Vipassana and the restoration of health

INTRO

This summer I spent ten days without talking. Ten days sat in a room from 4.00am in the morning to 10.00pm at night. In this blog I want to explain what the heck I was doing that for, and why it totally freed me of all the pains and injuries I’d been carrying with me almost five years since I tore a ligament in my knee and gave up skiing as a livelihood.

Ten very difficult days, with over a hundred hours practicing a technique. A very simple technique of mind purification, I sat with my eyes closed, legs crossed, using my noggin. Meditation is a dangerous word burdened by stigma and false preconception. I don’t want to completely avoid the word but from the outset I want you to know I’m talking about a science here, a science of mind control that completely changed my body and has had a huge impact on my daily life.  

It’s a hard process to describe but it’s kind of like doing surgery on yourself, mentally. Hour upon hour I spent unlocking different areas of my body, layer after layer of all this built up tension, like loads of tiny knots that all start coming unravelled. This technique has numerous implications for the sporting world however for this blog I want to focus specifically on how you can unlock your body and rid yourself of all tension and feel ten years younger.

We all love to flick to Youtube for some light-hearted random crap so thought I’d give it to u here to break things up a bit. It has no relevance to the blog, just mere amusement but through out I’ve posted random photos from behind the scenes of famous films that might the magic away slightly. I’ll start with the R2D2 operator Kenny Baker tucking into a sandwich whilst on the set of star wars.

BODY DETERIORATION

It’s been about five years since I blew the ACL ligament in my right knee and it had never really recovered back to normal. In fact both my knees were weak and would ache a lot. My back also was often sore especially if sat for long hours film editing (my job). If you’ve got yourself a desk job you might relate.  

Then there was my jaw, which over a few years started pulling over to one side and was sending sharp pains through my skull. After a facial surgeon did some scans he decided to book me in for a major surgery, breaking my jaw in two places to realign it. Not keen on this idea, instead I opted for wearing braces for two years, with about 6 elastic bands wiring my mouth together and pulled my jaw back into line. This was a painful process and not my strongest look at twenty-four. My parents kindly helped me cover the cost of this private medical treatment worth a few grand.

Also for about five years I’ve been seeing a great osteopath called Michelle who would regularly click my jaw and back into shape. On top of this I tried to do about an hours worth of physio a day.

I was confused because these issues seemed to happen to people in there fifties and sixties, it was happening to me in my twenties, I couldn’t understand it. I was consistently uncomfortable when sat down which is quite a mentally draining as well. Knowing it was getting steadily worse was a recurring thought I often left suppressed.

Not that money is the point here in any form what so ever but its of interest to note that learning this technique for ten days, completely free, did more for me than years worth and thousands of pounds worth of these common forms of treatments.

Batman climbing (walking along) a skyscraper in 1966

SUMMER (twenty thirteen)

At the start of this summer I turned twenty-five and in a nice quick succession my band split up and we all got evicted from our house, then my girlfriend left me. Then during a drunken stag do conversation a friend told me about a ten day silent Vipassana course in France that was free to go on. Although it didn’t sound like my idea of a holiday I figured it might be quite good for my head, so I signed up.

After a summer in Chamonix hanging out and climbing with close friends, it was time for the course but I felt no need to go, I think alpine air is always good for the soul. I was on the waiting list anyway so I came back to England thinking little of it. An email two days before the course started said they had one spare spot available and on a slightly spontaneous whim I packed my bags.

Ten days in silence, no talking, no phone, no pen and paper, no books or anything, ten hours a day I sat and meditated only eating two small meals. I’m quite indulgent when it comes to food so this was tough for me, apparently the technique is best practiced on an empty stomach. The gong sounded at 4.00am every morning and the itinerary was nice and simplified, two hours practice, five minute break, two hours practice five minute break, on and on till lights out at 10.00pm.

Radars of the wooden arc

The first few days were undoubtedly the worst. You mediate for two hours and come out feeling like crap, your knees and back hurt and you have a pounding headache. A quick five minute break to stretch your legs before the bell sounds and you’re back in again. It was excruciating and I often wondered why I was putting myself through it. I nearly ran away a few times those first few days, lots of people do on a course like this.

At a fairly young age I was diagnosed with a healthy dose of dyslexia and found that I had to struggled at school working harder than the other kids to achieve the same kind of results. This developed in me a bloody mindedness approach to certain things I strived for, an attitude that said if I work relentlessly hour after hour, ignoring all the stress I would succeed in the end.

Learning to fly through the air and spin my body about on ski's came far more naturally than reading textbooks so when I applied the same approach to learning tricks it made possible for quick progress in the sport. Although you get quick results I would also add that this is not a sustainable way to progress. To explain what I mean by that though would stir this discourse in the wrong direction so I'd like to tackle that can of worms another time. 

Anyway the summer after leaving school I went on a british freeski camp in Saasfee where I was lucky enough to have Pat Sharples (now head coach for the England Olympic team) teaching me how to land my first 360’s. A winter of jumping about in the park relentlessly and on the same camp one year later I did a double flip no one had ever seen or heard of before. Pat decided to sign me up to the Oakley team and I decided this was the career for me.

If I'd known at the time what damage I was doing to my body though I would of approached the sport in a very different manor and would still probably be skiing today. Although there was a lack of regard for my own body this style of learning did make me realise the mind is a powerful monkey when you really narrow your focus on something intently.

So I thought if I’m all the way out in France having this experience I might as well take this same approach, give it hell and see what happens. It was kind of like my own personal experiment, where I was the subject and I wanted to push it to the extremes. 

Kermit

The idea is that you don’t move what so ever, every itch or small niggle you just have to sit it out and observe the sensation of it. Your not meant to torture yourself, but it’s a bit of a fine line. The pain that creeps into your knees and back when you’ve been sat for hours really cuts into you and as I was trying to push my limits I wanted to test what pain threshold I could deal with. I over did it a few times and couldn't walk properly for about twenty minutes after.

The learning of this process is tough, this science of mind purification. It’s a mental and physical struggle, which in the beginning can all seem a bit much to handle. The emotional cocktail of highs and lows makes the process very arduous but after a few days you get over the hump and then all the magic starts happening.

I had climbed Mont Blanc earlier in the summer which I thought would prepare me nicely for this endurance race, this however was much more of a brutal challenge.

Me and my old man heading down from the 4808m summit

VIPASSANA

If you are to take a moment right now listen to all the noises around you I’m sure there is a whole bunch your totally unaware of. For example the humming of the computer your reading this from, maybe the traffic or birds coming from outside or the TV in another room. Take a moment to have a listen, can you hear yourself breathing? Each reader will be surrounded by a completely different and vast array of sound, and we pretty much ignore all of them, our conscious mind is busy focusing on other stuff. In a similar fashion at this very moment your body is giving off an array of sensations as well. These much like the sounds don’t enter our consciousness and are left ignored.

There is so much which lies behind the surface. Gut instinct is a good example of body sensations but it’s also a very large sensation on the scale thing. The equivalent, in my noise analogy of someone bursting into the room looking for something, whilst making a right racket. This would be hard to avoid whilst at the same time the quiet hum of the computer will stay hidden to you.

The aim of the technique then is to be aware of all the subtly going on in your body. Learning to listen and be fully aware of all these sensations our body is giving off. A mastery of awareness within your body, in a nutshell, that’s all there is to it.

Hogwarts

I would like to explain the specifics about the technique but I don’t feel like it’s the right thing to do here. The mind is a wild beast full of sporadic non-linear thoughts moment to moment arising and fleeting away. To harness the power of the technique requires a calm and still mind and if it is practiced in its usual agitated state there will be no benefits.

To tame the mind first a technique of Annapurna must be learnt which is a process of focussing attention simply on the breath, keeping the mind focused, pointed in one direction. There’s a lot of variation with every breath and the trick is to become aware of the subtleties, for example when you breath in the air is slightly colder than when you breathing out. Or when you breath in often its more predominantly through one nostril than the other.

So the process starts with an awareness of your breathing to quiet your mind from the everyday hustle and bustle, it took me three days, so about thirty hours practicing Annapurna for my mind to quiet. Only then could I move on to Vipassana, in this new heightened state of awareness you are free to cross over the bridge to start exploring the unconscious mind. On this side of the river you find it all, all your accumulated knowledge, all your behaviours patterns, trains of thought and ways of being. In this place you can see clearly why you do what you do, this is where all the routes are buried that make you who you are.

Dr Lector eating fries

It’s quite a scary process really, it’s certainly not common for us to harbour and nurture this uncomfortable stuff, often we don’t like what might be lurking. Now lets chill out and watch a video, as I’m sure you could do with a nice little break from the black and white lines. In this video Louis C.K kind of hits the point by explaining how mobile phones make it so easy to distract us from this place we don’t want to go.

We think of our unconscious mind as a volt we don’t have access to but that isn’t the case. The unconscious mind manifests itself as sensation all the time. That gut feeling in your stomach, when you feel like your body is telling you something, that’s because it is. This is your unconscious mind that’s gathered and collected a whole array of information you don’t have the cognitive capacity to process into your consciousness and instead manifests itself as a sensation through out your body, commonly in your gut.

This technique taps into that hidden volt below, it flips the iceberg upside down and brings it all from the subconscious to the conscious, where there is a world of knowledge on just about everything you need to know.

E.T

In another little video I have for you here Dr Gabor Maté explains how emotions are deeply implicated in both the development of illness and in the restoration of health. 

An abundance of sensations this world has to offer to simulate and vibrate the body moment to moment. When you stop the consumption of stimulus and focus your attention inward, you can explore your own reality layer by layer, sensation by sensation you drift around becoming aware of all the subtlety at play, and it keeps going on and on, subtler and subtler.

When viewing the world around us on this sensation platter, you look much closer, feel much more and the day-to-day drama we play out with our stresses, worries and built up tension really seem a whole lot less dramatic. More in tune with the body your sense of intuition is dramatically heightened, this can be harnessed in the sport world to understand when it right and wrong to push your limits, go for that trick, huck off that cliff. These implications are game changing for progression in sport and I think the most practical benefit of understanding a technique like this. This will be the subject of the next post.

Inception

BALANCE

Awareness is only one wing of the bird. The other wing is equanimity- or balance. When you are aware of these sensations the next step is to just observe the sensation and don’t react to it. So for ten days I slowly became more and more aware of the sensation within my body, and the process felt similar to some kind of surgery, I would sit down and concentrate for a few hours and would slowly work up my spine, layer after layer unlocking all this built up tension and pain I didn’t even know was there.

What I found by the end was all the tension in my knees completely disappeared. I felt younger and springier, roughly about like I did ten years ago. My spine had straightened up and I felt my posture much correct and natural to hold. My jaw pain had completely gone and the route cause must have been this psychosomatic stress. It was this tension that was pulling my jaw over to the right. If I had learnt this earlier there would have been no need for me to wear braces for two years, and probably wouldn’t of needed any of those osteopath treatments either.

By the end you get to a state where the sensations in your body are all in harmony. You observe the good sensation you observe the bad sensation, disconnect from it all and you find this place inside you that is totally calm, totally peaceful.

CONCLUSION

If I’d known about this technique and how to become aware of what my body was saying I think it would of completely changed my skiing career. Not only can you totally change your physical state from all harbouring aches and pains but there are numerous other implications as well.

If my story appears a bit grandiose and ‘far out’ for you well I guess that’s just a little bit how it is, it’s unbelievable to me also. I really don't want to come across here like I'm peaching at all, I just feel the need to share this thing thats been really beneficial for me and if I can help a few folk head in the similar direction then for me that totally justifies the this splurge into the digital ether. Basically this is good shit worth sharing and although the subject matter can be a little hefty in places I hope it’s been interesting to you.

I feel confident in stating that this technique can change your life if you really commit to the process, in more realistic terms though I’d say it could have some real positive and prolonged benefits for you. Your particular story might not be like mine in any way, in fact I’m hoping my story is much more of an extreme example of how it can all build up. Never the less the injury in snow sports is very common and how we recover is vital for the rest of your days doing the sport.

The effects of Vipassana on my sporting life are clearly visible. I climb a few times a week and since practicing this technique I’ve gone up a grade to 7a’s, which had evaded me for years. Now I feel much stronger, although I’m not, I'm just now more in tune with my body and using it more efficiently. My sense of balance has dramatically improved as well, essential for all you freestylers! The knock on effects to day-to-day stuff like concentration, focus, multitasking, timekeeping is vast but again I fell best saved for another post. 

Superman

Currently I do two hours a day, one in the morning from 6.00-7.00am and one after work from 5.30-6.30. This might seem a bit excessive but it's an appropriate. As I'm a normal human up keeping this discipline for two hours a day is difficult. When the buzzer goes a 5.40 every morning I sometimes convince myself its not worth it. What keeps me motivated though is I know mentally I’m much more focused and sharp, I eat less, sleep fewer hours and maintain a much higher all round energy level. The continuous lateral drift between future and past thoughts tappers and allows me to be in the moment concentrating on what I’m doing, with more efficiency.

There are also times when I slack off and when I do I find my old habit patterns slipping back in. But like good eating and good exercise the more you time you commit the more benefits you see right along side next to it. For me all the time invested is totally worth it.

This post is just scratching the surface of what I want to talk about really and in later posts I want to focus more on the science of this technique to help explain whats really going on and give it some scientific rigor. There is also a social barriers that might put people off trying it and this is also something I'd like to address. For me I don’t see it any different from how everyone obsessively cleans there teeth twice a day, they both boil down to simple maintenance of the body. Also I want to offer some advice on how to further apply it to the sporting world and how actually to go about practicing it.

Vipassana is a simple technique that helps purify the mind. I believe this can have a huge impact on all skier and boarders dealing with such things as learning new tricks, competitions and high-pressure situations, also for anyone looking to improve in the sport. How this could affect your previous injuries is really only a small piece of the pie. If anyone would like know more about this please send me a message. 

Gladiator

FOOT NOTE

If what I’m saying makes sense to you, this is great news, but that really doesn’t help you much. The purpose of this blog was to share the things I’ve learnt about sports psychology so people can progress and enjoy the sport and unfortunately one paradoxical thing I’ve learnt is that what ever you read is really not that helpful. You can watch Ted lectures and read blogs like this and understand something on an intellectual level but that really only goes so deep. To really get the heart of it you must experience the knowledge. Experiential wisdom is really the only way of understanding stuff on a level that penetrates down to your subconscious mind.

To understand what it is I’m talking about there’s really no other way than actually doing it. I could explain what it’s like to jump out of an aeroplane with all the elaborate articulation but its never going to cut the cheddar in comparison to actually doing it. 

The purpose of this blog then is to intrigue. By honestly telling my story I hope to encourage you to explore your own path, try it out for yourself and make your own set of assumption about it.

It is also worth noting this technique is no substitute for exercise. The body must be pushes and maintained in a similar fashion to the mind. They are totally linked together and must be managed from both angles.  

More star wars stuff

Health and safety on it with the mattresses