Running as a spiritual practice, part 2

Freed my mind .. and my feet followed.

.. Or my 7 tips to a fellow runner/parkour/human/prototype/biocomputer

The original quote “Free your mind and your ass will follow” is usually credited to George Clinton, so I’m not taking credit for that. The idea to write these tips came during a long run in the cold, wet darkness that is Finland in October. I thought about the basic stuff that might be hard to realize and how long it did for me to realize even these following basic things about running & overcoming obstacles/parkouring:

How I imagine my body moving

Leg movement starts from the hips

When running, I try not to think about my legs moving and getting me somewhere, instead I try to focus on my hips being the source of movement. When I do this, it puts me into a much more natural way of running than when just keeping my hips static and focusing on my legs and feet. I try to kinda “roll” the movement through my hips all the way down to my feet. If I do this properly, I wont have to even think about the running or my feet, I can just concentrate on my hips swaying back and forwards and looking at the scenery going by :)

Avoid landing on the heels

I try to make my feet roll smoothly over the ground so that the contact with the ground starts from the outer side of the feet’s heel, progresses towards the toes from the outer side still and when finally pushing the body forwards, the whole body is connected to the ground through the center of this balance point. This balance or rooting point is located about 2-3 inches between the first (thumb) and second toe, towards the heel and kinda buried inside. I myself can find this point by gently trying to massage this point with my fingers, when it hurts slightly I know I’ve found it :)

This nerve point is also our connection to the energies of the ground. This is something I’ve learned through doing Chi Kung. If I want to stay balanced, I try to walk so that I’m focusing on these points below the front of the feet and keeping them as connected to the ground as possible, forgetting about the other muscles totally, just letting them do their job and stay balanced.

Be confident and careful

When overcoming obstacles, I (try to ;) remember to practice everytime before doing something new. When practicising jumps, landings or whatever, I first try at levels that I’m confident with before moving into doing it in a bigger scale, ie. actually jumping over a big obstacle. I try to jump only with my other foot, or try at a lower level first, or anything that the current obstacle requires, but just taking it back a bit. Then when I know what muscle and leg movements are required for me to perform, I focus on the big picture:

Visualize your goal ..

I try to visualize my goal, not the movements that will get me there. This is especially important when jumping over obstacles or doing any kind of movement where there is the possibility of injury through failure. If I doubt my goal during the movement, I will fail. This is where being confident about the skills I have comes into play too. I don’t try to do something I’m not sure about, at least if there’s real danger involved.

Quoting the words of Jedi Master Yoda: “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’ “. Visualizing my actions helps my body to do all the different miniscule steps and muscle movements it has been trained for. First I train the body to perform the movement on a smaller scale, then I just go for it and let my body do what it was programmed for. Trying to think how to move my legs, or in what position my hands are during a jump will take my focus away from actually achieving my goal. This is something that I’ve learned through pain when failing ;) Or not learned at all and never made any progress, until I started to observe what is actually happening and how. Keypoint is listening to my body.

.. not the way to get there

A good example of this is walking. If I try to walk and think about walking at the same time, I will probably start to alter my walking or even fail to walk like I normally do. But if I just walk and not think about (like we naturally do), I will get where I was planning on going. Apply this same to every action you do and you will succeed to move naturally even without thinking about things. At least for my self this has taken some time to realize. We’ve been overeducated about things and then things tend to become complicated and we start to even question silly things like: “How to run ? Am I doing it right ? Are my legs like that guy in TV ?“. Everybody knows how to run properly, we might just be confused about it. But everything has a reason of course, so now we just have to learn to run again :)

I also like to think about my body as a collection of independent machines or forms of life. I train the hand to do a movement, and I can just do it without thinking about it. The human body is an incredible collection of autonomous forms of life, seemingly connected and controlled by a central nervous system that is connected to a central CPU called your brain. A hand or a leg can move without a brain, and a brain can operate without a hand attached to it.

Shaman running, visualization practice for uphill running

This is something I’m still learning. I got the tip from some book I read concerning shamans, but I can’t really remember which one. Anyway, in the book there was instructions for running uphill without getting really tired at the same time. Apparently Native Americans and indigenous people around the world use this technique to travel long distances or go uphill easily. I’ve tried it for some time now and was kinda surprised that it actually works.

Here’s what I do: when running uphill or any steep path, rocks or cliffs, I try to visualize a string coming from just below my naval point. I keep imagining that this string is attached to some tree, rock or other object that is coming up along my path. When I have made the connection, I feel the object pulling me towards itself with this string. I Keep focusing on this string and the feeling of being pulled, turning my hands so that my palms are facing downwards towards the ground and imagining that beams of energy or light are coming from the center of my hands. Visualizing that this beam of energy is supporting me, much like my legs are doing. Continuing focusing on these two points and I try to keep my breathing steady at the same time. This really makes it easier to climb uphill, I can definitely feel it, it’s a slight difference, but a difference anyway.

I usually use trees, as they are living objects and I can feel their energy flowing. Again, this is something I’ve learned by doing Chi Kung.

Pikachuuu! Energy flowing

Go with the flow, not against it

It’s better to go with the flow than swim against it. I listen to my body when running and try to see what is the most efficient way of running, and usually it’s the one where I’m the most relaxed also. This means Chi flows freely through my body, there are no blockages in tightened up muscles, and this way I can feel the energy of the environment better too. Now I can feel how to run so that the environment supports my movements, by feeling where there is less resistance, choosing that path in every action I do. This means that let your muscles relax and do their work, and let the brain do the thinking. Don’t try to think for the muscles, just concentrate on the thing you want to do.

Also, why do I choose to call this energy ‘Chi’ ? There are other names for this energy too, like Kundalini, Prana etc .. but for the simple reason that it’s the sound my mouth makes when I imagine energy flying out of my hands :) “Chiii!” “Chii!”, it’s the sound of lightnings, electricity, flowing, streaming .. and yeah, also .. “Pika-“ “CHUUUUUU!!!!” ;)

Purest form of light

Pure light .. pure love

The most purest of the energy forms, the most healing ? But what is pure light ? It’s not just the light of the Sun, but light of all the combinations that occur in nature. The most perfect waveform. So how does this waveform come to existence ? Through humans, through animals, through plants. Through all forms of life that gather energy and recycle it. How do I know this? I just do, and I trust my instincts.

Humans produce this energy intentionally, accidentally or so that they don’t even realize they’re doing it. When somebody loves somebody, they create this healing power that is the basis of all life. Some call it love, some chi, some ki and some prana. I choose to call it chi for now, but really there’s something more into it than just chi.

So, what does this most purest form of energy look like ? It looks like something that contains all possible combinations of the neutrons and atoms occurring in it’s space. It’s like a quantum event where all the possible possibilities come into form , but inside a certain area.

This is how it’s like in it’s purest form. But rarely will you see the perfect form actually reaching you. Most of this love, chi and energy comes in forms that try to approach this state of perfectness. Constantly improving, like elements moving towards their most perfect form, these energies will find their way at some point in the future. Then will world will truly know peace, love and unity.

Dream vision

This may sound ridiculous to some, but I wrote this once in a dream. A dream where I saw me writing this. What does that tell me? That maybe I see things somehow different? Maybe there are people who can sense these forces and are more sensitive to them than people born before them. Maybe we have a generation of psychic children alive now who see things differently. I mostly likely would like to think so. That they do things differently, do things as nature wants things to be done.

And at the same time, I feel ashamed of my thoughts. Ashamed that I think of these things that are not normally accepted. Afraid to talk about these things, afraid to publish my thoughts, being afraid that others will judge me. But time of being afraid is over. Time of thinking different is here. Too long have we been accursed by the enslavist corporations (church, government, corporations)  who try to control our lives at the luxury of their own life. Too long have we suffered and awaited to get back to the paradise we all belong. Where we all have fun, music, drums, food, nature, living, death, all the natural things we once had.

Hope

But I have the luxury of knowing that we are going towards paradise again. And that brings me hope. Hope that maybe we can make a difference. We can really make a difference and let us be free again.  We just have to think for ourselves. Trust our instincts. Our logic maybe programmed throughout our whole lives through mass media and public advertisements. They want us to be dumb, not think for ourselves, just go home and watch the TV, be happy, take your medication, pay your medication, don’t ask questions, DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS!..

’Teacher, why do we live in these gray blocks of houses, spend our mother natures resources wastefully, don’t respect the nature and have forgotten our connection with everything?’
‘Timmy! No Questions! I told you to stay quiet for a while!’
…
’Teacher, why do we eat other animals? Aren’t they our friends ?’
’Timmy! Eat your McBurger™ and shut up!’
…

’Teacher, why do we manufacture weapons instead of food?’
’Timmy, I don’t know’

This maybe leads to our children being frustrated as they can’t understand why we are doing things so stupid. And why they feel like they can’t make any changes in their lives, like they can’t make any difference in their environment. Some may get bored at school and start acting like what they call AD/HD kids. We should encourage creativity and direct experience over old ideas and without questioning accepted facts. We should let the kids think for themselves and discuss about things. Not just listen to the one great teacher who doesn’t even probably himself know what he is teaching, he/she is human after all.

But still, we have hope. But we must work to get there. We must awake. Good thing things are on their way already. People have been starting to find each other, connect to their kind and others too. At the same time it is paradoxical, everything goes as is already planned, all that remains is the work.

To get there, we won’t have to do anything except everything.  :)

NOTE: I originally wrote this back in 10th of September 2009, but didn’t decide to publish until now for some reason. Maybe I wasn’t ready.

Cool thing I found out .. controlling smoke with a quartz crystal, with video

This is something I found out recently. I found this nice crystal (or quartz, not sure) that was supposed to be cut into the same angles as the great pyramids. Anyway, I had some incense  burning while I was playing around with the stone, trying to feel the energies flowing from my palm and through the stone. I almost could see the energy, concentrated and coming from the tip of the crystal.

I tried out pointing the tip of the crystal at the smoke coming from the incense and to my surprise found out that I can control the smoke with the concentrated energy. When I realized that, I hurried to capture this thing on video, for myself too look at later. I have a RGB LED-light set to blue to illuminate the smoke better and I’m just pointing the tip of the crystal at the smoke, trying to make waves in it.

This is chi energy flowing through my palm. I wanted to share this video to show people that we have powers within us that are unknown to most westerners. I’ve been doing Chi Kung to open these paths for about 6 months now, and it has really helped me on every level of life. This video is just something really shallow and just to maybe make people go ‘wow, wtf?’. Maybe I’ll make a better video later.

And just to let you know, I felt kinda exhausted after I stopped playing with the crystal, so this really took some of my energy and I could feel it in my naval area where our dantian resides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dantian). I’m going to be careful with this stuff :)