The Meditative Benefits of a Solo Mountain Bike Ride

August 11, 2015

About the Author: Louise Smith is an avid moun­tain bik­er, hik­er and out­door enthu­si­ast. After a suc­cess­ful career in mar­ket­ing, keynote speak­ing, writ­ing and cor­po­rate train­ing, she has semi-retired to a chalet ‘in the Ontario north.’ Cur­rent­ly, Louise pro­vides wis­dom and advice to over 50,000 fol­low­ers on her Lessons of Life Face­book page.

Moun­tain bik­ers aren’t always cut from the same cloth. We can argue with each oth­er for hours over bikes and com­po­nents, and we have a pletho­ra of dif­fer­ent rea­sons we like to ride. Our styles vary, our inter­ests vary, and no mat­ter how much some of us try to be open, some­times we would rather hit the trails and ride our way.

The ben­e­fits of rid­ing how­ev­er are pret­ty con­sis­tent. Whether we agree to the fact or not, moun­tain bik­ing is meditative.

HERE ARE THE TOP 5 BENEFITS OF RIDING SOLO:

1. MOUNTAIN BIKING SOLO BALANCES MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT.

If you are emo­tion­al­ly or men­tal­ly drained from one of life’s hard­ships a good rip on the bike bal­ances every­thing out. The phys­i­cal actions of rid­ing bring your body to the same lev­el of exhaus­tion as your men­tal and emo­tion­al state and THIS puts you back in bal­ance and back in the dri­ver seat of your life.

2. RIDING SOLO HELPS BRING CLARITY.

For extro­verts that think ver­bal­ly a hard ride with friends allows them to ‘process’ cur­rent dif­fi­cul­ties they are fac­ing. We all know a ver­bal thinker — they don’t stop talk­ing! But did you know that’s how they process infor­ma­tion in their head? They have to talk it through, even if the only lis­ten­er is them­selves. Push­ing the body phys­i­cal­ly and emp­ty­ing the mind through ver­bal release brings clar­i­ty for them.

3. RIDING SOLO  HELPS YOU GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY.

Focus­ing on tech­nique and trail moves the mind away from obses­sive­ly try­ing to ‘sort things out,’ which in turn allows the pieces of life’s puz­zle to drop into place on their own. I call this ele­ment of med­i­ta­tion ‘get­ting out of your own way.’

4. RIDING SOLO BRINGS YOU PEACE.

Tears of anger or sad­ness may drop from your eyes out there in the trails, and that’s okay. As they flow the emo­tion­al ener­gy con­nect­ed to them leaves your body. Again, this allows new ener­gy to take its place. This process often leads to you mak­ing peace with what­ev­er caused the heartache in the first place.

5. NATURE IS HEALING.

Peri­od. The trees soak up our Co2 and give us pure, clean oxy­gen in return. Rocks and dirt are ground­ing, pulling neg­a­tive ener­gy out of us, leav­ing room for new, bet­ter ener­gy to take it’s place. Because we are focused on some­thing else (tech­nique and trail) we aren’t even aware the ener­gy is shift­ing. All we know is at the end of the ride we feel great.