Prolonged channeling, exhaustion and endurance

[king of nowhere]

I've been wondering, channelers that channel for prolonged time get physically tired. Channelers that do physical exercice can channel less srtrongly until they have rested. So, do physical endurance help you channel longer, or channeling exhaustion has nothing to do with your muscles resistance? Will you be able to channel longer if you run marathons? On the other side of the approach, do repeated prolonged channeling increase your channeling endurance (could be done throught a circle, to avoid the risk of burning themselves that comes from channeling when exhausted)? Would it also increase your physical endurance?

 

I can totally see the aes sedai running around the white tower to build up stamina. may be one of that many things that are effective but weren't done because of tradition.

[Morsk he/him]

It would be so ironic if the new Traveling weaves make Aes Sedai lazier, and channeling endurance goes down, and they don't figure out the reason for centuries. Sort of like how capturing men was breeding channeling out of the population, and they didn't notice.

[Aethling he/him]

Mental exhaustion can come even when you have done nothing physical.

[happyman he/him]

Mental exhaustion can come even when you have done nothing physical.

 

Sadly true.  You can work (mentally) like a bear and still gain weight.

[king of nowhere]

I think channeling causes physical exaustion. the way it is described is not that of mental exhaustion. The scene that comes to my mind is that of aviendha and elayne escaping from the seanchan at ebou dar. The way they feel match how they would feel if they had run until they collapsed, not if they were mentally fatigued. Mental fatigue is totally different, at least the way I have always felt it.

So channeling appears to cause physical exhaustion. That is what makes me wonder if physical endurance is related to channeling longer. But I don't remember a single line in the books addressing the matter of channeling endurance. Maybe even sanderson don't know it, I don't think notes were left about it.

[Aethling he/him]

I have always felt it was mental fatigue

.

I can't remember any of the AS that were described as physically fit.  A goodly number were described as more stout.

If it were truly physical fatigue, Avi and her ilk would easily have an advantage over the AS, but that didn't appear to be the case.

Several of the Seachan damane are described as fairly heavy.  That both the Seachan and the AS did not lean toward physical fitness, after all the time they have had to experiment, leans heavily toward it being mental.

 

Probably the best examples of long-term channeling outside of the last battle were the Bowl of Winds and the Cleansing.  The reactions at either event did not seem to be physical exhaustion to me.  The battle at the manor house mad most of the channelers just standing around and slinging webs, yet they grow tired.  Elayne is never described as being physically active that I can remember, but she is extremely strong in the power.  That she is one of the last women standing at the end of the Bowl scene shows that she lasted longer than women who would have been much, much, much more physically fit than she was.  You can't really count AVI in this because she was extremely powerful AND extremely fit from her time as a maiden.  Nyn was a rural girl, but her job was more politics and healing, yet she was responsible for probably the longest and most powerful example of continuous channeling in the series.  True, she was wiped out at the end, but you also had AS at the event that were wiped out from far less.

 

It is stated several times that dream walkers don't feel as rested if they don't really sleep.  You can channel while asleep.  Channeling does not require any physical involvement, thought most are said to have some physical movement they learned while coming up.  The spell to do away with weariness appears to affect the mental aspect of it.  Multiple AS say it is dangerous because the body is still tiring out

 

If you channel too much for too long, you burn out.  That has nothing to do with physical exhaustion.

 

We could just have a diferent defintion of mental v physical exhaustion, though.

[king of nowhere]

From TPoD, chapter 6

"tired was no longer in it; her muscles were water". Referred to elayne, when she's battling the seanchan. Note that she didn't do anything physically tiring in that day. she marched a few hours, she stood while using the bowl of the wind. She didn't run around or anything.

That proves pretty well that channelers feel physical exhaustion when channeling. Mental fatigue don't weaken the muscles. At least, in all my university exams, in all my chess tournaments, I've never felt weak in the muscles, even if sometimes I had troubles focusing.

On the other hand, you rigthly point out that sevveral aes sedai aren't very fit, and it is never mentioned that they have problems channeling longer.

It may be because no one explored much on prolonged channeling, what with the risk of burning out; it may also be that the fatigue of channeling is independent on your physical fitness, even if it exhaust you physically. Maybe channeling costs you a fraction of yoru physical endurance, no matter how much that is.

[Aethling he/him]

I looked up that chapter.  That is  after she goes to the farm, spends considerable time channeling into the bowl, and she begins the chapter by running around up and down a hill having to hold her skirts.  It even states that Nyn had been running around since they got to the farm, that is the reason Elayne had to create the gateway, which she had to pull apart string by string.  For someone that is not used to that kind of activity, just the running around would be physically tiring.  That is also the chapter where she kept the gateway open long enough for all of the kinswomen and windfinders to leave the farm.  Two pages later, she states that using the angreal caused her to tire.  That is after barely being strong enough to open the gateway to begin with.

 

The previous chapter has Nyn stating, "I feel like a kitchen sieve that just had the whole mill poured through it" The paragraph also states, "Carrying tht much of the power had its cost even if you did nothing, even with an angreal." The previous paragraph has, "Letting go of saidar was bad enough; having it simply vanish out of you went beyond thinking about."

There is also a discussion a few pages before about how some of the Windfinders almost sicked up and passed out. They would be in

much better physical shape because of the nature of their jobs.

 

I will take the compromise of saying that channeling is primarily mentally fatiguing, but that you also physically fatigue through the activity required to channel.  You can tire physically just by sitting in a chair.  Now throw in mega mental fatigue caused by the channeling, and you have something formidable.

 

An example from my life would be taking my the Orals and Writtens for my MA.  Concentrating that hard for hours drains you mentally and physically, even though you don't do anything but sit and write or answer questions.  Still, it is more mentally fatiguing than anything.

[Shaidar]

There's a great post on this (with math) here.

 

Basically it seems that the main factor is strength. The stronger you are, the longer you can channel before you become exhausted.