is pain the path to presence?

the present might be painful if someone bought you some knives for christmas and you cut yourself all up due to overzealous gift unwrapping...

Today’s workout was in zone five.

Zone five for two minutes means pedaling my bike on the trainer so hard that everything hurts and I’m gasping for breath.

Here’s the deal.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I’m using instructions and having some faith that in any new learning, the mistakes will kick my arse enough to slowly grind me into some sort of order.

Today’s ride involved getting my heart rate up to zone five - 90 - 100% of my maximum heart rate for two minutes then getting it back to zone two before hammering this out five times.

And I don’t like zone five. It’s tough to stay at that level of exertion for two minutes.

Eventually though?

I’m learning how to build my heart rate up - right up to about a hundred and seventy beats per minute!

I just push a little more.

But then?

It takes a full two minutes to bring it down around a hundred and twenty per minute.

I spend a lot of time focused on my breathing. With mental effort, I focus on my breath and looking for tension - working a few guttural growling sounds as I let go.

I want to like doing this.

But it hurts.

And?

The pain of it all?

The pain seems to be the point. The more punishing I make things for myself on the bike, the greater relief I experience in the rest of life.

But the best part of the ride was the recovery.

The thirty minutes of boring at the end is the best part.

I just move and breath with ease.

My dad’s new years resolution was to spend more time in the here and now - more time in the present.

I’m glad.

I’ll be holding him to it.

And I hope he holds me to it too.

The bike is great but being present doesn’t have to be that painful.

Does it?