I realized today at the gym and want to share with you.
In earlier blogs 'Three things to share - 7 good effects of going to the gym', and 'Gymming', I'd talked about the benefits of going to a gym, but there is one huge benefit that I left out, as I realized today:
Mental stability. This is a big, big thing that gymming does.
This morning when I went to the gym, my mind was in a topsy-turvy state. I was missing my DD; I had a whole lot of pending work at home; household chores seemed endless......my mind had constructed this impossible list of to-do's and must-do's and have-to-do's and just thinking about all this was making me ill. I was in a terrible state of tension.
The gym also was rather full, because tomorrow being a holiday, many of us had been rescheduled for today.
Just as I put on my shoes, the treadmill became free and my instructor told me to work on that. I could barely put one foot in front of the other, but there was no choice.....the belt moved and my feet moved along with it....after about 10 minutes, I felt my muscles loosening up and wonder of wonders, I felt my mind becoming blank...not a negative blankness or a tired blankness, but a positive, stable, calm blankness. There was no way I could check my phone because phones are frowned on, talking is not encouraged, and I could not stop to brood because we all follow the routine the instructor sets us....so it was just one work station after another till my personal workout sched started to move seamlessly....I was totally at peace with myself...my mind was completely stable.
So what had happened? I had distanced myself from the work I had waiting for me at home. Distanced myself enough to see that I need not do everything, in fact, I could just not do any of the things that were staring at me...I could just curl up with a book and then tackle whatever I could...or do only whatever was necessary......or restructure and prioritize my chores...... Since my mind was stable, I'd be able to do whatever I wanted to in a not-rushed, frantic-to-finish state of mind and the day would move forward peacefully.
This was an important lesson. Somehow - for me it was the gym, but for you it could be a walk...it has to be a physical activity, preferably done alone and something we cannot take a short-cut on - we have to put a distance between us and the chores that are hounding us in our mind and destroying the peace of it...destroying the stability of our mind. Any kind of imbalance in the mind has a cascade effect and soon the heart feels heavy, the body feels paralyzed and we are stuck in a vicious cycle.
By extension, we could also distance ourselves from destructive thoughts, people who hurt us, situations that cause tension and unhappiness...
And this goes back to Wu Wei, where we've been learning to go with the flow. Distancing ourselves makes our mind stable, brings the focus back and we are free to merge into the flow of life.