Mountain biking is a frustrating and demoralizing endeavor! It has riled me up into a furnace of ranting and rage. It has eroded my confidence and soiled my sense of ability. It has ignited tirades of expletives accompanied by trance-like head shaking accompanied with vows never to do it again.

Sometimes the pitch I’m slogging up gets so steep that my brain decides that I won’t make it and starts in with the reasons why I should stop. That often happens at about the same time my lungs begin to realize that I’m maxing out their capacity. All the while my legs are belting out a weary harmony of pain and fatigue. With every part and system of my physical body begging me to stop, I often do. I bow forward, lean my head onto my handlebars, gasp for air.

Sometimes I come upon an obstacle in the trail that I can’t get around or over. Even on trails that I ride frequently, a rock that’s just tall enough, a group of rocks clustered just so, a tree root just high enough or slick enough can fully stop me. I curse what I’m sure was an invisible hand that just reached up and halted forward momentum.

Sometimes I get a decent start over a challenging “terrain feature” with my front wheel, only to feel my back wheel stop abruptly against the obstacle, or have a pedal get stuck on top of it.

Then there are those times when I get a bumbling start into a rough section, completely lose my balance, and, in a sloppy flail, fall into a heap with my bike.

And I love it!

I head out on my bike again and again, eager for the whole experience—all that hard stuff included.

For all its difficulty and danger, all of its often-terrifying moments, mountain biking has become for me an “in the wild” mindfulness practice in motion. Something shifted for me when I learned about “sessioning.”

Not unlike what a pianist does to learn her way around a tricky bit of Rachmaninov, mountain bikers will sometimes stop to deliberately practice, with focused attention, over and over, a specific challenging section or feature on a trail. That’s “sessioning.”

Though I was surprised the first time I was on a ride with someone who said, “let’s stop and try that a few more times,” her suggestion filled me immediately with a new sense of calm. It was a relief and a revelation.

It was OK to stop.

It was OK to accept that something was hard.

It was OK to practice. It was OK to learn.

I noticed when I started to incorporate the session into my trail riding, the familiar frustration that often welled up, making me feel incompetent and impossible as a rider started to dissolve. That stopping deliberately in the middle of a ride, right at the spot where it was hard opened up my perspective, downregulated my emotion, and opening up my mountain biking experience in a whole new way.

Incorporating “sessions” into my rides has allowed me to practice:

  • Releasing the judgements I pass about myself and my worth based on whether or how I got through an obstacle in the trail
  • Breathing and relaxing right into the midst of something hard and fear-inducing, rather than sidestepping it or attempting to skip it
  • Reorienting myself to a beginner’s mind with every ride, every section of trail (even those I know well) is a new experience to be engaged in without expectation or pre-determined outcome
  • Focusing (and refocusing) my attention in and on the moment lets me tend only to what’s in front of me at that moment which sets me up to see opportunity and possibility more clearly, and to direct all my energy to the present situation
  • Returning again and again to the practice itself

Now when I go out and ride I have a new mindset.

I’m not pumping my tires already plotting out which sections of the trail are going to suck, where I’m going to struggle, and all the parts I might hate. Instead, as I click my helmet strap, and don my gloves, I feel curiosity start to rise in my heart. I start to wonder:

  • Where will I stop to release, breathe, open, focus, and return?
  • What will each moment bring?
  • What new experiences will reveal themselves in my practice on the trail?

I love this practice on my bike because it reminds me to apply the concept of “sessioning” to life off the trail. When things get sticky, I wonder, how can I go back and take another run at it, with a breath, different perspective, the mind of a beginner, and without pre-judging the situation?

Where will you “session” today?