When I teach meditation, I often say, “Normal meditation periods and mindfulness during the activities of daily life support each other in the same way that formal exercise workouts and generally being active in daily life support each other too”. One great opportunity to practice meditative awareness in daily life is while exercising. For me, my time while running has been a central meditation practice time for me for decades now.
When I was younger, often while I was running, and especially during races, I was aware of how much I was thinking. I could sense that the mental activity – that much blood flowing needlessly away from my muscles and into my brain – was dragging and slowing me down. Negative thinking and worries were also debilitating. It was frustrating, though, because I didn’t have any tools to do anything differently.
At this point, however, after one or two thousand hours of practice doing walking meditation focusing my attention on the sensations on the soles of my feet, I have the ability to do the same when running. This practice provides a physical anchor for my attention, something non-verbal, non-conceptual, and grounding for me to pay attention to instead of having a wandering mind. When I run, both out of necessity and interest, of course some of my awareness needs to go to seeing, hearing, and thinking about my surroundings. I also however try to have part of my consciousness feeling the sensations on the bottoms of my feet for as much time as I can.
I find that sole-grounding also works well when combined with a silent internal repetition of affirmations / “mantras” / positive phrases. Sometimes, I have used phrases that have helped me to get locked in with efficient running form, like “Kick my legs out behind me”, “Land on the ball of my foot”, or “Run tall”. Sometimes, I have used mantras that have more to do with general athletic vitality, like “Little by little, I travel far”, “Smooth and strong, Light and fast”, or “Run my own race, Run my own pace”. And I also have also sometimes repeated phrases that have general life applicability, like “Being here in this location, Being now in this moment”, “I am a finite fragment of the infinite”, or “May I be friendly, patient, and accepting with myself”. This practice of repeating affirmations while running has provided calm, spaciousness, and other positive mindstates for myself while I have run.
I have recently also been having more great results with deploying some of the other techniques that I teach and regularly practice when not running, like labelling to myself moment by moment where I am feeling prominent sensations in my body, or noticing moment by moment whether my experience has a tone of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, or mixed. I have also tried over the years to focus on my breathing as I have run, but this has worked less well – I’ve often ended up tripping over my breaths and gasping for air with that one. Luckily, as I have said, there have been plenty of techniques that have worked for me.
If you are someone who works out regularly, I invite you to experiment with different meditation techniques while you do, and see if you can find one that seems to create some grounding, deepening, and opening for you.