Of all the places I expected to find spiritual Insight, Parkrun was not one of them.
I’m fascinated by the psychology and neurochemistry of endurance sport. There are unique mental states available to us that we can only experience when pushing our physical bodies to our limits – and occasionally, beyond them.
Science offers us plenty of explanations for this. The release of endorphins, serotonin, adrenaline, dopamine, and even endocannabinoids play a huge factor, as do increased oxygen uptake and just being outside in nature.
However, I hadn’t given much attention to the spiritual dimension of running until earlier this year when I was struck with profound insight during a 5km run at 9.15 on a wintery Saturday morning.
The context for this insight is important, so let me set the scene.
In January this year, I was experiencing immense pressure at work, more than I had ever felt in my ten years as a startup CEO. I had been grappling with burnout for at least 18 months, and I reached my breaking point over the winter.
Outside of work, a relationship that meant a lot to me had just ended, I had broken my elbow so couldn’t exercise fully, and as a result of all that, I was experiencing severely low moods and anxiety.
To get through this period and survive until my sabbatical in May, I began exploring Buddhist writing in earnest for the first time in my life. I was doing my best to cultivate a meditation practice, which didn’t actually crystallise into a daily habit until a few months later in the Spring, and I was running. A lot.
I was learning that the purpose of meditation was not to strive for a blissfully calm mind.
The real purpose, to quote Ram Dass, is simply to Be Here Now.
On some days, meditation involves observing a tempestuous and restless mind, gently bringing the attention back to the breath whenever we notice it’s wandered. When I was younger, I would have finished a meditation like this with a judgment that it had been a “bad” meditation because I hadn’t calmed down or “gained” peace from it, and because I had spent the majority of the sit in a state of agitation, “not really meditating“.
Now, I know that there is no such thing as a bad meditation. Simply bringing awareness to the mind’s activity, and observing the day’s mental climate without confusing it with reality, is an incredibly valuable way to spend 5, 15, or 60 minutes.
One of the practices that helped me arrive at this conclusion was Yin Yoga. Until this year, I had only known Yin and Yang as two halves of a Chinese symbol, and knew nothing about their meaning.
My layman’s understanding now is that Yin and Yang represent two complementary types of energy. Yin is accepting of how things are, while Yang is striving for change. Yin is darkness, coolness, receptivity, depth, winter, night, and rest, while Yang is light, warmth, activity, surface, summer, day, and movement. Yin is the Moon, and Yang is the Sun.
There is always a hint of Yin within Yang, and vice-versa, as illustrated in the Taiji symbol. Neither is better than the other, and as a duality, they offer a path towards harmony.
I learned this year that I had spent thirty years operating almost exclusively in a state of Yang, constantly striving for change and exerting vast amounts of energy to transform my current experience. This helped me achieve great things in my work and sport, but it came at a cost.
Through Yin Yoga, which involves a series of relaxing, often floor-based poses held for several minutes at a time, I learned to listen to my body and, by extension, my mind. As I brought this approach to my meditation, I learned to accept the state my mind was in on any given day, and not to immediately strive for it to be different.
I had also been learning through reading, meditating, and yoga, that our Ego loves to dwell in the past and the future, often doing its best to avoid discomfort in the present moment. By contrast, our Spirit thrives in the present moment, but doesn’t always make itself known and produces a lot less noise than the Ego.
“The Spirit” is a notion I’ve grappled with for years. Until this year, I thought of our Spirit or “Soul” simply as our essence. The light inside us that goes out when we breathe our final breath; the metaphysical part of us that some religions believe lives on after we die.
My interpretation of the Spirit has evolved a lot this year, but I’m not going to attempt to define it fully in this essay.
Instead, I’m going to refer to guidance given by Sam Harris during some of his meditations:
“Look for The One Who Watches”
I found this guidance utterly baffling when I first tried Sam’s meditations back in 2019. (Image above from Sam Harris)
In one of his emails, Sam extends The Invitation to us:
Look for what’s looking.
Look for your self.
Look for your mind.
Look for your head.
Look for the seat of attention.
Look for the center of consciousness.
Confused? Frustrated? We hope this brings clarity…
I was certainly confused and frustrated, so much so that I gave up on the Waking Up course after just a couple of weeks.
Through extended periods of meditation this year, I think I’ve come to understand what Sam means when he encourages us to look for the one who watches. When the mind becomes truly quiet, we encounter our Spirit, quietly observing Reality without any of the Ego’s distortions.
My mind is often at its quietest during a good run, and so it stands to reason that I’d be likely to encounter my Spirit while running, which brings us back to my experience at Parkrun earlier this year.
Parkrun, for those who don’t know, is a 5km run that takes place in hundreds of parks all over the UK at 9am every Saturday. It’s volunteer-run and entirely wholesome.
As part of my marathon training plan, my coach had asked me to use Dulwich Parkrun (notoriously one of the fastest courses both in terms of flatness and the calibre of runners who show up) as a 5km time trial and benchmarking exercise.
I had lost a lot of fitness in 2023 through a combination of health issues and post-Ironman lethargy, and spent the early months of 2024 clawing it back.
The goal on this cold February morning was to run 5km as fast as I could, and to gauge my fitness levels relative to my peak in 2022
If I’d been fully prepared, I would have arrived at the park with 15 minutes to spare and diligently warmed up. Unfortunately, on this occasion, I had misjudged my timings, and arrived at the park about 30 seconds before the run started, making it to the start line with seconds to spare.
We set off, and my run began in a total fluster. After a brisk first kilometre, I started to lose the speed I had gained from the surge in adrenaline, and by the fourth kilometre, I was suffering.
Mentally, I was spiraling deeper and deeper into a pit of negativity. I noticed my mind berating myself for arriving late, and imagining alternative scenarios where I had been better prepared and was running a lot faster.
I was telling myself a lot of stories, and was starting to mentally draft the Strava post I would share afterwards explaining why I’d run a “bad” 5k to my friends. I noticed my Ego encouraging me to pull back, slow down, and effectively give up. If I did that, I could then explain to myself and others that I’d run a “bad” time because I’d called it a day before the run was even over. I could claim to have been in control of this disaster.
Essentially, my Ego was expending all my mental capacity on defending itself from the reality that I was simply having a bad run. I was experiencing most of the run trapped in my head, and wasn’t fully embodied in my body or the present moment.
And then, with just over a kilometre to go, I took a mental step back from the melodrama and simply observed my unfolding experience.
I’m fully aware of how strange this may sound, and you’re free to form your own opinions of what might explain this, but in that moment, I felt as if I was meeting my Spirit, and heard a very calm “Hi” vocalised in my mind.
My Spirit had always been there, quietly watching, but I had been too busy lamenting the past and anticipating the future to notice it.
I let go of the stories I’d been writing in my mind, and dropped into the present moment. I focused on my breath and the sensation of fresh, crisp air rushing into my lungs. I opened my eyes to the visuals around me, and began to notice things I hadn’t noticed before. I paid more attention to the sensation of my feet hitting the pavement, and how each stride felt in my legs.
It’s hard to describe, but in that moment, I began to tap into a very deep well of energy. My whole body felt more alive, and I started to run significantly faster while exerting less effort.
I was reminded of a trite mantra I had seen on a runners’ instagram a few days prior:
“Run the mile you’re in”
which now resonated with me on a deeper level.
I was existing purely in the present moment, and it felt euphoric.
I finished the run on a high, and felt a heightened awareness of the present moment for the next few hours.
I didn’t really care about the “bad” 5km that I’d just run, and felt grateful for the experience life had just given me. I’d experienced first-hand some of the Buddhist concepts I had been reading about in the weeks before.
Since then, I regularly remind myself to run with Spirit.
I haven’t found a reliable way to tap into the exact mental state I experienced during that run, but I’ve noticed that by:
- Catching and labelling the stories my Ego is telling itself,
- Thinking of the Spirit existing in the present moment, and
- Vocalising the words “Hi” or “Hello” in my mind,
I can induce a similar feeling of presence and full-body awareness.
Our Spirit is always with us, and always quietly watching.
We simply need to look for it.