Expansive and Spacious Minds
If there was one thing you could change about running, what would that be? For me, I would say running needs to be more expansive, more spacious. People who run, run clubs and communities, and the running industry should all be thinking more expansively and spaciously of what is possible in the realm of running; how it can be a catalyst for connection and shaping change, how it can be an antidote to capitalism and systems of harm, how it can bring us together in celebration—the ideas are endless. Perhaps this is from my experience at East Bay Meditation Center, who operates on dana, or gift economics, or reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s anti-capitalist book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, but I think we can create a running culture that borrows from models already in place to create a different way to think about our running practices. Different in that we commit ourselves to be in service of others and the land we run with rather than what can often become extractive practices of consuming and dominating the trails.
We (the general we) are confined by what has been done, what we are told is possible, we adhere to made up norms and standards. And to that I ask: Why? And who created these norms and standards? The norms we tend to follow within running includes running fast, wanting to PR every race, trail races are getting longer and longer in distance, races want you to register for next year’s race before this year’s race is even done—that is all so fucking exhausting. Then there is the consumption of stones, medals, race shirts, all the gear you need to race…Sure, those things can be part of the experience, but if we think more expansively, if our minds are more spacious, I think we would see none of those things actually matter. I’ve said this for years and I’ve gotten a lot of shit for saying it, but I stand by it now more than ever. As cheesy as it may sound, we aren’t taking any of that with us when we leave this Earth. But we can create material changes for those who will be here after us—maybe even those who are here now will feel, and see, and experience those changes.
Oakland community managers & coaches
This spring I was honored to have been asked to be a community manager for a team of women in the Bay Area who were going to be training for a trail race in the fall. My fellow community managers and coaches (Hillary, Mal, Vanessa) along with our team made true magical shit happen this summer. We created a community of support and care and love and reciprocity and humor and joy and honesty and respect—and it has been a highlight of my running experience. We were spacious in our acceptance and love of each other. We expanded the idea of what it means to be a racing team, which our teammate, Rebecca, so perfectly describes in the video created by the talented Miya Hirabayashi.
We fucked up the status quo by taking over trails all over the East Bay this summer, by holding learning sessions with Rising Hearts, by dyeing our pink HOKA gear to a color we felt was more representative of the team, by having mindfulness meditative sessions that included anti-capitalist mindfulness, by acknowledging and naming what is happening in our country right now as well as acknowledging our privilege to even be able to run on trails. Our team was truly democratic by the way we collaborated to create programming for the team, how we created routes and support for our group runs, me making sure our post-run coffee was from a local favorite, Proyecto Diaz Coffee (instead of a chain owned by a billionaire). As a team, we also put parts ourselves into everything we did—Hillary shared her creativity, Mal shared her mindfulness skills, Steph shared her sense of humor, Cinthi shared her care and love…everyone shared something special.
Big thanks to Corrine for including me on a panel the week of the race.
Photo: Miya
We are conditioned to think an experience like this is rare and is not “real life.” We assume it has to end and that we have to go back to our “real lives.” But WE get to create the world we want to see! This can be our lives all the time if that is what we want! Of course it wouldn’t be fun or easy or beautiful all the time, but neither is running and yet we still love it and peruse it.
This team of women that was brought together (thank you, Hannah) created an antidote to a fascist government and systems of harm with our strength and thoughtfulness and care and power and love because we all now know that we have what we need to take care of ourselves and each other and the land we run with. How lucky are we to have lived in that world together this summer.
This was far more than training to run a race together and we were able to capture that ourselves on film, as well as have Miya and other photographers in the Renegade community help share our journey along the way with their beautiful and thoughtful photography. The emotion you see captured in these photos was that intense and real, not because of a finish line, but because a group of women was given autonomy to create a world they wanted to see.
I’ll end this by sharing a quote from a favorite book I read this year that sums up my thoughts on expansive and spacious thinking that we can all use more of:
“My own spiritual observation has been that a small ‘self’ suffers and causes suffering, that a love of the living world lets single identities and selfhoods expand and encompass other beings, entities and whole landscapes, such that the self becomes a spacious thing…” - Is A River Alive?
Photo: Miya Hirabayashi