The Athlete and the Artist

Transcendental Training Methods to Sculpt the Mind, Body and Spirit

While researching content for a post I just published on my other blog, Artfully Learning, I was delighted to learn about a collaboration between avant-garde artist Allan Kaprow, progressive educator Herbert Kohl and physical fitness trainer Mike Spino. I am well familiar with both Kaprow and Kohl, but Spino was a new name that I am happy to have added to my lexicon.

During the late 1960s, Kaprow and Kohl took up an art education residency within the Berkeley Public School District. Their goal was to integrate participatory art throughout the curriculum. Kaprow believed art should be accessible to everyone and Kohl who championed student-centered learning. Together they developed a multisensory art program that helped students learn by tapping into their imagination and symbolically responding to their surroundings. Essentially, Kaprow and Kohl prompted the students and their teachers to think and act like artists, and in doing so, they transformed traditional subjects like literacy into immersive art experiences. All of these efforts had a significant impact on students’ eagerness to learn by personalizing the subjects in the curriculum and making it relevant to the sights, sounds and situations that enveloped them. They brought on Spino to develop a mindful and soulful approach to physical education. The result was “basketball poetry,” a unique experience where Spino gathered students and educators on school basketball courts, not to physically engage in a game of hoops, but to envision and enact the game of basketball through the lens of creative writing, attunement and spirituality. Think about how you might perceive and convey basketball in artistic terms, such as comparing it to dance or song. In my mind I can blend highlight reels of Dominique Wilkins competing during Slam Dunk Contests and the choreography of a prima ballerina.

Spino is a decorated collegiate runner and coach whose ideas for running are off the beaten track from traditional training methods. Spino considers running to be an art form, as well as a meditative process. Therefore, his approach combines the physical, intellectual and emotional aspects of athletics and blurs the lines between fitness and art. He has published books of poetry and transcendental thinking that is inspired by running. Spino’s pedagogical coaching focus on artful warmup rituals, which help to strengthen the connection between the mind and body. An example is “Have two partners run toward an object, like a tree, and have one person send a telepathic message of what side of the tree to run on. If the energy is ‘tight’ between the partners, the message will be received” (Ripatrazone, 2023).

Although it seems antithetical, I can attest to how running can be perceived in an artistic manner. Running and making art are both multisensory processes that require planning, variance and reflection in order to be successful. When we run, we are essentially creating a composition of lines as we meander through the trail or path. If you’ve ever turned on GPS tracking while on a run, and looked at it afterwards, the composition is often very aesthetic. This is especially true for my trail runs, where I often intersect and repeat my steps as I switch between different terrains. Furthermore, running is an expressive action, and can also be performed as interval training (i.e. alternating between sprinting, running and jogging, going up and downhill and running through different terrains). This is not that dissimilar from making a painting where the elements of art and principles of design are applied in layers by the artist to convey certain feelings and representations of nature.

Rather than focusing on the rote and didactic aspects of running (i.e. the quantitative data such as time, distance or step count), I allow myself to be in the moment. I feel each step of my foot hitting the surface below, and revel in the texture of the ground sending vibrations throughout my body. This method is largely derived from Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh’s lessons on how “being in the moment” enables us to feel joyful, enlightened and inspired. Nhat Hanh tells us to concentrate on breathing (in-and-out breathes) and to not be concerned with a destination…I have gone on a run several times with the intent to “get lost.” Aside from the breathing exercises, the only thing to be aware of is the process of taking each step forward. This will subsequently lead the runner to have a greater sense of spatial awareness and a realization of how the environment and body works in tandem. Nhat Hanh (2015) notes that, “when your foot touches the Earth with awareness, you make yourself alive and the Earth real, and you forget for one minute the searching, rushing and longing that rob our daily lives of awareness and cause us to ‘sleepwalk’ through life.”

Spino’s mindful running methodology is resourceful for anyone who feels like they’re in a rut with their workouts. It isn’t a matter of tricking ourselves into enjoying physical fitness, it is more about personalizing exercise in a manner that allows us to envision it as a creative and soulful activity.

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References, Notes, Suggested Reading:

Nhat Hanh, Thich. 2015. How to Walk, Berkeley: Parallax Press.

Ripatrazone, Nick. “The Brutal Wonders of a Late-Summer Run,” The Bulwark, 13 September 2023. https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/the-brutal-wonders-of-a-late-summer-run

Spino, Mike. 1976. Beyond Jogging: The Innerspaces of Running, Berkeley: Celestial Arts.