Aware Presence

Excerpt 11 - from ‘Total Mountain Fitness’

Introduction

Are you aware of what you are thinking and feeling right now? If not, you may be well served to become more present, as well as to raise your awareness. In fact, ask yourself – right now – “Where’s my awareness?”

While presence refers more to being in the moment, awareness comes from the internal monitoring of your systems. What are those? There are a few main regions of the body, and each has their own messages. Those from the head are generally categorized as thoughts, while the heart has feelings, and the gut - intuition.

What are you focused on, or preoccupied with? How does your head, heart, and gut communicate with you? Paying attention to these messages may seem a little woo-woo so let’s start more simply. Do you pay attention to your posture? Not just when you’re training, but all the time.

A simple, life changing lesson occurred when a friend pointed out that people train about 1hr a day, 5 days a week, for a total of 5hrs a week. There are 168hrs in a week – that leaves another 163 hours to focus on how things affect you. While it’s great that you are focused (or present) and paying attention to what your body is doing (awareness) for those 5 hours, just imagine what could happen if you did this for 163hrs - or, even, all 168...

Perspective

Awareness comes in many forms. After a meal, assess how it made you feel. Are you energized or sluggish, do you feel full and satisfied, or are you bloated and gross? Let this help you decide whether to eat that again or not, instead of basing it on habit, emotion, or price. Same goes for exercise and everything else.

Allow this newfound awareness to extend out from you and into the world. Sounds a little hippie but it’s true. If you practice, you may find you can cultivate the ability to be aware of yourself and how you react to things, you can then expand this to things around you. This can be an invaluable skill, especially for mountain athletes and outdoor enthusiasts.

What is the weather doing, the temperature, the clouds, the light? If you’re off grid and have no signal, and therefore no new info, this awareness may save your life by clueing you into an approaching storm, avalanche, or other natural shitshow about to dump itself on your head.

When climbing, instead of simply hanging out at the belay, ensure you are aware of, not only how your partner is doing as she runs it out at the top of the pitch, but also her system and what protection she has in. Should you worry and watch her like a hawk? Or is it fine and she’ll take a big -but safe- fall?

My Lesson Learned

Below are a few questions to ask yourself. With practice, they will fade into the background, as you continuously monitor for any issues as they arise:

• Head (Thoughts) – What’s my inner dialogue telling me? Have I even noticed? Am I calm and feel prepared, or am I stressed and running checklists because I’m concerned about something?
• Heart (Feelings) – Am I enjoying this? Would I enjoy myself more if I started or stopped doing something? How quiet or loud am I being? Has my attitude changed significantly?
• Gut (Intuition) – How is my psyche? As far as my body, am I hot or cold, hungry or thirsty, tired or sore, hurt or injured? Are there any hot points in my shoes, against my pack, etc? If I adjusted anything right now, would it be better than just keeping going?
• Partner – Scan your partner for the above. Better yet, talk to each other so things don’t creep up on you that may affect the day, or entire trek.

 My upcoming book "Total Mountain Fitness" (TM) teaches a minimalistic - and realistic - approach to fitness, including strength, conditioning, and recovery. If you would like to learn more, please sign up here to receive a free e-book version. Total Mountain Fitness will be released later this year.