Cory Richards Instagram – To the oldest part of our brain, the experience of climbing is interpreted as an act of survival and survival is stressful work. The sympathetic nervous system fires up and we step into fight, flight, or freeze and choose to fight. We fight gravity. We fight fear. We fight with our muscles and every cell of our body. We fight with our conscious and subconscious minds alike and the whole game is learning to manage the stress response and ultimately work in tandem with our brain and body in pursuit of a goal. In that way, it becomes an act of mindfulness because in order to survive, we’re forced to distill order from chaos and focus on the now. The discomfort of it all is offset by the highs that come with it. It’s beautiful and breathtaking and life-affirming in a way that few other sports can ever be. The conscious mind colors the experience with all sorts of stories and little self-deceptions about what we’re doing and why. But to the ancient part of the brain, it’s all the same thing; in that five-hundred-million-year-old piece of the mind, there is no poetry or story and we can tell no lies to escape the fact that the neurobiological basis of climbing is sim-ple: Don’t die.
Chaos is what I know best.
– an excerpt from my memoir, The Color of Everything, coming out next week. Link to pre-order in my bio! | Posted on 03/Jul/2024 05:38:53
