Meditation

[chimples]

Something that I try to intergrate into my training is meditation. At around the time i got into parkour seriously i had a brief flirt with Buddhism, and so i combined the two and realised that there is a lot in common. Before i elaborate further does anyone else see this or am i just a bit of a mentalist?

[Dave]

Meditation is certainly useful, and it really comes into its own when you can maintain a meditative-like state even while performing actions. Thinking clearly is never a bad thing.

There are definitely positive aspects to Buddhism but most of it refers to different areas than the one the parkour philosophy is concerned with, so I don't think there's a huge crossover directly.

[TicTac]

This is not directly related to meditation but is a thought process of sorts; visualization of the movement. Again, forgive me since I have only been training for several months now and this may already be well used but this technique of visualizing yourself move in a particular way prior to attempting it can bring positive outcomes. I do sometimes think that it can hinder you, because if you can't visualize yourself moving, when you attempt to, you barely manage to. Any thoughts on this?

[Dave]

Yes, visualisation is another useful tool.

In its basic form it's just thinking your way through the movement. You run through all the parts of a movement in your head from start to finish, seeing it as though you're actually doing it, and work out what you have to do at each point. Doing this helps your mind get used to the feelings and sensations so they don't come as a shock later on.

Then, the more parts you can add in through your imagination the better. If you can picture what you're going to be seeing throughout the movement then you can move on to recreating the commands to move your body, maybe even recreating the exact movements themselves on the spot. After that, you can work on recreating the feelings you are going to be experiencing during the movement, so you can get used to that part of the experience too.
Visualisation is all about recreating the feeling of moving without actually moving. The closer you can get to what you will experience when you actually do the movement, the better prepared you are going to be.

Visualisation is very difficult to use with movements that you are unfamiliar with, because you don't know what feelings and thoughts to recreate. I don't think visualisation ever hinders you, I think it just shows you where you are already weak.

[JADWrity]

I medetate a lot, I am not a buddhist but it is great for managing energy flows and purity in the mind which hugely helps with the sixth sense involved in parkour