No time to meditate? Or have you just never been able to sit still long enough to make it through a 10-minute session on the Headspace app? You’re not alone. By now, many of us know that practicing mindfulness and meditation has a ton of mental and physical benefits, but still struggle to make time for it on a regular basis.
But there’s good news: You may actually be able to get most of the benefits of meditation, specifically mindfulness meditation, while you’re pedaling. Read on, and next time you’re on the bike or indoor trainer, consider giving meditation another try. You might find that meditating while moving works better for your busy brain.
What Is Mindfulness Meditation?
Mindfulness—a focus on the present moment—is the easiest form of meditation to begin with. Many of us might assume that yoga would be a better medium for practicing meditation, but Scott Anderson, a meditation teacher and researcher in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin, says riding a bike might actually be better.
More From Bicycling
“Yoga has the potential to be mindful, but if we look at this standard definition of mindfulness, which is to pay attention on purpose, in a particular way in the present moment without judgment, yoga almost never meets those criteria, especially if you’re a competitive person,” he says.
Imagine yourself in yoga class. When was the last time you felt meditative, rather than sore, stuck, or simply ultra-focused on following the teacher’s instructions? Now picture yourself riding instead—how you might take a moment to feel the breeze against your skin, or focus on your pedal stroke and the feeling of your feet pushing into the pedals.
“If even for a moment, that recognition is mindfulness,” Anderson says. “And if you can consolidate those moments, you have yourself a mindfulness practice… And while I don’t think there’s any substitute for a mindfulness practice that includes some stillness, cycling is a great active mindfulness practice and starting point.”
Mindfulness Meditation Techniques To Try
So, how do you do it? Start by removing your earbuds and turning off your screen if you’re on the trainer. Get present with the sensations happening around you. “Take a few moments to feel the sensations associated with the movement, without trying to change the experiences,” Anderson says.
“And for as long as it’s comfortable, simply be with the sensations as they are. It’s not about making your mind empty, it’s about being aware of what is in the present moment,” he adds. “So maybe your mind is going 100 miles an hour, and you’re really worried or stressed out. Mindfulness is not trying to make that stop, it’s simply helping you to be aware of the state of your mind.”
Lean Into Suffering
According to Anderson, mindfulness originated in Buddhism, a religion and philosophical system which in part discusses the nature of suffering—something cyclists and other endurance athletes are no strangers to. Doing a demanding workout like intervals, Anderson points out, can create a mental state that’s actually pretty conducive to doing advanced mindfulness exercises.
“When you’re in the pain cave, there’s a sense that you’re going to break. There are those voices telling you to stop, and you get to look them right in the eye, and you can see that while they seem real, they aren’t. And you keep going, and you’re fine,” Anderson says. “In fact, you get through the pain cave and feel good. That’s the fundamental element of reframing suffering and seeing that this too shall pass. So just letting yourself feel that suffering and move through it in an interval is meditative. Fully inhabit the pain cave, and that’s mindfulness.”
Find a Meditation Mantra
A Sharpie’d reminder on a piece of masking tape reading “smooth is fast” was taped across pro cyclist Ruby West’s top tube at this year’s Cyclocross World Championships. That mini-mantra was one she had repeated to herself over and over—in training, in warmups, and now, at the start line. Maybe you’ve done something similar. Many riders use masking tape to create reminders for themselves, and it turns out, there’s a reason these mantras may help your riding.
Mantra meditation—essentially, repeating a word or phrase over and over in your head—helps you focus on that one important thing. In this case, “smooth is fast” helped West clear away start-line jitters and worries about powering up the course’s steep climb, boiling the race down into one singular objective.
Use Mindfulness Meditation to Improve Performance
A former nationally-ranked high jumper, Anderson came to meditation as a teenager looking for a way to cure his competition anxiety. (Sound familiar?) After discovering mindfulness and meditation, he taught yoga and meditation for decades before going back to school to begin research on why exactly meditation can boost athletic performance—something he already knew, but couldn’t explain. Now, it’s his life’s work.
The same is true of former BMX rider and mindfulness expert Brian Shiers. He works with UCLA athletes as well as the FBI’s SWAT Team and Hostage Rescue Team. Shiers has been meditating for decades: “It’s probably the reason I did well in BMX as a kid,” he admits. “Mindfulness supercharges mental training. When I would race BMX, I was so dialed in, I knew my foot would press in when I felt that first easing of the gate as it dropped. I had trained to have no mental noise, without even really realizing it.”
Race days are stressful, but not for the reasons you think. If you have race day nerves, you likely make them worse by judging yourself and trying to tamp them down, which Shiers says is an unhelpful practice.
“It’s important to understand that it’s normal to be jittery. Nerves show that you really want to do well, that you care about the outcome,” Shiers says. “Accept that it’s true and normalize it; hiding it makes it bigger. This is radical acceptance.” Radical acceptance is also a tenet of mindfulness and meditation practice—the goal is to simply observe thoughts, accept them, and let them go.
But on race day, it’s still not optimal if your hands are shaking and you’re sprinting for the port-a-potty two minutes before the start. “We want some anxiety, we want the body sensations that let us know our body is amping up, but we want to modulate them,” Shiers says. “Start by noticing your thoughts, and then focus on modulating them.”
For example, Shiers explains that anxiety is the set of body sensations that accompanies an over-exaggeration of a threat and an underestimation of your ability to handle it. Apply this to a race start line, and ask yourself: “What is the real threat here?” There isn’t a grizzly bear chasing you, this is the local Wednesday night race and you’re competing with 15 of your buddies. Your meditation challenge here is to really see your anxious thoughts, and let them go without judgment. “Ask, ‘What’s the worst case scenario?’ Get clear on that, and then check the facts,” Shiers says. “How often does this happen? How often does it not happen?”
This might not sound like a difficult task, but it’s hard to do effectively if you haven’t done it before. Sure, you can logically tell yourself the race isn’t a big deal, but actually tamping down your body’s chemical reaction to stress? That takes practice.
Practice Mindfulness Meditation on the Bike
If you struggle at start lines in particular, or anything else for that matter, then focus your mindfulness practice on that.
“Practice your starts in training, treating them like real, high-stakes start lines,” Shiers says. “Be mindful during these so you can recall the sensation of starting well, having the pedal where it needs to be. Rehearse it physically and mentally so that you can recall that calm space when you’re on the start line.”
You can do this on the trainer with your eyes closed. “Let your body relax, then allow the tension of the start to come in and really feel it,” Shiers says. “Meditate to recreate the experience: This is a distress tolerance practice within your mindfulness practice. Invite these nervous sensations in meditation, let the sensations flood you. Allow yourself to breathe into them, welcome them. These are signs your body is ready for action. You’re trying to find that good level of activation, trying to recreate those optimal conditions.”
When you visualize the start, Shiers suggests focusing on sights, sounds, and sensations. You can also do this outdoors, with your eyes open. “Really see what’s in front of you, hear what’s around you, and feel everything in your body, and hold all three at once without thinking about it,” he says. “You can practice this on a walk, on the trainer, or even on a ride… preferably on an easy trail with no traffic.”
When you can stabilize your attention, you learn to cut out the chatter, and you can choose which information to let in. The more attuned you get, the more careful and concise you become at tasks. “And that translates to riding and racing,” Shiers says. “I see the terrain, I hear the environment around me, I feel my body on the bike.”
So, the next time you’re out on a ride, consider doing a mini-mindfulness meditation practice. You might even find yourself taking a few extra minutes postride for some bonus seated meditation as a result.
