On cycling: learning something new is hard!

The author's brand new electric bike the day it came home from the shop.

Earlier in the year I made some changes to my practice and moved away from working as part of two therapy organisations to having my own room and operating fully under my own steam. 

Although I've been a therapist for a long time now, having the freedom to frame my practice exactly how I wanted felt a bit new, uncertain, unpracticed. Like wobbling on my bike again. 

Cycling was something I learnt late. I never learned as a child. My parents didn't teach me and my older siblings made a group attempt once when I was about seven to set me going on the patio. 

I am thankful for their energy in wanting to do this. They have, all in their different ways, played a big part in encouraging me forward, providing support and love and energy. 

The cycling was not a great example of this however. They were squabbling amongst themselves about who had the right techniques to show me whilst I was trying to get going on one of their bikes that was almost certainly too big for me. I was extremely frustrated that I couldn't just do it myself and the interlude ended in me declaring (shouting) I didn't want to ride a bike anyway.

I tried to learn a couple of times after that. Once as a late teen, one of my sisters resuming the teaching role, much better this time, but not enough that I actually got moving. 

Another time there was a fun attempt with some university friends whilst on holiday in Norway. Another group of people, all with good will, wanting to get me going on my wheels. 

This time was funny and I didn't feel grumpy but the attempt was short lived - curtailed by one of my friend's neighbours coming out to move his car off the street because he was worried I would crash into it.

With my inexperience and perceived volatility so clearly named, I decided to call it a day for that attempt.

About a year after my Norwegian attempt, my local council advertised an offer of free cycling lessons for adults - precisely what I needed, so I bit the bullet and signed up. I think you could have up to four lessons on the scheme and I arrived at the local park and met a friendly guy who's name I no longer recall. He got me on my bike in the empty tennis court. This was something that was missing from my Norway attempt - this was a well held space - nothing to crash into, no other users. There was space for me to wobble and gently fuck up. 

He got me able to cycle almost immediately. He said I could balance and all I needed was to keep going. 

I think we had about 90 minutes together, during which we had moved out of the tennis court and I was kind of able to traverse the footpaths. I definitely remember doing some turns!

At the end of the session he declared me as signed off - I'd done everything he had to offer and there was another adult in the London borough of Lewisham who had moved states - they had funded and created a cyclist!

Thrilled with my new found skill and buoyed by my partner who wanted to be able to go cycling together, the very next day we went and hired bikes in a forest. 

This did not go well. I had to shout at more than one family that I wasn't sure I could stop and could they move out of the way. I also fell off and fairly badly scraped my arm on the gravel path. 

Looking back I did pretty well, but at the time I was really deflated. I was embarrassed at being such a beginner in front of other families trying to walk and cycle. I went home dejected and ready to lick my wounds. 

I'm not sure if I would have attempted it again if I hadn't had my partner's energy providing the drive, but attempt it I did. We hired bikes in a Hungarian forest. I did pretty well apart from when mopeds came down the track. I was so terrified that I would wobble or crash into them that I chose to crash into the ditches instead to avoid them getting too close.

More crashes followed - once I needed to get my knee glued back together in a&e, once whilst I was trying out my partners Dutch bike with amazing hub gears I clipped a fence and twisted the handlebars

Over time, the crashes reduced, but the frustration didn’t. I am gravitationally challenged and always struggled getting up hills and was so mad that I had to get off and push, although I did still go out on rides and I got better at naming my limits so that I didn't try and do rides that would leave me cross and frustrated.

The final evolution of my cycling (my cycling charizard?) occurred when I invested in an electric assist bike - the first brand new bike I had ever had and hopefully the last one I'll need. It balanced out my lack of power up hills and now there was nowhere I needed to get off and push.

I had definitely become a cyclist and I love the exhilaration of whizzing through the landscape on a bike. I ride for much longer than I ever used to and no longer feel like a beginner, a mere 17 years after I ticked Lewisham’s cycling proficiency box.

Learning, especially as an adult, is hard. Any kind of learning requires time, repetition, patience and commitment. Learning something outside the ‘standard’ window for the task requires additional grapples, sometimes with a sense of shame or self criticism and also without the support in place that learning things needs.

Sometimes we need someone else to help us with the energy and commitment to get going (thanks siblings!), someone to have hope when we struggle to find it and to help us keep going (thanks friends!), someone with the right skills in a safe space (thanks Lewisham council dude!), someone with the commitment to be alongside all the practicing and frustration (thanks partner!). 

Over time, I have learned not just how to cycle better, but also how to be persistent enough to learn the difficult thing, kind enough to myself to know that it is hard, generous enough to myself to put a not insubstantial amount of money towards making it that bit easier and more enjoyable.

In my experience, therapy almost always involves learning something new, a new skill, new awareness, a new way of being at ease with your self, a new way to sit alongside some of the bad things that have happened that you can’t erase. 

As a therapist I am often holding space for people to learn new and difficult things. Providing energy, support, hope, some skills and knowledge and most of all patience and awareness that learning and change take time, repetition, experiences of falling off and taking wrong turns. 

Therapy provides awareness, skills and insight (in fact the development of brand new neural pathways) that are just like riding a bike - once learned it’s never forgotten. The new neural pathways developed in therapy are there for life.

There will always be challenges in life and new developments. Things we can't change and things we choose to, like me changing up my work and stepping away from working with organisations. 

Change always brings uncertainty and oftentimes grief too. In my work situation, uncertainty was short-lived and the benefits of change quick to materialise. 

Something like cycling, which for some people is a couple of weeks of learning, took me decades. 

Some unwanted and unavoidable change can bring huge grief that never really leaves and the challenge is to learn to live around those changes and with those experiences.

Regardless of the specifics or the scale, there are predictable things that help us integrate new ways of being and find some ease with a new skill or a new reality. 

It’s over 30 years since my first cycling attempt on the patio, but I got there in the end.