Let's bring our attention to this guy as he finds stillness of mind within freefall. Skydiving is not what you would consider a meditative sport. It's fast! In freefall your descending towards the ground usually between 120 and 180mph depending on how you fly your body. This sport is not for the timid of heart.
THE GEAR:
A complete system (aka rig) includes your container , 2 canopies (main canopy and reserve canopy), and AAD (in case of non deployment of parachute your AAD is a device that will deploy your parachute for you at a designated altitude). Using an altimeter is also considered essential for safety. Your altimeter is a device attached usually to your wrist which tells you your current altitude. In other words your altimeter tells you how long you have before you need to deploy your parachute and how long you have to work out a malfunction before you go splat!
Body position:
You can fly your body in many different positions. The two main categories for skydivers is Belly flying and Freeflying. Belly flying is with belly towards the Earth and a horizontal position of the body. Belly flying is a much slower descending speed and usually around 120mph. Freeflying is more of a verticle body position and usually either head down or head up (aka sitflying). Head down flying is the fastest and one of the most difficult skydiving positions to learn.
There are some similarities to Skydiving and Meditation. In meditation you are bringing your mind to a single point of concentration and the rest of the world and reality melts away. In Skydiving this can be a very similar experience. It is very hard to think of the outside world and any personal problems when you are jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and entering into freefall accelerating towards the Earth at tremendous speeds.
In both cases we remember:
There is only this moment, the past doesn't matter and the future hasn't happened yet.
I hope you found this post both entertaining and thought provoking.
Namaste.
