A Quote by John M. Grunsfeld
I was not really scared on my spacewalks. We practice so much and need to stay so focused that it has a calming effect on me. I do a kind of visualization and meditation in the airlock prior to going outside, to guide my first activities once I get out in space.
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If you decide to go on a Buddhist path, you have to be careful if you start mixing a lot of different traditions you are not totally familiar with - mixing this kind of meditation with that kind of practice or this kind of visualization with that kind of mantra. Then you really are concocting your own thing, and you have no idea what is going to happen.
They say that in space, nobody can hear you scream. The first time I stepped out of the airlock, I was ready to scream - not because I was scared but because I was so excited to see the Earth below me.
I'll be helping them getting suited up, getting them in the airlock, getting the airlock prepared, and getting them out the hatch, and then talking them through these three spacewalks.
I don't do too much outside of football during football season, because this is my job and I take it seriously. I don't do too much, don't really go out at all that much, don't eat out or anything, try to stay focused and stay to myself.
We were trying to do as much science as we could because that was the main purpose of the international space station. But without the shuttle to bring up heavy laboratory equipment and bring back samples, we were limited by what we could do, but I was proud that we actually accomplished more science that was planned for the flight. And I got a chance to do two Russian spacewalks on that flight, I had become an expert in U.S. spacewalks and using U.S. suits and techniques, and this was a chance to put on a Russian Orlan suit and do two construction space flights outside of the space station.
When I first moved to Los Angeles, I had a really bad run. I would sleep in my car during the day outside the Disney building in Burbank, and that's where I got my first job, which is really weird. I liked to stay around the studios and kind of get the good vibes going.
It was hard to become an astronaut. Not anywhere near as much physical training as people imagine, but a lot of mental training, a lot of learning. You have to learn everything there is to know about the Space Shuttle and everything you are going to be doing, and everything you need to know if something goes wrong, and then once you have learned it all, you have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice until everything is second nature, so it's a very, very difficult training, and it takes years.
I don't see any Stoic practice as problematic or risky, but I would advise to engage in extreme versions of the negative visualization exercise only if you are an advanced practitioner. The negative visualization is a meditation during which you visualize, slowly and deliberately, something bad or discomforting happening to you.
Getting into a space suit and going outside, to me, getting your peripheral vision involved and looking at the Earth was a whole different experience than looking through the window. And it's kind of the same on earth. If you're driving in a car and you see like a beautiful sunset or landscape, it looks so much better if you stop and get out and kind of take it all in and that's kind of what it's like doing a spacewalk.
We should be able to bring the practice of meditation hall into our daily lives. We need to discuss among ourselves how to do it. Do you practice breathing between phone calls? Do you practice smiling while cutting carrots? Do you practice relaxation after hard hours of work? These are practical questions. If you know how to apply meditation to dinner time, leisure time, sleeping time, it will penetrate your daily life, and it will also have a tremendous effect on social concerns.
Once you establish what activities your company needs to do, the next question is, 'How do these activities get accomplished?' i.e. what resources do I need to make the activities happen?
Growing up, I did quite a bit of reading on the mental side. My dad, who coached me, had us doing a lot of different types of mental work, like visualization. I read a couple of tennis books that talked about calming your nerves, belief, visualization, relaxing, breathing.
It's easy to stay in and work a lot. It's shitty weather, you don't go out and lay in the sun. That's a great thing to do - I love that, but in the summer I don't really get much done, because it's so nice to be outside. With the bad weather, you stay inside and dream. You create your own world, because you're not outside in the weather.
When you come onto the set, everything should be focused around your character and you should stay in the pocket, as much as possible. Every actor has their own process. For me, I really need to stay in the pocket.
When I did my spacewalks, it was during space station construction. So the shuttle was docked to the fledgling ISS at the time. So we would always stay tethered.
During events like the World Cup and the Olympics, I tend to get really wrapped up in my own experience to stay focused, but it's like a bubble. I don't see much outside my own perspective.
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