Epiphanies are coming fast and furious these days.
Last night I decided to go to the free "Meditation" class at the Y. I don't know what I thought it would be, but what ever I thought it would be, it wasn't. This was meditation to take a "spiritual journey." Unfortunatley the room was small and the town is smaller so escape was futile. Ashem works in mysterious ways....
After we got lavender oil dropped on our head and the lights were dimmed, she talked us through opening up the space above our heads and allowing each of the chakra colors to stream into our body, and she talked and talked and talked. She wanted us to get in touch with our spiritual guide. Well I don't know about that, but I did get in touch with my inner 5 year-old boy, when just as we were supposed to feel the yellow chakra flowing through our pelvic area, someone went into the bathroom that shared a wall with the classroom, tinkled, and flushed the toilet.
So I survived the hour and all the various and sundry chakra colors entering and filling my body and then, thankfully it was over. But not before I heard something that really blew me away. She gave some "tips" for meditating at home. Don't lay down, most people fall asleep (well duh), reclining is better, and best of all, walking. WALKING! Walking she said allows you to get into the perfect meditative state. Eureka!
Now, this explains a lot. Most of all, why I hate treadmills. And for that, kind reader, you'll have to come with me to back to a class I took when I was teaching many many moons ago. The class was called F.A.T. City (FAT = Frustration, Anxiety, and Tension) and nothing that I've done before or since has affected me more. The class is intended to put people in situations that allow you to experience what special needs students experience in the classroom. It was a profound experience. But here in lies the crux for this story.
In that class, we learned that all the tasks in the world are divided into to categories: associative and cognitive. Most things for normal functioning brains are associative, meaning you can do more than one thing at a time (talk on the phone and take notes for example, or in my co-workers cases, play computer solitaire.) But there are other tasks that are cognitive, meaning they take all your brain function at once. The example the instructor gave was driving. Most of the time driving is an associative task, you can drive and talk and listen to the radio all at the same time. But imagine, that suddenly the sky opens up, it starts to pour - it's dark and you don't know where you are. What's the first thing you do? Turn off the radio and say to everyone in the car, Shhh. Suddenly driving has become a cognitive task. (Ok many of you who have driven with me are now saying to yourself, For Robin, driving should always be a cognitive task and I can't argue with that, I'm a terrible driver, but this is about walking).
I realized why I HATE treadmills! For me, walking on a treadmill is a cognitive task! Maybe I'm scarred by my early childhood memories of poor George Jetson being constantly sucked under the treadmill over and over again and no one there to help him. But when I'm on a treadmill I literally concentrate on every step I take. So walking on the treadmill was never a place where I did my best thinking. And certainly watching TV or reading a book made it even worse as a time for my brain to cut loose. This also explains why I hate to walk with another human being (on a regular basis) it's nothing personal, it's just I realize how much I love walking when my brain and I are alone with each other. I also realized, I lost my perfect walking companion - Hazel.
So now I know, why I walk past all those people in the morning in the nice, climate-controlled room on those very state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line treadmills that the Y is proud to boast they just purchased. This is why I prefer the track to the treadmill. And despite my father's claims to the contrary, I CAN in fact walk and chew gum at the same time. And more importantly, I can walk and think at the same time.
Having that time alone with my brain every morning has been great. It's like we get on the track, and I take the leash off and let it run. Of course every once in a while it circles back mostly to belt out the chorus of the song it's just heard on the ipod or struggles to think about whether or not I clicked off the last lap on the clicker, but eventually, I can cajole it into running back out in the wild and seeing what it can fetch.
I composed this blog entry on my walk this morning. Ok so it's not War and Peace but come on, I've only been walking for 10 days, give me time. And if you have a problem that needs to be solved, give me a call and I'll walk on it.
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