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Mystical Miles: Running Living Beaming is a marvellous book about the deeper experiences life has to offer. And sure, it's about running, about the fullness of what it is like to run. Not quite a training guide though with lots practical tips, it goes further and through running explores the shimmering brilliance of life
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ContentsMystical Miles: Running Living Beaming has twelve Chapters. They cover
The Chapters in Mystical Miles are not designed to be read in order. It is a limitation of books that there has to be some order. Another way of looking at the book is that each chapter is a view on running, another way of looking at the same thing; they are all facets of a diamond. Readers can start with any chapter. Like the actual steps taken by beginners, this is the practical and direct chapter. While evoking the effort, struggle and embarrassment of starting to run, this Chapter also as many practical hints. One is how to getting through the first 6 to 8- week period after which the benefits of running take grow. Through exploring the meaning of what its like to start running, it becomes clear that in some way runners are always at the beginning. No matter how much they have run or achieved, there will always be new challenges and they will again experience the feeling of being a beginner. Part of running is that it enables a healing to take place. In the beginning it might be the physical healing - the loss of weight and the strengthening of muscles, heart and lungs. But with running there is always more and our scars are deeper. Running builds a core of being, confidence and self-acceptance. It then goes further. Runners look forward to the next run, the next event, the future. They plan ahead welcoming the future knowing its going to be good. These healings are just the beginning. Running outdoors rebuilds the connection with nature, builds the resilience to deal with setbacks, enabling the soul to withstand the cuts and tears of everyday life. This chapter relates enriching encounters with this nature in all its beauty and complexity: the sunrises and sunsets, rainbows, mountain streams and slow-moving owls. Through these experiences the runner begins to find a place in the world, our natural home and finding it full of special rewards. Through runner it becomes possible to appreciate one’s physicality. Racing is, in some senses, the essence of running. The chapter captures the racing experience from the early agitation brought by the adrenaline rush at the start, to the final gasping seconds when the runner gives all in search of a better time, in giving all. The author explores differences between racing long and short, for fun and more seriously, successful as well as unsuccessful races. As with all running experiences, racing confirms the richness and the rewards inherent in running. The rituals and ceremonies of running add another dimension to running. Included are evocations of long distance journeys like the pilgrims of old towards a place of special meaning; the gatherings and their rituals. The author finds in running ritualised ways finds ways of keeping alive friendships and of reaffirming aspects of the essence of being human. It’s also a chapter for friendship and bonding, of broadening the human experience from the individual and isolated to the communal. The idea that running has a
strong creative dimension might at first seem odd. But prompted by watching
dolphins at play while nearing the end of a long run, the author's experience is
changed. He then describes how running enables runners to orchestrate some
powerful emotions and situations - mountaintops, sunrises, the memory of
friends, courage and determination - into a moving and satisfying experience.
Runners are also able though to broaden and deepen the experience of their
environment as they run repetitive routes - discovering in the micro-world as
much richness and fullness as in the grand and expansive. Running far is a special experience and again this chapter captures the experience perfectly. The ultra, pushing well beyond every limits is the essential running experience. To the constant refrain of breathing and pattering footsteps, the runner's mind is set free to explore the world, unshackled from the comforts and demands of home and everyday life. The experience is rewarding as well as giving perspective to what's left behind. It's clear that the experience is not one of pain or of combating discomfort of fatigue but of a becoming. The purging experience of endurance running provides access to the inner self in a unique way. As much as running is a physical activity and talking about running is a different type of activity, there is a connection between the two. Using the positive aspects of philosophy - not the theoretical and abstruse aspects - the chapter explores different ways of talking about running to allow the fullness of the experiences and benefits of running to be accessed. The chapter also contains an analysis of the value of running. And in the quirky style of the book the author tests a new way of looking at what we do and creates a new word to help him conceptualise a way of experiencing that allows the richness and depth of experiences to come to the fore. The Zen running chapter brings a different perspective to running - in a discursive, fun and elliptical discussion. It starts with the elbows and ends with a marvellous description of running in the moment and experiencing it fully without any conceptual, logical or political prejudice. Zen-running suggests that it is not the mind that thinks, but the heart and the knees and the calves. In between are accounts of the therapeutic value of meditation and what successful therapy can lead to. Or not. Part of the understanding gained is that zen-running is in the on-going development of experience. That getting stuck in a repeating pattern of experience is not-zen. Things do go wrong in
running. It begins to mean too much to the runner who gets stuck in a pattern of
disappointment, striving without success, risking injury and depression. Of not
dealing properly with injuries, physical or emotional. Of allowing running and
other life-activities to become a destructive; of feeling the constricting
tentacles of self-deception. But for the author there is always a way out.
Running itself can create the way out. There is also a hint that the fullness of
the running experience may need to include going through the despair that
running can create. Mystical Miles This chapter is a
culmination of the different running experiences in a powerful, positive and
life-enhancing description of a runner's mystical experiences. Where his life
reaches a point of fullness, of reconciliation with his past and with what he is
now. Where he is connected fully with all that is around and in him to a point
which enables him to feel deeply satisfied with his past while at the same time
keeping alive the desire to go on and to go deeper into the experience. Post-script The post-script is a short, beautiful evocation of finding value in life.
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