable of the Two Arrows
When we pay more attention to our thinking (this is what we mean by mindfulness), we are usually shocked at the state of things. It is like crazy town in there. Even people who have never tried practices like meditation realize this because most of us would be horrified if there was a technology that allowed other people to listen in on our thoughts.
In Buddhism, there is the parable of the two arrows. Imagine you are out on the trails and somebody is lying in ambush to fire an arrow at you. This arrow represents the difficulties we experience on our human journey. Once such difficulties arise, there is much we can do other than deal with them. In this situation, the best thing to do would be to get away from the crazy person with the bow and arrows, and tend to our wound.
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.”
Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
What often happens when we are hit by one of life’s arrows is that we not only experience the pain of the event but also a negative mental reaction. We may start to dwell on how unfair it is that we have been hit by an arrow, how it shouldn’t have happened, or our thoughts can become fixated on how much we don’t want to experience this pain. Our thinking causes us to go into a state of resistance against what is happening, and this more than doubles are hardship. One of the goals of mindfulness is to limit the impact of this second arrow.
Moving Attention to the Five Senses
So, our first tool is learning to move our attention to the five senses (we refer to this as ‘getting grounded’) any time we start to feel overwhelmed by negative thinking. It is important to point out that we are not trying to stop the thoughts, we are just moving our attention elsewhere. What this does is it gives us relief from the negative thinking while also putting us into a state of increased mindfulness where we become less bothered by thoughts and feelings. This happens because when you are choosing to put your attention on your body and your environment, you must know what your mind is currently doing (this is what mindfulness means).
So, how would this work in real life? It is important that you regularly practice getting grounded so that you will remember to do it when you really need it. When you are out running, or just going about your daily routine, bring your attention back to your body and your environment. Notice physical sensations in the body, pay more attention to your environment ( a useful trick is to look at your surroundings as if you were seeing them for the first time – see running in a state of wonder below), Notice how the thoughts will eventually try to distract you. Mindfulness is a skill, and the more you do it, the better you will get at it.
Key point: mindfulness means being aware of what your mind is doing. This can be incredibly helpful because it lessens the intensity of our thoughts and feelings. It also leads to life-changing insights into how our mind functions.
Simple mindfulness practice
Imagine there is a balloon in your tummy. Notice as you inhale that the balloon inflates, and how it deflates as you exhale. Keep your attention on the balloon as it inflates and deflates. If you notice that your attention has wandered off into thinking, just simply come back to the balloon in your tummy. Do this for 5 to 10 minutes or longer.
2. Develop Resilience For When Things Get Hard – Finding the Light in the Pain Cave
When we talk about resilience we are referring to the ability to deal with whatever life throws our way. A key element of this is self-compassion where we are able to be with uncomfortable physical and emotional challenges in a way that is soothing.
One way runners can deal with uncomfortable physical symptoms while running is to use distraction. We can take our mind off things by diving into some fantasy in our heads. Distraction works to a certain extent, and it can be a useful tool to have, but the problem is that avoidance doesn’t increase our ability to deal with uncomfortable experiences (if it did, things like alcohol abuse would be considered a skill rather than an affliction). What can happen on a long-run is that we reach such a state of exhaustion that we just don’t have the energy to distract ourselves anymore. If we don’t have the skill-set to face discomfort head-on, we are going to be in big trouble.
Learning to be with discomfort is another skill that we can master simply by doing it. In some meditation traditions, the yogi is expected to sit for hours without moving in order to lessen their resistance to unpleasant sensations. This is not something you will need to do, as you will already be facing plenty of challenging body sensations while on a difficult run. Just start moving your attention to these sensations, and develop your ability to stay with them. It’s similar to weight-lifting in that it is better to begin with small aches and pains until we build up our strength.
I mentioned above that self-compassion is the ability to be with discomfort in a way that is soothing, so this needs to be more than just observing the discomfort. In fact, just putting our attention on discomfort can make it worse because we start to tense-up or wish it wasn’t there. In order to apply self-compassion we need to bring our attention to discomfort but without any resistance to it.
Once we get used to bringing our attention to unpleasant sensations without resistance them, we are likely to find that they can be easy to be with. It is often the trying to get away from the discomfort that is the problem rather than the discomfort itself. The fact that we no longer need to ignore discomfort in the body means we are no in much better position to recognize the signs of potentially serious issues.
3. Zooming-In and Zooming-Out of Pain
There are two ways of using our perception that are particularly good for dealing with discomfort, and I suggest you get used to playing around with both of them.
Zooming-in on discomfort means concentrating on the physical sensations directly. This would mean all of your attention if you are sitting down, or most of your attention (the amount you can give while continuing to move safely) while out running. What can happen when we focus directly on the sensations is they start to appear more wavelike, and it can be hard to pinpoint what exactly is painful about them. It can start to seem like pain is a mirage, and the thing that makes it so difficult is when we contract around the mirage.
Zooming-out is when we avoid concentrating directly on our discomfort and instead experience it as part of a much larger experience. The logic here is that if you put a teaspoon of salt into a cup of water, it will taste salty, but if you put it into a bath full of water, you would hardly notice it. To make this work you stretch your awareness to take in as much of your surroundings as you can. Be aware of your peripheral vision. Attempt to pull in information from all of the senses. See yourself as a part of your whole environment and not limited to the sensations of pain.
4. How Appreciation Keeps You Going Between and During Runs
Appreciation is one of the most important skills we can learn in life, and it can also be of immense benefit to our journey as an ultra-runner. When we are appreciating our surroundings, it pulls us out of our heads and into our environment. To appreciate means to be interested in and see the value in whatever we are experiencing. The problem many of us have in life isn’t so much that we are lacking things, but we have lost the ability to appreciate what we have.
Appreciation is one of the reasons we enjoy going on vacation so much. If we are in a new and interesting environment, our attention is going to be attracted outwards, and this provides an escape from our usual concerns and preoccupations. It is easier to appreciate things when they are new, but once we get used to them, the tendency is for our attention to return to the old stories that make up so much of our mental life.
The skill of appreciation involves learning to deliberately become interested in our experience right now (even if we are in familiar surroundings). This is a skill that people who plan to meditate regularly need to master. If we are asked to focus on something like the breath, and we have no interest in the breath, it will be impossible to keep our attention on the breath for long. It is only by appreciating the breath that we are able to focus on it – the more we can do this, the easier it will be to stay concentrated on the breath. The more we can appreciate our surroundings while out on our runs, the more enjoyable it will be. It is like going on vacation every time you put on your running shoes. It means you have a refuge from the ups and downs of life, and this is going to be rejuvenating. The fact that our runs become far more enjoyable also mean we are more motivated to do them.
5. Running in a State of Wonder
A useful trick for appreciating runs is to learn how to perceive with the perception of wonder. This requires letting go of all of our ideas about what we are experiencing and looking with fresh eyes. It means seeing the world like a young child might – going back to that time when everything appeared new and full of possibility.
I discovered a number of tricks that allowed me to easily access this state of wonder. These might work for you too, or they inspire you to come up with your own tricks.
A couple of years ago, I bought my son a virtual reality headset for his PlayStation. This gift was just as much for me as for him, and I ended up spending a lot more hours on it then him. I was just so impressed by how real everything seemed. I noticed that even after I took off the headset, I would continue to experience a heightened interest in my environment.
I lost interest in PlayStation VR after a few weeks, but I started to use my imagination to recreate this experience when I was out running, walking, or driving. I would pretend that what I was experiencing was virtual reality, and it would immediately fill me with a sense of wonder. I would become totally absorbed by my surroundings, and I’d experience an intense sense of appreciation.
Another trick that I would use was to pretend that I was dreaming. This would be another way to direct my attention to the environment while being impressed by how real everything seemed.
The ability to move into a state of wonder is a useful tool to have. It will mean you instantly become grounded (by focusing on your environment rather than your inner dialogue), and you will be able to appreciate your environment. This will also make your runs even more enjoyable and rememberable.
6. How Love Can Help You Go That Extra Mile
“it’s easy to get outside yourself when you’re thinking about someone else.”
Christopher McDougall (Born to Run)
Fear is a powerful driving force, but it fails once the discomfort of what we are trying to achieve reaches a certain point. An example of this might be pushing ourselves to finish a race because we fear what other people might think if we DNF. There could well come a point where we decide that we would rather people think we are weak than to go on feeling the discomfort.
Surprisingly, we can be better at facing hardships when we are doing it for someone else rather than just ourselves. Maybe this is why so many people will run to sponsor charities.
“We wouldn’t be alive without love we wouldn’t have survived without running. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.”
Christopher McDougall (Born to Run)
My first ultra was on a 2.5km track in Bangkok. I decided to dedicate each loop to someone I loved. This gave the race a deeper meaning for me, and it made the whole thing joyous.
7. Finding Stillness in Motion
“The longer and farther I ran, the more I realized that what I was often chasing was a state of mind-a place where worries that seemed monumental melted away, where the beauty and timelessness of the universe, of the present moment, came into sharp focus.”
Scott Jurek (Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness)
We start to experience stillness in those moments when we are not resisting anything. When this happens, we are completely at one with ourselves and our surroundings. As you begin to practice with tools we have discussed already, you will experience stillness more and more in your life. Instead of it being a state that you only rarely encounter when the conditions happen to right, you now understand how to create those conditions. You learn that stillness doesn’t come about by doing something, but instead by not doing something. We experience this wonderful state when we are not carried away by our thinking and when we are not avoiding whatever it is we are feeling or experiencing.
Ultra-Running as a Path to Well-Being
As you practice these tools while out running, you will start to notice that they naturally find their way into your daily life. Even if you don’t have a regular sitting meditation practice, you will enjoy similar benefits to what a long-term meditator might expect. You will find your ability to face the ups and downs of life has improved, and that you naturally gravitate towards periods of stillness during the day – this greatly benefits both your physical and mental health. Most of all, you find that you are just better able to enjoy your life, and you start to develop an almost unshakable sense of well-being.
If you would like to do some mindfulness coaching with me, please contact me at info@paulgarrigan.com
Here is a video of my first 100km race.
