Commonalities between yoga, meditation, and mountaineering.

Leave your thoughts on a mountain and come back to the city with a clear mind. That’s mental-mountaineering.

The location of second climb was also announced the day before: the 969 m Mount Bonoore. It took less than two hours from central Tokyo by express train and bus. The day was a break in the rainy season and the weather was fine. It was the first hot day of this year.

I was already sweating on the asphalt road to the trailhead. But once inside the mountain, the sound of clear water could be heard and the rocky uphill climb began. ”This is mountain climbing! ”, I felt. Now that I think about it, my first mountain was a hike.

The sound of the clear water gradually became louder and louder, and a gorge zone could be seen in front of us. The water volume seemed to be increasing due to the rainy season. I crawled over the rocks and climbed over the water. I trusted the rope and climbed against gravity. Is this a beginner’s level? ! But there were a lot of people older than me, some probably in their 60s. So there is no way I can’t climb this mountain. Anyway, climbing a stream is a great attraction on a very hot day. I enjoyed the best part of mountain climbing.

The climax of the climb was over, and from this point on it was just a hard climb up the mountain. I feel like my heart is about to break. That person is fatter than me, how can she climb so easily? Just like when I started yoga, I compared myself with other people. No, I’m a beginner, I only climb at my own pace. My buddy was always climbing at least 50 meters ahead of me.

Somehow I managed to make it through the heart-breaking climb and reached the summit in about two hours and twenty minutes! It was exactly the expected time. It’s probably because we didn’t take a single break. After eating a rice ball and a boiled egg, we started the downhill.

About 15 minutes into the descent, a family with a child approached me and asked, “Is it hard up ahead? “ I replied, “Even a beginner like me could do it, so I’m sure it will be fine.” Although in reality, it was hard enough that I had to keep a yoga pose the whole way!

On the way down, my legs almost started to wobble. To avoid this, I kept my feet going, not wasting one step at a time. The path went on forever, with tree roots as stair steps. No wind and sauna conditions. Moreover, I seem to have a constitution where my nose runs due to the temperature changes during the climb, and it is hard to breathe through my mouth all the time.

Shouting “It’s hard” doesn’t change anything. It felt like yoga. ”Your mind breaks first, but if your body is okay, you can do it.” I said to myself what my yoga teacher once said. And with too much pressure on the body, it is impossible to think about anything else. Only by dialogue with my body, the miscellaneous thoughts had disappeared. And meditation, which is not physically stressful, but can erase miscellaneous thoughts through mantras. I felt that yoga, meditation, and mountaineering have something in common.

The mindfulness practices that have been developed so far have been connected now. It doesn’t seem long before I will be able to experience the real thrill of mountain climbing by gaining the muscular strength needed to climb mountains even more.