This week I ran 3 miles Tuesday, 7 miles yesterday and 4 miles today. The 7 mile run was most enjoyable. It was overcast and chilly and I had a lot of stuff to do so I ran much faster than usual, down Crescent Heights, West on Whitworth, over on Pico to the park below the Fox lot and down the road that leads into the recreation center, then back home. I was in awe that this body/mind that thought running 7 miles was such a huge feat just a few weeks ago could find it to be so easy now. It is quite amazing what the body can do! However, this week I have also been bothered by the awareness of how much we all take for granted what we can do and/or handle, without first exploring if it is actually good idea. Hence Socrates in the picture above. "The unexamined life is not worth living" stated Socrates a long, long time ago. And although this is thought of mainly regarding inquiry into our human experience on a more philosophical level, I think it very directly applies to the physical realm. As my training has progressed, I have naturally found myself in conversations with numerous runners of both long and short distance. We talk about mileage, spandex rashes, stress fractures, shin splints, electrolyte replacing "goo"... all sorts of things. But I am often quite surprised to hear that very few people think about their running form at all. Neither do they necessarily acknowledge aches and pains that are developing and instead opt to push through them (often resulting in injury). I am kind of taken aback at how callously people treat their bodies, and then become angry or frustrated when the body doesn't perform the way the mind wants it to. We do this in so many areas of life. We are constantly coming up with ideas of how things should be without ever examining whether it's right or even possible - and without acknowledging the information that is right there in front of us.
I guess I have come to think of this body that I inhabit as a sort of information console that is constantly giving me feedback. Good feelings, strength, calm, comfort, ease, joy are all bits of information that this mechanism is on track, things are working. Meanwhile pain, anger, sadness, frustration, anxiety, desperation, exhaustion are all indicators that the choices I'm making are really not working for my mechanism. I think the freaky thing about us humans is that we think we should be able to convince ourselves not to have the reaction that we are naturally having. We run through the pain because we don't want it to exist. We caffeinate our exhaustion because we don't want to be tired. We ignore our sadness because we can't stand how it feels. Instead of examining these elements of our life as Socrates teaches, we find ways to medicate/ignore/avoid the feedback we are constantly receiving from our emotions and body. And it doesn't really work. There is always a breakdown that accompanies the choice to ignore what your body is trying to tell you. The mind never wins.
This society might not be structured in a way that makes it easy for us to honor all the feedback we get from our body and emotions. Often survival seems to depend on us pushing through very unnatural feeling circumstances. But I think this is all the more reason to examine that which we can examine. Explore the icky and uncomfortable things we want to numb out. Take them on and find out if there is another way that will take care of the mind and body, instead of just trying to force the body to adhere to the mind's idea of the best way to do it. I guess I just think we should really consciously take care of ourselves, no matter how inconvenient. Then, if Socrates is right, our life will be way more worth living.
ps. Yoga is really good if you want to practice "examining".
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