“Running and meditation are perhaps the most energizing and ultimately, joyful, activities in my life. Bringing them together is about as good as it gets.” ~Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Boulder is home to world-class athletes of all sorts, from Olympic gold medalist runners and cyclists to world champion triathletes to pioneering rock climbers. It is also home to Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, considered one of the world’s leading teachers of meditation.

Sakyong Mipham is head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage and the son of Naropa University founder Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He is the East-West bridging author of “Turning the Mind Into an Ally” and “Ruling Your World.” Sakyong Mipham is also a marathon runner, and in September, he will be elaborating on the connections between running and meditation at the second annual “Running With the Mind of Meditation” retreat. The program is set for Sept. 13-16 at the Shambhala Mountain Center, an hour northwest of Fort Collins near Red Feather Lakes.

“We are excited about the weekend and are lucky to have Rinpoche (an honorary term translating as “precious one”) available, since he travels so much teaching,” said Shambhala’s Jon Pratt, who assists in the weekend, along with local yoga instructor Misty Cech.

“Rinpoche was delighted with how well the program went (in 2006), especially with how much enthusiasm people showed for understanding the benefits of meditation and learning the practice,” said Pratt. “I know one of the highlights for him was doing the group trail run with everyone.”

That trail run was a point-to-point run that wound its way through some of the bucolic national forest land that surrounds the 600-acre Shambhala Mountain Center. The run ended up at the stupa — a Buddhist shrine — that is the centerpiece of the Mountain Center. There the runners, led by Sakyong Mipham, circled the structure three times to finish off the run and the weekend.

“It was a great experience,” said Boulder’s Darcy Africa, a top trail runner and recent winner of the 2007 Everest Award.

Read more of this article at dailycamera.com

ROE SAYS: I love everything about this man, and he certainly has a resume to get him any meditation job, but finding running information about him is a chore, and this article looks horrible with spell check.

I visited mipham.com to find a little about Sakyong Mipham, with regards to running:

“Knowingly or not, people arrive at this union of mind and body through exercise and other physical activity. We hear of it as a “runner’s high” or “being in the zone,” but what is really happening is that we are engaging with the breath, oxygen, the most basic element of being alive. Consciously or accidentally, we have settled the wind. Our body is more pliable, and as a result, we have more control over our mind.”

The “runner’s high” will get you every time. I suppose there’s some comparable “Meditater’s high” out there, so Sakyong Mipham spends a lot of time “In the zone.” He has only been running just over a year now and has completed two marathons already. Now he takes to trails, and I’d follow him. The man has great philosophies,  a great outlook on life and running, and great legs.

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