My hand

Rock Climbing on the Right Side of the Brain

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What do rock climbing and drawing have in common? I’ve been spending a good amount of time doing each recently, and I’ve found that they are more similar than I would have guessed.

I’ve done a lot of drawing over the course of my life and filled up a number of sketch books in the process. In the past couple years, though, I’ve shifted more of my creative energy to painting, and drawing has fallen by the wayside. To get back into it, a friend recommended to me Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I’ve started working my way through the book, following the exercises on contour and shape. It turns out I’ve done most of these exercises at some point previously, but I’ve never been consciously aware of the shift to right-brain mode that goes with them.

As for rock climbing, I’ve dabbled for about eight years, but I started getting serious about it three and a half years ago. It has worked out that I’ve had the most free time (between jobs, unemployment) during the winters, which has made me very familiar with the rock climbing gym. I’ve had a number of plateaus in my climbing ability, but I’ve put it some solid effort and training this winter and have progressed to a fairly advanced level.

So what’s the deal, how are the physicality of rock climbing and the creativity of drawing connected?

In essence, they are different ways of interacting with the same things: space, dimensionality, and texture. In drawing, you use your eye to follow an object, to perceive the way light reflects off the grooves, indentations, bulges, and flats. In rock climbing, you use your hands and body to do the same thing. You perceive the physical properties of the rock through your sense of touch. In both endeavors, it took me quite a while to realize the importance of utilizing this perception.

Rock climbing is very difficult as a beginner. It engages a whole new set of muscles, so even someone who has gotten incredibly strong through weight lifting will probably have a lot of trouble (and there’s something cathartic about watching beefy guys struggle to get up a wall). You spend a long time grasping for something to hold on to before building up the finger and core strength and awareness to move through routes smoothly.

My hand

Drawing of a hand familiar with rock climbing.

As the fingers strengthen, though, one gains awareness of subtleties in the body and the rock. I especially notice this in the climbing gym where the same hand holds get reused over and over again. As I improve (over months, to give a sense of scale), my sensation of a particular hold changes. This evolution happens slowly, maybe I find there is a certain angle and finger position that feels a little bit more stable than I remember. A groove feels slightly deeper, a ridge sharper. At some point, holds which I couldn’t imagine clinging to before are suddenly accessible, even easy to hold on to.

New awareness in the fingers leads to new awareness of the whole. The space between the hand holds becomes more concrete. With additional core strength, the body can navigate this space smoothly and efficiently. This becomes ingrained in the body’s movement; the brain quiets and lets the perception of shape take over.

This may be beginning to sound a little bit more like drawing. Although I’ve been engaging in a shift to my right-brain while doing art for years, I wasn’t conscious of what that really meant until I started working through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The main focus of the book is teaching the reader to see. Not just to recognize an image or object as something it already knows, but to explore the edges with the eye, see the negative shapes between objects, experience the subject as it really is. It turns out the right side of the brain is really good at this, and the left side of the brain is really bad at it. Unfortunately, the left side usually wins out for our attention and suppresses this deep right-brain perception with logic and symbols.

Now that I have an idea of what to look for, I’ve noticed some changes that occur when I’m able to reach that right-brain mode. The most obvious shift is to extreme focus. Time drops away, external stimuli become difficult to process, distractions lose their appeal. I am able to look closely and carefully, and to slowly trace an object with my eye. My hands are well trained enough to respond to this perception by copying it. I can quickly tell if there is a discrepancy between the object and my interpretation of it and make an appropriate change. The deeper into the zone I get, the clearer the textures, contours and shapes become, and the easier they are to translate onto the page. It is a blissful feeling of awareness.

I’ve improved my level of perception of shape through sight and touch, and I am curious how perception through the other senses evolves when well trained. I imagine there must be corollaries for smell, taste, and hearing. Although I’ve played music my whole life, I can’t say that I feel a deep connection to hearing. Perhaps the creation of sound is distinct in the brain from the perception? I’ll have to look into that. I think my music could use a good dose of right-brain focus.

Crater lake is the best.

Fixed Gear Riding

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Since my last post about biking in a city, a lot of people have asked me why I ride a fixed gear bicycle. Isn’t it more dangerous? Doesn’t it make hills miserable? What’s the deal? Are you a hipster? I’ve been riding mostly fixed gear for about four years (with the exception of bike touring in Italy), and I love it.

You only get to choose one gear ratio for a fixed gear bike, and it’s an important choice. A lot of people aim for a ratio of close to 2 for city riding (twice as many teeth on the chain ring by your feet as on the back wheel hub). This makes going up hills and stopping with just your feet a bit easier, but it means your feet really spin when you’re going fast. I opted for a gear ratio closer to 3, which lets me build up a little bit more speed. It makes some hills devastating, and it means I use my hand brake more often to control my speed. For longer rides, it’s key for getting through long flat stretches.

Anyway, here are the top five reasons I ride a fixie:

1. Control

Riding a fixie gives one a whole different sense of control of the bicycle. The difference between fixed and free wheels is that the fixed wheel has no ratcheting mechanism in the back hub. When you crank the pedals, the back wheel spins proportionally to your pedal stroke. If you pedal slower, the wheel spins slower. If your feet are stationary, the wheel is stopped. You can even pedal backwards if you’re good. With a free wheel, when you stop pedaling, you coast as far as your momentum will take you. The direct control over the back wheel means you can make minor adjustments to your velocity without braking, and you can come to a complete stop relatively quickly without brakes. Maybe I am a control freak? Some riders remove brakes from their bikes completely, but this is a pretty bad idea in general. It works if you live in a kind of flat place, or if you have a poor sense of self-preservation and live somewhere like San Francisco. It basically necessitates using skid stops, which is when you crank hard on the pedals to stop the back wheel despite your forward momentum, causing your back wheel to lock up and skid to a stop.

2. Simplicity

There are two primary forms of simplicity in the fixed gear: simplicity in mechanics, and simplicity in riding. The mechanics are easy to figure out and easy to tune up. It is a bicycle stripped down to its most essential. No derailleurs, and so no alignment issues, very few chain issues, and no shifting cables to worry about. I built my bike up with a friend in Eugene, which was a great way to see how the whole thing works. If you keep it clean and tightened, this bike will stay solid. In terms of riding, you always have one less thing to think about. You never have to worry about gear selection. When you come to a hill, you have to pedal harder. You don’t have to think about what gear ratio is going to get you up the hill with the least amount of effort, and you don’t have to click around through your gears to find it. This may seem like a small thing, but I enjoy the simplicity in it.

Crater lake is the best.

A friend and I rode around Crater Lake in Oregon. Mine is on top.

3. Momentum

When you ride a free wheel bike (one that can coast), there is a dead spot at the top of your pedal stroke. It’s the spot when your foot is at the top of the stroke when you’re transitioning between pulling up and pushing down. With a fixie, your momentum keeps the pedals moving, so you actually get a little push from the bike instead of having a dead spot. The bike always wants to keep moving. It is responsive to your adjustments and provides feedback on how it’s moving directly to your feet. As an added bonus, the fixed gear ratio allows you to calculate statistics about your ride on the fly. One time I went on a 135 mile ride with a friend from Eugene to the ocean and back. On the way, I figured out that the whole ride would entail 34,000 pedal strokes (I was a little bit off because I simplified pi).

4. Exercise

Riding a fixie is better exercise than a regular geared bike. To slow down, you have to resist the pedals turning, so you get resistive force on your legs in addition to explosive. Because I don’t get to gear down for hills, I generally end up riding harder up them. I know if I lose too much momentum I won’t be able to get it back without some serious effort. On the way down the hill, I end up going slower because I have to pedal the whole way. This requires some resistive force to keep from losing control, which makes it a great workout no matter the terrain.

5. Silence

This bike is quiet. Free wheels click as they spin, but a fixed wheel doesn’t have any ratcheting parts, so it is completely silent. Well, at least when it’s well oiled and aligned. My bike has been having some other unhappy sounding clicks and scratches, but that’s just because it’s desperate for a tune up right now. There is something wonderful about sailing down a road, fully engaged with the ground, not making a sound.

Riding a fixie may not be for everyone, but I really enjoy it. If you’ve got some time to burn, check out some Youtube videos of people doing tricks on their fixies. Really impressive, and really crazy. In order to move one step closer to being able to join the circus, I’ve been practicing my no-handed track stands. Once I’m able to play ukulele while I balance on my bike, I think I’ll have a chance.

Doing yoga!

What I Think About When I Do Yoga

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It seems like everyone is doing yoga right now, and there are probably just about as many ways to think about yoga practice as there are people doing it. I think it’s great that it’s become a big thing, and it has certainly had a major positive influence on my life. I’ve read a number of pieces on what is going on when you do yoga, and particularly like this one. The NY Times also just presented some reasons not to do yoga, which I thought was a little extreme. I don’t know much about the history or tradition of yoga, but I like doing it and I like thinking about it.

The first time I tried yoga was when I was in kindergarten. I don’t remember much about the year other than that. It was really fun, and my teacher was great. After that I didn’t touch it again until the end of high school, and I didn’t practice regularly until college. From there I took classes occasionally, and mostly did that when I could find a good deal or take it through school. About a year ago I started to listen to podcasts and practice in my room. Now I try to do this about three times a week, and it has been by far the most committed and enjoyable my yoga experience has been.

One of the most cited reasons to do yoga, and one of my biggest drivers, is the confluence of mind, body, and spirit. It’s great to have an activity that covers several different needs simultaneously. It loosens and limbers the body, calms the mind, and engages the spirit. I like the focus on energy and the mindfulness that comes along with it. I also like that it is not actually about the stretching. Going to the gym is a one-purpose activity. There’s not much you can do there beyond strengthening the body. With yoga, the strain on your body is a tool for actively strengthening your mind and expanding your spirit. Putting your body in a stressful position while keeping your mind calm and focused is practice for dealing with real-life stress.

Now that I’ve practiced a good deal on my own, I’ve found that I generally prefer that to a class. Maybe I’m just antisocial, but I like moving at my own pace and being able to focus on how my body and mind feel without the distraction of the people around me. I also like the repetition of doing pretty much the same movements over and over again. It makes it feel more like practice. I do occasionally miss the social atmostphere of a class and the variety and presence a live teacher brings, but usually I prefer to be alone.

And how do I actually feel when I do yoga? It’s hard to describe. The body leads the way for me, bringing my mind to a calmer state, and eventually generating a swell of warmth and contentment. I usually begin slightly stiff and tense from sitting at a desk and looking at a screen for most of the day. As I go through some gentle downward dogs and warrior poses, my muscles slowly start to give. Muscle fibers stretch, and strength and awareness begin to assert themselves in my body.

I find the physical discipline of keeping myself steady and at my edge is what initiates and grows my mental discipline. Through supporting my body’s effort to stay strong and steady, my mind releases its points of tension and pain, smoothes and steadies itself in the process. I find I’m more able to stay buoyant despite difficulties or sluggishness of the day. Some days I’m not able to get there, with my mind so crowded that I have trouble even staying focused through 20 minutes of yoga, let alone an hour and a half.

When I’m having a focused and strong session, though, my sense of body shifts slightly. As I go through more poses, I shed deeper layers of tension. My heels drop closer to the ground and my hips open a bit. I begin to be aware of subtler movement and tension in my joints and tissue. The warmth and energy from these sensations lay the foundation for the spiritual aspect of my practice. Rather than feel like I am straining a muscle, I feel like the muscle is engaging just to the minimum level of effort require to hold a pose steadily. Balance comes from exploring this boundary of effort. Shifting slowly from barely too much to barely too little in decreasing oscillations. Just at the limit, there is a feeling of engagement with one muscle, like the quad, and total relaxation of the opposing muscle, the hamstring.

This is where I begin to feel my breath. I try to maintain the “ugai” breath, but I’ve always had trouble aligning it to my movements. This is something I definitely want to keep working on, as I think it will bring fluidity to the practice. When I’m still, however, I use the breath to deepen a pose, release the tension in my brain, and to invite energy to flow throughout my body. I feel my lungs filling with air to their corners, expanding from my chest to where my body is tight or restricted. Energy draws from limbs, fingers, and toes, and eddies throughout my body. In prayer pose, there is a warmth between my hands which further calms my nervous system and deepens the spiritual aspect of the practice.

As I’ve gained body awareness over time, I’ve found that attention to certain details helps immensely. Slightly adjusting, or even just being aware of the angle and rotation of a bone or limb adds depth to a pose. Especially in the angle of the hipbone, the rotation of thigh bones, and articulation of the shoulders, I find that this can make a routine pose activate fully. Also, engaging a muscle while it’s being stretched and keeping a firm core throughout both build a warmth which spreads through the body. Gaining core strength through rock climbing has definitely improved my awareness and granted access to new levels of sensation and precision in these movements.

I’ve always been glad to have yoga with me through the various places my life has taken me, and I look forward to bringing it with me where I go from here. It is a solid, calming force, and I think it lays a good foundation for my emotional and intellectual well-being. I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the opportunity to do yoga more often than I am now, but it’s definitely something I’m curious about. I think something like a month-long focused practice would help expand my consciousness and mindfulness in a big way.

How do you feel about yoga? I’d love to hear your stories and observations!