July Hibernation

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Mind Tardis
I read a neat description the other day of Doctor Who’s Tardis. It said that the Tardis was conceived as a metaphor for the human mind, in that the mind is far larger and more complicated inside than seems possible for a small handful of grey lumpy stuff, and also because the human consciousness is the only thing we know of that can span vast interstellar distances at a glance whilst simultaneously traversing time.

And sometimes the mind, being the surprisingly large and complicated thing it is, gets slightly out of kilter and needs a bit of re-alignment. The code sometimes needs tweaking - especially true if you’re the kind of person who is interested in a squillion different things and so absorbs vast quantities of information and doesn’t actually get around to processing it correctly. The comms ports and buffers go into overload and clog, and then it becomes difficult to do anything effectively. This happens to me fairly frequently, and especially so just lately.

Alpha Beta Male
Doctors sometimes prescribe beta blockers for such conditions, but I am wary of such things, so lately I’ve been attempting meditation, which does more or less the same thing, but without the side effects. But it isn’t easy for someone whose mind races all over the place all the time. I’ve done a few of those brain test things and they confirmed what I already knew – my conscious and subconcious minds both redline much of the time. So when I’m in a relaxed state, all that happens is that my subconcious mind takes over and continues to scream along, making it difficult to get to that deep state of meditative relaxation (theta brain activity) – the state where the mind is completely at rest, something I (and perhaps most of us) only very rarely experience.

The goal is to get to that state of relaxation where the brain is barely ticking over, but not asleep. To slow down from alpha (fully awake) and beta states (a kind of daydreamy, creative state) without completely falling asleep (delta state). The neuron-thingies then sort of have the chance to get cleaned up a bit and get back into their starting positions before the next onslaught. It also leaves the brain somewhat open to suggestion, eg allows you to tell it and have it believe the idea that eating chips and ice cream is not actually a good idea. As if we didn’t already know that…

Sausages Are The Enemy
I don’t know why, but crap food does taste bloody terrific when your mind is away on holiday somewhere. Things like chips, chocolate, ice cream and particularly for me, sausages become mandatory food groups. Maybe they have inbuilt beta-blockers, I don’t know. But what an insidious enemy. It’s not like they sneak up on us in the middle of the night. We actually seek them out, pay for them and bring them back home! Crazy, crazy madness. It has to stop.

My Mind Is Out There, Somewhere
Which brings me back to the meditation business. It goes a lot further than just unplugging and letting the mind sort itself out (how does it know how to do that, by the way?)… it also has a lot of mystical and hallucinatory aspects which are simultaneously intriguing and maddeningly incomprehensible. But like dreams, they don’t have to be comprehensible I suppose. I read somewhere the idea that dreams were simply an evolutionary survival tactic to keep us asleep, and therefore prolong our lives, and have no other meaning at all. Maybe weird-shit-while-meditating is the same?

When The Sun Comes Up…
One of my favourite quotes/philosophies goes along these lines – you’ve probably heard it before: Both the antelope and the lion have to run to survive – the antelope to escape the lion, and the lion to catch the antelope. Whether lion or antelope, both know that when the sun comes up in the morning, they had better be running.

For me at least, that’s true both literally and metaphorically. Running keeps me healthy, physically. And in the metaphorical sense, I have to be kept challenged or I’ll just atrophy into slovenliness. But just for the moment, my lion nature is feeling a little off-colour and risking a lie-in (bad pun, sorry). I’ll be back in the running kit soon enough though. I am missing it. And I’ve got that darned mountain race in November to prepare for, and I’m determined to do it. So, sorry if I’m a tad quiet at the moment, and I do appreciate everyone’s thoughts and concern. I’ll be back into it soon. Promise!