So I think I've been posting too much policy/social philosophy stuff lately, and I want to get back to my life philosophy roots. I have an article on the meaning of life brewing, but in the meantime...
I play a lot of sport. My love affair with exercise reached its appex in 2009 when I took a year off from university to play/coach tennis 70 hours a week – 7am-9:30pm, every day. A great many of my friends think that I am a little insane, but what was more interesting to me was when one of my friends said: “don’t go back to playing tennis. You’re so boring when you play tennis”. And that struck me, not so much because I think tennis is fascinating (it is) but because my friend didn’t seem to understand the role that sport plays in my attitude to living. You see, exercise and fitness allow us to transcend our physical limits, and achieve things that we would not otherwise be able to do.
Let me give you a simple example – climbing mount everest is awesome. Its real hard and real satisfying, and you can’t do it unless you’re one fit animal. In climbing everest, you conquer yourself. You reach out beyond your potential, and achieve physical, tangible proof of your personal improvement.
What am I getting at here. Well, it’s always struck me that I would like to be totally free to do what I want with my life and my consciousness. Unfortunately, I am not god. As much as I can contribute to the elimination of suffering in the world or run a 100km, I can’t go on an intergalatic space voyage, or bring about world peace. One of the biggest things standing in the way of my adventures is the physical shell in which I am embodied. I die at high and low temperatures. I can get diseased. My brain only functions at a certain speed. I need to sleep 30% of the time etc. If I want the experience of scaling everest, I need to teach my body to survive at high altitude, to climb ice cliffs and the like.
But if I do put in the effort, I can do it.If I train hard, I could get up to the top of mount everest. Exercise improves our potential – it broadens our existential horizons. I can understand that for many people running 100km is not a meaningful thing to do, niether is canoeing down the Mississipi or walking across the arctic, but those are all things that I really want to do with my life. So is becoming a damn good tennis player. This comes back to be a well-rounded individual, but is also about reaching the limits of my potential in all possible ways. I would like to be the best I can be, and a big part of that is physicality. By being the best I can be, I open up possibilities for my life that would not otherwise be there – exciting possibilities. Meaningful possibilities. Anyone who has ever gone on an arduous Dawn hike to see the sun rising over cloudy valleys knows what I’m talking about. Physical capacity gives us access to a range of experiences that are otherwise unavailable.
When you achieve physical transcendence you feel more powerful regarding your universe. You have greater power to shape, experience and explore. Perhaps more importantly, physical goals are things that are easily measurable. If I have the goal of swimming the 10km open ocean, I can just go and do it. That is very easy access to coincidence of being (I will have an article on what this means very shortly). By contrast, if my goal is to foster bipartisanship and rational discourse in Australia, it is very difficult for me to grasp my effectiveness tangibly.
I’m not here telling anyone so work harder at being a physical weapon. I am really just trying to explain why it is that I like to push my body. At the same time though, I have always thought that transcending your physical limitations was an interested and thrilling experience, and I thought I might share my thoughts on the matter.
As an avid runner, I found your post interesting. For me, however, the physical is peripheral to the experience itself. It is merely a means to a transcendental expression that occurs internally, that of maximizing pleasure and desire. In my case, it's manifestation is acheiving a personal best time in a 10k. No matter how much I've trained, the last few miles of a marathon, for me, are an expression of something a bit more mystical than physics. Enjoyed your post.
ReplyDeleteI am starting research on a state of mind that athletes experience, the "in the zone mentality". I can speak from personal experience about what I feel transcendence truly is and the supernatural moments some people, including myself, have experienced. There is a point in competition or achievement of goals where an individual falls into a different mindset. In said mindset, when an individual lets go of their physical situation and adversities, they find that the physical realm becomes much more expanded and limitations seem to fall away. As an athlete myself I recall moments where my mental perspective changed and I almost felt as though I was experiencing everything from a third person perspective. My wants and emotions controlled the outcome and my physical condition became irrelevant. There is several great examples on film. One in which I was enraged by a pass interception during a game. I was an offensive lineman and I ran down a much faster defensive player so effortlessly that it looked like a hoax when watched on TV. Another instance during a defensive play where I leapt to knock down a pass and jumped to a height that is practically inconceivable for any athlete, especially one of my caliber. In that case I was outstretched vertically for the ball and my heels were nearly 6' above the ground. The cases of me exceeding not just my personal limitations but nearly exceeding human physical limitations is extensive, but at last I don't have a proper understanding of my mindset at the time, or how I achieved that state, or how it might be possible to train to access and maintain such a state of mind. I believe this is a state that Bruce Lee referenced to in his writings as well as other great athletes. Examples of this are boundless on the web, but research into developing this state is limited. I am interested to hear more on your opinion.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I don't think I have anything to offer sorry. Maybe check out the Yim Hoff method? Most of the results concern immune system response, but there's plenty of results around huge increases in strength, at least short term. The events you describe sound like adrenaline must be involved, and some of the scientific research on Hoff suggests that his methods allow you to consciously release adrenaline. The psychological state that seems most relevant is flow (Csikszentmihaly). But I don't think flow is associated with producing high performance so much as high performance is associated with producing flow, or they are codetermined.
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