![]() ![]() Running can inspire or even be what others label meditation, moksha, prayer, contemplation, communion, ecstasy, enlightenment. Sometimes I am simply free, free from distracting concerns or laborious thoughts or conscious monologue-free, that is, from a certain reflexive self, in an experiential zone (sometimes dubbed simply “the zone”) to which many spiritual or religious praxes aspire. Sometimes I experience an airy stream of conscious perception. Occasionally I stumble upon wisdom (recalling Nike’s relation to Athena). Sometimes I ponder personal predicaments. Sometimes while running I work through intellectual puzzles. I breathe in air rhythmically, and with it comes…well, that depends. Respiration and inspiration meld as body and spirit mingle. I, like my stripped-down shoes, feel less encumbered, more flexible, most free. I am, body and soul (however those words signify), my most porous, and I do my best thinking and my best contemplating while running. When I run, and my body is continually in motion, moving and moving me from here to there like Nike in transit, I am most receptive to inspiration, to thoughts and perceptions that I take in like air. Running is all about breath, air, spirit, since it involves respiration, perspiration, and, for me, inspiration. Running makes me acutely aware of that need it makes me intensely sensitive to my breathing-that is, my relationship with air. ![]() ![]() My body cannot live for long without air, without respiring. Spirit, as a matter of breath-as the (literal or figurative, biological or religious) breath of life-is humanly necessary, and that necessity ties spirituality to corporeality, bound together by air. It is divine, as Nike’s domain or as ruach elohim (a Hebrew name of god), as well as human, even fundamentally so in tripartite anthropologies, including Stoic and Pauline, that conceive of humanity as body, soul, and spirit. It is elemental, sensible, mobile, dynamic, animating, vital and vitalizing. Spirit-as ruach, as psuchē or pneuma, as anima or spiritus-names breath, wind, air with movement. This seeming paradox exposes itself as illusory as I re-member spirit: a matter of breath, of air. Thus I am, in a seeming paradox, simultaneously my most spiritual and my most bodily, most spiritual because most bodily. Running in them, I move and move through air. Running in them, I am my most bodily, hyperaware of my bending knees and elbows, of my foot stride and impact, of the angles of my head and chest, of my heart and lungs as they invigoratingly move air, resuscitating-almost resurrecting-my sense of my corporeality. They, like other spiritual exercises, are praxial rather than simply practical: they are transformative, perhaps even transfiguring. They silently suggest kinesthetic corrections, modifications in motion. Instead, they insist on corporeal sensitivity, reconnecting my bodily parts to one another by reminding me of action-reaction relations. They do not permit bad technique or incorrect form. Unlike nearly all other running shoes, Nike Free do not overcushion and overcorrect. Running in them, I become more bodily, more aware of my bodily movements, since I can feel those kinetic effects in my feet as they contact a solid surface and then lift themselves into air: contact, release, contact, release earth, air, earth, air. Running in them, unlike running in almost any other kind of running shoes, my feet feel the ground’s contours, its textures and striae. Introduced in 2005, Nike Free got back to basics and hence to the elements, coming two steps away from being barefoot (thanks to their extremely thin and flexible sole). These shoes promise freedom by using technology to strip away as much encumbering technics as possible. Nike Free running shoes, however, resist this fetish, opting for a different equation: new = less, and that less = better. In running shoes, such freedom often translates into a modern fetishization of technology, of progress (new = better) and excess (more = better). In many ways, then, Nike Free is redundant, particularly when Free suggests not, or not only, an enlightened free agent who is “free to” but a bareness that is “free from” unnecessary embellishment. Nike moves unencumbered-which is to say, freely. In Nike, wisdom is related to movement, transit, and to air. The daughter of a titan and a river, she is a force of nature, a numinous being, a kind of angel, who bears deep bonds to Athena, goddess of wisdom. She is a winged intermediary, moving and transporting through the air between here and there, between mortal and divine. Nike (Νικη) names an ancient Greek goddess or spirit, a divine courier who delivers Zeus victoriously via his chariot. In them I am, I am able to be, spiritual. I run in Nike Free, divinely inspired running shoes. ![]()
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