Meditation and sport

When shoul we meditate?

The answer is not so obvious. Sometimes, without concentration and skills, we don’t meditate even if we try to do it. Sometimes on the contrary – we do our ,,normal”, daily activities and we meditate at the same time.

Meditation = Awareness?

One person sits bored and another sits and meditates … – What’s the difference? The difference is the focus of consciousness in the real world. What is the real world? Hmmmm …

Is it possible to meditate while doing sports? Can and it is worth! Even the clergy from many cultures practiced various forms of the sports – or more generally practiced different types of physical activities to develop their spiritually. I can say that some sports force the meditation, but others can even make it impossible.

Jogging

Jogging is my favorite sport to join the meditation – long distance running. 30 minutes up. The distance and speed don’t matter – the rhythm, breathing and concentration are the most important.

How to run and meditate in the same time? Like normally, we need to focus on the present, on the running.

• Open up our senses: we observe the way, we listen to the sounds.
• Observe our bodies: breath , pulse, muscular effort, fatigue
• Observe our mind: some thoughts which come and go, but after a while the silence comes… and then the proper meditation begins.

This kind of meditation – even though it is not easy to implement – has a lot of advantages. In our ,,civilized”way of life it can be the occasion to settle two issues -”purged”our weak body and soften our agitated mind. Perhaps because of the wide range of benefits of the running – running can be addictive !

„Technical aspects” of jogging (eg. place, pace or how many times a week) from the point of view of meditation are not very meaningful. Of course, theoretically, the best is to run somewhere in the woods (and derive from the additional advantages or on the beach.

But I came up against the opinion that meditation doesn’t need such peace eg. of the forest. As well tt may be busy crossroads in the city – in both cases you can meditate and focus on the present.

So during the jogging you can meditate anywhere.

Running – what shouldn’t we do:

In my opinion:

• not listen to music – it’s too easy to fly from „now and here”
• not run too fast – the jogging should be harmonious and rhythmic.
• After some time the crisis comes – the first after 20-30 minutes – of course we have to try to deal with it – paradoxically the break won’t add us the strength!

Other sports

There are many sports that help to meditate such as walking, hiking, swimming, cycling … besides all sports can be practiced in solitude. There are no limits – the awarness counts the most:). Although it is difficult for me to imagine meditation while playing volleyball – but maybe I’m wrong…

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Tagged as: beginner, learning, meditation, positions, sport