Movement and the Search for Meaning - Dhiren Shingadia - Episode 94

weMove Podcast

This weeks episode we are on the bike, exploring one persons infatuation with the bike, or at least that’s what he was originally thought it was.

Turns out it was a vehicle for expression, but not of the ego image that is so often the case. But something deeper, the bike was a support vehicle to connect with what was needed. To grieve the passing of his dad, a big transition in the scheme of life.

We spoke to Dhiren half way through this year and this conversation really was a gem. Articulate, and willing to ask questions of himself that many suppress, Dhiren spoke about cycling, the infatuation that occurs when we begin the movement journey of a specific genre (in this case cycling), the addiction of feeling fitter, stronger, more capable and the all too common gentle attrition of the physical self that comes from endurance pursuits.

Sports are neutral, inert. It is us that give them a charge be that positive or negative. I fear that we are illiterate and ill prepared in our comprehension of why we move. That is changing slowly and can happen more often if we are to understand that movement is healing, that our bodies are always striving to move towards healing, to completion, to a feeling of wholeness.

There is a consequence in striving.

The question for me is “are we striving to achieve the thing we think we are?”

We think, most often because of the linear start and end point of sport that the achievement is the winning, the completing.

But what about the DNF, the inability to finish something. The DNF is the thing that no ones wants to do, but it represents to me a point of questioning, because the body and or mind could not continue because we weren’t listening to what it was trying to tell us that it needed or maybe didn’t need. Do you need to run that ultra, ride that sportive, climb that mountain?

It is the challenges that stop us in our tracks that teach us the most about who we are, what we an become, not doing something easily with little on the line.

The podcast is accompanied by a short film, one of Chris and Will (the editors) best I think.

Thanks to Dhiren for your patience on the bike, for the journey you went on and the openness of the conversation.

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That’s all from us, peace from the two of us.