Dirty Inspirations

In an era of digital games, childhood obesity and more text messages sent by young people than I could venture to count, I’m pleased to see that end of Feb/March is shaping up to offer me (and you!) multiple opportunities to stir young people to get outside.

• One of my sponsors – Mountain Hardwear’s is back with their Send a Kid to Camp campaign. For every click on the “Send a Kid to Camp” button found at www.mountainhardwear.com/givesback.aspx Mountain Hardwear will donate $1 to the cause, up to $40,000.  You can and should come back each day until April 15^th and click the button until they’ve reached their goal!
• On Friday, March 19 from 7-9 PM at Simpkins Swim Center, Santa Cruz County Parks is offering A Night of Inspiration for adult athletes. All proceeds from this evening will go toward providing scholarships to children for summer camps and swim lessons. I’ll be one of the presenters at this evening so come by and say hi for a great cause! More info here – http://www.scparks.com/pdfs/night%20of%20inspiration%202010.pdf
• Ann Krcik of  http://www.ExtremeConnection.net will be presenting at the University of Wyoming on the topic of:  “Using the Outdoors to Summit in Your Career”. She asked me and other Extreme Connection speakers to offer some sage advice for college students. Here’s what I came up with:

“Be in the outdoors regularly in order to gain ‘advise’ on what you might want to be in the outdoors. Playing, working, moving, hanging in the outdoors frequently offers us a chance to be in a medium that is indifferent to who or what we or others think we are. Nature does not care about the style of your hair, the brand of your shoes or how many friends you have on Facebook. This indifference offers a clean slate from which to create an authentic essence of who you can, are or wish to be. Nature has no agenda for you, you are required to create it for yourself. If we engage with nature frequently we are giving ourselves freedom from a contrived definition of self and over time we can truly see who we are and what our passions might be. Strip away everything man made, and you might be able to catch a glimpse of what truly drives you.” – TS

• I’ll be heading to Idaho in March as well, to inspire students with an interest in technology to ‘Do Amazing’ – using an outdoor based message.

If you know of any upcoming opportunities to inspire a kid to get out let me know and I will post them here and on my Facebook wall.  Get Inspired!!

How is that 15 second breath work in your office, car or home working for you? You on it several times a day? I have been, and I’ve already noticed a significant change up in my mental focus while at my desk! I’d like to add a few techniques to help you more fully zero-in during these mini-meditation sessions but first here’s a recap of the initial exercise if you missed it or need a reminder:

Sit in a chair or on the floor, posture tall but relaxed and comfortable, eyes lightly closed. Let your breathing be relaxed and natural but as you breathe keep your focus on your breath ONLY. Don’t force the breathing, but when you do inhale be aware than you are inhaling and when you exhale, be aware that you are exhaling. Allow your focus to remain only on your breath for 10-20 seconds. After a very brief time and before your thoughts start to play in your head again, take your last aware breath, open your eyes and get on with your day. Do it again in an hour. And then again.

 To help prompt me to do this exercise, I’ve brought in some wind chimes that were hanging outside and put them right above my desk. If I need a breathing moment I’ll tap the chimes and let the sweet, lovely sound prompt my desire for a breathing exercise (are you thinking Pavlov minus the dog? You got it!).

 To enhance the exercise, I’ve added a color and a word into my breath work like this.

 Imagine the breathe going in as white and cleansing and your exhalation as grey—as I’m letting go of all negative thoughts and distractions. Try adding a word to your inhalation, something like, “inspiration”, “confidence”, or “calm”—as if your are inhaling these words directly.

 Start with a few focused breaths. Then add the color for a few inhalations. Then add your power word for a few more before you open your eyes and get on with your day. Do it again in an hour. And again.

 Share this exercise with one co-worker this week and ask them to pass it along as well. You just might notice a change up of attitude in the office!

Enjoy,

Terri

Gryphon practicing his lying-down-breathing-meditation

When coaching athletes on self-talk, I encourage them to come up with a word or phrase that may help in keeping them present to their physical effort. Examining our self-talk properly can be a complex experience that takes time and practice while involving our sight, physical and emotional feelings, other sensations, and thoughts. Or, it can be a simple, playful intellectual slap on the face. Something like, “stay with me, relax for speed.”

After years of studying and practicing this type of mental focus in my own training and racing I’ve gotten pretty good at sharpening my mind at will, conjuring appropriate self-talk words or phrases in a flash, or kindly reprimanding myself for straying without placing value judgment on my disruptive thoughts. Racing can mentally be very logical and functional if you are willing to accept your fate on that day (or days), then hunker down and make the best of it, especially if one is comfortable being in discomfort.

But despite my ability to remain relevant in the face of desert heat, high winds, pouring rain, snow and pain—finding that elusive headspace in the office has never been as easy. 

It  could be because; when I am sitting at my computer I most often would rather be moving, or, that the emotional grind of surfing my favorite sites to catch up on the difficult world news can create internal angst, but I think for the most part its because I’ve trained my brain for many years to cope well with forward movement through nature and have not ‘trained’ for the mental rigors of day to day human living—until recently.  

I figured if I can stay present to my purpose with swollen, blistered feet I should be able to learn to suffer the sometimes tedious effects of organized work. So to help my cause I’ve been working on lots of types of sitting mediation (among other things) and last night we learned how to insert tiny meditations into our day with intermittent 10-15 second breath focus. One of the goals is to simply ‘Add spice to our day’. I can always deal with loads of spice and these are so fun and easy that I thought I’d share the great info! Here’s how it works:

Sit in a chair, feet on the ground, posture tall but relaxed and comfortable, eyes lightly closed. Let your breathing be relaxed and natural but as you breathe keep your focus on your breath ONLY. Don’t force the breathing, but when you do inhale be aware than you are inhaling and when you exhale, be aware that you are exhaling. Allow your focus to remain only on your breath for 10-20 seconds. After a very brief time and before your thoughts start to play in your head again, take your last aware breath, open your eyes and get on with your day. Do it again in an hour. And then again.

This is in some ways is the same manner in which we train in sport to control our head chatter (except there is more dialog involved and we are moving and in discomfort) – “relax for speed”, or in this case, “breathe for focus”. The result for practicing in both moving and sitting is a calm, yet laser focused mind, open to all tasks at hand, accepting, decisive. So if we slow down for a moment a few times a day our brain can actually work longer at warp speed and at will. The idea in both sport and work is that if we stop trying so hard and the results will happen.

Sprinkle this spice of calm focus into your day today and onward and you might even notie that “relax for speed” will happen a bit more quickly on your next run as well. Let me know how that goes! Namaste.