There’s a definite Mind, Body, Spirit vibe in the magazine this issue. It wasn’t planned like that, it’s just the way the stars aligned.
We have articles on flying and the mind, on how yoga can help you fly better, and, in Kinga Masztalerz’s account of flying in New Zealand, an example of the need for balance in mind and body. It’s very impressive, and it’s easy to read and to talk about – but much harder to put into practice.
On a flying trip last year I was re-reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. This is a best-selling account of the author’s travels into the world of the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico, who are considered the world’s best natural long-distance runners.
A paragraph jumped out about ultra-running that could easily apply to our sports. “Think Easy, Light, Smooth and Fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you got, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don’t give a damn how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go. When you’ve practised that so long that you forget you’re practising, you work on making it smoooooth. You won’t have to worry about the last one – you got those three, and you’ll be fast.”
It struck a chord because the hippie in the corner (ahem) had been talking about flow while others wrote down goals like “100km” and “25km/h”. There was talk about flying fast and increasing our average speed. But for me that was jumping ahead. I wanted my flying to feel easy, light and smooth – surely, I thought, then I’d be flying fast. I kept those words in my head and flew with them each day. I started to fly ‘Easy, light and smooth’. The 100k flight came and went, the hours clocked up, and the speed came too.
It’s a trick I played on myself, and it worked. As Mads Syndergaard says in the Head Game article, “When it comes to flying well, technique is all of 5% or less. Once you’ve worked out how to keep the thing open at speed, the rest is all in your head.”
Enjoy the issue!
Ed Ewing, editor
