The mindful rider is someone who approaches riding, and likely their life from the axis of mindfulness. What is mindfulness? Mindful.Org defines it as “the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.” That sounds pretty good to me. To be riding along, fully in the moment, aware of what is going on with ourselves, the bike and everything around us while at the same time maintaining a cool, calm disposition is pretty much the ideal riding situation.
Our brains love routine. We train ourselves to run on autopilot, we can drive to and from work almost mindlessly. How many of you have gotten home from work and don’t remember the drive at all? And while we’re on autopilot our minds wander. Worrying, self-criticizing and fantasizing are three common activities we take up while on autopilot. We become so “good” at autopilot that it often takes over even when we’d probably wish it wouldn’t and when it does we cycle into patterns of thought that are often unhelpful. And while preoccupied we miss a lot of detail on what is happening around us. That’s not to say that mind wandering is all bad, it’s not. There are studies out there that indicate it can be helpful. However, I hope you can see that letting your mind wander while you’re riding your motorcycle is sub-optimal.
To me, riding mindfully means that autopilot is disengaged, we have a clear head and we are consciously focusing on our senses – what we are seeing, hearing and feeling. Everything in that moment is about the ride. When things happen, a car pulls out in front of us or we see a deer on the side of the road, instead of reacting from an emotion like fear, we are able to think quickly and clearly about how to respond and then execute instantly.
Living mindfully adds value to my life. I’ve left judgement mostly behind, developed stronger empathy and learned to respond with equanimity, all of which enhance interpersonal relations. I am much more in tune with my body and my mind because I have trained myself to “notice” changes in my body and be aware of the thoughts passing through my mind.
So how can we cultivate mindfulness? Many experts have published exercises for developing mindfulness. Here’s a particularly good article from Headspace on 5 ways to get mindfulness into your everyday life. It all starts with awareness; noticing what our mind and body are doing. These practices are not designed to make you one with your toothbrush but rather to exercise your mind, training it to being completely present with whatever you are doing.
A useful strategy for developing mindfulness is to practice meditation. I use guided meditations of about 20 minutes in length twice per week. When you’re practicing meditation, you learn very quickly to notice when the mind starts to wander, and without judgement simply refocus your attention back to the practice. This in a nutshell is the skill that comes in very handy on the bike. When you’ve practiced it enough, one day you will just notice that you automatically do this when your mind starts to wander. It keeps you present and as you progress, you will find that if you set your intention: “I’m riding my motorcycle”, your mind will barely wander at all. If you’re interested and want a good place to start with these, on whatever podcast app you use, search for Tara Brach. Her guided meditations are simple and top notch.
I’ve talked about this in other articles, but through mindfulness we can detect stress, anxiety and fear and take steps while on the bike to deal with it. When I’m riding, sometimes the first time I notice I am feeling anxious is upper back/shoulder pain. Then I do a quick body scan and check my neck, shoulders, hands and feet. One or more of sore neck/shoulders, death grip on the bars and toes curled all signal stress/anxiety for me.
One of the actions I take at this time is to do a short breathing exercise where I do 5 deep inhales and exhales of 5 seconds each. On the exhale I focus on relaxing my neck, shoulders, hands and feet. Deep, even breathing like this activates the vagus nerve which in turn triggers the parasympathetic nervous system. This will relax you.
As important though is to examine my thinking. What’s going on in my head that has me stressed? Sometimes I’ve drifted and there’s a movie playing in my head that shows me crashing into a car turning left in front of me. Maybe I’ve blown a corner and now my confidence is lower in the subsequent curves and it’s stressing me out.
Once I’ve identified what’s going on in my head, I can frame a clear, rational response to the situation. I can talk back to myself, rationally explaining in a helpful way why something is unlikely to occur or I can suggest an alternate course of action from this point forward which will alleviate my stress, i.e. “Slow down and enjoy the ride”. Rationally examining your thoughts and consciously talking back to them is an important skill also. There’s something called the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy triangle. Essentially the theory is that thoughts influence feelings, which influence your actions, which influence your thoughts and so on.
So if you’re feeling stressed, anxious or afraid, it will influence your actions, which will subsequently affect your thoughts and so on. So by intervening at any point on the triangle, we can interrupt the entire process and get it back on track. This is particularly helpful if you feel like you are spiraling.
Hopefully you’ve taken note that most of this centers around your awareness of your mind and body. Practicing being aware of your thoughts and the way your body is feeling will help you tune into whatever may be the problem. The practice of being present will leave you less distracted, more in tune with yourself, your motorcycle and the scenery and I have no doubt make rides both safer and more enjoyable for you. Thanks for reading, ride safe!