Rock climbing has proven to be an important part of my life. I discovered the activity at around age thirty-two. I learned in the gym which was a fun social way to move my body. Once I went outdoors, that’s when I was hooked. I love touching the rocks, feeling my way around, noticing everything in a habitat that isn’t my own.
Recently I have been thinking a lot about the lessons climbing has taught me, specifically my relationship to fear and discomfort. When you are climbing up a route that is hard for you, you have to take risks, a leap of faith, to try despite the fact that you might fail. Sometimes you do miss and fall, but other times you hold on and you’re able to continue ascending. It’s a crazy moment where you have to maintain your focus, laser beam precision between mind and body. It can all fall apart so quickly. It is in the refining of that mind body connection where I have found repetition to be helpful. The more you work on it, the more apt you are to hold it together, the more inclined the mind is to stay calm. I suppose it has to do with creating neuropathways, like the way a river carves through a landscape.
Implicit in this process is some level of discomfort, that is what I am learning to tolerate. I don’t like being scared, but the more that I push that edge, I find that it’s malleable. What I was scared of when I began has shifted.
Similarly, I have been caught in surprise situations when outdoors. Whether it be hiking, climbing, camping, they have all brought temporary discomforts: stuck on the cliff in a rainstorm, or hailstorm, blisters from shoes, hungry or cold because I didn’t bring enough food, layers or plan correctly. Like most, I have also been physically sick or injured which sucks. Recently when experiencing some anxiety in the studio, I reminded myself of some of these outdoor experiences and how you don’t give up when it gets hard or uncomfortable, you tolerate it and eventually it changes. I have drawn on my outdoor experiences to help me through my day to day, when the consequences are not as life threatening but when the impact of my brain feels nonetheless overwhelming.
And so it seems at forty-one I am changing my relationship to discomfort. I understand it is a part of my rich experience here on this planet, and instead of running from it or avoiding it like I have in the past, I am accepting of it, trusting that relief will come on the other side. And, interestingly this trust has a way of disarming it, where it actually starts to feel less uncomfortable. Go figure.