You already mentioned having a great stress management technique, verbalizing or letting out the feelings of stress, which works great through self-talk. And I also talk with the glider, I talk to myself, but usually, I can get back into the green zone a bit with self-talk or glider-talk when I'm too excited.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from
the cosmos of paragliding. Today
with Banzerp and Lucian Haas on the mic.
To be honest, I think we all feel this way. When we go to launch with our paraglider and listen to ourselves a bit or feel it, we can sense it. Our heart beats faster. For some, that might be a sign of tense anticipation for the flight, but for many others, it's also just stress. And in a negative sense. And this launch stress can hurt some pilots. It can even actively discourage them from flying. To prevent it from getting to that point, one should deal with the topic of stress while flying. One person who has done this very intensively is Bendig Erb, known generally as Benz. Benz works as a flight instructor at the Chill Out Paragliding flight school in Interlaken. He also works as a graphic designer for Advance and other clients.
His latest professional passion project, however, is sports psychology and mental training. He completed a continuing education program with a certificate for this. He wrote his thesis on this very topic, launch stress, and surveyed over 400 pilots for it. I wanted to know what insights Benz gained from this. So, he tells us about it in this 35th episode of Podz-Glidz. It's not just about launch stress, but also other unfavorable flight situations that then become embedded in our flying souls as underlying anxiety. Three years ago, during a wolf-biff expedition, Benz himself had a rescue landing that burdened him for a long time while flying. However, he found his way out of that mental dead end and is now offering some tips on how to preserve the joy of flying.
My joy in producing Podz-Glidz is fed very much by stimulating conversations like this one with Benz. However, I am also happy when my listeners find this project valuable and provide me with financial support for it. If you also want to become a voluntary supporter of Podz-Glidz and the associated blog Looglites, you can find all the necessary information, such as a PayPal link or bank transfer details, on the Looglites website, specifically on the "Support" page. How much you might want to give is entirely up to you. For those who are unsure, I recommend a non-binding guideline of one euro per podcast episode and two euros per reading month on Looglites.de. But now, for the conversation with Benz Erb.
Benz, you recently obtained a certificate in sports psychology during some further training. For that, you wrote a thesis in which you basically introduce a term for paragliding that you call a psychological extreme sport. What is a psychological extreme sport?
Can it be described like that? There's a relatively high chance that, sooner or later, you'll be mentally challenged in this sport, or perhaps even reach your limits or go beyond them. And that has to do with the invisibility of air movements. The opportunities, like the thermals or the soaring slope, as well as the risks—the turbulence, the rotors, the gust fronts—they are invisible to the untrained eye. And that is a very demanding environment. And of course, there's a high chance that you'll misjudge things at some point, but by the time you notice it, you're actually already in the air and have to finish the flight.
At the same time, there might be evolutionary, biological reasons why the human psyche is actually adapted to life on Earth. And when it moves into the third dimension, like a bird, it's not really designed for that. But humans are incredibly capable of learning; they can do it, they can handle it perfectly, and they can feel comfortable. But I would guess the chance is increased that stress reactions simply occur because it's a completely new environment.
So, when it comes to a mental extreme sport, it's a lot about stress or dealing with stress, do you mean? So in which areas do paraglider pilots, in your opinion, experience stress most often?
Well, I can certainly never give a definitive answer; in all of psychology, it's always very individual and depends on who is in which environment and what they are doing. But for my CAS, I had to find people with whom I could gain initial consulting experience, so-called guinea pigs. I wrote in our flight school chat once, "Hey, who has mental goals? Do you want more fun, more self-confidence, do you want more performance, do you want more competition points, whatever." And then many people wrote that they are stressed at the launch site, especially at the launch site with spectators.
That many people are stressed or uncomfortable in thermals or in turbulent air. And then there are all the, shall I say, accidents, critical incidents, where a real fear remains. So like a mini-trauma, bad experiences that keep coming back whenever you're exposed to those triggers.
Is stress always something, well, fundamentally something bad, something negative?
No, clearly not. There's a distinction between positive stress, so-called eustress, which is stimulating, and then there's negative stress, distress, which then impairs performance. You could maybe imagine it like this: one side of an instrument is a good image for it. In order for a beautiful sound to come out—meaning, for you to be able to perform a sporting feat or any other achievement in life—you need a certain amount of tension. You can't perform while in a comatose deep sleep. So you have to turn that side up a bit, meaning you're activated, you have a certain pulse, you're concentrated, you have a certain breathing rate, and you're also oriented toward a goal.
And then you can really say, yes, I want it, I'm ready, I like this challenge, and then you'll very likely be able to deliver an increased performance. But if you now get into a state of being overwhelmed—let's take the launch site as an example, where your former flight instructors are there, and then there are other people who are much more talented, and you yourself haven't flown much lately and aren't exactly a natural athlete—it's possible that you'll judge this situation as being overwhelming. In that case, a physical stress situation might be triggered, meaning you're almost too stimulated; you're being prepared for, let's say, flight, fight, or maybe even death, and that is then totally counterproductive.
You're basically acting like a reptile, like a T-Rex. A very basic program is being played out there.
Let's stay with that EUS stress for a moment, this positive stress you're talking about. How do I experience that physically? And how can I tell that the stress I'm feeling right now is still more of a positive one and not that negative kind that might inhibit thermals somewhere and ultimately limit the actions I can perform?
Maybe you could say that if you have a positive gut feeling, if you feel comfortable and feel like this challenge I'm in right now is the right one, and you feel like you can handle it with the resources you have, I'd say you're still in the zone of EUS stress. It would be interesting to hear about a flight experience of yours where you felt, okay, this is challenging me now, but I can handle it.
I don't know, can I flip the question back to you? If you recall a few flights in your mind's eye now—ones that were good but also challenging—do you have a memory of one?
Oh, some. Well, here where I live, I'm in the lowlands or rather the low mountains, and lately we've had very frequent, very dry conditions, so the ground was very, very dry and the thermals were correspondingly very, very hard. And we climb here, it's a bit different for you in Switzerland, where you always have 500, 600, 700, 1000-meter-high slopes where the slope lift first comes up and then the thermals coming out at the top are already quite organized. Here, they burst out of the small valleys somehow and are still quite tight and disorganized. And if you want to get into them sometimes, you'll be pulled completely upward just like you jump in. You'll be thrown out just the same. And there are days where you have to fight extremely hard to hold onto these tiny bubbles that come up.
You get really tossed around there, because these bubbles are still actually bubbles and not like a tube; you get pushed around up there like nothing else.
And you have to endure this pushing and really constantly fight to stay inside this bubble. And it's really always a thing of, wow, I'm about to be thrown off completely. You really feel the fear. You're still relatively close to the ground, so it's already quite intense flying. And at the same time, there's the urge, no, the only chance I have to get up right now is this one. And if I don't make it up with this, then I might have to land down there in an equally turbulent situation. So for me, it's more pleasant to still make it up. And that's more of a situation where I'd say, okay, this is still, at times, on the border between eustress and distress. And it really depends on when you realize, ah, I'm getting higher, I'm managing it somehow. Then it tips back more towards euphoria. And you can handle this stress situation.
And if you notice, no, this is just throwing you off and then half the wing was just gone for a second or something like that, then the whole thing can go in the other direction.
Maybe you could tell by your breathing, what your breathing is doing. The inner images are also great. For me, it's like this: when I'm still in the eustress zone, I see the goal, where I want to go. Then I think about my skills. I also think about successful flights. And when I get into distress, then I think primarily about the landing field. I think about collapses, I think about emergency glider deployments, I think about the community's negative judgment, and, and, and. So it really switches over and then you're really on the losing end. Then the landing follows soon after. You could maybe also connect measuring devices and see what the breathing is doing, the oxygen saturation, the pulse, what else there is.
And I could imagine that a pattern would be visible there. Self-talk is another level. I don't know what you say to yourself each time you try to stay inside that toxic thermal.
I talk to the glider more. I say something to it.
That's a very good technique. May I ask what you say to it?
I just say, fuck, stay inside here, or some other stuff like that. Or often with us, because it's so close to the slope, it's more like, ah, come on now, just do it, and things like that. But that's always a conversation with the glider and at the same time a dialogue with myself, because I obviously have to decide in the situation, okay, do I hold it on the curve now or open the curve again, because I notice I'm not getting around the slope as appropriately as I'd like to have it.
And there, you're already using a great stress management technique—verbalizing or letting out those feelings of stress. It works great. Through self-talk. And I also talk to the glider, I talk to myself. And actually, based on how these conversations go, I also recognize where I stand. But mostly, I can get myself back into the green zone a bit with self-talk or glider talk when I'm too worked up.
In your thesis, it's not so much about the stress during the flight itself, but rather about the stress of the launch in paragliding. What kind of stress do people experience there? You also conducted a large survey among pilots for that. What did you find out about launch stress that you didn't already know as a flight instructor?
For me, it was extremely surprising that the spectators are actually such a huge stressor. In the end, I had 460 valid responses. I analyzed them a bit and assigned categories. And to the question of which factor stresses you out the most at the start? Wind and weather were mentioned by far the most. And that people are unsure about being able to judge that, to really be able to assess it safely. So, we come back to what I said at the beginning. Dealing with the invisible matter and the fact that you don't want to undo a launch—I can't imagine it. If you can't do that, and it stresses you out, then the spectator stress group stands out absolutely at the top.
So if you have a lot of people at the launch site and now you have to perform in front of them, they're all watching you, or you think they're all watching you. And at the same time, you actually can't repeat this sequence. If there's a start cancellation, then you have to pull yourself together in front of the spectators, get back up, and set out again. And
is that stress?
That creates stress.
That creates stress and is cited as a stressor by many people.
You say many, can you roughly quantify that? I mean, out of your answers, if you say you had 460 people who participated, are you saying 50% of them actually mentioned that having an audience causes them more stress than being somewhere alone?
Wait, I have to quickly... flip through. 3, 2, 7, Stress neu am launch site. 140 have mentioned audience group and Dichterstress.
That's about a third, Pi
roughly. Exactly, that's how you can quantify it. And at Meteo, 124 said unfavorable weather conditions, and 45 said that if they can't assess it, it stresses them out extremely.
So, this audience thing is already a huge burden for many. How can one learn to deal with such high-stress situations? Is there a technique to block out the audience? Or are there other ways to handle it? How can you stay relaxed?
I think there are many individual ways to do this and you have to experiment a bit. Generally, when it comes to stress management—or the technical term "coping"—you can say you can either address the problem itself, meaning you can change something there, or you can address your emotions. You could perhaps look at these two different approaches.
If you say now that you want to avoid the launch site with people, then you either have to take a different launch site or you have to put on the Lord of the Rings ring so that you're invisible, but that's not possible. You have to go start at a time of day when no one is watching you.
But the chance is certainly that if you want to launch on a good day, at a good, simple launch site that allows for a good thermals entry, then you won't be alone there. So maybe you have to focus more on your own emotions, and the most important thing I would say is to acknowledge the stress. To see, okay, this is completely normal, it's biologically proven, it's airtight, that when you enter a performance situation with spectators, you get excited. And that can then also feel like being overwhelmed. And just the fact that you accept that, I believe something happens where you tell yourself, hey, I'm normal.
On the level of sports psychology, mental training, you could perhaps start with a breathing exercise, or you could step back a bit and tell yourself, okay, I'm taking some time to arrive here now, I'm observing my emotions, my thoughts,
now I'm observing the weather myself, what's actually going on here? Am I sure? Can I judge this? And just those 10 minutes getting to the launch site, centering yourself, observing a bit of what's happening, something already happens there. I believe you're no longer a victim of your thoughts and feelings. I think you already have a relationship with them. So you can observe what's going on inside yourself. And then you can also intervene regulatorily. You can maybe prepare a good self-talk, even at home, and practice it. So it's completely normal that I'm a bit stressed here. I'm not a former chief pilot. I've only been flying for a year. I still have to work. I still have a family. So at best, I have three or four flights per month. It's completely normal that I'm nervous right now.
But now I'm trying to compose myself. I'm observing it. I'm waiting for a good window. I'm taking my time at my own rhythm. And I think something happens there already.
I saw a video the other day of a Dutch paraglider... I don't even know if he's a paragliding instructor. But in any case, he presents himself as a paragliding tutor in the videos. And he also made a video about launch stress. And he said that as an exercise he suggests to people is to go to the launch site with the glider packed, spread it out, act as if you want to launch, and prepare everything for it. The idea is to internalize the situation, the position itself, and then pack the glider back up and walk away again. So not to launch, but just this "I'm going into the launch position." And I prepare everything for it, but then I look at the whole launch site and then step out of the stress situation again and sit calmly on the edge, and maybe do that several times in a row.
Just to keep noticing that I can approach it a bit more calmly each time. And he said that if you do this more often, it's like the body gets used to the situation—going to the start, standing there with a group, spreading out and saying, "Okay," and then at some point, on the third or fourth time, you can say, "Now I'm calm enough that I can just do a completely normal, calm launch." And he meant that if you do this more often, eventually you won't need those four appearances on the tray to push off again, but that you can just launch calmly the very first time. Do you think something like that can really be a training effect?
I'm hearing that for the first time now. That sounds very interesting. I'm going to try all of that. So, thanks to this Dutch tutor and to you for telling me. Yes, I think that goes through trial and error. You just have to play around with it. But even the attitude of doing something now and then not doing it again, and controlling for yourself when you start and when you don't—that's already incredible. That's already a big step toward emancipating yourself from your own emotions and thoughts. So, whenever you take a playful, experimental attitude toward your own stress, something happens. And I think you're already very close to a solution there. I also know someone...
Pilots, I assume he has the same launch stress because he has this tendency, especially when he's out with a group, to often look for an alternative launch site nearby. Sometimes maybe not the most optimal one, but there he can prepare in peace. No one is watching him there either. At the same time, we sometimes—well, when we're out with him as a group—we sometimes get a bit of a stomach ache because we think the better launch site is actually over there. But I also sometimes wonder if it might even be easier for him to launch from this slightly more difficult launch site and that he has less stress then. That it might even be safer for him to be there rather than under this group situation. How do you see that?
Yeah, I'd like to ask him sometime. It's always interesting to see what people are thinking about, what their priorities are. But if he gets off the ground safely there, then I think it works. And that's a good individual solution for him. You just have to try things out a bit and not just be a victim of the situation. How do you...
even at
the start?
Do you also feel stress sometimes?
Yes, definitely. I have stressful starts too, so of course, there's the daily form. Am I well-rested? Am I sober? How am I doing emotionally? Did I just have an argument? Was I stressed? Do I have money worries? Whatever it is. That naturally creates a certain stress level. And then there's the question of whether I have pressure to perform. Do I have to measure myself against someone? Do I have to prove something to myself? That can then increase the stress level. Especially if I feel like,
that I have to do something. And then, of course, there's all the weather stress. When I'm doing something here in Interlaken, where I know the weather quite well, I'm rarely stressed. But as soon as I'm maybe on a bivouac flight and I'm launching from a place for the first time and there's already a 25-knot wind at the launch site, then it looks completely different, of course.
What about the pressure from the audience? Do you feel that too?
Rather less. I've been flying for eleven years now. I fly quite a bit. It actually stays within limits. So I can compensate for that very well with routine.
And for me, it's not really a stressor if I have to abort a takeoff. Even with the flight school and the former students watching, I can just tell myself that it's part of the job.
If a pilot comes to you saying they often have stress during takeoffs, especially with spectators and stuff like that, what would you give them as the most important tip? How can I, as a pilot, best create a good takeoff situation for myself, including mentally?
I would maybe find out how good he is at ground handling. Does he go out to play with the glider regularly, or is that a foreign word to him? And if he is very good at ground handling,
then I might work more on calming him down, so that with good breathing techniques, positive imagery, and good self-talk, he tries to regulate himself a bit at the start. But if he never does ground handling, I would strongly advise him to go out and play with the glider regularly. Because there are studies in sports psychology that looked at when people can perform better, whether they are in front of spectators or not. It turned out a bit that performances that are coordinatively demanding and that you don't do that much of, are hindered, obstructed by spectators and by performance pressure. But now, an endurance performance or a simple repetitive performance, a movement that you have trained well, that is actually promoted,
that actually helps then.
And it really comes down to practice in the end. But I would also try to look at it individually during the conversation,
where is his launch site, where is he coming from, what are his strengths, and what solutions has he already implemented?
Usually, if you listen closely and ask good questions, it's amazing what kind of things are mentioned. It's often something different from what you'd think is right.
For example, do you have any examples of that?
I once had a pilot where the longer she waited at the launch site, the more stressed she became. So waiting didn't help, because she saw more and more launch cancellations from other people. It was a winter launch site with a bit of a sink. The timing just has to be right at the beginning, otherwise the glider won't get up. And her solution was to just go over and, if the wind was okay, just lay it out and go straight. And the problem was solved with that. It didn't require any breathing exercises, visualizations, or self-talk, just going and launching.
That surprised me, because it actually goes against what I said earlier about practicing mindfulness for ten minutes first.
But did she figure out that solution for herself?
Yeah, that was just a conversation. We talked a bit about the launch site.
And that's where the pattern came up, that she actually always waits a long time and feels like she's waiting too long. Then we just flipped it. Now, just start right away.
Sometimes the solutions are much simpler than you think. But because they're right in front of your face, you somehow don't see them and overthink it.
Our paragliding club organizes a paragliding trip every year. I'm based here in Bonn, and the people who join us all come from the region. We usually head to the Alps, and it's very common to observe that the less experienced and less launch-stable pilots who come along often sit at the launch site for a really long time. We often tell them to rather start earlier, because the conditions actually get more difficult towards noon and so on. So don't wait so long, and yet there are always some candidates who watch the situation for a very, very long time. Probably also out of uncertainty about how they should handle it.
But at the same time, that also means they're basically making things harder for themselves during the flight, and maybe even leading to some less-than-great experiences afterwards. Do you have a tip on how to deal with people like that, or how you could help them to say, "Yeah, okay, I accept that. I'll dare myself to head out a bit earlier because I'll actually have a better experience for myself"?
I would look at what their goal is. Maybe if they wait a long time, they want good thermals, an easy entry into thermals, so they don't have to be the first ones to land. Maybe that motivation is that important to them.
What you can do is, if you're in the Alps first, do a glide or a flight in the morning hours when the conditions are still weak, push a bit of zero, then take the lift back up—then you're dialed in and a bit warmed up at the start. Maybe that could help. So you're in an area,
where there isn't as much going on and that pressure is taken off.
Well, very little is talked about regarding stress and fear in paragliding in general. Even among the pilots themselves, there isn't really much exchange about things like that. Maybe among friends, but in the group, it's not necessarily a big topic that comes up. It's always just the great experiences and the amazing stories people tell about various things. Why is that? Why is this topic of stress and fear and all that so sidelined, even though it's actually such a dominant theme in our sport as well?
I think we live in an exciting time where perhaps more will be talked about, and maybe the attitude toward it will change in the new generation coming up now. It has become very clear to me over the last few years that very little is talked about openly. I mean, after a second beer in a private setting, I can imagine very well that it gets discussed. But just saying at the landing field, "Hey, I'm actually a good pilot, but today I just felt stressed, I had a total adrenaline rush, I couldn't concentrate anymore, then I got out of the thermals and now I've landed and I feel like I'm a bad pilot." You rarely hear statements like that. I think it's a
complex phenomenon and I can really only speculate about it. But as part of my work, I wrote a chapter called Taboo Subject: Stress and Anxiety in the Paragliding Scene. And in that, I just made a few assumptions. I can maybe mention them. Yes, please, please.
It's quite possible that only the people who don't have a problem with stress, or who find a way to deal with it, stay in the sport. So let's assume a pilot has only bad experiences, then he leaves the sport very, very quickly. Or you only run into him at the landing field by the beer vending machine. So basically, only the roles of role models remain, who don't have to talk about stress at all because apparently they've found a way to cope with it.
Then I've observed, it's a flight instructor training, that's not such a big topic. Or let's look at the literature, the standard literature in Switzerland. Stress isn't a topic there. It's also not a topic how you can regulate it.
By standard literature, do you mean the paraglider textbooks that might exist? In those, the topic of stress isn't mentioned at all.
discussed. It's not in the exam collection. It's not in the question bank either. So it doesn't even reach the basics.
So you mean, basically, this topic should already be addressed during training or as part of the training.
I think you could do the pilots a great service by saying from the very beginning that this is just part of it. It's almost like a law of nature, like thermals, like wind shear, like material science. It's simply a fact. You will be confronted with it if you do this sport. And just as you can do a certain amount of meteo preparation or adapt to the wind in flight practice, you can also react to the internal stress. You can do something with it. That's perhaps one way, and I get the feeling that these flight students, these pilots, are completely on their own. Or you don't talk about it. Now the impression can arise that I'm alone with this, that I'm not enough.
And the others don't seem to have it, otherwise they'd be talking about it. This impression can actually be reinforced.
Then there are relatively few specialized mental coaches who focus specifically on paragliding. Or even trained, specialized sports psychologists. You won't find much there. I once estimated that in the German-speaking world, there are maybe ten offers that actually provide this. In Switzerland, there are 17,000 active pilots. In Germany, that's probably ten times as many. No,
no. Not quite that many, maybe double that. If there are any at all. I'd estimate there are about 25,000 active pilots.
25,000, okay. But that's the chance of you coming across such an offer. Or of you running into a trainer like that. It's just very small.
And then there's a demographic reason. In Switzerland, the male gender is very, very dominant. At best, we have 13% women among the active members. And that's around age 30. And then it drops off immediately again. So it's a totally male-dominated sport. And maybe stereotypes are still haunting...
...male gender roles are also at play. And it might not fit very well if you just talk about feelings or about stress or about fear. Maybe there's something like stress. Or how do you say it? Gender role stress, you say it. On one hand, you're actually supposed to be brave, but on the other hand, you have to be able to talk about feelings because you need that to be able to cope with the stress. And now you get into this kind of internal tension. And that can be demanding. Maybe there isn't a solution for that yet. That the strong pilot is the pilot who also talks about
talks about the stress. The one who...
...can express his emotions and can regulate them. The one who isn't just a victim. Yes, I'm scared, I'm a bad pilot. I'm going home now. And he tells you, okay, now I have a mental challenge. I want to take it on and I'm going to train on how to handle it so that I have fun and reach my goals.
You just said something interesting about how the role models people might have in this scene—the ones who stay in it, keep flying, and are successful—are maybe more like people who just don't develop that much stress. And when you orient yourself so strongly toward them, you might feel like someone who experiences stress is somehow inferior or says, "I can't keep up anyway," or something like that. But maybe sometimes that just comes from this stress block. How could one manage to highlight other role models in the scene more, or give them more space, more words, more whatever?
There is one very big and important role model, and that's actually yourself—you as the pilot you want to be in a year, or as a happy pilot. How does it look when you land with peace and pride and say, "Hey, this is just a beautiful sport, I enjoy the chance to do this sport, and I want to get back into the air as soon as possible"? That is actually the role model, and then you have to ask yourself, "Yes, what does the flight day have to be like for me to land with this feeling?" That was a key for me to refuel new motivation and also to move past setbacks; I just had to ask myself, "Hey, what do I enjoy? What kind of pilot do I want to be?" Because from the very beginning, it's not realistic that I can somehow measure myself against X-Alps pilots at a high level.
How could we, since we were just talking a bit about training, how could we sensitize flight instructors to this topic?
Quite simply, offer a module in flight instructor training where you talk about stress, stress regulation, and sports psychology techniques, just like you talk about meteo or whatever else. And I think there's a lot of interest in that because it affects everyone anyway, but I think it lacks a bit of a neutral framework—just talking about it like you talk about thermals or glide ratios.
Would you recommend to pilots, as it's put, "Yes, definitely do an SIV training course," and also say, "I would recommend to everyone to treat themselves to a session with a mental coach or whatever, specifically to talk about flying and emotions and other things, and the stress involved?"
Yes, from an economic point of view, of course, so five sessions, no.
From an economic point of view, because you do it yourself
you offer, I get that. No, but basically, the SIV trainer will of course also say, yeah, come to me at the lake five times and spiral down, that definitely gives me something. But just for your own flight development, in SIV training they always say the techniques you learn and the feelings you have and what you see and the trust you develop in the glider are of course great, but do you maybe need such mental training to also, in a sense, develop trust in yourself?
A key prerequisite for success, I'd say, in mental training is that you really want it and that you have goals. I would say, only go into consulting once you have a goal and a real will to change something, and when you feel that you can change something within yourself. As long as you're still in a situation where others are to blame and you have to change them, or you have to change the weather, whatever, or the equipment, then I don't think that's a good starting point. But it can also be that people want to deal with these phenomena autodidactically. There are great podcasts, there are books,
Websites, there are many good articles in magazines, including paragliding magazines. I think the important thing is simply engaging with the topic if the interest is there. I can't imagine that there are many pilots who are never confronted with stress or mental challenges in this sport. And that's why it surprises me all the more that more isn't being talked about. And specifically in a positive way. Hey, how can we deal with this challenge? How can we be successful? Not, oh, how does the fear feel to you? And, oh, it's the same for me. And, oh, now that leaf is moving again, we're definitely in the lee. But in a positive, constructive way, simply talking about the mental challenges.
One important stress factor, which you mentioned earlier, is basically the bad experiences you have. In flight, with whatever experiences you encounter. You yourself had a rescue landing once in 2017. And you were just at the beginning of a big project. You wanted to do Volbif, Hike and Fly, and stuff like that, crossing the entire Alps from France to Slovenia. And on day 5, you ended up coming down by rescue. How did this experience actually affect the rest of that Hike and Fly adventure, which you called BZ Alps, and you also wrote a blog about it—so you can read a lot more about it. But how did you integrate that at the time?
And how were you even able to continue after that? How did that work?
Certainly, a combination of many factors. The important thing is that something happened that I hadn't planned for, hadn't prepared for, and hadn't expected. And so, the adventure actually only really began at that point. I was confronted with a situation that truly overwhelmed me.
And now the question was, what should I do next? Maybe regarding the route. There was quite a bit of west wind in the French Alps and I reached the area of the Prealps. And every day I got closer to the limit. So there was a lot of wind, and there were even thunderstorms nearby at times. Around Briançon, in the French Southern Alps, things get pretty intense. And I just had the goal so strongly in my head: yeah, now you're putting in kilometers because the weather is still good. And I took more and more risks. And it always worked out. And instead of saying, okay, that was too much risk, now I'll take it easy again, I just kept pushing a little further. Which means
Risk? Start risks? Or did you just fly with more acceleration or into the lee more often because you thought that's where it would lift best? So what was the risk where you say you took on more?
Just flying at all in strong conditions and simply flying forward all the time. Sometimes also when I couldn't quite read the situation. And I underestimated a lee and then had two front collapses in a row. I messed up a bit on the second one and ended up 200 meters above the ground with two very large hang-ups. And at that point, the situation was clear: it's out of control. Pulled the Nordschirm. Unfortunately, it was a delayed opening. And I think this delayed opening, combined with looking down and seeing such rocky terrain, hurt me psychologically. Luckily, I landed very softly and at first I was incredibly frustrated. I was also embarrassed, and then the first thought was, hey, if you find the container now, then you can continue the project
continue without anyone noticing. And you don't have to give yourself away. Then I searched for this container like a man possessed for an hour and a half, but I didn't find it. And I hadn't planned for a reserve container in my packing list. I had a second phone, I had a lot of things redundant, but no second one. And then it was clear, okay, now you have to out yourself, because now you have to get to a second container. And that worked very quickly—it was already there by courier the next day—but psychologically, the whole thing...
incredibly demanding. As soon as I wanted to fly again, I was obviously full of adrenaline. I didn't want to split in the thermals; I'd rather just land again or just stay near the area in a ground handling style. I saw everywhere
Dangers. Or you can just imagine it, imagine a situation in the forest, it's dark, or as a child you have to go into the basement and you're just... it's like in a horror movie. You're fully in this fear reaction. It's not exactly healthy for flying. It's a huge mess, you just want to land and your inner images then revolve around the landing field or possible dangers. That was just very, very, very exhausting. I had to force myself a bit to keep going, to bite the bullet. What might have helped me would have been simple, pleasant weather where I could have gained good flying experience. But the altitude wind didn't get weaker and I just always knew when I was flying, okay, that's sporty. There's a north wind in the forest now or there's a strong southwest.
I also had many experiences where it became really too much and I had to land again. It was very counterproductive because the air was turbulent again. I was full of those stress hormones once more.
You were also out with a high-performance glider, so one that demands a lot from the pilot as well.
Absolutely, yes. You can't sleep, and if that glider has betrayed you once or, let's say, overwhelmed you, the trust just isn't there anymore. But I decided then, I'm just going to push through it. I even forced myself a bit, and somehow it worked. But it was incredibly exhausting, mentally.
From a psychological perspective, is it actually sensible to force yourself to push through in a situation like that? I mean, you probably have internal resistance and your body is screaming "No, I don't want to be up here in the air at all. I want to be on the ground," and so on. Is it still sensible because people say it's a coping strategy or that the body learns from it again? Or can forcing yourself to do something like that even be counterproductive, because maybe the aversion that builds up in the body becomes even stronger?
Looking back, what you said second is clearly the right call; you could actually call that a mistake. I just learned on every flight, okay, flying is scary. It gives me experiences that are outside of my control. I actually reinforced the whole thing.
Looking back, it might have helped—radically—to have just one or two sessions with a qualified mental coach, a qualified mental coach, or even a psychotherapist who is good with the topic of anxiety, with the topic of mini-traumas. Maybe it would have helped to radically change the glider. And maybe it would have also helped to simply redefine the goal completely. So, not Ljubljana anymore, but just enjoying the flying, the landscape, the people, and the volbif, without any pressure to perform. I can imagine the damage would have been a bit less. But you can only speculate about that.
Was the performance pressure for you, did that also come from the fact that you said, "I'm doing this as a major project"? I mean, I put it online too, you had the blog, and you wrote your daily reports there as BZAlps and stuff like that. You had also announced beforehand that it would be like that. So, that you'd say, "I have to deliver on this"? So, to whom did you feel committed?
That's a good question. To whom did I actually feel committed? Certainly to a certain level of public. I announced it and presented it on a large scale, of course. That increased the pressure to see it through.
Then I also had, how shall I put it, Advans supported me. I also had people in my family who generously gave me a budget
...put together. That was also like a pressure, like, now I want to make the most of this. And I actually just judged it day by day. Every day I felt, okay, I can do something. If it's possible to fly, I fly. If it's possible to run, I run. And then every evening you realize, I'm still moving forward. I'm getting closer to this goal. And that also helped me keep going. And then there was maybe a hidden script in the whole story. Now, with three years of distance, you can say that quite well. Since we're both back on good terms now. But there was actually a separation going on in the background, from a three-and-a-half-year relationship. And I knew that when I come home, that whole story is going to happen and I have to move out anyway.
That might have played a small role in the background as well. I mean, you're already out there, so you might as well stay out there. Because, although it's completely selfish thinking, it's actually cooler than going back home and dealing with the whole situation. That might be a small variable in the background that also played a part in me just pushing through. But you have to say, the chance to fly a month-long bivouac doesn't come around that quickly again if you're also working and doing other things in life. It also requires a lot of preparation. It requires the right mindset. And just letting that chance pass me by, that wasn't an option for me either.
While you were still out there, you did get a bit of help, didn't you? If I read it correctly, you did two hypnosis sessions with Karin Ganter or Katrin Ganter. In what form did that help you?
That was only after I got back. But of course, I was always in a bit of contact with Katrin during the project. An email here and there or a few WhatsApps. I'm sure there were some good words exchanged. But I knew when I got back, now I have to do something about this. Back in the acro days, I'd have setbacks or also glider releases while flying. But that never left as much damage as this situation here. It might also have to do with age, that you don't quite take it as well over time. And yeah, then we had four sessions within a year and a half. And that certainly made a good contribution. But I can't tell you now what part of the story contributed what.
Just combining all the variables together got a positive development going again.
So you managed to break out of this fear spiral, as I'd call it, when it comes to flying. What all did you do? You said you did this hypnosis session to maybe access certain subconscious states. What else did you do? You mentioned earlier that you can do quite a bit autodidactically. Did you try things like that too? And what was that, for example?
The most important thing for me was admitting that the starting conditions are different now, that I'm carrying a wound—a psychological wound—inside me, and that I can't just continue from where I was before. And that alone already helped in setting realistic goals again. Someone told me to stay close to the fun. Just look at where you have fun while flying; that's where your path to regeneration will lead. I then started keeping a diary, writing down before and after each flight day what I'm telling myself, what images I have, and what's going on inside me. And that helped me figure out which flights help me. For a while, that was a bit of thermals flying at the local mountain, with my swimming gear in the harness.
Because I knew that if the stress gets too high, you can go for a swim and just have a good day. So, always incorporate those relaxing moments. What also helped, for sure, was no longer being competition-oriented, no more XContest, not comparing myself too much to what everyone else could fly on that day. That helped. And just flying a lot. Flying, flying, flying, flying, but without overexerting yourself. Always stay in the zone that feels good.
And then, of course, all the classic mental techniques, breathing techniques, self-talk, talking to the glider. Also bringing up the good flight experiences again and visualizing them calmly—like, in which flights was I good, what are my talents, what are my strengths. That already helped. And really, really cool was a tool I learned from Yvonne Dathe, which is also widespread in sports psychology. It's the steering of attention. And you can either
scan everything out there, or you can focus on one detail outside, and you can do the same thing internally. You can perceive your whole body, scan around, or you can just feel the tip of your nose or just your ear in the wind. And when you switch between these fields of perception, there's a lot of power in that.
Let's say I'm flying in Valais and now I'm flying into that 6-7 meter tube, and that starts to trigger a bit of a stress reaction. Then my perception is somewhere in an internal image of a Nordschirm launch or whatever. But if I now say, okay, crosscheck, you're going to look at the 4,000-meter peaks, then the panorama, then you only look at the dam of a Grimsel reservoir, then you feel your body in the harness, how it's swaying, and then you only feel, you don't know, your right toe pressing against the leg bag. And then you do this cycle a few times and a lot of positive mental focus is released again.
That means,
You basically pull yourself out of that fear situation or that spiral of fear by giving your brain something else to focus on. Instead of the hippocampus just saying, "Oh, there's only this stress situation popping up," you're saying, "Yeah, I'm going to look a bit to the right, a bit to the left," and you're basically tricking your own brain—or at least that fear center of the brain—a little bit.
Yes, that can work if you start at just the right time and don't really fly into a state of total overwhelm. But it can also be that you're already completely overwhelmed, and in those cases, I'd fly off that 7-meter hose, and maybe the next one would be better. There were also times when I'd go for a landing because I realized, okay, it hasn't gotten any better after half an hour. I feel like I can't categorize or control this meteo situation, so I went for a landing. And then I analyzed the meteo situation and it was clear: it's much better to go for a landing. There was just too much altitude wind; it was too demanding for me.
Was that rescue landing and all the psychological and mental development you did afterwards also a trigger for you to start that further training in sports psychology and mental training and all that? Was that a catalyst for that?
Hard to say. It definitely helped, yeah. It was certainly a catalyst, but all these mental issues have actually been preoccupying me for as long as I can remember. That was always a topic, always somewhere in the background. Maybe there will be a deeper dive into psychology at some point. But since I was confronted with myself, with really getting the joy of flying back, yeah, I think that helped, it had a certain effect.
Now, regarding this emergency glider deployment, where the Hike-and-Fly adventure happens—is Hike-and-Fly somehow a particularly stressful undertaking from a psychological perspective?
No, I wouldn't say so. It depends on what kind of person with what prerequisites you put into which setting. If you take an absolute social butterfly who always chats with everyone at the launch site, and you send them to a launch site alone for the first time, with tall grass and weird crosswinds, I think the chance of stress is absolutely increased. But if you have another colleague who always goes to launch away from the crowds, then Hike-and-Fly is actually a prejudice and a calming technique. What's added to Hike-and-Fly is the endurance sport performance, and you have to see a bit what that does. If someone has stress in everyday life, in their job, family, whatever, then it's very good if they can first wind down from that with endurance sports.
That is to say, I would argue he's in a better state of performance to fly a paraglider. But if someone is poorly trained, or feels overwhelmed, or if something is wrong with their nutrition during the ascent, then they're obviously in a completely different starting position. I can observe this in myself: if I climb too fast and overexert myself, I feel uncomfortable in active air and I'm not ready to fight a rough thermal at the entrance. But if I go up the lift relaxed, I'm sometimes much more determined to stick with it.
That means it's also the influence of being physically exhausted by the time you get to the top. You have no reserves left to serve as a buffer zone, and you hit your psychological limit much faster because of it.
Yes, perception is of course also impaired when a person is exhausted. It's also important to mention another risk factor with hike and fly. Let's say you've climbed 1,500 meters and you have a launch site that only goes in one direction. Now the wind is wrong. What do you do now?
Either you have to descend 1500 meters again, you haven't flown, you're frustrated, and your muscles are sore the next day. Or you suddenly start reinterpreting it a bit. Yeah, it's not that bad, and a little bit of lee is fine, and I can still gain so much if I take off anyway. So this escalation of commitment, that's a danger that's always in your backpack when you do hike and fly. And you just have to know that. You give
at the flight school Chill Out Paragliding, where you work as a flight instructor in
leisure
...work, including introductory courses on Hike and Fly. To what extent is the mental side—the human factor—also addressed there?
Yes, if you come to one of my courses, you'll inevitably be confronted with it because right now, it's seeping through every pore; it's just pushing out everywhere.
But a quarter of the course is actually dedicated to the human factor. Or maybe a third. Those are the kinds of tours I offer. So there's a theory evening, and then there are also tours. At the beginning of these tours, you get a case study. I've collected 16 case studies from myself and other pilots. Basically, where there was a connection between human factors, maybe material factors, then the terrain, and also the meteorological situations. And then the participants can think about it, and in the evening there's a talk, a case study discussion. And that's one way that, for example, it gets across.
What are the most important mental tips you would have for aspiring hike-and-fly pilots?
From the known to the unknown and from small to large. So, an increase in small steps. That way, there are as few setbacks as possible.
Always ask yourself after the flight: did that have fun? Did I feel like I could control it? And do I want to do something like that again right away? If you have that feeling, then you're on the right track. So, if the balance between the difficulty of the flight mission and your own abilities was right, then it worked. If you constantly feel like, "Hey, it was pure luck that I didn't end up going home in the rescue helicopter," or if you already have that feeling in the morning before the tour—like, "Oh, I have a knot in my stomach, this is impossible"—then you should pay attention to that, take more time, and do simpler missions, meaning simpler flight tasks.
Conversely, you could say that if you've been going to the same mountain for 10 years and always taking off at 9 a.m., you might be under-challenged, it's boring, and you won't develop further as a pilot. So, every day, you have to reassess that balance—it's also called the flow model—to see if it's right.
Let's switch topics a bit towards the end. Before you started with this psychological side and began sweating it out in every pore, as you say, you also studied visual communication and worked as a graphic designer. Good graphic design often relies on working with a very clear, reduced visual language. To what extent does this approach of thinking in graphic images and reducing things to their essential content help you in your work as a flight instructor?
That is a very important resource.
I often make sketches for myself and frequently search the internet for simple images, simple graphics, to actually explain meteorological facts.
Yes, that helps absolutely.
Meteorology is also my thing, and I always love exploring the question of how to explain this complex topic of everything happening in the air in the simplest way possible to other pilots, so they can start developing their own picture of what's actually going on. A few years ago, I happened upon a simple graphic of yours about good cross-country flight weather and what ingredients are needed for it, and this graphic illustrates something you call the "Hex Formula." What is a Hex Formula?
So ultimately it's a hexagon, because I looked at various, just simple classic literature on thermals and cross-country flight weather and made a mind map out of it, and then I tried to condense that into spices, so relevant ingredients, and in the end, six things came together: sunny, which needs some kind of surface, a heating area; then humidity plays a role, so it should be rather dry, but not too dry; light winds and low pressure; and finally, there should also be a labile layering. You can imagine these six ingredients together like a witch mixing a potion, a bit of this, a bit of that—it's a very, very sensitive balance, but if they are all present and play together ideally, there's a good chance that longer flights in the Alpine region are possible.
You have six factors now
I'll repeat this again just so the people listening can visualize it a bit more clearly. So, there must be sun—I need solar radiation for anything to warm up at all. I need a corresponding heating surface on the ground that is well-oriented toward the sun so that the air actually gets warmed up. It should be dry, so that the heat from the sun can be converted into the air instead of just heating up the ground water. It should be lightly windy so there's little lee, and so on. It should be unstable, at least a little bit unstable, so that the air is even interested in rising, and then the high pressure shouldn't be too strong. Let's go back to the last one again: the high pressure shouldn't be too strong. Why is that so important?
So if the high pressure is too strong, you get this subsidence inversion; the air sinks in the high-pressure area and there's a condensation somewhere, and that's where you get an inversion. And if that's at 2,000 meters or 1,500 meters, then the instability criterion is no longer met.
I've also seen in the various literature on thermals that a surface pressure between 1015 and 1023 hectopascals often goes along with actually good cross-country flight weather conditions. If the high pressure isn't pronounced, then you usually just have way too much humidity, you have way too much cloud cover and
the air rises too quickly and then you get clouds and rain; you don't just get 12 hours of lightly cloudy skies, you get that instead.
Even more important is the image on the upper-air chart. Maybe in a version 2, you could replace the weak high-pressure system with the fact that you're in the wedge. From these isohypses—I've looked at 40, 50 "hammer" days—in the majority of cases, you're simply inside the wedge. So these isohypses are anticyclonic. And at that level, you can actually identify cross-country flight days very well and reliably 4 to 5 days in advance.
When you're doing your weather assessments, do you always go through that hex formula in your head and say, okay, I'm going to check all six factors now?
I don't think I go through it that systematically all the time. I usually look at the 500 hectopascal map, if a wedge appears, and then in the various chat groups and forums, people already get nervous or there are people asking who's going where and when they're flying, and then you notice there's already a bit of a basic unrest there. And then, of course, I look at the thermals models 1-2 days before, maybe Top Task or Meteo Parabond, and if it looks good there, I'll check the wind and the temp, and yeah, then I basically get ready.
You also say that if all these six factors are in the positive range, it's basically Hex - Alarm; you've mentioned that too. Do you still use that term?
Or has he already established himself in Switzerland because you introduced him there? Can
I can't judge, I don't know, but yeah, you could do a bit more "Hex-Alarm" again, exactly. But the idea behind this Hex is that people see it's not just a recipe where you have to go to this launch site, you have to launch at this time, and you have to fly there, and then you'll have a good flight; rather, it's always a very sensitive interplay. And one day it can look great, but then there's a shear zone or anabatic inversion somewhere, or not, and then it changes. So it also has a lot to do with the fact that you're always outside and always flying.
But I can imagine, it's also the illusion in the room that you're somehow protected from failure in cross-country flying with some simple trick, or a simple app, or a simple weather model, but it doesn't work like that, or I don't know how. But at least it says...
Let's look at the basics: if all these Hex factors are met and things still go wrong, it could very well just be down to me as a pilot. In your Hex alarm, these factors mean it should be light wind and as dry as possible. So, you shouldn't expect it to rain or have thunderstorms or anything like that at any point. Do such days—good Hex days—ultimately mean less stress during the flight? Can you expect that if you say the Hex conditions are met? Will I probably have fewer stressors myself then?
It depends on what stresses you out the most. If it stresses you out to only fly 250 kilometers, I can't take that stress away from you; in fact, it increases on a day like that because you know everyone else is going to fly extremely far too. But if it's about there being no Föhn conditions, no thunderstorms, and not constantly being hammered by an inversion, then yes, you definitely have less meteorological stress. But for a pilot who doesn't like flying thermals, they should probably go for a swim or do something else in the afternoon and fly in the morning. For that person, the Hex alarm is really also a thermal turbulence alarm, because things will be happening—even in the low-level wind field with the valley wind, it can get very strong.
When was the last day with a Hexalarm that you were able to really make the most of while cross-country flying?
I had a few very good days here in the Bernese Oberland region during the Corona lockdown when flying was allowed again, but the really conscious one—I think it was in July a year ago—I was able to fly for 8 hours straight, and that was a classic day where everything clicked. Unfortunately, there were some cirrus fields towards the end, which ended the flight in Eastern Switzerland, and I would have liked a little more humidity, as you already mentioned, or then the thermals are less eager at the beginning because, due to the humidity difference, you simply have larger lift fields. So I'll let him off the hook a bit there, you obviously know better, but my experience is that when it's very dry, it's not as much fun as when you maybe have 3 or 4 eighths of cloud cover.
If you were to plan something for the next Hex-Alarm day, or what big flight goal do you have in mind, just based on the data, where you say, "I'd really like to achieve that"?
I'd definitely like to fly more than 200 kilometers at some point.
That would be nice for me.
I'd love to do the big Valais triangle, or I'd also really like to fly the whole axis from Valais, Disentis, maybe all the way into Tyrol. That was the route I mostly had to do on foot during the Band Salbs three years ago. And I always thought, hey, you can just fly over that in one day. And I think it would be cool to just fly everything in one go from the air.
Now you just said you've already flown 199 kilometers and would like to fly 200. After that 199-kilometer flight, were you disappointed and thought, "shit, I was only 1 kilometer short," or how did you handle that?
I was very happy. I mean, on one hand, I was tired and the last two hours were just a bit of a struggle. So it wasn't really making any difference anymore and I just couldn't get across the Klausen Pass. Cables everywhere, you always had to check the map. I was very proud that it was even possible to fly for so long again, that I was completely in my element after an hour. No, it was a total success. And I also knew that I've reactivated my resources. If I go to the start regularly on good peak days now, it will happen automatically. But it's also cool if it's only 160 kilometers. It's just that the feeling I have after landing is what's decisive.
And why are goals with numbers still mentioned, like when you say you'd like to do a 200? Why is something like that actually so important for us paraglider pilots from a psychological perspective? Where you say, if it were just a little bit different, then you would have hit the 200. So sometimes these are complete factors of chance, or you could only glide off by a tiny bit. That has nothing to do with your skills as a pilot, saying "yeah, I was too stupid to hit the 200 there," but many things really do depend on the random weather factors of that day. Why are such limits sometimes so important for us flyers?
Because the whole thing becomes tangible and manageable. It's like a simple line and you have different numbers, so you can orient yourself, you can compare yourself—for example, I can compare myself to a year or two ago—and you can measure your progress extremely easily. I can imagine that's an appeal. But what about you? What do mileage figures mean to you when flying? Is it important or rather not?
Mileage figures are relatively unimportant to me. I'm not a huge cross-country pilot either. It might also have to do with the fact that I don't live in the Alps, where you can fly relatively simple, longer distances compared to here in the flatlands. But at the beginning of my career, I was much more focused on that and would say, "Now I've already done this much," and then 70, and then 90, or something like that. But actually, over time, I've moved more towards the idea that I also like to say sometimes in certain areas, "I'm just going to..."
contour flying or sightseeing, saying, I want to get over to that little church back there, flying. And where I would completely fly past the cross-country route in the side valley and just fly straight ahead just to rack up those kilometers to have that higher mileage at the end, I find it much more interesting sometimes to say, I'm doing this here
basically landscape sightseeing or flying or whatever, just to experience that feeling of free flight and to actually experience this freedom, and to use that freedom to free myself from this obsession with mileage. But that's also a development that only slowly established itself over the years of my flying career.
Yes, it's important to be aware of what goals you set for yourself and then look at the end of the day and see what that did for you. When I look at myself, which flights do I remember, which flights do I want to do again? Those are often such playful flights with top landings, just enjoying the terrain, observing nature, maybe flying with other eagles. Those aren't the kind of flight days where you feel like, okay, I should actually be on the speed bar all the time because I have to get something out of this day.
If you're an athlete who can pull out your maximum performance and you compare yourself in terms of kilometers, then that's good—that's the perfect motivation technique. But I dare to say that relatively many pilots have more fun with the sport if they approach it from the enjoyment or experience side. In the sense of, "Now I'm going to discover something" or "Now I'm going to do something I've never done before." Maybe they ultimately have more rewarding experiences.
Is there maybe not enough talk about something like that? I mean, people always say, "Yeah, I did 70, 90, 150, 240, or whatever kilometers." So these numbers are often used to show off, or things like, "I was at a 7-meter thermal" or "5 meters," always those kinds of numbers that are presented as some kind of performance. But we actually talk way too little about the soft factors, like "I had such a great experience doing..." and we mostly just keep that to ourselves and ultimately say, "Well, I don't have anything I can measurably compare with others." I can't say my flight was better than yours or anything like that, even though that's not actually what it's about. It's only about your own experience.
Yes, I agree with you there, and that's where we both, along with everyone else who thinks even slightly in that direction, are challenged—that we should talk about flights differently, or that when it comes to evaluating a flight, we should use other, softer criteria. The question is always: what was your most beautiful flight? When were you completely in your element? Why do you fly at all? And what gets mentioned then goes in the direction of the factors that motivate the pilot in the long term. So, if no one is watching you, you can't upload the flight anywhere, it's not a competition, so nobody's going to get that you had some great dance with a small cumulus cloud.
What motivates you then? Why do you go flying at all? If you know that and make peace with yourself, then I'd say the chances are good that you'll stay motivated in this sport over the long term. And you'll also have the strength to get through setbacks because you know how precious it is to be able to fly and to experience that sense of freedom.
If you were to imagine, last question, last answer, if you could imagine—I mean, you could wish for an ideal flight right now. What would that ideal flight look like? Whether it's a long distance or just the experience? So what would be the thing that makes you go, wow, I'd love to have that, if you were allowed to wish for a kind of flight from a good fairy?
I think that has to do with bivouac flying. I'd like to land somewhere on the night before, at a beautiful mountain lake, then spend a restful night there, watching the stars, then wait until the thermals are good and then fly about 100, 200 kilometers east and then land somewhere high up in time and actually set up the tent again. That would be wonderful, but it could also be that I land perfectly one or two times in between, maybe at a mountain guesthouse to eat and take a siesta. But it could also be in one go, I'd find that lovely.
Then I wish you a hex layout this year that you recognize as such, so that you can get on the flights early. You know, I can really take my tent, my glider, and everything else and you can fulfill exactly that. Benz, thank you for your great stories on this. I think some listeners can really take something away from this. I've learned a lot myself and can now think a bit more about my own coping strategies for certain stress situations. I thank you in any case for this story and have good flights.
Thanks, I enjoyed it, it was very interesting.
That was Benz Erb in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you want to learn more about the entire course of Benz's Volbif adventure BZ Alps, I recommend the associated website www.bzalps.ch www.bzalps.ch If you are interested in perhaps working with Benz on your mental strength as a pilot, you can find his corresponding offer on the website chilloutparagliding.com under the section "Weiterbildung mentale Stärke" (Mental Strength Training). I have put together these links and several more regarding the topics mentioned in this podcast episode, such as the thermal stress study and the Hex alarm, in the show notes for this podcast episode on the Lu-Glidz blog. As a science journalist, I also want to correct a small mistake of mine here.
In the conversation, I referred to the hippocampus as the brain structure responsible for fear and flight reactions. But that's not entirely correct. The amygdala is primarily involved in fear conditioning. However, both the hippocampus and the amygdala belong to the so-called limbic system, which plays a central role in processing emotions. That's also where what we commonly call "gut feeling" is rooted. So, if your gut feeling is telling you that this podcast is a good source of fuel for your passion for flying, then go get some more. You can find over 30 more episodes of Podz-Glidz on Soundcloud, Spotify, iTunes, and many other audio catalogs. You can also simply subscribe to Podz-Glidz in your podcatcher of choice. But also keep in mind that all these stories don't produce themselves.
I put a lot of time into this and I'm happy for everyone who supports my work as a patron. You can find all the necessary information for that on the Lu-Glidz website on the Support page. That's all for today. Now go fly again. But no stress. Ciao!