What I love about Climbing…

August 5, 2010 at 8:55 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments
Tags: Alexander Technique, Feminism, Magic, Spirituality

It’s almost six months now since I first started climbing, and it has been one of the most life changing hobbies I have ever experienced (though, if you take out the word “hobby” and add “obssession”, you would probably be closer to the truth!)

Why did I start?

As a kid, I spent hours in the garden on the climbing frame.  I loved to do the monkey bars, and stand up tall lke a tight rope walker.  Sometimes, with my head in the cherry blossom, I felt like I was in a different world: my head in the clouds.  Trees were always nice too, but I always struggled with that first step up – and still do, as recent attempts prove!

My physical pursuits, though, are always sparked by a spiritual possibility. Some of my dearest friends are surfers and paragliders, and, talking to them – watching extreme sport films – I had a sense that there was something tremendously spiritual about these sorts of pursuits.  Once I asked my friend what enlightenment was, and he said that it’s those moments when he’s surfing, where he completely loses all sense of self, disappears, merges for a moment, almost.  And, watching committed surfers, it seems to me, something of a prayer: a spiritual discipline.  In fact, I think it is that pearl, the Kingdom of God.  Attention.  Being in the moment. A form of meditation.

I wished so much to experience it myself, but, I’m not a strong swimmer, I can’t afford to fly and, ultimately, I felt intimidated by “a man’s world”.  But, I met a girl who climbed, and she encouraged me that it didn’t matter if you were small, or not very strong or lacking in stamina: it would build up. (Well, not the height bit!)  So I went…and sitting there, being the weakest link, unable to learn the knot, I felt like running away.  But those are the times when you have to stay. After 5 hours climbing up walls, I was totally wired and addicted.

Climbing has saved my life over these past few months as sadness and pain and anxiety threathened to overcome me.  For that, I shall always be grateful, because imagining how, or indeed if, I could have coped without it, I am terrified of my own inner frailty.

This is a love song, a love song to climbing.  I love climbing because:

It’s physical

As I learn more and more about the human body; as I develop more and more sensory awareness – that, being “in your body” not just your mind – from the Alexander Technique, my sense of awe ever increases.  I praise God because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. David knew what that meant, experientially, and I am beginning to.  Climbing is a sport that makes optimum use of that wonderful organism, the human body.  Arms and legs and fingers and toes, and most of all, your core. And, particularly when bouldering, where you have to contort your body into incredible poses, I just love making different shapes, and experiencing what that feels like.

It’s creative

Climbing is a kind of dance. No one dances the same; they all do it a different way.  No one climbs the same route exactly the same way; their true self shines through every move the more authentic they are. And I love to watch that; to see REAL people.  People’s inner child that is so oft suppressed and hidden away.  Some people climb as fast as they can, it’s all about reaching the top.  I can’t say it’s my style.  Process, not goal orientated. I enjoy every move, slowly deliberating on how I might like to make the next step, savouring every moment.  It can be so beautiful, so artistic, and I aspire, more than being a “good” climber, to be a beautiful one: full of grace and poise.

It’s intellectual

Climbing requires thinking, planning, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t thrive on using my mind.  It requires creative problem solving. So many days, so many nights, I have spent pondering on how exactly I am going to achieve that next move, what I need to do with my body, what the possibilities are.  And then, by trial and error, testing them out, you eventually work it out.  And I love that kind of learning, where no-one’s directed you towards the answer.  Because, whilst I like to watch other climbers and see how they approach things, we all have different problems and our bodies have different strengths.  I might not be able to reach all that far, but I am incredibly flexible.  I love the intellectual process of solving a climbing problem, and knowing that it was my solution and nobody elses.

It’s emotional

Climbing makes me happy. Particularly during the worst days, I would sit in the library, trying to revise, trying not to feel all the messy, chaotic emotions, and to focus.  But I would end up totally paralysed,  physically tense and usually reverted to tears as a means of release.  But then I would go climbing.  And suddenly, I wasn’t thinking anymore, I wasn’t emoting or worrying – it was all about me and wall.  Nothing else mattered: simplicity itself. An hour of complete focus, would be as rain pouring down a blocked drainpipe.  I felt fresh and new, absolved, after.  Maybe that’s what true confesssion really means.  All the dirt slipping away.  Not by us “doing” anything, but by completing “being”. Endorphins would inevitably release, and I have never felt unhappy post climbing.  Instead, a terrific energy, a new buoyancy, the ability to see again what is magical and true.  To look up at lifes possibilities, and not down at how far you might fall. It feels like walking in the rain.

It’s spiritual

My spiritual journey thus far has taken me in many directions, and it is an incredible joy of discovery.  Meditation though, I think, is an anchor that will remain in some kind of guise.  The first time I learnt to meditate, it was seated cross legged, stilling one’s body, breathing, and one’s mind.  Ultimately, meditation is mind-body unity, and our stress is caused when we lose this. When body and mind march to the same tune, the moves are pure and incisive.  Yet, the moment you lose confidence, you think “you can’t” is the moment when “you can’t”.  What I can achieve is beyond my imagination: how dare I fence in my soul with low expectations. Like the Alexander Technique semi-supine position, like Ashtanga Yoga, climbing is something I find incredibly meditative and absorbing.  When mind and body are one, the spirit emerges. Not just our individual spark, but the Universal Consciousness, the Holy Spirit.  When I completely “am”, with no masks, I become unified with something bigger than myself.  It is non-duality. Humanity and divinity merge, and there is no beginning or end.  No split between heaven and earth.

It’s natural

More than anything, I feel this when I climb outdoors.  In dearest Llanberis, Wales, the splendour of the mountains healed my soul. That, and a very dear man who sold me a sheepskin rug, laying them all out on the floor and helping me decide which one was “perfect”.  That was very special too.  The trip turned my world back the right side up, and I rediscovered my joie de vivre (something I too often take for granted).  To my main point, however, on rock, I begin to understand what “the Lord is my rock and my fortress” really means.  The ground of all Being. I feel the security of that, amidst the craziness of life.  I cling to it, tenaciously, and it sees me through. Being at one with nature, though it sounds cliched and cheesy perhaps, I feel so much part of creation.  I don’t feel so alone.  I feel surrounded by Love.

It’s independent

I think my feminist journey may have come to an end, at least in a political form.  In a political form, my brand of feminism is one which sees gender as a problem for men and women both, and seeks, more than anything, to enable guys to be their true self, not a puffed up/toughed up version.  And, if that is what I seek, I think I should seek it external of a movement that defines itself with a “feminine” and “exclusive” noun.  Discovering the Divine Feminine generated a new confidence within me, to allow my emotional self to rise (and not see it as a sign of weakness) and also, to rely on myself. I am lucky to have an incredible father, and a handful of totally sound guy friends in my life.  But, in the past, this has curbed my own development.  When I haven’t known how to solve a problem or do something, I haven’t had the confidence that I can work it out, and instead have gone running to them.  Climbing is helping me to trust myself and my own abilities. Half way up a rock, no one can tell you “go this way or that”, you have no-one to rely on but yourself.  And knowing that you’ve achieved something in your strength, and not because of someone else, is a massive confidence boost.  I feel that, in myth, the Lone Ranger and Victorian adventurers/explorers, there is something very “masculine” about self-reliance, autonomy, independence.  For myself, it is frustrating that my own dreams (the vocation of motherhood) are not something I can just “go after” like one would a career goal.  I can’t control whether I achieve them or not, and that feels very helpless. Climbing, however, is a sphere I can control – my success or other is completely down to me, and I don’t have to share responsibility with anyone else.  It makes me feel strong; it makes me feel safe from harm.

It’s community

The diversity of the climbing community is vast – from dirtbags (who live out their cars and don’t have a “proper job”) to weekenders (who are bit too worried about a lack of pension to be able to” live the dream”).  The only thing that unites us is that we have discovered that ambrosia, the Elixir of Life, eternal life, in fact – (which actually means knowing, experientially, the Divine) – and we cannot let it pass us by. It is the Kingdom of God, or Dharma, or whatever other name you might give it.  The parables say that the man who finds it, this treasure, sells his possessions to buy the field with it in.  I think the “buzz” or climbing is this discovery, though I’m sure many wouldn’t verbalise “the feeling” in the same way I do.  I have met great people through climbing, people I would never have met in another context.  My horizons are broadened and my understanding of the universe increases.  My climbing partner, in particular, is a wonderful friend, a women of courage and strength, whom I admire no end.  If climbing had given me nothing but this friendship, it would’ve been more than enough.

Ultimately, what I love about climbing is this:

It makes me happy: pure joy, an expansion of consciousness without recourse to short cuts.