Viewing 35 posts - 1 through 35 (of 35 total)
  • Is cycling spiritual?
  • jekkyl
    Full Member

    I can’t stop thinking about cycling, it’s like I get a high when I’m spinning along, standing up in the big ring. When I’m warmed It’s almost effortless to float along at a constant speed and rising to the challenge of a hill, keeping in same ring, just floating up n over the top. I cycle with tunes on & the spin of my cranks pounds to the beats in my ears. Cycling through countryside is the best, away from all the work & the worry with just the sky & the birds for company, could you class cycling as spiritual? I feel like I’m on a higher plane, in a special place, and I want to tell everyone I know ‘COME ON COME CYCLING, YOU’LL LOVE THE FEELING YOU’LL GET’ but I don’t of course. This must be how happy chappy Christians must feel.
    I’m also dreaming of cycling, the spinning of the wheels enters my subconscious and all I can think about is my next ride.

    5thElefant
    Free Member

    When I was building decking in my back garden I dreamt of decking. I didn’t blame god.

    jedi
    Full Member

    i love riding bikes. i find it very hard to explain how much 😀

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    bencooper
    Free Member

    When I was building decking in my back garden I dreamt of decking. I didn’t blame god.

    I was in B&Q once, and a man said “do you want decking?”

    Luckily I got in the first punch.

    patriotpro
    Free Member

    jedi – Member
    i love riding bikes. i find it very hard to explain how much

    Agreed, the OP has done a pretty good job here though imo. 🙂

    mt
    Free Member

    I’d say it is at time. Out on the bike miles from anywhere, the space, the freedom, the pain, the movement, yep I reckon spiritual is a good word for it. I do like Steve Hillage though so it’s the sort of thing I would say.

    mt
    Free Member

    bencooper – Member

    I just spit out my coffee, that was really funny!

    buzz-lightyear
    Free Member

    No. It’s very much in the realm of physical and psychological. Tis joyous though, and that can lead to more metaphysical thoughts.

    bigbadbob
    Free Member

    It can be sometimes. When you have cycled trough some woods on your own and stop for a drink or something. Just stand still and look around you. Your surroundings will stay as they are when you have gone. Something nice about that.

    mattjg
    Free Member

    I don’t think it’s ‘spiritual’, because I don’t think such a thing as ‘the spirit’ exists.

    But I do think we evolved over millions of years to be creatures that move through countryside in a rhythmic motion, on foot of course. I think riding taps into that, for lack of a better word, habit, somewhere deep down in our heads.

    annebr
    Free Member

    Nah I think you’re just psychologically damaged. Have you considered therapy?

    Onzadog
    Free Member

    No, people can be spiritual though.

    Some of them find cycling can facilitate that.

    I certainly find cycling theraputic, almost medatative in its total exclusion of anything else going on in the world/my life.

    legend
    Free Member

    Didn’t feel spiritual when cycling through Govan this morning

    mattk
    Free Member

    When people ask why I love riding bikes, I tell them it’s the bite of knobbly tyres on a woodland trail (you know when the grounds not muddy but moist and grippy?)

    I get some blank looks when I try to explain it.

    But spiritual? Nah I just love my bikes

    wolfenstein
    Free Member

    i might have to downgrade the anti-depressant i prescribed 🙄

    ..please ring your local GP to book a schedule ASAP 😐

    kudos100
    Free Member

    It can certainly have a spiritual element to it. Riding down a bit of singletrack with your focus soley on the trail, is akin to meditation.

    It is one of the greatest things about riding bikes, it is good for mind body and spirit 🙂

    And by spirit, I mean the belief in something else, not belief in god or belonging to any religion.

    Sancho
    Free Member

    not spiritual, just enjoy it, though in the past winter Ive not always enjoyed it, at times just had to go out to maintain a balance of fitness.

    mattjg
    Free Member

    feelings of spirituality are just “little chemical drops in the brain” (that’s an obscure theatrical reference)

    but I think riding (and walking and running etc) in a pleasing environment are good for us all the same

    I feel sorry for kids growing up in urban environments with no knowledge or access to countryside, it’s no wonder so many grow up a bit angry and ****ed up.

    senorj
    Full Member

    For me it can be a form of physical meditation.
    If I don’t cycle, I’m not as happy as when I do.
    However,when cycling through North London I sometimes struggle to reach a transcendental plane. 🙂

    docrobster
    Free Member

    I’ve often considered this question as my next door neighbours are very Christian, and when I’m heading out at 9am on a Sunday morning I consider that I am just going off to my “church” to “worship” in the same way that they will be later. I’m sure I get the same inner piece from cycling that they do from sitting in church, plus I get some exercise and sometimes top up my vitamin D levels.
    win-win 😀

    brakes
    Free Member

    now the cold weather has ****** off, it’s certainly more pleasing.
    the sun certainly makes me want to be on a bike constantly. but I guess even in the pissing wind it’s still some form of flagellatory therapy.

    edlong
    Free Member

    For those who’s spirituality is connected to the “earth mother” thing I can see how cycling / mountain biking gives you a very physical connection to the landscape you pass through that you can’t get any other way, even by walking. The way what feels like level ground on foot will tell you clearly that it is either a bit upwards or a bit downwards when you’re on a bike, the way every bump and rise, every lump and every tree root communicate directly through your whole body. Man.

    boxfish
    Free Member

    Is cycling spiritual?

    Well, I looked like I’d seen a ghost when my last credit card bill arrived. 😈

    tang
    Free Member

    If it makes me a happier, healthier person that then has a knock on effect to family, friends, colleagues or anyone else that’s a very good thing to be cherished. If it makes me a grumpy, competitive, selfish, miserable a-hole then I need to take a good look at myself and sort it out.
    Physical yoga in a traditional sense is ultimately practiced to prepare the body for meditation. So I guess it sort of is, but most things can be, in one way or another.

    jameso
    Full Member

    Mattjg’s comment is close to how I see it. Our surroundings and lifestyles have evolved way too fast for our still-primitive brains to adapt to and all of us probably need some back-to-basics time, whether we do or realise it or not. Anything that takes you back into a more living-by-the-moment state of mind while in natural surroundings is good for the soul/mind/whatever. The post-exercise buzz helps too )

    Nothing better than a good bike + wild camping trip for a simple life experience. Travel and wild camping alone and on foot is even better soul-food imo as it’s simpler and more natural, but I enjoy the riding too much to do that very often.

    buzz-lightyear
    Free Member

    when I’m heading out at 9am on a Sunday morning I consider that I am just going off to my “church” to “worship” in the same way that they will be later

    “Better to be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking of mountains” John Muir

    docrobster
    Free Member

    Ooh I like that one buzz I’ll try and remember it next time she tries to convert me.
    (Actually to be fair she gave up on me after a short while but persisted in trying to give my wife the “gift of Jesus’ Love” for a few years after they moved in)

    brooess
    Free Member

    Dunno about spiritual but meditative, certainly.
    I’m halfway through a book on meditation and it’s all about driving all thoughts from your mind and living 100% in the moment.
    Sweet flowing singletrack demanding all your attention is certainly a medidative experience for me.
    Road riding I find less so, although fighting up a hard climb comes close.
    I do love the ‘glow’ I feel after a good bike ride…

    mattjg
    Free Member

    @edlong:

    “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.”- Ernest Hemingway

    Man.

    uselesshippy
    Free Member

    Shut up you **** hippys.

    Oh.

    oops. 😀

    senorj
    Full Member

    Shut up you **** hippys.

    Oh.

    oops.

    pmsl.

    stAn-BadBrainsMBC
    Free Member

    When you have cycled trough some woods on your own and stop for a drink or something. Just stand still and look around you. Your surroundings will stay as they are when you have gone.

    Which pubs do you go to ?

    slackalice
    Free Member

    brooess has it. It’s about being in the now, the present moment. For some of us, it is akin to a self-defined spiritual experience.

    Riding my bike, skiing and sailing are the main activities for me that enable me to be in the now. During these activities I am focussing purely on feeling the experience, through my body. The moments of yesterday, last week, last month, the last minute; as well as the moments yet to be are not in my thought process. I am existing in the now or the present moment

    Its a very good place to be for me. But then, I am also spiritual.

    For those of you who are keen to explore more of how to ease modern day anxieties and stresses, there are many books on the subject of meditation and enabling the realisation of being in the present moment. Many Buddhist teachings also.

    Overall, a book called ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle is worth a read for some.

    If of course, the ‘spiritual’ is not for you, then just go ride your bike and focus on the trail ahead… 😀

    hh45
    Free Member

    I don’t even know what spiritual means. People talk about Yoga being spiritual and i like Yoga but its just a form of exercise etc to me.

    I do love cycling to a much higher level than anything else I can think of. And its not just being in epic countryside although I like that. Cycling is awesome on a heavy bike in central London, on a road bike in a bunch, carving down some singletrack in the Alps, nailing something tricky, nearly vomming on a steep climb, churning away into a headwind and rain – its just great.

    allmountainventure
    Free Member

    Zen and the art of improvisation. Works for me!

    That and addiction to endorphine…

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