Exercise and meditation

I discovered something the other day which will probably do wonders for my health and my practice - I like to cycle for exercise, and I found that if I noted every stroke of the pedal, or every breath in/ breath out, along with seeing/hearing and occasional mindstates and thoughts, while anchoring on either the strokes or the breath, it had a very strong effect. I notice the same during yoga if I note the breathing. I'm not sure if the extra oxygen helps or what, but I plan on doing more exercise meditation in the future!

Anyone else have experience with this?

I'm a cyclist as well, and have tried noting while riding. It seems to work in short bursts for me, but I find I get easily distracted from the noting unless I'm on a fairly uneventful road.
I'm sure that more practice will help, and the season is young.

On the other hand, concentration practice seems easier for me on the bike than general noting. So, paying attention to the qualities of my breathing works well. Also, one of the things that I routinely work on is the smoothness of my pedal stroke, and it's very helpful for me to keep attention on it for a set period of time, say, until I get to a particular part of the road, or until the hill ends, etc.

On the other hand, I've found it fairly easy to note while riding my trainer, and while using a treadmill. Not much chance of running into anything important that way.

good point - I'm on a closed loop on an island after work at times so its safe enough to do that...

I did what I called a "biking retreat" a few years ago by biking from Minneapolis to Chicago. At the time I was just doing concentration practice, and I found that it actually worked pretty well. I'd bike for an hour or so, then have a nice long sit in the shade, then go back to biking. It was like a silent retreat with alternating sitting and walking meditation. I loved that experience.

WSH3 - you're on an island? Where?

wow - great idea... No there is an island here in San Diego, called fiesta island. Its not really an island as it has a road going to it but its a cyclists after-work training paradise.. 25mph speed limit, one way loop of 4 something miles. Its not uncommon to see a paceline of 30-40 cat4-5 and up riders cruising the loop at 27mph...

The whole "Chi Running" thing is kind of interesting. I bet you could adapt some of that stuff to cycling.

I've always been struck by the fact that Adyashanti in his early days was a competitive cyclist who would spend hours at a time simply cycling, his mind quiet, his entire body and being present with the simple activity of cycling and the surrounding environment - nothing less than shamata in motion. This as reported by him in conversation with one of the Integral Life crew.

More generally, doesn't attention enhance everything? Life's very own msg/salt, only that attention is healthy and wholesome and creates a space out of which all sorts of good things emerge.

"I did what I called a "biking retreat" a few years ago by biking from Minneapolis to Chicago. At the time I was just doing concentration practice, and I found that it actually worked pretty well. I'd bike for an hour or so, then have a nice long sit in the shade, then go back to biking. It was like a silent retreat with alternating sitting and walking meditation. I loved that experience......"

That's awesome Ron, I feel inspired to do something similar.

So, I did a 2.5 hr training ride on Saturday, and tried to figure out a practice that works for me on the road. Doing this on the trainer is pretty easy, and I'd like to do this on the road, since I spend a fair amount of time on the bike once the weather is above 50F.

The first thing I found was that noting out loud is a non-starter. It completely threw off my breathing. Not a problem, I thought, I'll just switch to silent noting. I started, and then 35 minutes later, I realized I had stopped noting a long time ago.

This happened a few time, so I switched to trying to do some kind of samatha. I tried concentration on the feel of my feet on the pedals, and the feel of the full pedal stroke, and this seemed to work for a while. I then tried counting breaths, and this worked for a while too. But in the end, distractions and habit won this round.

Basically, doing this practice on the road will require, well, practice. I think I'll buy a small timer and set it to go off every few minutes to help keep me on track. I suspect the biggest problem is that I'm not used to doing this on a bike. It took a long time for me to be able to note steadily in the car, but now it's second nature.

Any comments or suggestion on ways to help keep my focus?

Two comments:
1. I'm soooooo jealous you got 2 1/2 hrs in. Still waiting on the weather here, and the trainers just not the same.
2.I'm thinking of just trying a full body awareness, but will still probably take some time to get used to it.
I tried this a bit at the end of last season, but I was just starting to get serious about meditating so it was a pretty half hearted attempt.

Yeah, the weather here in Michigan, USA has not cooperated much either. Saturday turned out warm in the high 50's, but with steady 20 mph winds. You know it's windy when you have to pedal just to roll downhill.

However, the alternative would have been to do this ride on the trainer. I suspect that I would have gotten more mindfulness or noting practice done, since I can ride it with my eyes closed.

I'll keep trying various sorts of mindfulness techniques, and we'll see how I fare.

Yesterday, I played again with noting while cycling. This time I did a recovery ride, which means I intentionally rode at a much lower heart rate and effort than on the previous training ride.

I think that point is important. I've noticed that during really hard exertions, say full-out sprinting or a hard hill-climb, my focus of attention gets really, really small. I don't notice much except what's immediately on the road in front of me, the feel of my body on the bike, maximizing the power I can deliver to the pedals, and the road feel of the bike under me.

Even on a moderately hard ride, focus really narrows, and it's hard for my mind to wander much.

On a recovery ride, however, my attention is much, much wider, and so many more objects appear in the field of my attention. It's a lot easier to get distracted. Look at that bright blue fence, and that dog behind it looks like my neighbor's dog that barked at me when I left home, when it was less windy, and sunnier too, and why are the fingers on my right hand warmer than my left, maybe I should get better gloves at that bike store downtown, ad nauseum...

I mainly played with these mindfulness techniques:
1) Silently noting whatever comes up.
2) Silently noting vedana.
3) Silently noting everything except stuff in the visual field.
4) Paying attention to my breathing.
5) Paying attention to feel of my feet on the pedals and the feel of my pedal stroke.

Cont...

I found that simply mouthing the notes instead of using breath to make them audible was a good compromise with verbal noting, which used too much breath to be very useful.

1, 2, and 3 all seemed to work well, except that eventually I'd notice that I'd stopped a while ago. 2 used up more mental bandwidth than 1. 3 helped me note more of the foundations besides the first.

4, 5 were good as well, but needed a low-traffic road and few interruptions to sustain the practice.

In general, I'll keep at it. I had longer stretches of noting this time compared to last, but still lost focus a lot and didn't realize it until much later. I may also purchase a cheap resettable timer I can tie-strap to my handlebars. I'll set it to go off every few minutes to help me remember, and slowly increase the interval to help wean me off of it.