I tried.
For a while, it seemed like everyone was talking about how meditation changed their lives鈥攆riends, acquaintances, podcast interviewees and interviewers, authors, even the baristas at the coffee shops I went to.
Someone told me about the Headspace app, so I downloaded it. It seemed like the most dummy-proof way to start meditating鈥攑lug in some headphones, listen to some stuff, sit still for a while, change your life. I figured it only took 10 to 15 minutes a day鈥攈ow hard would that be?
It ended up being pretty hard, actually. I listened to the first episode while lying in bed, and fell asleep before it was over. Andy, the Headspace guy, has a really soothing voice. Really soothing, like he could put people under at the dentist鈥檚 office with no anesthesia. I鈥檓 pretty sure falling asleep wasn鈥檛 the point, though I slept really well that night. But I figured I missed something, so I listened to it a second time just in case. It was great. It went really well. I felt relaxed, my head felt clear, and I finished the session. I meditated, without stopping, and I was kind of proud of myself for completing the session (probably an early warning sign that I was not approaching the whole thing the right way).
The next night, I did the second episode. It was great, too. Then, I don鈥檛 know what happened. I didn鈥檛 make myself listen to the third episode, and then a week went by. I tried again a few weeks later, only to lack the discipline to get through an entire session without my brain flitting off and thinking about something else. Eventually, I deleted the app from my phone, so it wouldn鈥檛 shame me every time I saw it. I figured, you know, maybe meditation just wasn鈥檛 for me.
But here鈥檚 something: I go on these long runs. ,聽but I love to eat food, so I run. And on these runs, which are sometimes an hour, two hours, four hours, or even eight hours, I don鈥檛 have headphones in my ears. I don鈥檛 talk to anyone besides the occasional 鈥渉ello鈥 to fellow trail users, I don鈥檛 listen to music to make the time pass more quickly, and I don鈥檛 listen to podcasts. I just run, in relative silence, and my thoughts go wherever they need to go. I create grand plans that will never be acted upon, think about people I haven鈥檛 thought about in years, resolve to eat better and sleep more, dream up book ideas and films, remember dialogue from movies I haven鈥檛 seen in a decade or more, hear lyrics from rap songs I鈥檝e been listening to for 20 years, and occasionally, have a thought I think is so good that I pull out my phone (which is in airplane mode) and type a few words into the Notes app.
So, am I鈥asically meditating while running?
Have you ever noticed all the great ideas you have when you鈥檙e either:
- In the shower
- Driving somewhere
- Walking
- Running
- Riding a bicycle
- Getting 鈥渂ored鈥?
This is not a coincidence. Leo Widrich looked into this phenomenon in titled 鈥淲hy We Have Our Best Ideas in the Shower: The Science of Creativity.鈥 Widrich writes: 鈥淚f you are in a relaxed state of mind, easy to distract and full of dopamine, your brain is most likely to give you your best, most creative ideas.鈥
Of course, generating good ideas isn鈥檛 usually the goal of meditation, but changing (or at least adjusting) your state of mind usually is. I suck at relaxing: I don鈥檛 like baths or hot tubs, I don鈥檛 drink, I don鈥檛 smoke weed, and as previously mentioned, am terrible at meditating. Like almost everyone nowadays, I have 40-some ways that people can contact me, spend a lot of time looking at glowing screens, receive dozens of emails and texts per day, and am generally bombarded with media messages. So, how do I find stillness? I literally run away from all the noise. For a few minutes, or a few hours. And that, I would argue, is my meditation (even if it鈥檚 not in of 鈥渕oving meditation.鈥)
If you compare the 听补苍诲 , you鈥檇 find a lot of similarities in the effects they have on your brain. Both meditation and walking:
- Improve cognitive function
- Increase creativity
- Help with mental and physical fatigue
- Lower risk of developing depression/help with depression,
- Release endorphins (in similar amounts, )
- Increase blood flow to the brain
Of course there are other benefits to meditation that exercise can鈥檛 compete with, and vice versa. One is not objectively 鈥渂etter鈥 than the other for someone. So I had to ask myself, what am I looking for? Right now, stillness鈥攕omething to get me away from the fire hose of data and noise and into my head for a while, and running does that. So I鈥檓 putting sitting meditation on the list for Future Me to take another shot at, and for now, I鈥檓 going to stick with my personal 鈥渕oving meditation鈥 practice, because it still provides at least one benefit that meditating does not: an increased amount of justified eating of pizza.