It isn’t every day a runner is blessed to cruise effortlessly, mile after mile, at a lickety-split pace while bathing in inner peace and joy – especially if he’s in his sixties. Yet in the last month it’s happened to me three times. Here’s what happened during the first run.
I set off from the Stanford stadium and jogged my usual warmup route through the sports complex, past the swimming pools and baseball and soccer fields, then across the street and through a lovely eucalyptus grove.
Before setting out, I prayed to know the right way to train, and during the warmup I again prayed to run expansively. “I don’t want to run for any other reason than to expand my heart,” I said. “I don’t want personal glory, or to run fast so that others will admire me, because that’s only stealing from them. I want to run to discover my heart and radiate kindness and goodwill to all.”
I warmed up for an entire hour. Wary of falling into the trap of running too fast, I held my heart rate at 65-70% of maximum. That’s very slow, a shuffle, but I was determined not to run any faster until my heart told me it was what my body wanted to do.
For the first 40 minutes, I struggled with restless thoughts, but as I prayed for clarity, my heart and mind began to relax and feel at peace. Jogging through the biology complex and finding my rhythm, a Duke Ellington lyric popped into my head: “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing!”
As my pace rose, I glanced at the heart monitor. I was running at a speed that would normally raise my heart rate to 77-78% of maximum, yet it was cruising at 70-72%. What had happened? I wondered if the long, slow warmup had given my body the time it needed to become nicely synchronized.
An hour into the run, my body felt as if it could happily run faster, and I let it accelerate. All the while, I was holding my attention gently at the point between the eyebrows and talking to God, checking in continually to be sure I was making the right decisions. I knew I could easily slip into running too fast, and I steadfastly curbed the impulse. As I’ve mentioned in earlier chapters, the teachings of many spiritual paths say that the “spiritual eye,” between and slightly above the eyebrows, is the “broadcasting station” for prayer, and that the heart is the “receiving station” where we can hear God’s answers intuitively.
With the stopwatch at 1:02, I asked if I should run fast or go for a long run. Sensing no clear guidance, I decided to try some tempo running and see how it felt.
I picked up the pace, and as my pulse rate rose, I checked the feeling in my heart. As my heart rate passed 80% of maximum, I noticed a distinct feeling of harmony, but as it climbed to 85% and beyond, the feeling faded. I held pace at 85-87% for a few minutes, but then I thought, “If I don’t drop back down to 80% and explore those good feelings, I may miss an opportunity to learn something wonderful.”
I slowed until my heart fell to 80%, and for the next three miles I held that pace and was rewarded with extraordinary, unbroken feelings of harmony and love.
Earlier, at the start of the run, I had had trouble finding my rhythm as I struggled to pull my thoughts together and raise my mood, but now a lovely, smooth rhythm came effortlessly. My body was poised over its center of gravity, my feet padding lightly over the ground. My spine was straight and my breathing was deep and expansive, filling my upper body. My head was raised calmly, my eyes relaxed and looking straight ahead, not downward. My attention was strongly interiorized – I had no trouble keeping my mind focused, though I was running on the margin of a busy road with cars whizzing by. In fact, it was pleasant to remain “inside,” while the world “out there” went its way – it simply didn’t matter. This was a delightful way to run, and the thought came irresistibly: “This is Happy Heart training.”
God had answered my prayer. Today I knew how to train. It felt so completely right, and the knowing came from my heart, with undeniable certainty. I ran expansively, and the proof was that my heart was more than just physically and emotionally soothed. There were feelings of a love and joy that, after the run, I discovered I could extend in blessing to others. On the way home, I stopped at the market, and as I chatted with the checkout clerk, my heart was relaxed and appreciative, glowing with unspoken kindness.
An hour and a half into the run, I swung back through the campus, making a long S-curve past the Quad and through the biology complex. My body had begun to tire, and it announced the fact by running more slowly at the same heart rate. But that was fine; I felt no compulsion to run faster, whether for dignity or machismo. The heart’s love was all-sufficing; I didn’t need anything more.
Earlier, during the first miles, I had been thinking how, when I pray to God, He rarely “explains.” He seldom answers in words, through my mind; instead, the answers generally come through my heart. And if I succeed in praying with one-pointed attention, from my deepest core, the response comes invariably. It can be puzzling, when the answer doesn’t come right away, but if I mean business, I suddenly find that, in some subtle way, I know.
That’s what happened today. God didn’t explain, but I knew. I knew when to start running tempo, and I knew how fast to run. There was the first, fleeting sensation of harmony in my heart when it passed 80%, as if to say “That’s it!” And then the confirmation, with miles of running in a state of primal happiness, my heart bathed in love. And afterward, there was the proof – my body had worked hard, doing good training, and my spirit sang through the deep channels of my body.
It was, in every respect, a perfect run. It was excellent training, it was mentally healing, and it was spiritually blessed. Maybe God didn’t talk to me in so many words, but He definitely answered my prayer.
(This story was first published in The Runner’s High, published by Breakaway Books.)
