240kms done, 90 to go.

"Meditation is good for you." This statement should be uncontroversial. It's well-established that the benefits of a regular meditation practice include reduced stress and anxiety, along with improved focus and mood.

I've enjoyed these benefits in my day-to-day life. But one story stands out where I experienced these benefits in the moment.

In the summer of 2023, I raced in the Garmin Unbound Gravel 200-mile event in Kansas. It was later described as one of the worst years for mud. Over 330 kilometers and nearly 17 hours, temperatures swung from 10°C in the morning and night to 40°C in the afternoon, with conditions ranging from blazing sun to a rain and wind storm. Hundreds of participants who started didn't finish (DNF).

During the final 90 kilometers of the race, my shoulders and mid-back were in agony. I'd tried every remedy I could think of—shaking out my hands, stretching my arms behind my back in various ways, shifting the weight in my Camelbak. I was fighting hard for relief and losing the battle.

Having exhausted the "normal" remedies, the idea of meditating on the bike crossed my mind. Could I accept this pain the same way I'd learned to accept anxiety? Could I move through it?

Rather than fight the pain, I became curious about it.

"If this pain had a color, what would it be?"

"Where are the edges of this pain?"

"How is this pain interacting with my determination to finish this race?"

I focused on my breathing and simply "felt" the pain without attaching any reactions or judgments to it.

By shifting my mindset from battling the pain to being mindful of it, I realized that the pain would simply be part of my race experience. The pain wasn't gone, but it had lost its power to affect my race. My adverse reactions to the pain evaporated. The pain was simply, as one meditator is fond of putting it, "an appearance in consciousness." No more, no less.

Meditation is a tool to lean on when facing acute difficulties, like outsized emotional reactions or, worse, shutting down with a loved one. It helps put our impulses into perspective, not through shame, but through curiosity and compassion. Meditation doesn't seek to categorize experiences or feelings as either good or bad, but merely as "there"—and sometimes with wisdom of their own to impart if we take a moment to listen.