Peak Experiences And the Art of Skiboarding
By Doc Roberts
President, Skiboards Superstore, Inc.
Leaping forward into your life with greater joy, vitality, energy and aliveness is very simple. To live your life with passion, enthusiasm and love every moment of your life is not by coincidence or chance. It’s ignited by making a choice.
It’s not death that people really fear, but actually the un-lived life. It’s the regrets, not really grabbing hold of those special opportunities in life, that is the hardest. Dr. Kubler-Ross, researching those who were dying, summarizes, “our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. To the extent that we become captives of culturally defined role expectations and behaviors – stereotypes, not ourselves, we block our capacity for self-actualization.” Many of her patients realized too late, when facing their own death, that they had not really been living at all, instead focused on the pursuit of money, power, and status. They squandered something more precious, their time, and the chance to really live their life to the fullest.
DO NOT SQUANDER YOUR LIFE.
You can create a different course in life – a life lived with real joy, passion, aliveness. As Sanaya Roman states, “you will have joy when you focus on having it and settle for nothing less.” You have to want it. Yet it takes more than just wanting it.
Oddly, to live the fully alive life requires courage. Saying “YES” to life is a courageous act, particularly when so many in our society have given up, no longer listen to their hearts, no longer allow themselves to go after what they really want. Being your own person, despite pressures to conform and fit in, is the epitome of courage.
As Joseph Campbell has stated, “we’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.” The courage to trust in ourselves, our intuitions and desires and then to act on these no matter what, that is what is required.
Joy and freedom of expression go hand in hand. It takes courage to express ourselves openly, without inhibition, to be who we truly are in life. Always when we freely express ourselves, without reservation, when we create, skate, ski, skiboard, whatever the activity, doing it wholeheartedly being in the moment, that’s when joy arises.
Bob Dylan’s song comes to mind when he said, “he not busy being born is busy dying.” Being born to me means birthing new possibilities, new joys, living fully. This is the question posed to each of us by life: “To Be or Not to Be”, as Shakespeare put it. We each have to decide, not just once, but regularly, whether to say Yes to life and be fully alive or to duck the question and be busy dying. Skating, skiboarding, dancing, singing —- whatever it is, it is an expression of your joy, your life force participating in dynamic creation. When we participate in this universal force, we know it, for we experience joy. This is the direction of fulfilling our greater human potential.
Why I promote the sport of skiboarding?
Because I find that Skiboards bring instant smiles, instant confidence and joy to those who ride them. It happens faster than most other sports. Skiboarding allows for more fun right from the first day on the slopes.
The art of skiboarding is something that grows naturally and quickly with faster progress than usual snowriding equipment.
Skiboarding is more of an art really as it allows one to flow with gravity easily and effortlessly. The rhythm combined with the growing abilities of the skiboarder begin to create an almost ecstatic feeling, a natural connection to the surrounding mountain environment.
Due to the ease of learning and the fun factor, it’s easy to experience the Zone.
The Zone is a term used to describe Peak Experiences – characterized by joy, a feeling of effortless flow and an experience of oneness. It is often related to moments of total effortlessness. Many athletes who are very skilled at what they do, have regular moments of being in the Zone when they feel as if they could do no wrong and everything just happens very naturally. Peak experiences is another term used – feeling of effortlessness, transcending everyday experience and being fully present in the moment of sheer joy.
To me, this is Skiboarding!
One of the interesting things about skiboarding is that people quickly begin to experience the Zone (Peak Experiences) on a regular basis. They find these moments of joy, freedom and oneness to occur with predictable regularity and usually from the very first day.
Regular experience of the Zone solicits the embodied total attention state (Zone) that has been found to accelerate self-actualization.
In the research, it’s been found that individuals who experience the Zone on a regular basis begin to find a carryover to other areas of their lives. This full attention state begins to train the physiology including the brain to create the Zone experience in other areas of life more easily.
Self-actualization means being fully functioning or utilizing more of your full potential (liberation, fun, creativity).
As an individual becomes self-actualizing, meaning more fully functioning in terms of their full human potential, they more and more find characteristics such as ease in life, happiness, greater health, being able to convert crises into opportunities and reversing the aging process.
Skiboarders tend to be those who live out of the box and are able to develop their full potential.
What is interesting to notice is that those who decide to try skiboards are able to step “out of the box”, to step out of the mainstream (in this case, skiing or snowboarding), and be different. These individuals have courage to try something new and are willing to have others judge them as odd, strange or even crazy. Yet, throughout history, it was just those types of individuals, walking to the beat of a different drum, that were the pioneers, the innovators and the more enlightened individuals.
Peak experiences become more regular and occur in all areas of life due to the repetition factor.
What this means is those who skiboard regularly will begin to notice positive changes in their lives in many ways. They will also notice an acceleration as well as deepening of the experience of the Zone. In short, life becomes better, freer, more creative or magical, and the person themselves becomes more individuated and empowered.
Ready to try something new and break the bonds of limitation?
Want a true adventure in your life?
Well, you know what to do while you’re on this website!!