Extreme Sports and The Spiritual Dimension
Common to practitioners of extreme sports - be it skydiving, rock climbing, whitewater kayaking, diving, surfing, etc. is that they are motivated by a quest for intensity and sense of freedom, and that the exercise of the sport usually takes place in nature.
Feelings of freedom and intensity occurs when the habitual patterns of our daily life and our mind's thought patterns are allowed to slip into the background. And this is precisely what happens in extreme sports during peak experiences where body, mind and environment come together in a single flow - The nervous system and the brain are flooded with adrenaline, endorphins and other neurotransmitters. The experience is that the separation between the practitioner him/herself and the environment in which he/she is immersed dissolves for a moment: The skydiver becomes one with the atmosphere and the gravitational force during the free fall, The awareness of the freediver dissolve into his/her own body and the ocean alike, and the kitesurfer experience himself as an extension of pure wind force, the waves and the infinite horizon.
Connecting with forces of nature in this way, is an effective method to raise the level of energy in the mind and the nervous system. Sometimes the level of arousal is so high, that the ego's habitual functions cease periodically (including depressive and negative states of mind), and experiences of freedom and joy replaces the ego's incessant self negotiating process for a while. - And this surplus of energy and openness we can transfer to other areas of our lives, sparking new creative impulses..
When people try kite surfing, it is common to experience intimate with nature - An experience many never forget. In playing with the elemental forces a feeling of high speed and infinite freedom arises. All plays together: The body's balance, the tremendous traction of the wind and the board that thunders across the waves - And exactly there, while everything is on, we sense inwardly and meet ourselves exactly how- and what we are in that moment - Intense and full of life!
Some forms of meditation practices are likewise very intense, but paradoxically the practitioner is sitting completely still and relaxed on a pillow.
While we during kitesurfing utilizes the external energy of the elements, we work in meditation with the mind and the body's internal energies, and the result is that we eventually reach the same experience of flow, intense presence, freedom and joy.
Meditation
One way to explain the inner dynamics of meditation, is that our awareness becomes able to 'surf' the surplus energy in the nervous system. Some of the energy that usually is absorbed in our normal stream of consciousness, is released by the practice of applied mindfulness. The point is that an aspect of our own awareness arises - an aspect, that is free from the usual mind chatter. This 'pure presence' begins to emerge, when one part of our mind breaks free and starts to look at the minds own thought patterns and emotional flows, instead of, as usual, when our awareness completely lose itself into the never ending stream of thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations that are constantly in play in body and mind. Most people can recognize this experience, as the constant internal dialogue we have running with ourselves most of the time. By slightly detaching our attention from the mental content, some of the energy, that was previously invested in this inner dialogue, now is set free and flows back as pure awareness. This shows in the form of increased intensity and clarity of consciousness - or to put it another way: As more presence in body, mind and feelings.
The point of combining extreme sports with meditative training is to include our inner reality when we kite surf. In this way, extreme sports become more than just an adrenalin rush - By integrating the heightened sense of energy and aliveness from the forces of nature into our daily state of mind, we can experience a more intense life of inner and outer freedom and joy and clarity of mind.
