midnight gospel

my sister is visiting this week and we watch an episode or two of the midnight gospel every night. it's been really good and gotten me thinking a lot about consciousness and states of being. 

Running has always been a way to access that kind of thought. 

A lot of times you can get locked up in your thoughts and the same thoughts and worries start to swirl and constrict and create a negative cycle. Running has always provided a way to clear that drain blockage. Like those thoughts are able to pass and new thoughts are allowed to come in. It's gotta have something to do with moving the body and hormones get released and you activate more pathways in your brain. You change your brain chemistry and probably the structure too. 

There's also a sense of just running away that's really powerful too. A sense of going to a space where your worries can't get to. Like when I worked at a boarding school, in the mornings I would run out in the woods and none of the stress of that school could reach me out there. And you at least get the chance to flirt with the idea of being wild and free. Outside of society and all these things that anchor you to a space, a sense of stability and comfort but also anxiety. 

Now I'm thinking about how much we need to medicate just to function. What was I saying?

Oh yeah,  I had a stress dream last night about some kids in my art class who were challenging. I consider myself someone who is good at working with challenging, high need students. And I have a theory that my body doesn't want me to get too far away from that stress. So that I'll be ready for it and able to function when it happens instead of shutting down or reacting out of control. Anyway usually in these dreams the kids are really misbehaving and they never respond positively to my corrections or whatever. Although usually I think I do a good job. But it never goes well and it's very stressful and then I wake up. 

I don't know what that has to do with running. Maybe you could make some connection to running as pain management. And that your body can adapt to stress and pain through exposure and you can learn to work within that and not see it as pain anymore. Alternatively, you can go even deeper into pain than you thought possible. I guess that important component to that is choice. If you choose to run every day or deal with unruly middle schoolers, and keep making that choice long enough then you'll adapt. You'll find ways to get better. That's maybe true. I like 60% believe that.