Running Is An Excellent Form Of Meditation

With today’s lifestyle, we absolutely must take care of body and mind. Of all the forms of physical exercise, running is one of the most popular and also one of the healthiest.

Of course, this applies if your physical condition allows it, and you do it in a smart way.

And then there is meditation: meditation has become an accepted and loved way to take care of our mental and emotional selves.

Running is so good for you. Running good for the heart – and the brain too. It is not uncommon for our thoughts to wander when we run, whether we think about running or something completely different.

You can say that good exercise is when the body and head are in sync, even if they do different things. This state is where meditation finds a home, a meaning.

The magic of meditation

The practice of meditation consists of focusing your attention for the purpose of clearing the mind and reducing anxiety. It teaches you to disconnect from the worries that creep into your streams of thought.

This is why running can be a great way to free your mind and release tension from your body. In fact, it turns the tension into motion.

Meditation not only provides peace, it also has other benefits for those who practice it. It has been shown to help reduce stress and stimulate hormones that protect us from depression.

Meditation is also related to attention, and can help us deal with pain. It can even have a positive effect on the architecture of the brain, and enhances important synaptic connections.

There are many ways to develop a practice of meditation and midfulness. For this we do not need to light candles, burn incense or sit on a special pillow in a particular position.

In fact, when you are deeply engrossed in any activity, you can take a meditative stance. Running is one of those activities because when done right, it allows flow.

Running is medicine for the mind

Runners often talk about running as a medicine, as a way to navigate through life’s problems. It is a way to escape from negativity and overcome your personal demons.

It goes beyond the need for physical exercise. There is also a need to be “vigorous” emotionally. “If I can get through this run, I can do anything.”

Running is a rhythmic, natural movement that allows energy to flow through the body and become a movement. Instead of using energy for negative thoughts and emotions, it becomes a fuel for an activity that stimulates our nervous and endocrine systems.

Thus, when we are freed from negative emotions, it becomes much easier to work with them. We can learn from them and move on.

It turns out that when running stimulates meditation, both mind and body become stronger.

Furthermore, a study from 2016, published in Translational Psychiatry, showed that directed meditation in combination with an activity such as walking or running reduced the symptoms of depression by 40% for participants who had been diagnosed with depression before the study.

The key to all of this is that running helps us focus, especially when we have been running for a while and our movements become more automated. It also helps when we no longer have to work so hard to run.

We move from “dragging” our body with us to “following” our body. This leads to the type of active meditation that can be very soothing.

Running makes your mind slow down

Running is something that makes our train of thought slow down. It gives us a new perspective, a new mood.

If you have never run or just done it a little, here is something you have definitely experienced: how many times have you had a big problem in the evening, and in a way it feels less in the morning?

Why is this happening? Because our way of thinking is very different at different times every day.

Well, running gives the same effect. It gives a different way of thinking. The movements of running allow us to look at a problem without feeling the anxiety that we do at night.

On the other hand, if our mind does not want to work on the problem, we can let it go and free our mind to focus on the stimuli around us. This allows our mind to work quietly.

Even when we do not want to, running forces our minds to slow down. The intense storm of thoughts and worries gradually subsides.

Running puts us in the present

Most of the time we are completely unaware of the present. Our mind goes from the past to the future without stopping in the present, so we do not process much of the information our senses take in.

When we think, we have limited resources, so if we decide that the past and the future are more important to think about, we will not give the present very much attention.

The main purpose of meditative practice is to help us pay attention to the present. To help us understand that we must stop in the present for the past and the future to have continuity.

Mental concentration is a fundamental part of all meditative practice, with the aim of bringing us to a state of consciousness without losing perspective. With meditation we are thus able to see the trees without losing our place in the forest we are in.

Running helps us do just that: be more aware of the present moment and deal with problems that arise.

It also connects us to the present because it helps us communicate with our body, an almost perfect “machine” that we tend to ignore unless it cries out in pain.