Can You Meditate While Running Treadmill?

[Shqipe]

Is it effective to practice meditation while you run? I run and focus on deep breath, should be good?

[Sahil Pandit]

@Shqipe If that works for you, keep doing it. 

[Chakra Lion]

The quieter you are, the more you can hear.

[Leo Gura]

Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei meditate while running 20 miles per day.

[Armand]

I concur with Shiva.

It's difficult for me to walk up and down a single ⛰, let alone ? for 20 miles every single day. Phew! 

 

[Forestluv]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei meditate while running 20 miles per day.

That is the newbie course. . . The masters course is 52.5 miles per day for 100 days.

[Conscious life]

Yes. You can meditate, but the process is automatic. I am athlete and at certain kilometres when body and mind tired when I couldn't no longer control myself I would go to a medtative state and I don't know where I am while running. My body simply functions and run without my control. 

But to enter to a medtative state you have to be exhausted and letting go of the need to run. 

[kieranperez]

The short answer is yes. 

As a competitive runner for 12 years now, I’ve found that the more meditative you are comes from really 2 things:

• perfecting your craft
• letting go

Flow states in running is really just another type of meditative state. 

The best way I can put this is that when you run with the aim of meditating, keep in mind that this can get more difficult because the mind will get extremely punchy. Controlling your mind is really about what you don’t do. It’s staying focused. So when you run, run. Stay there and allow. 

This will get hard when you get tired. If youre like me and you’re going up steep 10, 12, 14% vertical grades for miles at a time, that shit gets REALLY hard because the mind can and will react. 

Correcting running form mechanics really helps because it’s all about becoming more efficient. In this case it also helps it become more “effortless”. 

@Conscious life does make a point where it sometimes does take points of exhaustion to really reach that. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re meditating regularly and are really working to perfect your craft at meditation, you can bring that into running. 

18 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei meditate while running 20 miles per day.

They walk those miles. Which is why it can take them 15+ hours to finish. 

17 hours ago, Armand said:

I concur with Shiva.

It's difficult for me to walk up and down a single ⛰, let alone ? for 20 miles every single day. Phew! 

 

You’re an endurance animal that was physiologically designed to run hundreds of miles at a time. Give it time.

[Conscious life]

@kieranperez exhaustion mean when you let go for the need to run, I used to amaze that running has this kind of meditative state. 

When you first run for few minutes you are motivated to run and you want to feel you are running. after some minutes past when you lose your motivation and you get frustrated,  when it become boring but you keep run, you body start to function by its own, your mind stops, you body go to instinct mode. 

Osho amazingly talked about it. 

Small amount of time running or warmup does not do it. You have to go above your limit even it is slow. 

[kieranperez]

49 minutes ago, Conscious life said:

@kieranperez exhaustion mean when you let go for the need to run, I used to amaze that running has this kind of meditative state. 

When you first run for few minutes you are motivated to run and you want to feel you are running. after some minutes past when you lose your motivation and you get frustrated,  when it become boring but you keep run, you body start to function by its own, your mind stops, you body go to instinct mode. 

Osho amazingly talked about it. 

Small amount of time running or warmup does not do it. You have to go above your limit even it is slow. 

This is not at all universal. Most people who run hundred milers or even marathons dont really even hit that. Don’t turn this into a fantasy. Running is fucking hard when you take it on seriously. Osho aint no runner. Have him run a hundred miler in the mountains and I’d bet money that dude would still fall apart. 

Your mind doesn’t just all of a sudden stop or something like that. You allow the mind to do its job and staying present and a few other aspects but this idea that you have to reach exhaustion is silly. 

I suggest you don’t speak as though what you’re saying is universal.

[Adam M]

@Shqipe Yes. Maybe not as a replacement for an hour long sit though. 

[Smurfinstein]

I'm a trail ultra runner and I pretty naturally enter a meditative state when I run long, but, here's my question....

Are you running to meditate? Or meditating while running to "kill two birds with one stone"? Multitasking is a habit that's best broken.... what's your intention here? Why do you get on the treadmill in the first place?

[outlandish]

You can totally meditate while running. It's easier than sitting meditation. This is because it's easier to be fully present when you're doing something than when you're not doing anything. You can practice just running, not thinking about other things, always bringing awareness back to your present action action of running.

So yes, you can meditate while running treadmill, or any running, but It's still a good idea to practice sitting meditation because it's so damn hard.