Picture a warm summer evening, a healthy dinner eaten outdoors followed by a desire to go for a brisk 40 minute fitness walk as the day unwinds and cools down. Does that describe your typical evening now, as after your visit to Mountain Trek you’ll have embraced the importance of the evening activity to lower blood sugars and release growth hormone factors to raise metabolism while sleeping? If your answer is yes, high five!! It most certainly describes most of my evenings. However, I would like to share with you a night a couple of weeks ago where that typical evening walk metamorphosed into something much more, something I call flow.
As the sun set and the air temperature dropped my two dogs and good friend and fellow MT guide JP and I set out at a brisk walk down my country road. We reached a creek 3 kilometres along; we stopped to listened and watch as it flowed down the mountainside without effort. How fresh and rejuvenating it must have been because as we turned to go back, with out speaking we just started to jog. That jog turned into a run and the run picked up speed, I haven’t run in years (unless its between the office and the lodge at MT) but this felt good, we were matching each others breath and step, I would grab JP’s hand every now and then to help her negotiate a pot hole as it was dusk, the lighting was poor, and I knew the road. Now we were running full out, the strides were getting longer and faster, and we were breathing harder, louder, at one point I thought of slowing down but instead I pushed through and then came this ease… this ability to move with freedom, poise and strength. It felt like I could keep running forever.....I had found flow.
Maybe it was the endorphins or maybe it was my companions or maybe just maybe at the heart of it was that fitness has an artistic quality that goes beyond more reps, sets, or techniques that ultimately the goal is to be able to move with freedom. Realize flow and you will open the gateway to peak performance and freedom.
Cathy; blogger, MT guide, fitness director and reformed runner!