Cycling for a Quiet 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 have perhaps had difficulty quieting their minds with conventional approaches like meditation. He explains how he is often able to achieve a quiet mind while cycling. This is not something that can be forced, but we can take some simple steps to prepare the ground so it is more likely to happen. He also connects this to Zen practices from the website from Leo Babauta. Gerardo is also familiar with the relevant neuroscience, and explains that what we are trying to do is quiet the brain’s “default mode network” which I have discussed previously.

I come from a different background perhaps than the target reader, because I am experienced enough at meditation that I am able to readily quiet my mind during conventional sitting meditation practice. But I’m always looking to integrate this quietness into daily life. Since cycling is a significant chunk of time each day, I’m interested in ways to turn it into meditation in motion. I found the tips from this book to be quite helpful in this regard.

I only disagreed with the author on one point. He felt that out of various exercise modalities cycling is ideally suited for quieting the mind. He thinks walking is too slow, and running “asks the body to brace impact every stride, and the bracing is itself a small constant noise.” This may be the case for him but we are all different. The endurance activities I’ve had most experience with are running, hiking, walking, and cycling. For me any of them help quiet the mind. But in my case running was the best, cycling and hiking tied for second. Walking helped but not as much. Now that I’m older and slower and can no longer run, walking works great too. As for the impact of running, it did not feel that way for me when I was doing a lot of it. It felt more like floating. The only time that impact became noticeable was when my body was tired at the end of a very long run like a marathon. This actually adds to the breadth of the book’s contribution, however, because the cycling tips given are readily adaptable to running, hiking, and walking.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to use endurance activities to help quiet their minds. I’ve given it a try on one ride and liked the results, and am looking forward to doing it consistently on future rides.