In it for the long run

Gifts

Simple one-hour run today--wandered through park, around track until it got too hot, took off looking for shade, which seemed in short supply, headed home. Was about to start down into the park when I saw a nice hill across the road from the park entrance. Not much shade there either, but the heck with shade, I thought. As the Outward Bound saying goes, "if you can't get out of it, get into it!" Why turn down a chance to run up a nice hill!

After enjoying this hill, I re-entered the park, where there's a lovely shaded trail--not long but covered with cedar chips and bordered by trees. It's my moment of bliss near the beginning and end of my runs. Trotted along that and down a dirt road, then came upon a man doing t'ai chi. Stopped to watch for a moment, and he then finished his routine. I complimented him. His movements were so graceful and fluid. When I told him I was learning it, he said I should keep it up, that it would be better for me than running. He said that in running, the body puts out energy, but in t'ai chi, it receives energy. After I left him, I felt a sense of peace that made me aware of how much tension I'd been holding during the run.

I don't plan to substitute t'ai chi for running, but was intrigued by what he said about receiving energy and the sense of peace I felt after leaving him. It makes me think it would be good to do some t'ai chi/chi gong exercises before a run. I think I'd run more relaxed. (I've noticed that during interval workouts, if I do some of the breathing exercises between repeats, the effort seems to yield more speed than otherwise.) It was interesting the feel of the running after I left him as compared to before I met up with him.

Yesterday, after the workout, I stopped at Borders and picked up Keith Johnsgard's _Conquering Depression and Anxiety Through Exercise_.* Johnsgard opens with the story of a man who is on the verge of death. He is obese and borderline diabetic, has high blood pressure, high cholesterol. His doctors tell him that if he puts any more stress on his system, he will die--which, in fact, he wants to do, because he is depressed, so depressed that he decides to take his life. However, "not wanting to embarrass his parents or compromise their life insurance by an obvious suicide" (p. 24), he decides instead to bring about his death by the heart attack the doctors predict. One morning before dawn, he drives to a park near his home (the idea being to find a time when the park would be deserted and so allow him to die before someone could call an ambulance), chooses a hill known as Coyote Hill, a steep two-mile rise, and sets off to run as hard as he can to the top. His reasoning is that this will surely kill him. However, instead of dying, he passes out, and when he comes to, finds a coyote staring at him, apparently smiling.

Both disappointed and intrigued, he tries his plan the next day and the day after that. The only result was not his death but the ability to go further each time. Soon enough, he realized that his will to live had resurfaced, and that he wanted to heal. With that, he commits himself to walking, then running up Coyote Hill, and grows stronger. Eventually, he runs his first race, makes friends among runners, finds a new reason to live. He remembers the coyote he'd encountered that first day at the park, and curious about its significance, learns that, "in one tribal legend the coyote played a central role in the creation of man" (p. 27). The life-giving significance of that first encounter then becomes all the more clear. In a sense, the coyote has played a central role in his re-creation.

I think of those "behold!" moments during my runs--and in daily living too--when it seems as if I can't go on for some reason or another, and I am given the gift of some special animal encounter. I am surprised into inhabiting my animal self, that self that doesn't get wound up with worry, simply lives. Of course, these encounters don't happen only when I'm depressed. Sometimes simply being receptive and ready for them brings them about. But whatever my mood, they are gifts, unexpected and lovely, like the humming, vibrating noise I heard outside my sister's window the morning after my mother died, and looked to find a hummingbird among the flowers. When I run, I signal myself ready to receive these gifts. Sometimes they come in plant form: the riot of wildflowers along a road--heather, tiger lilies, and black-eyed susans or the lacy white flowers that peeped through a dead bush (sometimes one has to look beyond the dead, dry branches to find the life underneath--so it it is with how we view people). Sometimes they come in human form: the man doing t'ai chi, the occasional elite runner I happen to see flying past with quiet grace. They come with their gifts, their own wisdom--these apparitions, these visitations--and their gifts don't cost a penny. We just need to watch and listen.

When the depressed man in Johnsgard's story made his way to the park, there was in him something preparing him to receive this gift. I believe the will to live was in him already: his concern about embarrassing his parents, his concern that the insurance not be compromised--these show that he was thinking beyond his death, beyond himself and his worries, thinking his way back to life.

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* Keith Johnsgard, _Conquering Depression and Anxiety Through Exercise_ (Prometheus Books, 2004). Page references are to this edition.

posted by DPMcManus @ 10:07 AM