Cycling for a Peaceful Mind – BionicOldGuy

This was an interesting and helpful book by Gerardo Regalado, who writes under the pseudonym Captain G. It is aimed at people who may have had difficulty quieting their minds using traditional approaches such as meditation. He explains how he often manages to calm his mind while cycling. We can’t force it, but we can take a few simple steps to set the stage for it to become more likely. He also links this to Zen practices on the site https://zenhabits.net/ by Leo Babauta. Gerardo is also familiar with the relevant neuroscience and explains that we are trying to silence the brain’s “default mode network” that I discussed previously.

I may have a different background than the target reader in that I have enough experience in meditation that I can easily quiet my mind during traditional seated meditation practice. But I always try to integrate this peace into everyday life. Since cycling takes up a significant amount of time each day, I’m interested in turning it into exercise through meditation. I found the tips from this book to be very helpful in this regard.

I only disagreed with the author on one point. He felt that among the various exercise modalities, cycling was the best for calming the mind. In his opinion, walking is too slow and running “requires the body to prepare for impact with each step, and the support itself is a small, constant noise.” That may be the case for him, but we are all different. The endurance sports that 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, with cycling and hiking a close second. Walking helped, but not that much. Now that I’m older and slower and can no longer walk, walking works great too. As for the effects of running, it didn’t feel that way to me when I was running a lot of it. It felt more like floating. The effects only became noticeable when my body was tired at the end of a very long run like a marathon. However, this actually adds to the breadth of the book’s contribution, as the cycling tips given can easily be applied to running, hiking and walking.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to use endurance activities to calm their mind. I tried it on one ride and liked the results, and I look forward to doing it consistently on future rides.