How You Can Meditate in Motion

This morning I was working with one of my regulars, George. He’s a tall, lean man in his mid-sixties who has completed half a dozen marathons and, for whom, training includes regular 20-mile runs; aside from the road work he’s a successful financial advisor and has spent many years of his life in self-exploration, everything from groups devoted to inner-awareness to the indigenous plant medicines of tribal cultures. He’s a hard worker, an explorer, and very mindful, with a determination that I respect.

George was training on the seated chest press, a standard piece of equipment in most gyms. Using a relatively light weight in coordination with his breath. Breathing to a count of two breaths as he pushed the weighted bar away from his chest — this is the concentric phase when the muscles shorten — and three breaths on the eccentric phase (movements which lengthen the muscles) as he lowered the bar back to the starting position.  This slow-motion style of training is a good insurance against injury, and because of the breathing pattern, the two breaths to three ratio accentuates the eccentric phase of the exercise, when the muscles lengthen under tension (or stress). Because the fibers are stretched under stress they develop micro-tears, tiny wounds; it is during the recovery phase of training: the day, or days off and out of the gym, according to the intensity of the work, that these micro-tears heal and the fibers become stronger and somewhat thicker, adding both size and strength to the muscle.

The addition of a controlled conscious breath to this movement, or any movement, whether it’s lifting a barbell or walking around the block, adds another dimension, bringing the mind and body into a coordinated alignment.

“I do a regular meditation,” George said, at the end of his third set. “And this feels like meditation.”

“It is meditation,” I replied.

And there lies the difference between “going through the motions” and consciously training. There is a real divide between the average gym with news channels blaring on overhead televisions and music piped through wall-mounted speakers — diverting attention from the here and now of the body and mind — and the yoga studio where reverence is given to the asanas or postures in coordination with the breath.  

Yoga means ‘union.’

Meditation is union, with the present moment.