Exercise and mindfulness: can participating in endurance sport improve our mental health as well as our physical fitness?

25 May 2018

In the warmer, dryer months around summer, many of us will challenge ourselves physically with a bike ride, running race or swimming event.

The benefits of getting regular exercise are now accepted as part of having good overall physical health, but can the practice of endurance sport also be specifically good for our minds?

Exercise and the mind

Endurance cyclist Rod Dalitz shares his ideas on physical activity and a meditative state.

The practice of mindfulness, or meditation, though not fully understood, is linked to benefits like clear thinking, a removal of stress and resilience to pressure in our lives.

Many of us feel ‘clear-headed’ after a walk, run or ride — so can longer, faster, harder be better for us if we take a mindful approach?

Endurance activity has been said to ‘work the mind’s state’ and has undertaken all around the world for many years by people like:-

Sufi dervishes
They perform ritual whirling to enter a religious meditative state
Japanese marathon monks
They have a practice called kaihōgyō in which they circle a holy mountain, covering epic ultra-distance marathon distances as part of their quest for enlightenment
The legendary Lung Gom Pa runners of Old Tibet
They were said to be able to run for 48 hours and covers distance of 200 miles