I rarely feel inclined to grab a bike to get to work in the morning. Today the morning was nice, I looked at the bike station and loitered a bit, not feeling like biking to work but knowing it would be more pleasant than the train. It's a bit like going to the gym: the prospect isn't attractive, but the immediate result (improved mood) is. I took the bike.
On my way I saw a man riding his bike, just a normal bike with a child's seat in the back. Something about how he rode caught my attention, he was very consistent in his cadence, and his bike went in a very straight line. I'm not into cycling despite cycling a lot, but I could tell he was good at it. A "normal" rider caught up to him and I could see the normal rider's bike zigzag a bit by applying uneven force on the pedals, and she would ride over minor road imperfections while the pro skillfully avoided them with elegant slides.
I spoke about this topic with a man who was a very proficient Kizomba dancer. He said he had stopped practicing because he reached the "advanced" level, and the gap between "advanced" and "expert" is something most people can't even notice. The law of diminishing returns applies in ability too. In my experience with yoga it's similar, 80% of my practice was obtained in the first two years, and I'm at perhaps at 90% with four extra years. I'm not frustrated at this, because my aim is not gaining skill (I don't really have an aim, I do it like the bike ride: because it's pleasant and it makes me feel good afterwards).
I sometimes wonder if I'd be better off diversifying my physical practice (by obtaining beginner gainz across the board). The body has many facets to be explored, besides the obvious (strength and flexibility) there's cardiovascular fitness, speed, balance, rhythm, agility, coordination, breath, expression and probably more but I don't want to ask Claude.
I don't understand how or why I became interested in the body at around age 40, I guess it was a "discovery" to understand my mind doesn't own my body, they live in relationship: your body influences your mind and viceversa, to the point where it's difficult to separate one from the other. We are mind-bodies despite the illusion of the mind that it is in charge, and our nervous system is part of our brain. What would happen if I injected adrenaline into a sleeping person? This I can ask Claude:
The classic report [from accidental or unexpected injection of adrenaline] is a sense of impending doom — that's actually the clinical term, "angor animi," anguish of the soul. It's not just intense fear in the ordinary sense; it's a specific, almost cognitive conviction that something catastrophic is happening to the body and that death is imminent. People describe it as qualitatively different from being scared by an external threat. The fear seems to come from inside, attached to nothing in particular, and then the mind scrambles to find an explanation for it.
Fascinating, but it's time to get back to work.