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Compassionate Running

When I finished a six minute, twenty second mile as a teenage athlete, I ran so hard that it hurt and I cried. My coach looked at my tears with pride; he said to the others who finished after me, "This is how hard you should be pushing," and directed them at my wet, anguished face. My pain was an example of correctness, of the morality of competition: a distinction between a good performance and a bad performance. Like many former athletes, I have long held onto what I was taught while I trained in competitive sport. I accepted what was prescribed by coaches as the correct and only way to run a mile (like linguistic prescription) and this indoctrination influenced how I approached physical conditioning, specifically running.

The intersection of humans and competition originates with the will to survive. Competition is inherently biological and occurs between species that exist in the same environment and have to compete for food, water, land or shelter, mates, and other needs and resources. The motivation in competition stems from either one's loss or gain where one cannot succeed unless the other fails: a zero-sum game. Self-care, on the other hand, is not about surviving or succeeding, but rather staying well and enhancing the mental and physical aspects of the whole human to promote peace, wellness, and contentment.

I am not suggesting to halt rigorous physical training for competition because I believe it is necessary for sport and applying compassion can be adapted for competitive spaces; however, I think it's dangerous to strive for suffering and evoke fear in non-competitive running intended for self-care. When it comes to running for self-care, one must approach it compassionately, reserving judgment; furthermore, one ought to reflect on the histories of competition and sport that have promoted problematic attitudes that may slide into self-care.

I was sixteen when I ran that six minute, twenty second mile and I've never been faster. In the ten years that followed that run, I believed that if I didn't push myself until I cried, my run was unsuccessful. I believed that if I did not cry from the pain, I did not try hard enough; I was not good enough or strong enough and would not be skinny enough. If I felt pain on a run, I felt that I earned a bigger meal afterwards. Now I can see how this distorted thinking bled swiftly into my twenties, where I would wait to run in the dark so my fear of being taken would make me run faster - a strategy mentioned by another coach. Naturally, this affected how I viewed running and how I thought about and what I expected of my body. Because of this, I still struggle to feel safe from others while running, even in broad daylight at the local track. In the past, for me it was simple: when I ran, I felt fear. This is something that I'm working on in my practice though to be honest, I'm not sure how to wholly get past it. Mostly, I just try not to let the fear of being taken dictate my mind and body.

To satisfy our biological need for competition, we emulate it in games and sport to evoke the sensory pleasure of conquering. The people of Ancient Rome exemplified this gloriously. The Romans widely attended shows involving exotic animals, gladiator battles, chariot races, executions, and mock naval battles that assaulted the senses and evoked emotion. The Roman rulers knew this well and to increase their own popularity commissioned the construction of amphitheaters and circuses across the empire, including the Colosseum and Circus Maximus, to host performances and battles; the entertainment served as a distraction from life's complexities and tamed the crowds.

A typical performance would showcase courage, fear, technical skill, celebrity, the possibility for upsets, and life and death. Here lies the most significant difference between competition and self-care: in radical self-care, there should be no room for injury to the mind or body, and certainly no risk to one's life. As a result, the motivations of competition and self-care would ideally be mutually exclusive. However, sometimes even in the modern world, they are not.

The NFL represents perhaps the greatest example of sport that has maintained the Romans' insidious transfiguration of competition into sport. A significant number of autopsies conducted on deceased former football players showed that they sustained severe brain injuries­­ - many posthumously diagnosed with Post-Concussion Syndrome caused by repetitive trauma to the brain.

Despite the development of the modern world, destructive tendencies through hyper aggressive competition and over-exercise exist just as they did in Ancient Rome, only the appearance of risk has been diluted. We have to pause before bringing the cultural norms and attitudes that exist in professional and collegiate competition into a self-care practice.

I found that I woke up one morning feeling in the mood for a run - this was unusual. My head can be the unfortunate host to paradoxical thoughts when it comes to running: I need to go faster. I need to go farther. Remember that one girl who ran five miles a day for fun? What a psycho. I should be doing that too. But I don't want to. But I know I'll feel good after. I listened to these voices until a new one floated in: I thought, What if I do this run and instead of telling myself all these things I should do, what if I tell myself that I don’t need to do anything? What if I tell myself to treat my mind and my body with compassion?

Jellyfish drawings

I told myself that if I needed to stop, then stop. I told myself that if I wanted to stop, then stop. I told myself that if I approached an uphill section of the road, I did not have to run up it or view it as a challenge to be conquered. I told myself that if I was tired of trying, I didn't have to try anymore, and that was okay. I told myself that I did not need to push as hard as I could until I cried because I really did not want to do that, and I can do whatever I want when it comes to my body. Why listen to the running tyrant in my head when I literally do not have to? Then came the revelation: I don't have to do anything I don't want to do, even if my own mind is the one telling me that I should be doing the very thing I don't want to do. If I wanted, I could walk - just walk. I felt free and in charge.

I felt anticipation towards this new type of run. I slipped on my running shoes and hit the road, releasing my long-held expectations for my running. After a short while, I wanted to walk, so I walked. I discovered new things about the road that I drove on every day: there was a creek that ran parallel to the road and several walkways down to it. I did not walk to the water but admired this discovery as I continued on my compassionate run. I gave myself a gift and now the gift was multiplying. I resumed running when I felt like it, and I walked when I felt like it. I returned to my street and finished my run feeling refreshed, gentle, and at peace.

The mental approach to running must depend on the context: one does not enter a competition hoping to practice self-care, and vice versa. By definition, competition is binary: there is only good or bad, a winner or a loser. The performance of the athlete is judged by a score reflecting speed, endurance, mental acuity and precision. Not everyone can be first by the nature of the system. These may be valid judgments in competition, but not in spaces for self-care.

Compassionate running doesn't have to mean easy running; if I feel like it, I still try to challenge myself, but now, it is always something that I want, and comes from a place of love, rather than something that my head is telling me that I should want. Compassionate running is about respecting yourself more than respcting fear.

The significance of a self-care practice is that it is non-polar; it always returns to practicing and receiving compassion, joy, fulfillment, nourishment, growth, and peace. In competition, we may ask ourselves if we've performed well, if we've done a good job or a bad job. But we never ask ourselves, "Am I practicing good or bad self-care?"

To be kinder to ourselves and our bodies, we might strive for, "Am I practicing self-compassion?"" and leave morality out of it.


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