Mind Tricks

Breath deep and sense yourself.

I'm just coming off an amazing week long Spring Break. I've had friends in visiting from Oregon and South Carolina, and we've been having great adventures in Muir Woods and all throughout San Francisco. Perhaps my favorite adventure this week though, has been deep inside myself within my own brain.

Balance is a curious thing, and most people don't think about it too often. Relying on a complex system of neural circuitry, once we're able to walk as toddlers, it's almost as if we forget that it was ever difficult and required some concentration and dedication. Balance is a virtue of mine and I've written in the past about how fond I am of Slacklining, a balance sport that involves stringing a flat piece of rope between two points and walking on it. Getting on the line has become somewhat meditative for me and I've spent the week teaching the basics to my friends and strangers alike.

Get past the tiny size of the rope (one inch wide) and the flexible bounce (hence the "slackness") and most take their first day or two trying to stop their legs from shaking and search for their center of balance. One must breath deep, stop thinking about and start feeling for their center of balance. When I'm walking, my eyes are locked ahead and nothing clutters my mind. My breathing becomes deep and controlled. When I'm on the line, nothing enters my mind except input from my physical senses and I'm able to clear my head of all the mental clutter. By the end of the weekend, I'd set a personal best by walking a fifty foot line (the shorter and/ or tighter the line is, the easier it is to walk on. Thus, the longer and/ or more slack, the more challenging). Below is a video of my final success on the line.

This comes as such a personal victory, as it wasn't too long ago that I sat in the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, recovering from my rock climbing induced TBI. After my head cleared and I had begun intensive In-Patient therapy, simply standing up and balancing on two feet was a huge challenge. My vestibular system (the auditory and neural network in the Brain that contributes to your sense of balance) had taken a huge impact and I would close my eyes and tip over, my head spinning. After relearning how to walk, my balance and leg strength returned very slowly but surely. Now, it's as if I'm walking in Philippe Petit's footsteps and walking fifty feet between two trees on a tiny piece of rope is an easy challenge.

I walked away from this afternoon, marveling at the wonders of the brain and how training your sense of balance through slacklining is almost a form of cognitive exercise: routing and rerouting your neural circuitry to more keenly grasp your physical place in physical space. My legs were once shaky on flat ground as I slowly re-took my first steps, but it seems you can do anything you practice and set your mind to.

How does that sound?

My first steps re-relearning how to walk in 2004.



My first successful steps on a 50 foot slackline.