“I meditate when I run.”
“My gardening is my meditation practice.”
OK, cool.
My take and experience is movement has the capacity to absorb the mind. Rhythmic movement in particular can be both restorative physically and meditative. The power this has to absorb the mind can also be an escape (and has been for me in the past for sure).
However, I feel there may be a depth in a stillness practice and a level of insight that we can find there that goes beyond that during movement.
I kind of think about it like trying to read the signage on a moving bus. When it’s moving past, we can get most of it. When it stops, we can really notice the fine print.
Am I saying that we can’t find calm and clarity in our movement? Of course not. I’m sure many people have.
However, having gone through multi-year phases of 25+ hours per week of different types of training, endurance work and other dynamic exercises, experiencing flow states and calming the mind through long trail runs, I believe there is more.
I strongly believe there is true value though in the seated practice and in particular for longer term retreats. In these settings, we can learn lessons that we can take with us on our daily life.
