I’m not alone, it appears. Other runners enjoy/need the kind of highway hypnosis I mentioned yesterday, especially on longer runs. In What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami writes:
I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void… The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always.
Over at Boing Boing, Lisa Katayama describes her encounter with Chi Running in an article on “How to run, meditate, and not get hurt.” Chi Running is apparently a combination of Kenyan running techniques with Tai Chi and meditation.
Katayama suggests her only real experience with mindful meditation while running–perhaps her only experience of Murakami’s “void”–came when she forgot her iPod. I often “acquire” the void even when I do have my iPod. And like Brodie over on dailymile, I find it really makes those miles go by that much quicker.