I’ve traveled many kilometers since February—on rocky trails, through snow and ice, along country roads, deep in valleys, and up a few mountain peaks. Very often alone, with only my mind and body for company. Hours of quiet meditation, hours of hardship and pain, hours spent in the flow of life.
I don’t consciously use running as a form of meditation; rather, it’s the long hours spent on the meditation cushion, the years of practice, that naturally spill over into the rest of my life. When I run, I also explore my inner world—the sensations of my body, the contours of my mind—not as a project, but as the natural continuation of my body’s movement.
Meditation and Running Retreat
Last month, in April, I led a meditation and running retreat at Dechen Choling, my Buddhist center located in the Limousin region. I arrived with a few ideas that I let float freely so they could blend with the energies of the place and the participants and create an ephemeral map of our collective territory. I was once again amazed by how, once doubts are set aside, each of us can tap into unconditional trust and find within ourselves a way of being and running that is fluid, gentle, and enthusiastic.
These were precious moments in a place that is dear to me for its ability to bring out the best in everyone. Our group was diverse, ranging from beginners to marathon runners, but at no point did the pressure of comparison or the need to perform weigh on us. There was great authenticity, wonderful kindness, lots of laughter, and a sense of humanity that makes us love our lives.
Wherever I go, I run
In recent months, running has become even more woven into the fabric of my daily life—like a journey through familiar terrain or uncharted territory. Wherever I go, if my body allows it, I run. I explore open spaces and dead-end streets, lush countryside, and shopping center parking lots. When I run with curiosity and set aside my judgments for a moment, I find our world simply fascinating.
I ran through some beautiful places in Canada in February. Lake Ontario was partially frozen, the sidewalks were slippery, and the trails were buried under snow. I’d left my GPS watch at home, and after a minute of frustration, I realized it was a fantastic opportunity to just run—without evaluation, without confirmation, and without any numerical goals.
Running and Meditating
Running and meditation thus go hand in hand. They’re ways of being with oneself, of trusting oneself without needing to validate our experience through anything outside of ourselves. So now I run during the week with just a simple stopwatch; I save the GPS for the long weekend runs that Coach Megan suggests in miles.
Running slowly most of the time—I’ve known for a long time how important this is, even key to building a solid foundation and, paradoxically, developing speed. And who knows better than I do what “easy effort” means? Why entrust the assessment of how I feel to a device when I could give myself the gift of trusting my own sensations? Isn’t that the ultimate guide for a long-distance runner? Being at one with yourself, listening to yourself without complacency, and offering yourself kindness, strength, and self-respect.
That doesn’t mean I’m always slow—far from it. I run much faster during tempo runs, interval training, or races. But even then, I make a conscious effort not to go as fast as possible, but to find that fine line between sustained—or even very sustained—effort and aggressive effort. Our culture is so steeped in the idea that “no pain, no gain”—that you have to suffer in order to hope for some kind of reward in the end—that we forget to live in the moments in between, the moments leading up to it, and we stake everything on a finish line, whether metaphorical or literal.
Yet we know that once we cross the finish line, our world won’t change; we won’t be any more sheltered from suffering and doubts, nor will we be any more loved or admired. In English, this illusion is called the “arrival fallacy.” Coach David often reminds us that the ultimate finish line is death. And this is also a common Buddhist contemplation. The idea here is to strive to embrace the entirety of our experience, to not put our lives on hold while waiting for that magical moment to change everything. Our life—and every run we go on—is an invitation to appreciate the magic of the ordinary, to be fully present in the moment, whether it’s fantastic, boring, or even painful.
Athletic effort as a path to self-knowledge
I strive to cultivate this attitude right in the midst of performance. In March, I set the FKT (fastest known time) for the crossing of Montagne Sainte Victoire, which is my near-daily playground. It wasn’t really the performance itself that was a challenge, since it had never before been officially recorded as an FKT and is undoubtedly easy to beat.
The idea was to traverse this extremely difficult terrain for running—rocks, cliffs, sharp stones, mud—while moving quickly and staying curious about every moment. I caught myself judging myself (“You’re dragging your feet—get moving!”), getting annoyed (“These rocks are such a pain!”), raving (“That view is insane! ”), cheering myself on (“You’re rocking this!”), and appreciating myself (“Seriously, you’re handling the descent well!”). I saw myself living without sorting out what’s acceptable, what’s tolerable, and what’s conceivable. Making running and physical exertion—even when it’s difficult—a path to self-knowledge.
Playing while running
And above all, above all, not to take any of this too seriously. Kids run to play or play while running. Most of us have forgotten this possibility and turned running into a task to be completed in order to be thinner, faster, more like this or that. What if we, too, relearned how to pretend to be airplanes on downhill stretches, to break into sprints for no reason, to jump from rock to rock, to scamper about while humming?
Maybe a simple way to sum it all up is that I simply long to play—everywhere, even high up, very high up.