The Freedom of Skating

When I was skating last Wednesday after my lesson, I had an epiphany of sorts. It took me a while to figure out just what it means, but now that I've had some time to reflect I thought I would share it. It's pretty personal, so if that sort of thing makes you uncomfortable, stop reading now. I though that I would share it because it's a good way to communicate it to those of my family and friends who read this, and also because I thought it might serve to provoke discussion and reflection among my readers as well.

I was skating to some song, and "interpreting" it as I often do in the rhythm of my stroking, switching into a slalom at one point, and so on. It suddenly hit me that I was not really thinking about what I was doing, it had just come out from within. In that realization I also realized why skating has become so important to me so quickly.

For most of my life I've felt like I had things I wanted to say or do... things I wanted to be, even, that I couldn't seem to just let myself say/do/be. It seemed like in some fundamental ways or times I couldn't just relax and by myself. There's a great quote from the ABC TV show, "My So-Called Life":

Angela: People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even. But every so often I'll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where I am is, like, enough.

I have often felt this way. But in that moment when I was skating, I realized that I was... just being me. I felt like I was just me, being myself, a definite thing. I was relaxed. I was me.

There are a couple of other areas in my life that are like this, namely dancing and singing. With dancing, though, it always takes me a while to loosen up and relax, and sometimes it's still hard; and it generally requires other people. With singing it's the same, but different too. Singing usually requires or involves an audience and so it's not for yourself, with yourself, and it's hard to really relax when you are being listened to, when you have an audience.

With skating it's different. It doesn't require anyone else, and ideally there isn't anyone else involved. I'm not trying to please others, or even necessarily myself. In these moments I can just relax and let it flow. My mind and my body are connected, working together, and in harmony. I'm relaxed and at ease, not fighting, not posing, not evaluating.

That isn't to say that all my skating, or even most of it, is like that. Certainly I spend a lot of my skating time evaluating or analyzing! But the moments I'm talking about are not analytical, they are simply experiential. In the yoga classes I've been taking there's a lot of talk about accepting yourself and your body. I've always been very much "in my head", very focused on things of the mind and not at all very connected with my body. Now with my skating, at the ripe old age of 40, I am re-connecting with my body in a way I probably haven't since I was a freshman in high school. A unity of body, mind and spirit, which is what yoga talks about, and of course Catholicism does too. Perhaps it's a mid-life crisis sort of experience, but if so, it's not such a bad one.