Yoga and biking

Hi,

It is strange being here in Madison in the USA at a conference and not cycling at all. It is fairly flat, its a small town with not too much traffic. There are plenty of bikes around many of them very stripped down with no mud guards whether mountain bikes or racers.

So to keep ready for my trip I have been doing yoga. It was very strange doing the first session at about 5am having woken up at 4am on my first morning here. When I first seriously began yoga classes 5 years ago it felt quite a physical challenge - I was in a quite physical 2 hour class but immediately I felt something spiritual happening to me, I would go into some kind of almost trance state.

Then my friend Keith - he of the "If I fall off the bike the pig gets it" fame, anyway Keith told me of a class run by a spiritual group called Ananda Marga. This class was more gentle more energy centred (chakras) focused. In between posture you lie for a minute or two flat on your back in what they call the corpse position.

In most postures there is a still moment when you don't breath for about 10 seconds and the world stops. It always reminds me of the time when Grace was first born before she took her first breathe. Magic.

So I guess we are talking about how Yoga is a liminal space for me especially this in between breath moments. This Ananda Marga yoga felt even more spiritual for me than my previous Yoga class. I felt all chilled out and de-stressed by it - it was better than therapy!

If you take this notion of what yoga actually is then I guess riding my bike can become a yoga for me too in fact it already is.

I can get a bit boring about all this bike stuff I guess it has always been my way to share with people what I am doing and what it does to me. This blog just makes me worse. But there again it up to you. You don't have to read this stuff - you can leave it!

Best to all,

Bill on bike