Your Brain on Skiing
I think that my brain just turned on. I accidentally bought this book at Barnes and Noble in a ‘buy two and get the 3rd one free’ sale because the title sounded goofy and minorly thought inducing, and have just found out that it is actually a philosophy book. I was imagining something along the lines of an anecdotal story promoting the value of life experiences and mundane tasks to remove and calm you in the midst of your fast-paced and turbid lifestyle. It kind of is, but it also divides between two major types of thought processes and is more of an exploration into serious theory.
I always forget how much more vivacious I am when my brain is engaged on something. I find that during ski training it is better for me to spend most of my workouts in kind of a haze, without thinking too much about any of it and just letting my body do its thing. This is great, but I feel like I need to snap out of it after workouts. I have trouble doing this, but if I let the haze continue I am liable to just sit around all day without really being aware of my surroundings. Dulling my perception of things is good for enduring a particularly difficult workout, but as soon as I am done working out it seems to keep me from accomplishing anything. I have the dubious ability to wander around in a daze indefinitely until something in particular snaps me out of it, and I will not have any great need to do anything (like dishes, vacuuming, laundry) until it does. Thankfully, it turns out that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance does that for me. Thinking about thinking seems to do the trick right now, and maybe the theme of philosophy is a good one for me to pursue. Keeping an active mind, which is something that I lazily discounted previously, seems to be really key for me. If I let myself wander around in a daze for too long, it starts to get to me.
Thursday, July 23, 2009