try riding a bicycle no hands

Get on your bicycle and start peddling, and when you're up to a certain speed, take your hands off the handlebars. Continue peddling, or free wheeling, if you are going downhill. You can steer the bicycle just using your body weight, shifting it slightly one way or the other.

You probably did this as a child, if you learned to ride a bicycle when you were young. So it's another technique borrowed from the life of children. To begin with, you will wobble, and feel rather insecure, and probably very self conscious if there are other people around. But don't worry, these things will pass. And soon you will be gliding along quite comfortably, balanced, in repose.

This exercise is partly about finding balance on the bicycle, for it requires a certain sensitivity. But more, it is to do with letting go of being in control; letting go of needing to live in a field of security and comfort. It's allowing us to dwell a little more in the flow of life, as if existence is steering the bicycle for us.

You'll be surprised. Some of these simple things – if you play with them not too seriously – they will start to change your outlook on life, without you even realising it, until it's too late. And then you will find that you are relaxed and happy in more day-to-day situations where you are not in control, where you are not the one steering the bicycle of life.

So, try riding a bicycle without holding onto the handlebars.