The Power of Practice: Running, Meditation, and Discipline
Motivation gives you a quick start, but discipline keeps you going when things get tough.
It’s said that the last 20 minutes of running makes the first 20 minutes worth doing. In other words, the first part of running can be a serious struggle. Your body is probably aching from your last run. Your mind is juggling all the ridiculous things that really don’t matter. Your patience gets a test—Seriously? 40 minutes? This is just hard.
Then you get into your groove. Your mind shuts up. Your body says, Oh yeah! Circulation! New blood! Strong muscles! You get to a place where you feel that runner’s high and you want to hold onto that feeling forever.
Meditation is like that, too.
It’s not that you need 40 minutes, especially if you’re not used to meditation. Like a beginning runner, a beginning meditator might only be able to meditate for a few minutes. But that’s practice enough. You might not get that feeling, but you will if you continue the discipline.
Ryan Holiday, who writes and speaks about Stoic philosophy, posted a meme (I can’t find it right now) about discipline. Many of us don’t like discipline and rules, but they are necessary to get us through the hard parts of life.
At the beginning of a year (or when we’ve just said ‘Enough’), we might be motivated to start running or meditating. That motivation comes with incredible enthusiasm as we take on the new task. But come mid-February, these New Year’s Resolutions fail. That’s because our motivation and enthusiasm have run out.
You might not get that feeling, but you will if you continue the discipline.
When our emotions run the show, they can give us a quick start, but they’ve got no endurance. Some emotions last 90 seconds, while more afflictive emotions might keep us locked in for 24 hours.
These fickle emotions can easily weaken our motivation, which is where discipline matters. Laurence Freeman writes:
Once you begin to enter into this interior world of meditation and practice it as a discipline, you will realise that it is not about technique. We have become a very technique-oriented society, East and West. It is very important for us as Christians not to approach meditation as technique, but as a discipline, as a way of learning, something to persevere in.1
That means you have to practice when you feel great and when you feel crappy. That discipline of practice shows God that you plan on showing up through thick and thin. It’s the least we can do since God is always with us through all of our circumstances. God never says, “Eh, I don’t want to be with her because she’s such a pill.”
Yes, many of us need techniques to help us handle the chattering of our minds. We need to prepare our bodies to sit in meditation for a given amount of time. That’s why mantras, breathwork, sacred reading, and even some exercises can shift our mental and physical gears. After all, a runner doesn’t break into his fastest pace at the start. He must warm up his body first. Give himself time to transition to his optimal running pace.
Sometimes these techniques are the best we can do in our discipline of meditation. We might not have the endurance to experience the fruits.
But time and discipline will get us to that inner stillness, even if it’s for a brief moment. And that brief moment is enough.
Here’s a passage from Rumi you can use for your sacred reading:
When your ego releases your heart, then you will see the Beloved. Just as you cannot see yourself except in a mirror, gaze upon the Beloved—who is your mirror.2
Listen to the most recent episode of Brad4d Savasana below:
1 In The Fire of Silence and Stillness by Paul Harris (Ed.), p. 96
2 In R. Hooper’s The Essential Mystics, Poets, Saints, and Sages, Kindle, p. 96.