Foundation for Change (stopping safely)

Foundation for Change
1.1 When I first took motorcycle riding lessons I used to do emergency stops perfectly. Speeding along, when my instructor flagged me to stop I’d quickly and smoothly squeeze the brakes and the bike would slow like a spaceship coming out of hyperspace with the rear wheel lifting, pausing and then lowering at the end of the stop. My instructor enthusiastically told me that I was using the full stopping potential of my bike. I was applying pressure to the brakes at just the right rate without skidding.
1.2 Perhaps I became overconfident in my abilities but as I practiced again and again, I lost my ability to stop properly. I felt tight and nervous and instead of stopping smoothly I lost control of the bike as I braked and nearly dropped it. No longer poised and controlled as I braked, the bike would wiggle and I would scramble to get my feet on the ground as the bike settled down.
1.3 I was no longer stopping effectively or smoothly, elegantly or efficiently and I didn’t know what I had been doing to make my stops so smooth before. So I didn’t know what I had to do to make them better again.
1.4 I realized that my stops had gone bad because I’d been looking at the instructor waiting for him or her to flag me to stop. He became my focus point and he was too close for me to stay balanced when I stopped. When my stops had been good I’d been looking beyond the instructor to the horizon, so that it gave me the leverage to stay in control. The instructor was still in my field of vision but I didn’t focus on him, instead I included him as part of my visual panorama. I noticed when he flagged me but I kept my eyes open so that I saw everything that I could. Then I was able to use the brakes to maximum effect, stopping smoothly and staying balanced.
1.5 It is as if by seeing more of the earth I gave myself a broader foundation. Connecting to the earth and keeping that connection till I stopped gave me leverage to stay upright, a broad base on which to balance. In addition, as I braked it was like I was giving the energy of riding a means of bleeding off smoothly, directing it onwards by looking to the horizon. And I kept looking ahead until the bike settled down on to both wheels and all the energy of riding had dissipated.
1.6 And here’s the thing, talking to a friend I realized that stopping is changing, it’s one of the biggest changes we can experience, that and starting. And likewise so is a corner “A Change.” It is during change that looking to the horizon can be the most helpful. In all those cases, when I looked to the horizon, I stayed upright, poised balanced and connected to the machine I was riding because looking ahead I saw change at the earliest opportunity.
1.7 When we ride the horizon is constantly changing but smoothly changing, and when we keep our eyes on it we can change smoothly too. Stopping is one of the most extreme cases of change, but if we do it while looking at the horizon we can make our stops smooth and controlled.
1.8 Stopping normally in traffic the first thing we did after we had stopped was to check our mirrors, sometimes when we stop the world around us keeps on going forwards.