21 Meditation on the Bike

“I think that it can be useful for us to think about moving meditation like a gateway drug, a way to step into a meditative practice. Maybe it will grow and develop into different ways. If you do it for a while, then you might be inspired to explore other paths of meditation. In my experience, working with different clients and different personality types, some athletes will start meditation and immediately dive very deeply into it; they just embrace it. It’s something their soul has been craving or hungers for.

#1) First of all, we’d prefer ideally free to pick flat or mostly flat terrain, terrain that is not obfuscated with a lot of things like stoplights and potholes and people, not a busy bike path. Not a lot of turns, not a lot of rolling hills.

#2.) And the second point that directly stems from that is, no matter where you are in this meditative process, you need to understand that you are responsible for and obligated to always keep a direct awareness of your environment.

Just because you’re zoned out and thinking about your pedal stroke doesn’t give you license to ignore cars that turn in front of you, dogs, cats, ice, sand, potholes, small children, flying objects, whatever else you might encounter on the bike. So we’re here to be aware, you’ve got to accept the fact that during cycling, we need to have our reticular activating system on which is a low-level alert for threat.” – Colby Pearce

This is the Meditation portion of Podcast Episode 21: Meditation on the Bike; uploaded here separately from the full episode for you to utilize with more ease.