My Idea Of Freerunning

(This is where I mainly talk about why flips aren't freerunning from the latter's creative aspect. For a technical insight on this subject: http://www.parkourindia.net/articles/flipsarenotfreerunning.php)

There was a lot of controversy and politics behind the origin of Freerunning. It is a physical art form invented by chance. Luckily, my personal interpretation of Freerunning was something that I could immediately relate to.

To me Freerunning is about your own freedom, mental and bodily. It’s about breaking through, defying the worldly (which includes social) constrains, overcoming obstacles and moving in any way you can imagine, exploiting the physical liberation. This also helps bring about a state of mental enlightenment.

In my personal opinion, I sometimes find flips kind of dumb. I mean what’s the point in rotating over and over in different ways. It’s too stereotyped. But again, some things they do are truly amazing, so “sometimes” I say.

Freerunning to me is not just about flipping or rotating, it’s about moving in any way you want without the need to prove yourself or “present” yourself in pretentious ways. It’s about achieving the simulation of your own mental images of reaching different places, dimensions and axes with your bodily form that ordinarily you couldn’t.

You can just literally run through the city, screaming and wailing and throwing your limbs around like a lunatic.. and that’ll be a perfect example of Freerunning.

Simply, moving just for physical thrill can be Freerunning.

Or if you aren’t brainwashed by the 400-odd videos uploaded by ‘glyphmedia’, etc., and you still decide to flip your way around, that would be Freerunning too.

Anyway you move accompanied by any association that movement has to your then state of mind or your inner expression.. is Freeruning.

Your environment can destroy you completely; respect it and move safely. You can never master your environment; you can never accomplish mastery over nature. You are nature; you are a part of nature. We’re just minuscule elements of this earthly system. You can be free and flying. But then, you’d just have advanced yourself to be one with your environment; you’d have neither mastered it, nor have remained a slave to it.

Diptarko Bhattacharya

Kolkata