Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh, from Living Buddha, Living Christ
I breathe, in and out, to the rhythm of steps and leaps upon the pavement. Right now, running is what I have. We are quarantined, and I am doing my best to follow Governor Newsom’s stay-at-home order. I leave the house to run. Running is all I have.
I have never been more grateful for the freedom and ability to marry breath with movement across time and space, learning slowly every single sidewalk, hopping over and eventually anticipating dips and cracks, savoring every brightly painted door, giving thanks for the drought-resistant eco-friendly sandy yards full of succulents, and praising the overgrown urban jungles that allow me the opportunity to at least pretend that I’m back in the wild, on some trail or far-flung travel destination.
Today, I’m running on Mountain View, a journey of free-flowing, wide, winding residential streets jutting off from Adams Avenue, a main street that connects uptown neighborhoods from east to west. It’s flat, it’s safe, and especially since the stay-at-home order began, it’s got very few cars driving around. I listen to the sounds of birdsong, squirrel chatter, and other exercise-pilgrims small-talking.
Despite my new need to weave into the street to stay a meter or more away from others, the Buff face cover I pull on and off to protect myself and others, and the unusual quiet…running feels like home. This is the most normal my day ever feels.
I am grateful for this practice of running, which came to me late–not in middle school or high school, when I was focused on academic success at all costs, playing music for hours because I’m great at it, profoundly uninterested in anything that might make me feel like a failure.
Running came to me via my college roommate, Molly, a then-collegiate cross country star and now-Insta-famous professional runner and former Olympian. I never ran with her: no way. But I saw her. I noticed her discipline in all things: waking up early, working out daily (or twice daily!), eating healthy, wholesome, fresh food, studying over socializing, getting enough sleep. She did everything that I didn’t. Did I have fun? Of course. Did I suffer unnecessarily? Totally.
I suffered because I was only and always in my head: I had no balance between honoring both the body and the mind. Now, I believe that movement is medicine, and running forces me out of my worrying-and-planning mind and allows me to put my whole self back together again.
I believe that movement is medicine, and running forces me out of my worrying-and-planning mind and allows me to put my whole self back together again.
This process of running more than walking, then walking hardly never, then running faster, has been as slow for me as the tree roots growing until they buckle city sidewalks– more than 10 years. There is no ‘one perfect run.’ This is a daily dance of competing wills, desires, inclinations. I want to work out and I want to sit down and play video games. I want to push myself to run faster and I want to stay at my desk, lesson-planning and reading. But the body is me as much as the mind. So I get up and run.
I draw closer to awareness of the whole universe in my running. I remember how hard it is for students to write paragraphs as I struggle uphill. I connect to my family, my friends, my students in the simple act of breathing and moving fast. This is always needed. But now, when almost every headline delivers a message of disease, death, or economic calamity, I need running more than ever. Breathing in, breathing out, this is a wonderful moment.
8th grade English @ CVLCC 