Bobby Robins: The Mindful Hockey Player?

I’m Canadian and being a Canadian, I admit to being a hockey fan.

When I was a kid, I remember watching games with my family and eating egg salad sandwiches, plain salty crispy chips and soda while ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ blared through the house. I’m really not sure why I associate this specific meal with my hockey-watching upbringing, but I’ll leave that for my parents to answer. Strange now that I think about it.

Anyways, to the here and now. My husband is a HUGE hockey maniac. I mean huge. When we first met, I think he was weirded out by all of the woo-woo Buddhisty stuff around me as was I getting nervous about being a hockey widow and counting the games through out the season much like one would count down mala beads.

Add onto this, well -  we support teams that are mortal rivals. Bruins (me) vs. Habs (him), although, I have to say that I am a weird hybrid of a Bruins/Habs fan since living here in Montreal and being swept up in the fervor of the passion this city has for the venerable Montreal Canadians.

All of this to set up the weird Kevin Bacon-esque connection that took place over the weekend when I was checking my Twitter feed and saw this.

Now I did not know of this Bobby Robins until Fat Mike of NOFX retweeted the aforementioned tweet in his stream so I had to go down the rabbit hole of ‘Who is Bobby Robins?’ I ended up on his blog and found writing that was evocative, raw, beautiful and that carries the mark of someone who is on the path of self discovery and realization.

Ding Ding Ding.  A post titled ‘Zen and the Art of Reinventing Yourself’ and no, it wasn’t an athlete misusing the ‘Zen and the art of’ theme…

At first you learn to listen to the breath, to observe it, and get to know it. You pay homage to it, and feel it, and welcome it. Instantly my mind would drift off to my To-Do list, or ingredients I needed to pick up at the grocery store, but every time, I returned to the breath. After a while, I began to feel the ebb and flow of the breath, and it took on an aquatic property, a wave-like drifting mechanism. After some time. I felt my consciousness flash in and out of some kind of room. It was my sanctuary. There was a pool of water there and exposed wood beams and pillars. That’s where my breath was. Every time I would lose my grasp on it, and think about an email I had to get out, I would return to the breath and to my sanctuary; the wooden room with the pool of blue water.

Then there’s this post on this blog titled ‘Good Vibrations’ about a visit he had with a young cancer patient in the hospital and the realizations that followed from his experience.

If you are excellent every single day, eventually you become that person. You become excellent. The same thing applies to altruism and spreading positivity in the world. If you do one thing every single day to spread positivity or one thing to make someone else’s life better, you become that brush stroke that paints a better world for me, and for you, and for Logan. We are all connected in some strange way, and we all have the power to send ripples and currents of love out into the world.

Even if you aren’t a hockey fan, I’d encourage you to check out Bobby’s blog as he is an exceptional writer on the topics of overcoming addiction, basic human goodness, health and motivation.

I’m a new fan of Bobby’s - both on ice and on his blog.