Meditation after Injury and Loss

Bear Psychology Podcast

After years of excellent health as an ultra-marathon runner and athlete and a good life in a stable marriage Katie Arnold’s life flipped from stable to unrecognizable. Arnold experienced a significant injury while on a rafting trip that left her with a broken leg and big life changes. She takes us through her life as an ultra-runner and a “seething but adequate” married woman before the accident. The things she relied on before her accident were ripped away from her leaving her wondering who she really is.

After her accident, she sought solace through a Zen meditation practice she experimented with earlier in life. She immersed herself in a Zen meditation practice in an effort to find healing. This is the journey she shares in her memoir “Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World”.

Katie Arnold shares her story of exploring wilderness a quest for quiet. Over the course of 2 years, from before her injury, to the uncertain recovery of both her leg and her marriage, it is a personal account of a turbulent period nestled among Zen meditations.

Listen to our conversation with Katie Arnold as we unpack her powerful personal narrative of this tumultuous time in her life and how Zen meditations helped guide her through.

Katie Arnold is an author, contributing editor at Outside magazine, journalist and athlete. She published her first critically-acclaimed memoir, Running Home, in 2019 and has worked for Outside magazine for the past 12 years creating popular columns about bringing up adventurous children. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Runner’s World, ESPN: The Magazine, Elle, and many others. Arnold is also an ultra-runner having won the 2018 women's Leadville Trail 100 Run. She holds multiple course records and victories at every distance from 5K to 100 miles.

Over the course of a decade, Katie went from being a reluctant spiritualist to a Zen meditation practitioner. In her new book, Arnold offers unique company for those seeking nature's exquisite highs, as well as for creatives, spiritualists, and sensualists who want to slow down and explore the possibilities of a well-lived life. Arnold takes readers on a journey of both destruction and healing as she details her struggles to make it to the other side of a life-shattering injury with her body, sanity, and her marriage, intact.

If you are interested in learning how to experience these brief moments of enlightenment when they come, and what they mean for our lives, this podcast is for you.

Links & Resources:

• To purchase Arnold’s book “Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World”: https://www.amazon.ca/Brief-Flashings-Phenomenal-World-Arnold/dp/1952692695
• To learn more about Katie Arnold: https://katiearnold.net/about
• For more information about Arnold’s other books: https://katiearnold.net/books

Materials to Reference:

• Arnold’s other writing pieces: https://katiearnold.net/writing
• How to Know if Zen Meditation Is Right for You: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-zen-meditation-4586721
• What is Zen Meditation?: https://mindworks.org/blog/what-is-zen-meditation-benefits-techniques/