Breathing down the mountain

I went skiing for the second time in my life on New Year's Day.

Warmest thanks to my friend Colin, who has skied for almost as long as he's walked. Colin continually pushes me to try things that are new and challenging, and then maintains an almost inhuman level of patience while I cop a bad attitude about it. At the end of our adventures together - usually while I tend my wounds (road rash, aches and bruises, near-hypothermia, damaged ego) - I realize how much I'm actually capable of enduring. We should all be so lucky to have friends that make us meet our edges. I try not to sound sarcastic while extending this gratitude, though it is sometimes difficult.

Putting me on skis was Colin's idea. First I was excited to go. Then I saw the mountain and got nervous. Then I fell down the mountain and got frustrated. But by the end of the day I was genuinely enjoying myself.


Being bad at skiing taught me a few lessons.

Firstly, my lack of patience (which usually reveals itself when I'm doing something that I am not particularly good at) is laughably unhelpful. At the beginning of the day I actually accused Colin of not having any patience for me, but he politely pointed out that I was projecting. Then I noticed it again and again; when I felt I was about to fall, my mind would suddenly flood with self-damning babble: I should be better at this, that four-year-old on a leash is better at this, why is this mountain so big, why is no one else falling down, I'm probably going to break both my legs, I should have worn a helmet.

The good thing about practicing yoga and meditation almost daily is that I picked up on these thought patterns pretty quickly. I saw them, and allowed them to happen while I pulled my attention to more important matters: namely, my movement and balance.

Think of this shift of attention as being similar to the way a loving parent ignores her child's temper tantrum. The wisdom-mind, which is grounded in the breath and the body, is the loving parent. The ego, which flails around on the vehicle of your thoughts, is the irritating child. Don't hit the child, just let it do its thing. If we approach our thoughts with this attitude of acceptance, without indulging or repressing them, they settle on their own.

I got better at skiing when I remembered to breathe. When you practice yoga, the movement of the breath accompanies the movement of the body. As I cruised down the mountain at a faster and faster pace, I tried to align my breath with my movement, beginning each inhale and exhale with each turn of my hips. When I could do this, my mind was quiet and the motion came naturally. I felt a little more graceful. If I thought about how I felt graceful, my skis would cross and I would tumble forward like a drunken Superman.

That was a big one to take off the mountain: I saw clearly that the mind's natural tendency is to detract from your experience of the present moment by cluttering it with thoughts. I knew this already, but trying to ski made it slapstick comedy.

If you can come back to the breath again and again, you will see how your monkey-mind starts to take the back burner. In its absence, your awareness is heightened and your sensory experience becomes more vivid. Activity is experienced in a way that is whole and visceral, as if each action were complete in itself.

Whether you are skiing, doing dishes, paying the bills, or driving, coming back to the breath is like being born back into reality. Sometimes we only catch glimpses of the world around us before the chatter picks up and we fall on our asses again. But from what I've seen in those instances of clarity, each moment is new.