The Right Time….
I have just returned from my Spanish lesson… A whole two hours speaking in Spanish with Maricarmen! The clock struck 1pm signalling the end of our time…
She then shared with me that she had seen a film about the racing driver Niki Lauda last night, and that it had made her think of me… This prompted me to tell her that I made a video yesterday, about the experience of training for and running my best ever marathon…
Having mentioned how she had connected something in the film with me, I thought she might like to see my vlog….
I told her how it had accessed emotion from within me… ‘And you hadn’t expected that?’ she enquired? ‘No, no, not at all…’ I responded… ‘It was the right time then…’ She said.
It was the right time…
Lauren Kelly is a barefoot runner in California… It was a video of hers, she had just completed a 16 mile run in bare feet, (!) that I watched when I first embarked upon my own barefoot journey…
We have become friends across the globe, and she said via my YouTube channel, that she was interested to hear about my experience of training for and running my best ever marathon…
And so I responded….
I didn’t anticipate the emotion rising in me as it did, and as Maricarmen said, this demonstrates how necessary the process was, and that it was the right time…
Over all my running years, I have been aware that part of fully embracing my running expression, has been to know that I was on a journey to be able to ‘let go’ of the ‘attachment to my running’… Or rather any attachment to some hoped for state, that running could never possibly give me…
To discover instead the Zen of running – how to truly be in the step – to be here, now…
This process has deepened over the years, and particularly in most recent months I have been aware of a profound ‘letting go’ occurring.
This has shown itself in my barefoot running, as well as an inner knowing, and an ever increasing ability to trust the next step…
My running energy is where I have seen manifest where I am holding on everywhere…
I have always been ‘Running to learn’… I knew as a very young woman that the running path for me has been one where I came face to face with myself again and again and again…
Over the years running has been both my nemesis when I chased the ‘god of fast times and race results’, I hoped might bring the chimera of some sort of immortality; an illusion of ‘safety’ from the transience of this life…
But then it was also running that has been my salvation… Because, time and time again I was brought right back to the truth that there is nowhere to get to, and that there is no finish line; nowhere to hide…
I have been letting go all my life; and trusting that the letting go will reveal my true expression….
Running is and always has been a natural place for my soul to dance, to express, and the more I let go… The more it seems that rather than the running leave my life – instead the running step is more joyous, more free, more me…
And yesterday as the tears rose in me while I spoke, I was aware that this was all part of the process of letting go and setting my spirit free….
We can only resolve when we are ready to resolve.
It was the right time….
I have been running all of my life – it feels I was born to run. In the running step I experienced freedom and my true expression. I came to see that I needed to ‘get out of the way of myself’ and let my energy flow through the running step; allow it to express itself in the dance and the motion of running. I ran for England and GB for some years. My first international was in 1979, a three mile cross country race; and I continued to run at international level until 1993. Two of my best results were first place in the Dublin City Marathon in 1985 and 7th place woman, 3rd British woman in the 1986 London Marathon in a time of 2.36.31, which gained me selection for the Commonwealth Games.
As a little girl I ran barefoot for many years, and then I put on shoes to race around the world. Fifty years later I am travelling the world as a nomad with my husband Anadi and I have taken off my shoes and I am running barefoot again….
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Email : juliachitaylor@gmail.com
