The most fundamental benefit of parkour, is the study of our own fear!
It is not a practice of becoming fearless. It is a practice of mastering the relationship with fear. It is a way of turning your fear into a tool to drive you and keep you safe not a force that overwhelms and controls you.
Nothing else I have practiced has ever given me the same opportunity to confront and study the mechanisms of my own fear.
When stand before a jump that frightens us, we get are able to observe our own fear, to recognize its roots and then to build our capacity to overcome it.
We learn to use the breath to calm the nervous system, to shake the tension from our limbs, to visualize the scenarios that make us afraid, and to visualize success.
When we learn to find pathway through our fear, we are learning the fundamental process, by which we can confront any fear. We are learning how to calm the body, how to think through the causes of the fear to develop options to buffer the consequences of failure, and finally to visualize success. We learn to find the moment we know in our bones we can not be anything but successful. When we find this mental state, when find flow through fear, then we can jump.
Recognizing the moment you are ready to jump is study in recognizing the moment you a ready to overcome any fear.
