PAUSE

The Ride Beneath the Ride: Remembering Who You Are

Ask yourself, gently, honestly:

• Am I happy?

• Am I having fun?

• Does my life feel alive … or does it feel heavy?

• Is joy what I experience most of the time?

For many people, the truthful answer is uncomfortable. Life can begin to feel like a long, grinding climb, one where the summit keeps moving just out of reach. You do your best, you show up, you work hard, and yet something always seems off. People don’t do what they “should.” Systems don’t work the way they’re “supposed to.” Your body aches, your mind races, and the world feels louder, faster, and more demanding than ever.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not broken.

• You’re not failing.

• You’re just tired of living on the surface.

I spend a lot of time caring for bodies, athletes’ bodies, working bodies, aging bodies. But over the years, something deeper has become unmistakably clear: beneath every tight muscle and every exhausted nervous system is a deeper struggle. A forgetting.

We forget who we are.

Most of us are raised to believe we are our thoughts, our roles, our achievements, our mistakes. We identify as the rider who needs to perform, the parent who must provide, the partner who should get it right, the human who must constantly improve. The ideology becomes our identity. Life becomes a soap opera, a story, one emotional episode after another, where we’re just trying to get through the day without falling apart.

But here’s the truth that changes everything:

• You are not the struggle. You are the awareness experiencing it.

• You are consciousness itself.

And consciousness is not fragile. It is not aging. It is not limited. It is not broken. Consciousness is the silent witness behind every thought, every sensation, every joy, and every sorrow. It is the part of you that has been present since your earliest memory and will remain long after today’s worries dissolve. Consciousness is immortal!

When you recognize this, not intellectually, but experientially, life begins to shift.

Happiness stops being something you chase and starts becoming something you allow.

This doesn’t mean the challenges disappear. Bodies still get sore. Life still delivers loss, uncertainty, and unexpected climbs. But the relationship to those experiences changes. Instead of being consumed by them, you learn to ride with them, the way a skilled cyclist rides terrain rather than fights it.

This is where true wellness begins.

In massage, in soigneur work, in movement, and in stillness, the body becomes a gateway back to presence. When touch is offered with awareness, when breath slows, when the nervous system finally feels safe enough to soften, something remarkable happens: the mind quiets. The story pauses. And for a moment, you remember yourself.

• Not the version of you that’s trying to fix everything.

• Not the version measuring worth by output.

• But the deeper you, the one who is already whole.

• Joy doesn’t arrive as fireworks. It arrives as ease.

• Peace doesn’t shout. It whispers.

And fun! Real fun, returns when life stops feeling like a problem to solve and starts feeling like an experience to inhabit.

Whether I am supporting cyclists on the road, preparing nourishing meals, tuning bikes, or offering therapeutic bodywork, the intention is the same: remove what’s in the way of your natural state. Strength, clarity, resilience, and joy are already there. They don’t need to be manufactured. They need space.

So if you’re feeling stuck …
If life feels like effort instead of flow …
If joy feels like a distant memory instead of a daily companion …

• Pause.

• Breathe.

• Notice the awareness reading these words right now.

• That awareness is you.

• And from that place, everything can change.

Because the most important ride isn’t the one you’re training for, fixing gear for, or recovering from. It’s the one beneath it all, the ride back home to yourself. Enjoy the ride!!