There’s no drifting off and noticing the birds while you’re careening down the mountain at a speed fast enough to stay with your people. You have to concentrate when you ski, absolutely, no doubt. Years of skiing allows me to typically avoid fear. I can manage my way down most terrain (some won’t look so pretty, but I’ll get down) and my record speed according to an App called Slopes, is 37.5 mph. I am only telling you this because the fact that I know this data makes me laugh. Bottom-line is that I am not a beginner skier. Now, let the story begin.
We spent two days with our friends at Squaw Valley Ski Resort. Two days that contrasted like the Sahara Desert and the Atlantic Ocean. The first day was, in skier’s vocabulary, a “bluebird day”, sunny, cloudless with a dusting of fresh snow, easy to imagine happiness behind all the Covid masks. The second day, clouds covered the sky creating what skier’s call, a “flat light” which makes fluctuations in the terrain difficult to see, like you’re skiing down an ironed, white bedsheet. By mid-morning conditions were worsening. We could see fog and feel wind. Nonetheless, we got into the Funitel, an enclosed passenger cabin that takes you quickly, standing with skis in-hand to higher altitudes. It is important to note: My intuition had already whispered to me that it wasn’t a smart idea, but I knowingly succumbed to peer pressure.
When we disembarked, reassembled ourselves and started the descent, we saw another ski lift that was able to take us even higher, or “further into the abyss”, as someone jokingly said. As we got off this second lift and faced downhill, all we could see, in every direction was white, the largest canvas of white possible. Skiers call this a “white-out” yet again stemming from poor lighting conditions. There is no delineation between sky and mountain. There is no horizon. There are no irregularities in the terrain. It is very hard to know where you are in relation to anything else, a true sense of disorientation and an uncomfortable feeling atop a mountain on skis. This is where yoga comes in. When you find yourself in the aforementioned conditions, you need to concentrate.
The sixth limb of yoga as outlined by Patanjali’s eight-limb system is Dharana or concentration. It is defined as focusing on one object or holding one thought in a continuous stream. It is taught as the step prior to meditation. I like to think about Dharana in my daily life, as a way to keep my attention focused on whatever I am engaged in rather than the scattered, fragmented and typically less productive attention that has a tendency to surface. We spend much of our time juggling more than one activity, let alone the plethora of thoughts that make focusing a challenge. The glass half-full approach would point to the many opportunities we have to actually practice concentration throughout the day.
The experience in the “white-out” was an interesting place to witness my ability to concentrate. At the onset, my mind had a field day bouncing between “you are so stupid to have gotten yourself in this situation” to “you should have listened to your intuition” to “if you make one wrong turn you will go off the side of the mountain” to “its hard enough to see your friends in normal conditions, let alone in a white out. You’re going to lose them.” I heard the rapid-fire dialogue going on in my own head. There was an inner party taking ahold and Ms. Fear was the main guest, loud and obnoxious, successfully making the situation worse than it really was. In time, I was able to slowly discard the harming thoughts and exchange them with more useful and focused thoughts implementing what I know about skiing to make my way down to better lighting and safer terrain. I witnessed myself go through a process of total distraction (slight panic, who are we kidding here?) to concentration, a single focus on pointing the skis down. Yoga on skis.