These Bridges

These bridges.  That I like to go to.  In the woods.  Made out of wood.  One at the back corner of Centennial park.  And a newer one erected last year in Mill Creek park.  There are many other bridges in both parks.  But I am drawn to these two for some reason.  Last Sunday.  After a brief sojourn at the pavilion, I pedal my way out to Mill Creek.  I had fat biked to this bridge on a very cold day last January.  I’m not sure if it was the warm forest tea, the simple wooden bench beside it, the freshly fallen dusty snow or the restful solitude in that moment but I fell in love with this spot then and there.  The Centennial park bridge has been on my best-loved local whereabouts list for three or four years now.  A go-to spot that I have visited numerous times, mostly in autumn.  Such an optimized standpoint from which the fall foliage really pops in all directions at that magical time of the year.  Falling leaves swaying and dancing to the soothing sounds of the streaming waterway.  Many cups of forest tea have been savored in this here location.  And then there was the time that I made a new friend with a squirrel when we shared my homemade cookie.  Alone.  I meditate on the gentle flowing sound of the water below.  I feel alive.  Recentered.  More human.  Riding these bikes.  Yoga.  Meditation.  And visiting these sacred bridges.  Pursuits that I need to keep practicing.  Not as an attempt to become faster, fitter, awakened or better in any way.  But simply to bring me back to a certain baseline of normalcy.  These proven physical rituals.  The daily medicine that I need in order to be able to function like the so called sane people in this world.  My edge dulling therapy.  A few days without and my mind and body remind me that not practicing simply isn’t an option anymore.  For me.  At this point in my life.  It really is that simple.  These bridges.  Reconnecting the parts of me that have slipped apart from me.

Bike Yoga

This subdued underlying ache.  This longing.  It has lived inside me for so long that I had completely ceased to notice it.  This hunger.  This unease.  With an undertone of grief.  And a hint of shame.  This subtle yearning for something.  Redemption maybe.  It tastes more like melancholy than depression even if I have definitely been swept into that dark place from time to time.  Do other people also feel it?  I’ve often wondered.  Younger me actually assumed that everyone did.  As every life phase passes, I convince myself that this too shall pass.  That it will eventually leave me.  Future salvation.  After I pay my dues.  Peace and happiness just around the next corner.  That’s what everyone keeps telling me.  One of my initial motivations to ride was to numb this discomfort.  My best escape attempt.  Giving me much needed temporary relief.  But eventually always leading me back to what I was running away from.  Yoga is teaching me how to stay put.  Sitting with what is.  Especially the things that make me feel uncomfortable.  Leaning into what I have been trying so hard to avoid for so long.  Slowly but surely making me feel more comfortable in this body.  Mindful movement.  Mindful breath.  Guiding me to feel safe enough to let go of what I have been holding onto that is making me ill.  Turns out that mindfulness added to my riding also has the same healing effect.  Helping me fully feel to finally heal.  My happy place.  The place where I feel more present.  Here.  Now.  Am I a cyclist who practices yoga?  Or am I becoming a yogi who practices cycling?  I guess it doesn’t really matter does it.  Either way I always win.

84 days

84 days.  The current tally of my ongoing daily yoga streak.  I may just have to take a day off.  Or stop counting.  To avoid turning this into some type of personal competition which defeats the purpose of why I committed to a regular practice in the first place.  I have a habit of overdoing things like that.  Something good doesn’t seem like it’s enough unless I make it excessive.  One of the unconscious strategies that I use to distract myself from this underlying torment.  Yoga seems to be the compassionate antidote for my unrestrained striving.  Simply showing up.  Day after day.  Gently flowing from where I am in this moment.  Nothing forced.  No keeping score.  No tracking numbers.  No values to indicate progress or forward movement.  Simply practicing breath-coordinated mindful movement to guide me to feeling more deeply.  In complete harmony with life itself.  Working with what my body can give me on this day which is always enough.  Yoga doesn’t end when I get off the mat.  So much to teach me about myself.  So much to teach me about this life.  Noticing how my yoga practice gently overflows into my bike practice.  Old habits of setting ride objectives or following a written program replaced by a healthier organic approach.  Asking myself each and every time I swing my leg over my bike what I have to give today.  What do my body and soul need here and now.  My brain seems to have a mind of its own.  Especially since hitting my head.  It calls the shots.  Reminding me over and over again that all I can do is play by its own unpredictable rules.  There is this bridge inside of me that yoga has started building.  A connection.  From doing to being.  Mindfully guiding me towards what we all really need most.  Healing.  

unCanadian

In so many ways, I’m very much an unCanadian Canadian.  I don’t really care for hockey.  I never watch it on TV.  Skating was my favorite part when I used to play.  But to be honest, I mostly only kept signing up because I couldn’t ride my bike during the winter.  In 2010.  Tired of the indoor trainer, I tried x-country skiing.  I loved the being outdoors part of the sport.  But my skate technique sucked.  And because of this I never seemed to be able to ski comfortably.  Then.  In 2016.  After my concussion.  I bought a fat bike.  I had resisted for years.  They just seemed too damn slow.  But at that point in my life, slow was exactly what I needed.  My fat bike saved me during that first winter after hitting my head.  Unhurried easy solo rides were my therapy.  They still are really.  Growing up, I remember spending countless hours ogling over pics in my BMX magazines, dreaming of living in California where I could ride my bike year round.  I have always been and will always be a summer soul, but I have come to appreciate that there is something very special about riding a bike in the depths of winter.  Something about the arctic snow cover that slows everything down including my thoughts.  Something about the wintry stillness that enhances the taste of my forest-tea.  In so many ways, my fat bike has literally changed my relationship with our Canadian winters from something to suffer through and endure to something to cherish and enjoy.  Bikes are simply authentically me.  An unCanadian Canadian.  Madly in love.  With pedaling outdoors.

 

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 !!