One of the things I like best about motorcycling is how it engages all the senses. Some say riding can be considered a kind of meditational activity. If one means focusing on the present, then that is certainly true.
Riding is a whole body experience, coupled with brain function. It requires the use of both hands and feet, and all your senses.
For those of you who haven’t ridden before, let me explain.
The reason motorcycling is a whole body experience is that it requires the use of all your limbs. Your left foot and left hand are responsible for controlling the gearbox and the clutch. Your right foot controls the rear brake. Your right hand works both the throttle and the front brake. You also use both arms for steering, of course.
There’s more: your eyes and brain are critical to your overall decision-making, situational awareness and making the motorcycle go where you want it to go. Your ears are important, too. You listen to engine RPMs for gear changes and to your environment for other cues, like car horns or voices on the sidewalk. Your skin feels temperature changes. Even your nose come into play. Since motorcycling has the great advantage of placing you in the real world, your sense of smell is active. On a country ride you notice the scent of grasses or of the ocean. In the city, you smell aromas from restaurants and coffee shops. Travelling the same roads in a car, you are often isolated in your compartment and miss these aspects of the world outside.
When you first work on getting your license, you are entirely focused on getting all the mechanical sequences correct. Sometimes you also battle a little bit of fear. But once you overcome fear, and your muscle memory improves, then riding enhances your ability to focus on the present. When you are “in the zone,” you don’t think of other things. You are fully engaged. Your troubles tend to fall away, you stop worrying about your list of things to do or your earlier argument with a co-worker.
Most pleasant for me is how the sense of time melts away. I have gone on many a ride and stopped for a break, looked at my watch and been surprised at the time. What felt on the bike like mere minutes were actually hours.
This kind of engagement is magical. It replaces pills and prescriptions for all kinds of ailments. The meditative aspects of the sport, the inherent joy in the synchronicity of human and machine, combined with ever-changing scenery, are the reasons for that popular phrase so many of us have shared: “You never see a motorcycle parked outside a psychiatrist’s office.”
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Note: An interesting study in Japan tracked the brains of riders in their 40s who commuted to work each day. It found that that motorcycle riding stimulates brain function in very positive ways. A summary is here.
My Motorcycling Life 