Have you ever tried to become aware that you are dreaming, while you are dreaming? I’ve tried it. I’ve never succeeded. One trick that supposedly works is to look for your hands in the dream. It’s claimed this will help trigger your awareness.

The problem is, you have to remember to look for your hands. And that’s the hard part. I’ve never been able to.

You might wonder, what does this have to do with cycling, or with yoga?

A similar challenge of remembering often occurs while I’m riding. Through the practice of yoga, I’ve been able to conquer this challenge, or at least begin to.

Sometimes when I’m out riding, whether on a long century ride, or a short group training ride, it’s like being in a kind of “cycling dreamtime.” In this dreamtime, I’m aware of things around me — things like traffic, curbs, potholes, and riders beside me that seem to be trying to crowd me out, and riders in front of me who might stop at a moment’s notice.

But what I’m often not so aware of, is what is going on in my own body. That can be a problem. One of the most important things to do while riding, besides not falling over, is, er, well breathing. I know, it sounds pretty obvious. But how often are you aware of your breath? The answer for me: Not as often as I should be.

I sometimes ride with a group of triathletes, the TriScottsdale group, on their weekday training rides. (I don’t do triathlons myself. Heavens no. I just like joining their training rides.) Most of these riders are younger, stronger, and faster than me. But I like the challenge, and figure it’s a good, fun (at least I think it’s fun sometimes) way to improve on the bike. These riders aren’t so fast that I don’t have at least some prayer of staying with them. On a good day, I can hang in the middle-back portion of the pack. On a not so good day, well, does the phrase lanterne rouge mean anything to you?

To those of you with furrowed brows at this point, the term ”lanterne rouge” – French for “red light” – stands for the red light on a caboose. In bike speak, if you are the lanterne rouge, you are the caboose of the pack, dead last. Yes, the lucky one. Ha! I’m often the lucky one more often than I’d like to be.

Some days after being dropped, I can pull myself back up to the stragglers. On one such day I caught up to a gal who’s often near the back of the pack with me, and I told her I’d been trying hard to catch her.

“I know,” she said, “I could hear you coming, like I always do.”

Yes, that would be me, Mr. Locomotive Breath. For that’s what I often sound like, panting heavily up the climbs and during the sprint intervals.

On the Thursday rides, the group climbs a series of hills out along Via Linda, in northeast Scottsdale. One day we were on the last climb of the day, Scottsdale Mountain. The road up Scottsdale Mountain is a steep one, about a mile and a half long, ranging roughly from 6%-12% grade. I was riding near the back of the pack, as usual, and a rider pulled up beside me. I knew she coached some of the local athletes. She had obviously noticed my locomotive-style breath.

“You know,” she says, “you need to learn to control your breathing. It will really help your cycling.”

She suggested I go on the web and look up information on breathing techniques for cyclists. I googled the articles she mentioned, and I did read them. But the knowledge gained didn’t seem to help all that much.

At the time, it didn’t occur to me why.

A year later, I started taking yoga classes at the Yoga Pura studio in north Phoenix. To those of you who know yoga, you also know that breathing is one of the keys to yoga. Pranayama, it’s called, in yoga-ese. The instructors teach various techniques for controlling your breath, such as counting evenly during the inhales and the exhales, and of slowing down your breathing, and how slowing down either the inhales or the exhales affects your body differently. During yoga classes, I’ve practiced these techniques, along with the other students, on the mat.

But again, I’ve had problems using this newly found knowledge while out cycling.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized what that problem was. The revelation came during a six week meditation class I was taking, where the instructor talked a lot about becoming aware — of being your own ”witness” to what your mind and body are doing in your daily activities. Why should we bother, he asked? Well, you have to become aware of these things, before you can have any hope of controlling them.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

A bell went off in my head. Now I knew why my breathing wasn’t improving while I was riding:

I had to become aware of my breathing, before I had any hope of controlling it.

Looking back, there were times that I did notice my breathing, while out riding – even before I started practicing yoga. During these times, I was able, at least in part, to slow down my breathing, and to take in fuller breaths, and to breath out completely. I also realized that the times I remembered to do this were usually when I wasn’t under any stress. I wasn’t riding hard trying to stay with a group, or going up a steep hill.

You’d think that during those times when I am riding hard, gasping for that precious oxygen, in full locomotive breath mode, that I’d easily be aware of my breathing. But nooooo! Somehow, that’s not often the case.

In yoga class, the instructors put us into difficult poses — or alternatively, they put us in easier poses for unknown-to-us lengths of time — and then tell us to relax and concentrate on our breathing. They are always saying that the idea is to learn how to do this on the relative safety of the mat, and then take it and apply it out in the real world.

The problem, of course, is remembering to practice these techniques out in the real world. In my cycling endeavors, that means remembering to practice breathing techniques while in cycling dreamtime.

It’s just like trying to become aware that you are dreaming, while you are asleep. You have to remember to do so.

I don’t always remember to “wake up” from cycling dreamtime, and focus on my breathing. That’s seems especially true at those critical, stressful moments, when I’m trying to keep or catch up with other riders.

Now that I know this, I find myself being able to remember more often to breathe in full deep breaths.

I’m not always good at it. Recently, I went on a 100 mile ride that involved a lot of climbing, and it wasn’t until afterwards that I realized, gee, I hadn’t remembered to focus on my breath the whole day!

So I still have a ways to go. Ha! Don’t we all.