Pinned on Karma Rock: whitewater kayaking as religious experience.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion. American Academy of Religion January 1, 2007 A Whitney Sanford
Whitewater paddling constitutes religious experience, and non-Western terms often best describe this experience. Many paddlers articulate their experiences using Asian or indigenous religious language as opposition to existing norms of what constitutes religious experience. Investigating the sport as an aquatic nature religion provides opportunity to revisit existing categories. As a lived religion, whitewater kayaking is a ritual practice of embodied encounter with the sacred, mediated through the body's performance in the water. This sacred encounter, with its risk and danger, illustrates Otto's equation of the sacred with terrifying mystery and provides a counterpoint to norms of North American religiosity.