36 days

This bike my bolster.  This horizon my mantel.  This nature my alter.  Sunday mornings.  They are for riding.  It’s just how it’s been for the longest time now.  Drawing circles with my legs in this ruminative serenity.  Everything slows down.  That’s one thing that I love most about deep winter rides in the woods.  The unhurried quiet and tranquility.  Cresting a short incline, I come face to face with a deer practicing his yoga mountain pose in the center of the trail ahead.  I too gently halt.  Maybe I should try to get a picture.  Naw…  That would just ruin this moment.  I simply relish in our mutual presence.  After a few minutes, another deer joins the party and they both gracefully hop off the trail and disappear into the forest.  I start pedaling again.  Glancing out into the vast woodland that just swallowed my new friends as I ride by.  They’re long gone.  I’m on a 36 day meditation streak.  Motivated by just finishing a 6 week meditation program at @puravidadieppe.  I have been meditating for about 8 years now.  Off and on.  Mostly off at the end of last year.  This course gave me the nudge that I needed to set me back on track.  15 minutes each day.  Like brushing my teeth, I wanted to make sitting in silence compulsory.  In his book, journalist Dan Harris estimates that daily meditation makes him 10% happier.  After my 6 week trial, I can also confidently agree that sitting on my mediation bench daily improves my solo rides by at least the same margin.  Not faster.  Slower.  And stronger.  Enhanced presence is one of my favorite meditation presents.

 

Cry

Healing.  Part 2.  Crying into my first breath.  How we all emerge into this world.  The most natural thing.  Our innate ability to embody all emotion.  But what happens when we get older?  Do our eyes dry up?  Why is it so difficult for the adult me to shed tears?  I have always been an emotional human.  But, growing up I quickly learned that it wasn’t safe to express painful emotions in most situations.  It would get you ridiculed.  Bullied even.  Big boys don’t cry.  So in order to fit in, I learned to stiffen my upper lip.  To push it all back in.  Resourcefully doing what I needed to do in order to gain acceptance.  The most common survival mechanism.  The problem is that most of us get so good at concealing and burying these emotions that we completely lose contact with them.  So very out of touch with how we really feel.  Especially men.  Maybe that’s why our life expectancy is less than women?  All these stuffed, stale and toxic emotions eventually making us physically ill.  I really miss that soothing feeling that I used to experience as a young boy after crying it out.  The release of this pain through these tears.  Blissful exhaustion.  Alone in this forest.  I feel safe.  Nature’s embrace inviting me to fully embody all that I am feeling.  No one to judge.  No one to fool.  Just me and my shit.  Stuck emotions coming up as I pedal amongst these meditating snow covered trees.  Just step out of the way and let them flow.  Maybe that’s the whole purpose of my solo rides in the woods at this point in my life.  To gently teach me how to cry again.

 

Cyclotherapy

Healing.  Part 1.  Being alive means facing certain situations or events that cause unpleasant, painful feelings to arise inside of us.  There is no escaping it.  It is simply part of what it means to be human and alive.  If we were to touch a burning stove with our bare hand, the pain receptors in  our skin would very quickly communicate to our brain to remove our hand from the dangerous scorching heat source.  That’s the purpose of pain.  Protection.  With emotional pain, our inclination is similar in that we instinctively want to distance ourselves from what hurts.  Because of this, our tendency is most often to push down unpleasant emotions.  Repression.  Our best attempt at protection at that moment.  It kind of works.  But only temporarily.  The pain never gets released.  It remains inside of us.  Eventually buried under layers and layers of suppressed painful feelings.  Until we reach a certain breaking point.  For some it’s middle age.  For some it could be much sooner.  These unbearable accumulated emotional anchors immobilizing us.  Disguised as anxiety and depression.  Can we free ourselves from these shackles?  How do we begin to heal back into happiness?  Maybe it all starts with locating, identifying and releasing these difficult and painful stuck feelings?  Maybe this is why I love my solo rides so much?  These pedals.  Drawing circles.  In nature.  Pointing out these emotional anchors.  Lifting them up to the surface.  Giving me the opportunity to allow them to move through me.  Something about the meditative aspect of these rides that just seems to give me the courage that I need.  Something about spinning these legs that makes the pain of the release a bit more bearable.  Long before psychotherapy.  I was unknowingly working on healing my trauma using what I call cyclotherapy.

2023

2023.  A new year.  Or maybe it’s really just another meaningless number.  Humans are the only living beings on this planet who are counting.  I have come to despise numbers.  Infinite yet irrelevant.  Precise yet deceiving.  Chasing them always ends up weighing me down.  I much prefer words.  Honest.  Truthful.  Even if we can’t really use them to accurately quantify anything.  Focusing onto the infinite potential of these next twelve months.  No measurable goals to pursue.  No check lists to go through.  No set resolutions to follow.  Just a simple list of nine words.  Themes or intentions that I am putting out there.  Seeds that I am planting.  Authenticity.  Compassion.  Forgiveness.  Curiosity.  Presence.  Flow.  Meditation.  Yoga.  And of course, Bicycles.  I really feel like I am at a pivotal point in my life right now.  Much more comfortable with where I’ve been.  Both excited and terrified facing what happens next.  The final act before the epilogue.  How will the rest of my narrative be written.  No one knows for sure.  One thing that I do know for sure is that all nine words in my list lead me to a single word.  Healing.  As 2022 comes to an end, may we all find the courage to finally stop betraying ourselves and either begin or continue our own personal healing journey.  Healing into happiness.  Everything else will fall into place from there.  Happy New Year friends !!