Cycling for Peace of Mind – BionicOldGuy

This was an interesting and helpful book by Gerardo Regalado, who writes under the pen name Captain G. It is for people who may have had difficulty quieting their minds with conventional approaches such as meditation. He explains how he often manages to achieve a calm mind while cycling. It’s not something that can be forced, but we can take some simple steps to prepare the ground so that it’s more likely to happen. He also relates this to Zen practices from the website by Leo Babauta. Gerardo is also familiar with the relevant neuroscience and explains that what we are trying to do is to silence the brain’s « default mode network » that I discussed earlier.

I probably come from a different background than the intended reader because I have enough experience in meditation that I can easily quiet my mind during a conventional sitting meditation practice. But I always strive to integrate this silence into everyday life. Since cycling is a significant part of the time each day, I’m interested in ways to turn it into a meditation in motion. I found the advice in this book quite helpful in this regard.

I only disagreed with the author on one point. He thought that of the various types of exercise, cycling was ideally suited to quieting the mind. He thinks that walking is too slow, and running « forces the body to brace itself at every step, and the bracing itself is a small constant noise. » That may be the case for him, but we are all different. The endurance activities I have had the most experience with are running, hiking, walking and cycling. For me, each one helps calm the mind. But in my case, running was the best, and cycling and hiking were a close second. Walking helped, but not that much. Now that I’m older and slower and can no longer run, walking works great too. As for the impact of running, I didn’t feel it that way when I was doing it a lot. I felt more like floating. The only time this effect became noticeable was when my body was tired at the end of a very long run like a marathon. This actually adds to the scope of the book’s contribution, however, as the cycling advice given is easily adaptable to running, hiking and walking.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to use endurance activities to quiet their mind. I tried it on one ride and loved the results and look forward to doing it consistently on future rides.