Mindful Running

Some evidence is in that running is good for you if you want to live a long and healthy life .  The research titled: Reduced Disability and Mortality Among Aging Runners: A 21-Year Longitudinal Study

A study published by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers show that over a 20 year period middle-aged individuals who were part of a runner’s club were half as likely to die when compared to a control group that didn’t.

The research was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. It followed 284 people over the age of 50 that ran several times a week since 1984. It compared them to a control group of 156 healthy people who were similar.

The participants, the runners and the control group, were Stanford University faculty and staff. They were all over 50 with similar social and economic backgrounds.

These researchers found that running reduced the risk not only of heart disease, but of cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Runners over 50 that ran on a regular basis for several years suffered fewer disabilities. Running gave them a longer span of active life. The research results showed that runners reduced their risk of dying early by 50 percent compared to inactive people. The difference in health between runners and non runners was seen even for those approaching 90.

Some comments based on these findings would indicate that the benefits of regular exercise might reduce risk of death and disability due to:

• Increasing cardiovascular fitness,

• Improving aerobic capacity,

• Increased bone mass,

• Lower levels of inflammatory markers,

• Improved response to vaccinations and

• Improved thinking and other brain functions..

Diane Gallo, a friend of mine and the VP of HR at Vistagee send me a link that truly speaks about competition in its original and truest meaning. Competition come from “cum peto” meaning “to seek with. I’ve written about it in the past that to come in second or third may mean that I pushed the person who came in first to a level they did not realize they were humanly capable of achieving.

World records simply show us what a fellow human being is capable of doing or achieving.

In this instance I was moved by the human spirit of these 5 finalists in ABC and Prevention Magazine’s Picture of Life. These 5 marvelous women who are competing (seeking with each other) to see who is the winner of the finalists are all winners. Also winners are all the hundreds or thousands of women over 40 whose stories didn’t make it into the finals. Like the five finalists these other women moved and continue to move the hearts, souls/soles, and spirits of the people their lives have touch.

In our understanding of competing with others, we often miss the human spirit in true competition and see only winners and losers. It is about being in the game and being present, being mindful. I’m am not a loser if I have lost. I am not a winner if I have won. Rather I have lost at a moment in time or I have won in a moment of time. There will be a new moment of time in which I will again get a chance, should I choose, to participate. I will get the opportunity to see if I am able to be present in seeking with someone else. I will see if my best efforts for today were better than your best efforts today.

It says nothing about me at another time. Each moment is a present moment.

Diane has been touched by MaryKay Mullally. I saw what Diane achieved in running her first half marathon. And behind Diane was the coaching, training, spirit and inspiration of MaryKay through her Step Up For Life program.

For me all five finalists are winners. Will my vote and your vote be for the woman whose story moved us as individuals? Will I be moved to action? To do what is humanly possible for me?

Or it may be that it becomes a popularity contest or a contest of who was able to motivate the most people to vote for one particular finalist. If that is the case, I really don’t know who the winner is. If that is the case, then all five finalists are winners and the one who had the biggest network of contacts will win the 2008 Picture Of Life. Is it a vote of the heart? Is it a vote for ourselves to vote for the person who has or is moving me to become my own Picture of Life? Or am I checking a box because…someone asked me? For me it is about being awake, aware, and mindful of what is the purpose of Competition.

When we are finished, we are all in the biggest competition of all: The Human Race. These 5 women are models of what is humanly possible. I won’t tell you who I’m voting for after watching each of their powerful stories. I wouldn’t want you to do something because I did it or told you to do it. Rereading this teaching of Buddha will remind us of who to believe.

Dick Michener, a dear running friend from my days around rec.running & The Roads Scholars Running Group on Yahoo Groups has a great short story called “The Rest of My Life that Richard Benyo has accepted for a future publication in Marathon & Beyond.

There’s a bio at the end of this short piece of his that gives his perspectives about actual events before and during an actual race.

“You become what you think about.” This has been a popular saying since it was uttered by Francis Bacon nearly five hundred years ago. I first heard it in high school. Is it an outdated cliché? Consider the following before you decide.

8:30 a.m. on a balmy Saturday morning in September is the scheduled start of an annual cross country race put on by a local club. Attracting entrants ranging from health walkers to elite runners, it traverses woods and water, rocks and mud. It ends at the top of a Native American mound. The tough course and the lingering heat and humidity challenge folks of all ages and abilities. Most of them sign up every year for the experience but are glad when it is over.

However, this time the start is delayed. A few minutes before the gun is set to go off, one of the entrants experiences a sudden and prolonged seizure. The victim, a middle-age man, is well known and respected in our mountain community as an excellent role model, a self-disciplined adult who has stayed in shape and compiled a clean medical history.

In the throng are several medical doctors who give him immediate and expert attention. An EMS unit arrives within minutes and transports him to a regional hospital with a fine emergency department. The entire incident delays the start of the race by less than half an hour, but it seems as though a lifetime has passed.

A debate begins about what should be done next. There is a quick consensus that the race should continue, to honor a fallen comrade and affirm an active lifestyle. These considerations make me feel guilty and unworthy. “Why am I still standing here,” I wonder, “as inconsistent as I have been with my efforts at increased exercise, improved nutrition, and weight loss, while a younger and a better man has been cut down?” However, my focus returns to the race as soon as it begins.

I have volunteered to be a course monitor, directing competitors at the final turn, where participants emerge from dense woods and head toward the steep and elevated finish. I shout the same encouraging words: “Sharp u-turn; follow the signs and the cones; you’re almost home!” I take particular pleasure in watching senior citizens grunting but grinning as they struggle up toward the finish line.

Toward the back of the pack, I spot two females coming our way in tandem, linked by a tether. As they pass by, I watch a middle-school girl listening as her middle-aged companion describes what lies ahead. The girl is blind, but her eyes are shining. dick_michener@yahoo.com

Here is Dick’s writers bio:

“My essays and stories have been published so far in the USA, Canada, Australia, and England. No books yet, but I am working on that. Most of my pieces tackle serious subjects but leaven them with humor.
All of them are less than 1,500 words. Working on a small canvas compels me to be concise, precise, and emphatic. Also, how often have you finished reading anything and said to yourself: ‘I wish that had been longer?’”

This video gives a very convincing visual of the Pose Running Method. This keeps one aware that the turnover rate of 180 steps a minute is just the beginning when learning to run in good form and style. Back to my old saying: Running is a dance. You can do it gracefully or clumsily. Go for the grace!

On April 1st, a short article Walking the Talk Therapy by Tina Kelley talked about Karen Arthur and her offering of “Walking and Talking Psychotherapy.”

If I were to say that it was sweeping the nation like a wildfire, you know it would be an April Fool’s. In the span of 30 plus years since Tad Kostrubala wrote the Joy of Running and began to train Running and Walking Therapists, the number of people using walking and running as a tool in the process of healing Mind/Body/Spirit has increased ever so slowly. This is an endurance smoldering.

The word “Therapist” comes from the Greek verb meaning to attend or listen to. Twenty-five hundred years ago there were healing centers dedicated to the demigod of medicine and healing: Aesculapius (Greek spelling). This Wikipedia piece on Asclepius (Latin spelling) is a good starting point. You can also get a short definition from medterms.com or further insights into Aesclepus at Pantheon.org.

The “theraps” in 400 BCE or 500 BCE was the person attending or listening to the needs of the individual in the healing centers who had come for healing. The “theraps”assisted the person prepare for their healing dream…that was the healing. It wasn’t the interpretation by a priest, oracle or some seer. The healing came in the dream.

I am wondering if more people have found their own healing or have become the “theraps” (ones attending or listening to individuals seeking healing) to others in such unsuspecting healing centers called: Mall Walkers, Marathon Training Groups, Team-In-Training groups, City Striders, Volks Marchers, Urban Ramblers?

Carl Jung’s statement: The mind reflects the body reflects the mind, to me means I can start with the body or with the mind; or I can work on them both at the same time. What better way to do so that to go for a long run or a long walk with a friend or friends who are traveling their own paths through life and through their endurance training.

Some of my thought are reflected in my writing: The Journey of a Running Therapist: A Sometimes Mindful Runner.

Not sure where the years went. I came across this poem after a run on St. Valentine’s in 1998:

Thoughts are like leaves
dropping into a stream.

As soon as they
touch the water
they are carried away.

Sometimes they get
caught in an eddy.
Soon there are so many leaves
in the eddy
you cannot see the water.

If you didn’t know better
you would swear
you could run
on that bed of leaves.

Thoughts come and go
like breath.
We breath
and don’t even know it.

Thoughts come and go
like each step in our run.
We know not how many
steps we’ve taken.

The rhythm of the run
the sound of the breath
leave thoughts behind
with each new step
and each new breath.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Jen Lucas as part of her Masters Degree in Social Work at Cal State Sacramento did a project on Running For Mental Health. I remember receiving an email from her inquiring about the Running Therapy that I had been doing with patients since the mid-1970’s.

Jen completing her Project for the degree, in my mind’s eye, has been an ultramarathon in mindfulness which she has now completed. Now she moves forward in the practice of her skills of being present, the best Jen Lucas she can be, and towards her work as a Clinical Social Worker.

She sent me a copy of her project and I asked if I could share it with the readers of Mindful Running. With her approval, i’ve attached her Masters Project.

For me, it is a small tribute to Jen for her tenacity in completing her Project and all that she found out about herself along the way.

It is a reminder that the marathon still remains a marvelous metaphor in a modern world where there are so few rites of passage into adulthood. If you read Hollis’ book Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men you get a better understanding of the difficulties facing us into becoming adults in the truest sense of the word. To see what I mean, you might enjoy reading the blog piece I wrote: Seeking Personal Experience and Personal Authority that talks about Personal Authority which in Hollis’ words is: Finding what is true for oneself and living it in the world. And as we know much easier said than done.

Some quick thoughts and observations on breathing:

1. Keeping the same cadence, my speed depends on the lean of the body from ankle to the top of the head. The more the lean, the faster I go and the quicker I have to move my foot through its cycle while maintaining the same cadence.

2. When I am running slowly, 9 to 10 minute pace, I can breathe 8 steps out and 4 or 6 steps in. That means I get one cycle of air every 12 to 14 steps.

3. As I speed up, but maintaining the same cadence I will shorten the breathe cycle so that my perceived effort (Borg Scale) will support my increased speed. University of Waterloo has a great little learning site on the Borg Scale & RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion). (more…)

Just wanted to share with you someone that I consider a dear friend.

http://www.joehenderson.com/archive

Joe is someone I remember reading in the mid-70’s when I first began to run. He took me through LSD (Long Slow Distance), has been a companion in my thoughts and reflections, and remains one of those people I champion because of his spirit, his energy, his integrity, his willingness to share, and the fact that he continues to run and write, and write and run.

I look forward to reading his book-in-progress, Home Runs, as he shares his own road less traveled.

You will find so much in his archives that will inspire, give you fuel for thought and reflection, and miles of your own running and walking to ponder your own journey and Odyssey.