Awareness and a Sense of Awe

By Jim Freeman

February 1, 2024

To find our way, we will need to pay more attention to this moment. It is the only time we have in which to live, grow, feel, and change. We will need to become more aware of and take precautions against the incredible pull of Scylla and Charybdis of past and future, and the dreamworld they offer us in place of our lives. - Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are

Scylla and Charybdis by Alessandro Allori 

The many benefits and methods of a formal meditation practice have been discussed here in the last three essays. However, when I suggest such a practice to those hoping to improve performance or calm the mind I'm often met with blank stares and a general lack of enthusiasm. I remember the first time I recommended meditation to a player. She stared at me as if I had six heads. When reading Dr. Richard Keefe's book On the Sweet Spot, I came across a passage where he described similar reactions from athletes that he worked with in his sport psychology practice. Many of them just didn't want to do it. Dr. Keefe noted that the advice to meditate struck a number of the athletes as weird and a bit too exotic.  He actually stopped using the word "meditate" and instead told them they were working on improving their ability to focus and concentrate by sitting, breathing or locking in on everyday activities. I've tried using that approach as well while looking for other ways to help improve mindfulness apart from proposing a formal meditation practice. I wasn't too sure that such an avenue truly existed but the fact that so many were unreceptive to the notion of adopting a formal meditation practice spurred me to keep up the search. 

The way to experience nowness is to realize that this very moment, this very point in your life, is always the occasion. - Chogyam Trungpa, Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Jake Eagle is a mental health counselor and Michael Amster is a physician and yoga and meditation instructor. In their book The Power of Awe they also discuss the difficulties they encounter in convincing a number of their clients to adopt a regular meditation practice, "However, we have observed that meditation requires an amount of time, dedication, and effort that effectively discourages far too many people from ever becoming proficient enough to fully experience its benefits. Simply put, meditation is a stumbling block for many people, especially those who can't find even 5 minutes for themselves in our busy world, let alone 30 minutes to meditate. For those who struggle with silencing their anxious minds - which ironically, can lead to cycles of negative self-talk as they 'fail' to meditate - meditation can become a stressful, rather than a calming experience." 

Surprisingly, Eagle and Amster discovered that many if not all of the benefits of a more prolonged meditation practice could be achieved by "micro-dosing mindfulness" for just seconds at a time. The process involves momentarily focusing attention on something you "value, appreciate or find amazing" and inhaling while appreciating that "cherished item." The final step is to "exhale and expand" which amplifies the experience. The authors found that carrying out such a practice three times a day, which amounts to less than a minute of time invested, was literally a "shortcut to transcendence" or awe. They define awe as "an emotional experience in which we sense being in the presence of something that transcends our normal perception of the world."

One of the conditions that helps us be free to enjoy what is there is our mindfulness. If our mindfulness is not there, then nothing will be there. We will not be aware of the beautiful sunshine, the fresh air, the stars, the moon, the people, the animals, and the trees...The practice of mindfulness helps us to free ourselves to enjoy what is there. - Thich Nhat Hanh, Going Home

Eagle's and Amster's A.W.E. Method stands for Attention, Wait, Exhale and Expand and is described as a "brief, informal mindfulness practice." The authors joined with Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkely and author of the book Awe, to conduct studies on the effectiveness of their methods. Their research showed that a regular A.W.E. practice reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety, loneliness, chronic pain, and stress and produced feelings of improved well-being that matched outcomes produced by more typical meditative practices. Eagle and Amster detail the experience in their book, "The A.W.E. Method quickly transports us into awe, an incredibly powerful emotion that produces wonderment and a heightened state of consciousness along with some remarkable changes in the mind and body that can improve health and wellness." Most helpful is the fact that these results were experienced in everyday settings while paying attention to everyday items or circumstances and did not require being transported to Hawaii or the Grand Canyon to elicit them.

Keltner expands on this in Awe, "Why would I recommend you find happiness in an emotion so fleeting and evanescent? A feeling so elusive that it resists simple description? That requires the unexpected, and moves us toward mystery and the unknown rather than what is certain and easy? Because we can find awe anywhere...Our research suggests that just a couple of minutes a day will do. Because we have a basic need for awe wired into our brains and bodies, finding awe is easy if we just take a moment and wonder...Because brief moments of awe are as good for your mind and body as anything you might do."

We often think that practicing mindfulness has to involve formal activities such as meditation or prayer, but anything we do is an invitation to be present and available. As we open to what's before us, our everyday actions become spiritual practices. - Seth J. Gillihan, Mindful Cognitive Behavior Therapy

In a recent episode of his Finding Mastery podcast, Dr. Michael Gervais discussed a competition he engages in with some of his friends with regard to who can experience the most awe moments on a daily basis. He described his experience of awe thusly, "it happens in moments that are already unfolding but I'm bringing myself into that moment in a way that allows for the magnificent of that moment to be present in my body." His guest was author and endurance athlete, Rich Roll who commented that such a competition was the most "Gervais thing" ever. 

An increased ability to be awed...to be moved...to experience the full impact of the present, ensures that our days will not slip past us barely noticed. If we are able to participate in an activity on a moment-by-moment basis, we will get the most out of whatever it is we're doing whether it's a musical performance or a conversation with a friend. Jason Silva speaks passionately on this subject in his Shots of Awe YouTube series, "I think a lot about the contrast between banality and wonder. Between disengagement and radiant ecstasy. Between being unaffected by the here and now and being absolutely ravished emotionally by it. And I think one of the problems for human beings is mental habits. Once we create a comfort zone, we rarely step outside of that comfort zone." 

Awe is not to be found apart from heightened degrees of awareness. Indeed, an escalation of our awareness is the whole point. It lifts us out of the comfortable state of mindlessness in which we spend so much of our time. Dr. Daniel Siegel echoes the sentiment in his book Aware, "When we learn to cultivate our capacity for being aware, the quality of our life and the strength of our mind are enhanced." Rick Rubin posits a similar notion in A Creative Act: A Way of Being, "The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe." By expanding the universe we're open to moments of awe which reduces the relative size of our self in the process. That diminution can lend perspective and shrink the size of our perceived problems. Michael Pollan writes in How to Change Your Mind, "An experience of awe appears to be an excellent antidote for egotism."

When unawareness dominates the mind, all our decisions and actions are affected by it. Unawareness can keep us from being in touch with our own body, its signals and messages. This in turn can create many physical problems for us, problems we don't even know we are generating ourselves. And living in a chronic state of unawareness can cause us to miss much of what is beautiful and meaningful in our lives - and, as a consequence, be significantly less happy than we might be otherwise. - Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living

Dr. Ellen Langer has been a faculty member in Harvard's psychology department since 1977 and has spent decades conducting research on mindfulness as it relates to health, personal relationships, education and business.  Her influential work includes the "Counterclockwise" study conducted in 1979 that saw elderly men live in a retrofitted retreat center for a week as though it was 1959. After just five days living as their younger selves, the men showed measurable improvements in hearing, eyesight, memory, grip strength and they even looked younger. Dr. Langer's work has repeatedly shown how increased awareness and attention paid to our circumstances can change our perceptions and have a radical restorative effect on health and well-being. The wrinkle in her work on mindfulness is that it does not involve any sort of meditation practice. She has joked in numerous interviews that most of her friends couldn't sit still for five minutes let alone engage in a meditative exercise for 20-30 minutes on a regular basis.

A foundational aspect of Langer's work is the belief that our minds and bodies are not separate entities. She writes in her book Counterclockwise, "I began to realize that ideas about mind/body dualism were just that, ideas, and a different, non-dualist view of the mind and the body could be more useful. If we put the mind and the body back together again, then wherever we put the mind, we also put the body. If the mind is in a truly healthy place, the body would be as well - and so we could change our physical health by changing our minds." Dr. Joan Borysenko, an author and formerly an instructor at the Harvard School of Medicine, echoes Langer's ideas concerning the mind-body connection in her book, Minding the Body, Mending the Mind, "Through a web of subtle interconnections involving nerve pathways, neurohormones secreted by the brain, and hormones like cortisol and adrenaline secreted by the adrenal glands, attitudes can affect every cell in the body. For better and for worse." These ideas speak to the importance of being more aware of our thoughts and how they profoundly affect our health, well-being, performances, and relationships.

It takes no more time to be mindful than mindless, and mindfulness is the way that you will taste freedom. Commit to doing one activity mindfully for the next month, in addition to the other daily practices. - Joan Borysenko, Pocketful of Miracles

The mind and body have been treated as one unit in a wide variety of curative approaches throughout human history. However, in Western societies over the last 300 years the two entities were generally separated when prescribing medical and psychological treatment. While many advancements in health care occurred during this time, the importance of the emotional and spiritual aspects of physical healing was de-emphasized. The last century slowly featured a return to seriously considering the value of working with patients from a mind-body unity perspective in Western medical communities. The Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital has incorporated these ideas into their work since 2006. Dr. Herbert Benson is the founder of the Institute and his valuable and influential work regarding stress, health, the mind-body connection, and the Relaxation Response has been discussed here in previous essays. 

The concepts surrounding mind-body unity and its relationship to physical health merit serious consideration. Its relationship to performance and mental health issues requires similar reflection. Thomas Sterner is the founder and CEO of The Practicing Mind Institute and he notes in his book It's Just a Thought, "You cannot change any behavior, any response or reaction, if you are not aware you are doing it...If you are not aware of the thoughts your mind is producing, then your mind is operating without your permission. You can't change the programming that is running if you are totally immersed in the experience of the programs. If you do not have awareness and at least some level of control over what your mind is doing, then you have no real power in your life." Sterner's assessment describes the kind of mindlessness that Ellen Langer addresses with her suggestion that we try to be more mindful on a regular basis. She writes in On Becoming an Artist, "How is it we don't realize that we've slipped into a particular mindset, that we're mindlessly accepting and holding on to information? We don't notice precisely because we are 'not there' to notice - to notice, we would need to be mindful."

It's very rare for human beings to be in the present moment: we're either daydreaming, listening to our internal dialogue or on autopilot. - Jayne Storey, Breathe Golf 

In a 2014 interview published in the Harvard Business Review, Langer defines mindfulness as "the process of actively noticing new things. When you do that, it puts you in the present. It makes you more sensitive to context and perspective. It's the essence of engagement. And it's energy-begetting, not energy-consuming. The mistake most people make is to assume it's stressful and exhausting - all this thinking. But what's stressful is all the mindless negative evaluations we make and the worry that we'll find problems and not be able to solve them." In order to become more mindful, Langer suggests trying to notice five new things about your spouse when you get home from work or five new objects on your walk around the neighborhood. She goes on to describe the importance of a mindful approach to finding success in our professional endeavors as well, "No matter what you're doing - eating a sandwich, doing an interview, working on some gizmo, writing a report - you're doing it mindfully or mindlessly. When it's the former, it leaves an imprint on what you do. At the very highest levels of any field - Fortune 50 CEOs, the most impressive artists and musicians, the top athletes, the best teachers and mechanics - you'll find mindful people, because that's the only way to get there."

Most of us think of our mental states and most of what goes on in our minds as things that happen outside of our control. But the truth is you can control your mental activities and your behaviors to a degree you never believed possible before. - Tony Robbins, Unlimited Power

Being mindful comes down to how consistently we pay attention to what we're doing and how aware we are of our thoughts and the way they impact our emotions and our actions. The more we can practice paying attention to what's going on around us, the better we get at paying attention. Greater levels of awareness regarding our thoughts gives us a chance to corral them, to make them work for us instead of against us. Seth Gillihan explains in Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, "The key to challenging our false beliefs is to notice them. Thinking more effective thoughts starts with awareness as we realize what the mind is up to." The more we're aware of our thoughts, the better we get at choosing more productive lines of thinking.  It's impossible to make those choices if we're routinely unaware of what we're thinking. If we're unable to make those choices with any kind of regularity, then we have no chance of consistently performing to our capabilities or effectively dealing with mental health concerns such as anxiety and stress.

The reward for attention is always healing...More than anything else, attention is an act of connection. - Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

We've shown that being more aware of our thoughts and our surroundings can be accomplished without the adoption of a prolonged meditation practice. We just need to pay more attention to what we are doing even if it's something as commonplace as going for a walk or preparing a meal. Music producer Rick Rubin expounds on this idea in The Creative Act: A Way of Being, "The gift of awareness allows us to notice what's going on around and inside ourselves in the present moment. And to do so without attachment or involvement...Reading, in addition to listening, eating, and most physical activities, can be experienced like driving: we can participate either on autopilot or with focused attention. So often we sleepwalk through our lives. Consider how different your experience of the world might be if you engaged in every activity with the attention you might give to landing a plane."

The process of becoming more mindful allows us to direct our attention with purpose. Michael Gervais states in The First Rule of Mastery, "Our real power lies in being able to choose where to place our attention and having the mental skills to do so." The ability to regularly focus our attention is a fundamental facet of choosing productive thoughts that align with our values and lead to greater levels of achievement. In 1890, William James wrote in The Principles of Psychology, "The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgement, character, and will." Conversely, if we spend our days being mindlessly reactive, we have little chance to live the kind of life we desire, the kind of life that is reflective of our character and what we believe to be meaningful. 

Having an awakened mind means using the mental processes of attention, awareness and intention to activate new states of mind that, with repeated practice, can become intentionally sculpted traits in a person's life. - Daniel Siegel, M.D., Aware

From a performance standpoint, the ability to direct our attention allows us to remove judgement from what we're doing which then accords us the opportunity to execute to the best of our abilities in that moment. In his Inner Game books, Timothy Gallwey talks extensively on the importance of purging judgement from our performances in order to give us a chance to produce optimal results, "We both learn and perform at our peak levels only when the mind is alive, alert, curious and enjoying itself."(Inner Tennis) It's impossible to be curious and enjoy ourselves while automatically and mindlessly criticizing our performance.  Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross comment on the relationship between attention and curiosity in Your Brain on Art, "Attention is essential for sparking curiosity. Attention is how the brain neurologically controls and directs consciousness...When you pay attention to a thought, emotion, or perception, your brain activity increases. Your conscious life effectively becomes what you pay attention to. And curiosity is an emotional state you can strengthen with practice." Paying more attention more often grants us more openings to choose thoughts that will help us enjoy what we're doing and facilitate the level of performance we seek.

Your mind will create thoughts with or without your permission. It can be your master or your servant. Awareness offers you the opportunity to make that choice. - Thomas Sterner, Fully Engaged

None of this is meant to diminish the importance or impact of a more traditional approach to meditative practices. It is intended to offer alternative paths to mindfulness to those who have little or no desire to engage in those practices.  An increased awareness of our thoughts and surroundings can begin immediately. Experiencing feelings of awe can occur in the next few seconds. It doesn't require a special room or a sacred place. It doesn't need us to section off a large block of time. The process can begin in the next moment...right now...by becoming immersed in something as simple as the holding of a child's hand or tuning in to the gurgling of a nearby creek. Rick Rubin reflects on this fact in The Creative Act, "Broadening our practice of awareness is a choice we can make at any moment. It is not a search, though it is stoked by a curiosity or hunger. A hunger to see beautiful things, hear beautiful sounds, feel deeper sensations. To learn, and to be fascinated and surprised on a continual basis." Ellen Langer elaborates on the never-ending choice we make between mindlessness and mindfulness in the 2014 interview mentioned above, "Life consists only of moments, nothing more than that. So if you make the moment matter, it all matters. You can be mindful, you can be mindless. You can win, you can lose. The worst case is to be mindless and lose. So when you're doing anything, be mindful, notice new things, make it meaningful to you, and you'll prosper."

There is always something new to notice. - Ellen J. Langer, Mindfulness

The world is constantly changing, so no matter how often we practice paying attention, there will always be something new to notice. It's up to us to find it. - Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Recommended Reading

The Power of Awe by Jake Eagle and Michael Amster

The First Rule of Mastery by Michael Gervais

Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy by Seth J. Gillihan

Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner

The Mindful Body by Ellen J. Langer

Counterclockwise by Ellen J. Langer

On Becoming an Artist by Ellen J. Langer

Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

Recommended Podcasts

Finding Mastery with Michael Gervais

ReThinking with Adam Grant

Huberman Lab with Andrew Huberman

Way of Champions Podcast with Jerry Lynch and John O'Sullivan

High Performance Mindset with Cindra Kamphoff

The Steven Pressfield Podcast

The Gabby Reece Show

The Rich Roll Podcast

Max Out Mindset with Larry Widman

Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson

The Relaxation Response

By Jim Freeman

January 6, 2023

Research has shown that slowing down and deepening our breath shifts us from the stress response to the relaxation response; this slows the heart, normalizes blood pressure, increases blood flow to the digestive system, deepens sleep, increases energy, focus, concentration, and memory - optimal breathing not only helps prevent or cure diseases, it raises performance levels in school and sports. - Jim Loehr and Jeffrey Migdow, Breathe In, Breathe Out

The way is in training. - Miyamoto Musashi, Book of Five Rings

In the 1970's, Dr. Herbert Benson, a professor at the Harvard Medical School, identified the relaxation response as the body's opposite reaction to the stress response. The stress response features heightened levels of anxiety and adrenaline along with increased muscle tension, blood pressure and heart rate. Eliciting the relaxation response has been shown to feature lowered heart rate and blood pressure while brain wave activity mirrors that found in the zone or flow state which results in fluid and "effortless" movement. That material has been covered extensively in the previous two essays on this site. Since Dr. Benson's best-selling book, The Relaxation Response was published in 1975, many sports psychologists and performance coaches have introduced mindfulness and breathwork to their clients in the worlds of entertainment, business, sports and the military. Over the last 40 years, Dr. Benson and his team have researched and discussed how the harmful affects of stress and anxiety may be ameliorated through meditation programs and other relaxation response exercises. They have also conveyed how such exercises can benefit those seeking improved performance levels in their  respective undertakings. 

There are any number of ways to engage in this practice but Dr. Benson and his associates have used the ensuing approach to trigger the relaxation response at the Harvard Medical School for decades. The following is adapted from his book, Relaxation Revolution as well as Jayne Storey's books Breathe Golf and Connected Golf.

Step 1: Choose a focus word, phrase, image or short prayer for your relaxation session. You can also elect to place your attention on your breathing.

The word or phrase you choose (like "one" or "peace") should produce a neutral or positive feeling. Focus on that word during the exhalation phase throughout the practice. You can also pick a word, phrase or prayer that is soothing and aligns with your personal belief system or world view. For example, a Christian might select "Christ have mercy" or a Muslim may choose "In sha'Allah".

From a performance standpoint, breath awareness is crucial to being able to elicit the relaxation response. Greater breath awareness will only occur through consistent training and focus on the breath. This will allow for the use of the slow, deep breath to quiet the mind and control biochemistry in any activity that produces heightened levels of anxiety, stress and nervousness. 

Finding time each day to practice paying attention to your breathing is the only way to become conscious of this automatic process - and it's only by making it conscious that you can harness it for your game. - Jayne Storey, Breathe Golf

Step 2: Find a quiet place and sit calmly in a comfortable and upright position. It can be in a chair or on the floor. You can rest your hands on your thighs, or lay your left hand in the palm of your right hand at your abdomen, or have your hands form a circle at your abdomen. Placing your hands at the waist will keep you minfdul of breathing from your abdomen as opposed to breathing from your chest.

Step 3: Close your eyes. You may also choose to keep your eyes open using a broad, gentle gaze as opposed to a focused stare.

Step 4: Empty your chest and progressively relax all your muscles, beginning with your toes and feet and moving up through your body, shoulders, and face. This will take a couple of minutes.

Step 5: Breathe slowly and naturally through your nose and focus breath awareness on your abdomen (from your hara or tanden, a couple of inches below your navel). Don't force it, just envision it. You will feel your abdomen expand as you inhale. As you exhale, silently repeat your focus word, phrase or prayer. Or concentrate on your breathing rhythm if you have chosen to think about your breath. For example, you may want to think "in" and "out" or "inhale" and "exhale". You can also choose to sit quietly and be aware of your breath without repeating any breath-related phrases like those mentioned above.

Where you breathe from is vital too; shallow breathing (from the chest)...serves to initiate the stress response, causing feelings of anxiety and promoting tension in the body. Long, slow, deep breaths (from the hara) encourage the opposite of this, engage the relaxation response and with it the alpha state or Zen-mind, which is essential for effortless shot-making. - Jayne Storey, Breathe Golf

Step 6: Assume a passive or neutral attitude during the session. That means no worrying about whether you're doing it right. Invariably, your mind will drift and other thoughts will come into your head. When that occurs gently direct your attention back to your breath, focus word, phrase or prayer. This will increase your ability to focus and then refocus. You can return to your breath anytime during the day when you're feeling anxious or stressed. Simply, pause and take a couple of slow, deep breaths through your nose to calm yourself.

Yet if you pause and take a moment to breathe, the link between the mind and the body can be quickly re-established. - Jayne Storey, Breathe Golf

Step 7: Continue with the exercise for 12-15 minutes. Don't apply judgement to this step (or any of the other steps). If you feel finished, it's ok to stop...even if it's only been 10 minutes. This activity should not be viewed as yet another thing to stress about. You can also choose to stretch the session out to 20 or 30 minutes. Eventually, you may wish to perform your practice when tired or hungry or when other people are around. This is a way to train your ability to remain neutral and in control during stressful or pressurized situations.

The deep, controlled breathing process coupled with positive attention control and imagery will enable you to override any destructive thoughts or emotions sneaking in...As you practice, you'll find stress dissipating in the face of improved, clarity, focus, and resilience. - Mark Divine, The Way of the SEAL

Step 8: Perform your practice at least once daily, preferably in the morning prior to breakfast and then in the early afternoon or evening before dinner. If a day or session is missed, do not overreact and tune yourself up over it. There is no winning or losing at meditation, just pick it up the next time. Attempt to be aware of your breath as often as possible throughout the day. The more you perform your practice the easier it will be to access your breath during times of nervousness or stress.

Avoid using an app for these sessions. You want to be the one doing the work and not relying on someone else to do it for you. If you are concerned about going too long or falling asleep (it happens), then set an alarm for 30 minutes. That should give you plenty of time to move smoothly out of your meditative state at the end of the session. When you're finished take a few minutes to image or visualize accomplishing a goal or improving a skill then open your eyes. See yourself breathing slowly and deeply throughout the day. This can also be done while going for a walk or standing in line at the grocery store. The result will be an increased ability to bring about the relaxation response, to be able to stay in the present moment and to more consistently be at one's best.

"Make everything quiet inside." - GI Gurdjieff

Breathe, You Are Alive!

Breathing is a means of awakening and maintaining full attention in order to look carefully, long, and deeply, see the nature of all things, and arrive at liberation. - Thich Nhat Hanh, Breathe, You Are Alive!

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few. - Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

By Jim Freeman

December 14, 2022

Thich Nhat Hanh

The previous chapter in this series discussed the practice and benefits of meditation. Initially, I had planned to discuss meditation and the breath in the same article because the two subjects are so intertwined. However, I quickly realized that would make for an extremely long post. Thus, I will further explore these matters with a focus on the breath and its place in the practice of mindfulness as I continue to pursue ways to improve health and performance. The personal health benefits of  breath-based meditation are significant and were touched on in the last article. For further information on the impact that meditation can have on one's personal health, I strongly recommend Herbert Benson's books, The Relaxation Response, Beyond the Relaxation Response, Your Maximum Mind, Timeless Healing, and The Relaxation Revolution. Benson was a doctor at Harvard Medical School and spent over 40 years researching and teaching the importance of including a mind body approach to medicine.

During this series on mindset I have covered a range of topics including self-talk, negativity, imaging, and perception. The previously discussed areas are, of course, extremely impactful but after decades of studying ways to better performance, I have come to agree with those who believe a breath-based meditation practice should play a fundamental role in any training plan that seeks to help those hoping to consistently perform to their potential, particularly when anxious, under pressure or during times of elevated stress levels. 

Those who do not know the power of rigorous and protracted meditation cannot judge of the self-conquests it makes possible. - Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

Emphasis has been placed on the breath during meditation and prayer for centuries and across a wide variety of cultures and disciplines. Nicephorus the Solitary instructs in the Philokalia (Christian monastic texts that date between the 4th and the 15th centuries), "And so, having collected your mind within you, lead it into the channel of breathing through which air reaches the heart and, together with this inhaled air, force your mind to descend into the heart and to remain there...when your mind becomes firmly established in the heart, it must not remain there silent and idle, but it should constantly repeat the prayer 'Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me!' and never cease." Abraham Abulafia, a thirteenth century mystic, taught a system of meditative practices that included syncing one's body and breath while repeating the Hebrew letters that formed the name of God. Omid Safi, a professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, wrote in a 2017 article in On Being, "This starts with a mindfulness, with an awareness of the breath. When we monitor our breath, simply observe the breath enter into the heart, and emerge from the heart, our breathing slows down. The heart rate slows down. Here is where we become whole: our body, our breath, our spirit becomes One." 

If you want conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath. - Amit Ray

In Buddhism there is an entire Sutra (or discourse) on the Full Awareness of Breathing, also known as the Anapanasati Sutta, where the Buddha "shows us how to transform our fear, despair, anger and craving." (Thich Nhat Hanh, Breathe, You Are Alive!) There are sixteen exercises in the full discourse including: "Breathing in, I calm my whole body, Breathing out, I calm my whole body." (#4) and "Breathing in, I calm my mental formations. Breathing out, I calm my mental formations. (#8) This sutra contains the basic meditative instructions of the Buddha and is a fundamental plank of Buddhist teaching. Thich Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967. In his commentary on the Anapanasati Sutta (Breath, You Are Alive!) he asserts, "We can begin to enter the present moment by becoming aware of our breath. Breathing in and breathing out, we know we are breathing in and breathing out, and we can smile to affirm that we are in control of ourselves...Full awareness of our Breathing helps our mind stop wandering in confused, never ending thoughts."

Regulate the breathing, and thereby control the mind. - B. K. S. Iyneger

Dr. Larry Widman in his excellent book, Max Out Mindset notes, "One of the great separators between average and elite performers is the ability to stay in the present moment...one definition of mindfulness is simply the ability to spend a prolonged period of time in the present moment." This lines up neatly with thoughts voiced by the Buddha thousands of years ago, "Don't get caught in the past, because the past is gone. Don't get upset about the future, because the future is not yet here. There is only one moment for you to be alive, and that is the present moment." I remember years ago hearing Mike Schall (currently Head Volleyball Coach at UNC-Chapel Hill) in the gym regularly inspiring players to stay present, to "keep your head where your feet are." As Thich Nhat Hanh said above, "We can begin to enter the present moment by becoming aware of our breath."

Staying present is often discussed and  encouraged but doing so on a consistent basis can be extremely difficult. Performance and Movement Coach Jayne Storey writes in her essential book, Breathe Golf that psychologists "have estimated that the experience of being present ('Me, Here, Now') lasts approximately 12 seconds." She has since stated in numerous podcast interviews that the 12-second figure has now dropped to roughly 8 seconds. Adding to this conundrum is the fact that the physical and the psychological aspects of performance are typically addressed separately, often by different coaches or instructors. At times there may be some bleeding over from one area to the other but generally speaking, the two realms are distinct in how and when they are trained. This only adds to the difficulty of consistently connecting mind and body. Breath awareness is a tool that has been used for thousands of years in the East to get the head and the feet in the same place. That approach has been gaining traction in the West for the last several decades.

Breath remains the vehicle to unite body and mind and to open the gate to wisdom. - Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Felicity Heathcote was the official psychologist to the Olympic Council of Ireland and worked with the Irish Olympic team at Barcelona in 1992. That was the first time a pyscholgist had been allowed to travel with the Irish team and not all were convinced that her ideas on Zen and its application to sport could be helpful. However, many of those who did work with Heathcote produced some of the best performances of their careers. Heathcote spent a number of years in Tokyo developing her program and her outstanding book Peak Performance: Zen and the Sporting Zone is one of the byproducts of that experience. There she states, "Breathing deeply and naturally in an unstrained way and learning to sit in stillness lead eventually to an ability to maintain a state of one-pointedness, a harmony between body and mind." Forging that harmony between body and mind is the way we remain in the present instead of having our monkey minds be miles away from our bodies while we ruminate on past struggles or future worries and outcomes.

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as a means to take hold of your mind again. - Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

In his "Inner Game" books, Tim Gallwey divides the mind into two parts: Self One is controlling, judgemental and self-conscious; Self Two is just the opposite: unconscious and non-judgemental. Self One features plenty of beta wave activity and is the part of the mind that needs to be quieted during performance so that Self Two can produce smooth, "effortless" movements that reflect increased alpha wave activity and appear to flow as a result. Jayne Storey describes the problem in Breathe Golf, "The more the mind tries to take control of and organize movements, the more tension arises in the body and the less fluid and accurate your motion." The key here is having a quiet mind that is free from any thought or judgement; a mind that is in a state of relaxed concentration where nothing is forced. That includes aspects of our mental game. A constant barrage of positive self-talk, technical thoughts and focus during performance will not produce the desired state of mind nor the hoped for results. That barrage will only create anxiety and tension, activate the stress response and prevent our heads from being where our feet are. Author and Performance Coach Trevor Moawad expressed in an interview with Olympic sprint champion, Michael Johnson that positive self-talk during competition can sometimes give the performer one more thing to fail at, one more thing to be distracted by, one more thing to be anxious about. Gallwey says that we can fall into a trap that finds us chasing positive feedback and as a result, we're back to letting Self One call the shots. Any time Self One gains control there is effectively a split in the mind-body connection and movement becomes stilted and tense. Once the pre-frontal cortex has been engaged, the signals being sent out to the motor-learning system are scrambled. As a result, movement ceases to be smooth and fluid. Storey presents the antidote in Breathe Golf, "By getting out of your own way, focusing on your breathing and quietening the mind, the brain-body connection can take charge of complex motion, your fast-twitch muscles fire in the right sequence and fluid motion emerges from a calmer, more collected internal state."

Breathing has evolved as a very important feature of the Relaxation Response, I believe, because it gives an anchor point within yourself to which you can attach your chosen word, sound, prayer, or phrase to break the train of everyday thinking. - Herbert Benson, author of The Relaxation Response, in a 2019 interview with Brain World 

Having an understanding of the correct way to breathe in order to produce the desired results is crucial. I regularly hear spectators and coaches instructing players to "Breathe!" However, I believe that further directives on the matter may be necessary. A shallow chest breath (typically through the mouth) will do nothing to calm our minds and bring head and feet together. In fact, that sort of shallow breathing will do the opposite...it will induce a stress response that features an increase in beta wave activity in the brain. That increase will see heightened tension, adrenaline and anxiety levels and set the monkey mind racing.  Jim Loehr and Jeffrey Migdon explore these concerns in their informative book Breathe In, Breathe Out, "Research repeatedly reveals that mental calm and quiet are associated with best performance, physical and mental. A calm mind correlates with a low-range alpha brain-wave frequency. It has been shown that slow deep breathing can shift the person from hectic beta waves to calm, focused alpha waves." 

When we practice zazen our mind always follows our breathing. - Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

The slow, deep breath through the nose and from the abdomen is what is taught and promoted by instructors of mindfulness regardless of their culture or discipline. In his landmark book, Zen Training  Katsuki Sekida states, "Even those who have not practiced zazen (seated meditation) know that it is possible to control the mind by manipulating the breathing. Quiet breathing brings about a quiet state of mind. If, when you feel like shouting with rage, you keep your breath bated and make yourself quiet, you will find you can control your anger...In zazen, we breathe almost entirely by means of our abdominal muscles and diaphragm." In her ebook, The PRACTICE of High-Performance, Jayne Storey elaborates, "For most people...the breathing pattern tends to be fairly quick and short using only the top part of the lungs." Instead breathing should take place "from the lower abdomen, specifically the centre of gravity, known as the hara in yoga and Zazen or the t'an tien in the Chinese internal martial arts....the lower t'an tien or hara centre is considered as the 'second brain', the source of life, and the initiation point of movement." Felicity Heathcote describes it similarly in her book Peak Performance, "The seat of energy is the hara, the lower abdominal area (approximately two inches below the navel). Where the body feels strong and stable, in harmony with itself and free from distracting thoughts that intuitively one is ready for action. An important concept here is mushin - no mind, where thoughts come and go but no thoughts cling, like a mirror reflecting and letting go..."  

The body performs better when the athlete lets it go than when he tries to drive it. - Bruce Lee, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Some, but certainly not all, sports pyschologists suggest that purposely accessing "the zone" is nearly impossible and should not be considered or even attempted. In her equally essential book Connected Golf, Jayne Storey explains how the zone or flow state can be allowed to occur instead of being blocked,  "The meditative state, so akin to the sporting zone and flow, is encouraged by observing the breath. As the breathing deepens and slows down, analytical thinking, anxiety and nervous tension are reduced. In a performance situation, the applied meditative state helps movement to flow freely." The flow state can be accessed with the kind of training that improves one's breath awareness throughout the day. In a podcast interview, Storey comments that there is no way a samurai warrior was ever busy filling his mind with positive chatter and technical instructions before engaging in combat. Miyamoto Musashi, one of history's greatest samurai warrriors, writes in his enormously influential The Book of Five Rings,  "Regarding the setting of the mind: without weakening, becoming entangled, trying to figure things out, or fearing, make the heart full of intent and the mind broad and like water. According to the situation, the mind (like water) is one that adapts to things. Water has a deep blue color. There are single drops. There are vast oceans. This should be investigated deeply."As a sidenote, I'll add that it is impossible to get into a flow state while receiving constant technical feedback and instruction just before and during a performance. That kind of instruction is generally best left for the practice field and should be limited during competition. Even during training or practice the athlete should be given plenty of time and space to learn and work things out on their own. This also should be investigated deeply.

The key to emotional control is breath control. - Jim Loehr and Jeffrey Migdow, Breathe in Breathe Out

Mark Divine, a former Navy SEAL Commander and current author, podcaster and entrepreneur, has studied Zen meditation and Eastern philosophy for decades. In his book, The Way of the SEAL, he discusses how impactful a regular breathing practice can be, "Before you can take control of your mind, you must first calm it down.The fastest way to calm your mind, along with your body, is through slow and controlled deep breathing...This settling practice helps reduce mental chatter, prevents your mind from wandering, and is generally a great boost to your self-control efforts. It will also rebalance your nervous system and reduce harmful physiological effects associated with fear and stress." Divine teaches these breathing techniques in his SEALFIT program and a number of other military training programs around the world have instituted similar methods. Such breath awareness programs give war fighters tools to maintain or regain their composure under the most stressful conditions and they do the same for those who may not have to perform under quite the same sort of pressures. However, those pressures are real enough and can be tremendously debilitating despite the fact that literal bullets are not flying.

Rickson Gracie

Sometimes when I make my routines, I get in a very special stage of meditation, and this is beautiful because I'm able to exercise and totally clean my mind and keep myself in the present moment. - Rickson Gracie

In their book, Breathe In, Breathe Out, Jim Loehr and Jeffrey Migdow relate a number of examples and case histories of people using breath work and meditation to improve health and aid in performance across an extremely broad spectrum of occupations and pursuits. Dr. Migdow used some of the different breathing methods mentioned in their book to help him successfully handle the pressures of medical school. One of the case histories cited involves Dr. Ronald Dushkin who has conducted numerous "stress management and wellness" seminars and works with business executives on how to regulate their breathing. He gives his own ideas on breath work, "I find that deep Abdominal Breathing is helpful in a number of ways. It is an effective, a very effective, stress management technique. It is just about impossible to feel stressed when doing Abdominal Breathing correctly...Directed breathing helps us to focus on what's happening in the moment, not before or later." 

Breath control is the ultimate weapon. It is the simplest, cheapest, most accessible handle there is for mastering emotional control, for recharging the Ideal Performance State in response to problems, for staying in control, for becoming a peak performer. - Jim Loehr and Jeffrey Migdow, Breathe In, Breathe Out

Jayne Storey has practiced Tai chi for over 30 years and has taken principles from that discipline to create a system that effectively allows her clients to intentionally keep mind and body connected on a more frequent basis while engaging in a variety of sports. She has developed a groundbreaking Performance Practice that strengthens the mind-body connection and features two pillars: breath-based meditation and movement training derived from Tai chi principles. For our purposes, we will limit our discussion to the first pillar. She writes in Breathe Golf, "Again it's about effort, but the effort to pay attention to what's most important of all, your breathing, which has myriad benefits such as relaxing your muscles, lowering your heart rate, quietening your mind, and calming the anxiety that goes with performing under pressure." The key is to routinely practice breath awareness. Storey declares in The PRACTICE of High-Performance, "...thinking about your breathing in a pressure situation is no help at all and only adds to the clutter in the mind. But, when you develop a regular breathing practice, for instance by sitting each day in a short meditation, when you're in a tournament, and feeling anxious you have more ability to slow and deepen the breathing such that it calms down the worry-brain and allows movement to flow."

It is impossible to breathe deeply and slowly and have an agitated mind; it is impossible to breathe deeply and slowly and have a mind overcrowded with swing thoughts; it is impossible to breathe slowly and deeply and feel irritated or angry or have your nerves get the better of you on a decisive shot. - Jayne Storey, Breathe Golf

The time spent meditating has clear benefits but the increased awareness of the breath throughout the day can also pay significant dividends especially when dealing with or performing under pressure. Using slow deep nasal breaths during times of stress is how the mind and body are reunited, so to speak. This mind-body connection is where we access the flow state; it is where we find the effortless shot or swing. Calming the mind so that it can remain where the feet are allows that mind-body connection to occur. Storey writes again in Breathe Golf, "Finding time each day to practice paying attention to your breathing is the only way to become conscious of this automatic process - and it's only by making it conscious that you can use it to harness your game." In earlier articles in this series we mentioned Trevor Moawad's excellent book It Takes What It Takes and his ideas about the importance of staying neutral. Getting to neutral is a concept long taught in the East and Storey expresses in Breathe Golf how important breath awareness is during the process, "Being neutral requires that you stay with your breath so that this simple one-pointed awareness is stronger than your thoughts and stronger than your emotions. Only then can you attain neutrality, be in the present moment and let your physical movements flow." That includes not allowing musings concerning outcomes to be a distraction during play. These sorts of thoughts inevitably snap the mind-body connection and heighten tension and anxiety. Felicity Heathcote affirms in Peak Performance, "Untiring dedication to training, quieting of the mind and the letting go of any interest in gain or loss - all these help to lead to perfection of action." Loehr and Migdow espouse similar views in Breathe in, Breathe Out, "When the anxiety of trying to succeed is released, success, calm, and focus come of their own accord."

Mindful breathing is a kind of bridge that brings the body and mind together. If through mindfulness of the breath you generate harmony, depth, and calm, these will penetrate into your body and mind. In fact, whatever happens in the mind affects the body, and vice versa. -  Thich Nhat Hanh, You Are Here

Being present is the only way to truly experience each moment of our lives. We are better parents and spouses when we are fully with our family members at dinner. We are better friends when we are entirely there in a conversation over coffee. We are better at whatever we do when we are present; when our mind and body are in the same place. In The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh uses a simple, every day activity like washing dishes to make the point, "If while washing the dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not 'washing the dishes to wash the dishes.' What's more we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact, we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future - and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life." 

I once heard Jayne Storey say in an interview, that she comes back to her breath up to 100 times day. Getting lost in thinking about our breath just for the sake of thinking about our breath is not the point. She posits that using breath awareness will aid us in controlling our thoughts and emotions and help us stay present on a more consistent basis. Pausing to take a couple of slow, deep abdominal breaths is the way to regain control of ourselves, mentally and physically. It doesn't matter if you are waiting in a long line at the post office or teeing it up on the 18th hole on the last day of The Masters. Breath awareness is the way to be present and keep our thoughts and emotions in check. Storey declares in Breathe Golf, "The most important thing - again - that you can do for your golf game and indeed your life, is to focus your attention on your breathing, first and foremost as a daily practice and then as often as you can remember throughout the day. By doing so you can reduce mental interference, gain access to the zone or flow state, control your biochemistry (nerves and anxiety), activate the mind-body connection to help deliver fluid, powerful, effortless and precise golf shots and moreover, you can maintain this exceptional level of performance under pressure." 

The way to maintain your presence in the here and now is through mindfulness of breath. - Thich Nhat Hanh, You Are Here

Recommended Reading on Breathing, Zen, the Zone and Performance:

Breathe Golf by Jayne Storey

Connected Golf by Jayne Storey

The PRACTICE of High-Performance by Jayne Storey (eBook)

Peak Performance: Zen and the Sporting Zone by Felicity Heathcote

The Tao of the Jump Shot by John F. Mahoney

Zen Golf by Joseph Parent

The Competitve Buddha by Jerry Lynch

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel

Moving Zen by C. W. Nicol

Playing in the Zone by Andrew Cooper

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey

Breathe by Rickson Gracie

Recommended Reading on Zen and Buddhism:

You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh

Breathe, You Are Alive! by Thich Nhat Hanh

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

Zen Training by Katsuki Sekida

Breath by Breath by Larry Rosenberg

The Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee

The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi

Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Recommended Reading on the Benefits of Nasal Breathing:

Breath by James Nestor

Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life by George Catlin

The Breathing Cure by Patrick McKeown

"That Zen Buddhism Stuff"

By Jim Freeman

6 September 2022

"When I got that rebound, my thoughts were very positive, the crowd gets quiet, and the moment starts to become the moment for me. That's what we've been trying to do...that's part of that Zen Buddhism stuff. Once you get in the moment, you know when you are there. Things start to move slowly, you start to see the court very well. You start reading what the defense is trying to do. I saw that moment. When I saw that moment and the opportunity to take advantage of it...I never doubted myself. I never doubted the whole game." - Michael Jordan

(Fernando Medina-NBAE/Getty Images)

The above quote by Michael Jordan is taken from George Mumford's excellent book The Mindful Athlete and was recounted to the author after Mr. Jordan hit the shot pictured above to win the 1998 NBA championship. Mr. Mumford collaborated with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn to start the Inner-city Stress Reduction Clinic in the early nineties. That connection ultimately led to Mr. Mumford being introduced to coach Phil Jackson and his role working with the Chicago Bulls during their last three championship seasons in 1996, 1997 and 1998.  In 1999, Mr. Jackson moved on to coach the Los Angeles Lakers and Mr. Mumford was asked to consult with those teams as well. The Lakers would win five NBA titles under Jackson's guidance including three in a row from 2000 to 2002. Kobe Bryant commented on Jackson's influence in this area in his book The Mamba Mentality, "When Phil Jackson came...I started to understand the importance of my personalized meditative process. From then on, I placed an increased emphasis on it." 

"There will be calm and tranquility when you are free from outside influences and are not disturbed. Being calm means having no illusions or disillusionment with reality." - Bruce Lee, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do

The term meditation comes from the Latin word meditatum which means "to ponder". There are many different ways to meditate including such methods as transcendental, compassion and mindfulness. We will focus our attention on mindfulness meditation in this essay. 

There are writings in India that discuss the training of the mind that date all the way back to 1500 BC and later works from approximately 600 BC in the writings of the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (author of Tao Te Ching). Meditative methods for developing and calming the mind have been used for thousands of years across a wide variety of cultures. Meditation is a primary tool in the art of mindfulness training. The term "mindfulness" is defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn in The Mindful Athlete as "paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgementally, as if your life depended on it."  Mindfulness is a state of awareness, a state that is focused on the present moment. It allows us to be fully present where we are right now without being distracted or overrun. It is a capability we all possess at some level but training will lead to an enhanced ability to control our thoughts and emotions and stay in the present. Controlling does not mean we try to suppress unhelpful thoughts and feelings when they arise. Instead of being surprised or becoming more anxious at their arrival, we expect those thoughts and emotions to come and gently nudge them aside so our minds can be in a more productive state. All this has proven helpful to me during such mundane times like standing in line in a grocery store or sitting in traffic. In my pre-meditation days, which were not that long ago, I would sometimes react in a volatile manner to everyday circumstances like those mentioned above. For example, I have memories of me shouting and pounding the passenger seat in my car (it was empty) while stuck in traffic...a response that I've thankfully outgrown. Those incidents are embarrassing and humbling but I use them when discussing ways to gain control of thoughts and emotions.

"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present." - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Buddhist teachings describe the unsettled, restless, easily distracted and indecisive mind as a "monkey mind", a mind that is hopping about in a reactive and uncontolled manner. Mindfulness practices help us calm the monkey mind by training us to become more aware of our thoughts, remove judgement from them and return us to the present moment. Dr. Herbert Benson describes this calming effect as the "Relaxation Response" in his impactful book by the same name published in 1973. In that book, Benson discusses how some of our increased ability to calm and control our minds is a result of physical changes in the brain that take place during minfdulness training. He writes, "Zen monks who meditated...developed a predominance of alpha waves, brain waves usually associated with feelings of well-being. Furthermore, the alpha waves increase in amplitude and regularity during meditation." In the past, we thought at some point in the maturation process our brains were fully formed and there was no changing them. Much current thinking regarding how the brain works and adapts differs from that view and revolves around the term "neuroplasticity". Neuroplasticity refers to physical changes in the brain that occur in response to our environment whether they are an increase or decrease in the size of certain parts of the brain or altered neural pathways connecting to each other and other areas of the brain. 

A 2015 Washington Post interview with Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, discusses the effects of meditation on the brain. An eight-week mindfulness study found changes in volume in five different regions of the brain. The participants in the meditating group for that study saw thickening in the following four regions:

The posterior cingulate ("involved in mind wandering and self relevance"), the left hippocampus ("assists in learning, cognition, memory and emotional regulation"), the temperoparietal junction ("TPJ associated with perspective, empathy and compassion") and the Pons ("where a lot of regulatory neurotransmitters are produced"). 

The amygdala ("fight or flight part of the brain important for anxiety, fear and stress in general") got smaller in the group that went through the mindfulness-based stress reduction program. The mindfulness training was practiced by the test subjects an average of 27 minutes a day but many adherents meditate for only 10-15 minutes a day and see benefits. Kobe Bryant (pictured above in Taiwan in 2016) discussed his daily mindfulness routine in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, "I meditate every day and I usually do it for ten or fifteen minutes in the morning, as that prepares me to face whatever comes next." Consistently engaging in a meditation program physically alters the brain as well as trains the mind to become more aware of thoughts and emotions which leads to an increased ability to control them. Dr. Benson writes, "Our Western society is oriented only in the direction of eliciting the fight-or-flight response. Unlike the fight-or-flight response, which is repeatedly brought forth as a response to our difficult everyday situations and is elicited without conscious effort, the Relaxation Response can be evoked only if time is set aside and a conscious effort is made." 

"Remain quiet. Discover the harmony in your own being. Embrace it. If you can do this, you will gain everything, and the world will become healthy again. If you can't, you will be lost in the shadows forever." - Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching

Dr. Amishi P. Jha is a neuroscientist and a professor at the University of Miami and she posits in her TED Talk that our minds wander to the extent that in roughly half of our waking moments our attention strays from the task at hand (monkey mind). In her outstanding book, Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day, Dr. Jha discusses presence and purpose as well as the solution to our mind-wandering, "Mindfulness exercises are intended to strengthen and improve coordination between brain networks that carry out a variety of attentional functions: our ability to direct and maintain focus, notice and monitor ongoing conscious experience, and manage goals and behavior." Dr. Jha outlines a four-week program that involves the use of three different kinds of meditation practices each with a different focus and form of attention. Each day's schedule is for a 12-minute period but initially she suggests practicing for just three minutes. The amount of time spent will increase as you become more and more comfortable with the practice. The first method concerns directed attention (on your breathing or some other specific bodily awareness). The second category is an open monitoring exercise where you see yourself "standing on the river bank watching the water flow by". You see thoughts and emotions as they come flowing by without trying to capture or analyze them. The third method is a connection or "loving-kindness" meditation where you focus on improving your "ability to connect and offer goodwill" to those around you as well as to yourself. In all three methods your mind will eventually wander off. As you become aware of that wandering you gently guide your thoughts back to your meditation. Jha writes, "Success here does not mean that your mind never wandered, or that you didn't move at all, or that you experienced bliss, peace or relaxation. Rather, success means you put in the time and did the practice. Success is completion." (See Dr. Jha's book for a complete outline of her plan.)

Increased awareness of our thoughts gives us a chance to be more intentional in choosing them and thus, allows us to choose thoughts that are more constructive whether they be related to performance or our relationships with others. Dr. Rollo May states in his book, The Courage to Create, "Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness." The more adept we become at using that pause, however brief, to select a more constructive response, the more we will be able to make decisions aligned with what we truly aspire to and who we truly wish to be. This is opposed to spending the bulk of our time being controlled by our reactions and remaining a puppet of our circumstances and the people around us.

"The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it." - Thich Nhat Hahn

Mindfulness practices are used by high performers across a variety of disciplines but heightened performance isn't the only positive result of such exercises. Recent studies show potential health benefits from mindfulness practices including decreased levels of depression, reduced anxiety and stress, improved memory, slowed cognitive decline, and lowered blood pressure. Sara Lazar states, "Mindfulness is just like exercise. It's a form of mental exercise, really. And just as exercise increases health, helps us handle stress better and promotes longevity, meditation purports to confer some of those same benefits." Dr. Benson cites decades-old studies that show decreases in oxygen consumption, resting heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure during meditation. These are "indicative of decreased activity of the sympathetic nervous system and represent a hypometabolic, or restful, state. On the other hand, the physiologic changes of the fight-or-flight  response are associated with increased sympathetic nervous system activity and represent a hypermetabolic state...This is why we feel the Relaxation Response is of such import, for with its regular use it will offset the harmful effects of the inappropriate elicitation of the fight-or-flight response."

As mentioned earlier, meditation and mindfulness have been common practices across Eastern and Western cultures for many centuries. They may be somewhat different in certain specifics but they all possess a number of the same qualities, characteristics and benefits. Dr. Benson quotes William James from The Variety of Religious Experiences, "The fact is that the mystical feeling of enlargement, union and emancipation has no specific intellectual content of its own. It is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material furnished by the most diverse philosophies and theology, provided only they can find a place in their framework for its peculiar emotional mood." Benson then goes on to cite examples in ancient and not so ancient histories of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Sufism among others. Down through the ages, many in these disparate cultures have consistently practiced and advocated a meditative lifestyle. Some engage in a mindfulness practice for the physical health benefits and some do so in order to gain control of their thoughts and emotions. Some look to improve their free throw percentage or to more effectively handle preparations for an exam or calm the mind before giving an important business presentation. Some hope to become kinder and more considerate, to become the sort of person that has a consistently positive impact on others and their environment. Dr. Benson closes his book with the following lines, "You can choose any method of eliciting the (Relaxation) response which best fits your own inclinations: a secular, a religious, or an Eastern technique. We could all greatly benefit by the reincorporation of the Relaxation Response into our daily lives. At the present time, most of us are simply not making use of this remarkable, innate, neglected asset."

"The real meditation is how you live your life." - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Seeing is Believing

By Jim Freeman

"I used to be so delusional. I always imagined I could be more than I was, and eventually I grew and evolved into that person. I used to walk down the street like I was a ******* star...I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be - and then fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth." - Lady Gaga

"Create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it were already true." - Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Even though you may not feel or look the part now, you must envision yourself in your ideal state, activating your personal power and living in alignment with your stand and purpose. I learned in the SEALs that there's no such thing as perfection, only perfect effort. Through practicing a 'perfect' version of ourselves mentally, we'll slowly become that person in real life." Mark Divine, The Way of the SEAL

"We have to visualize a successful victory before we even start a very difficult challenge. Stay hard!" - David Goggins

"I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain." - Nikola Tesla, My Inventions

"It sounds pretty funny, but over the years and definitely over the last four years, I've taken that visualization part to another level. I've basically visualized so many things on the field, making these big plays, scoring goals." - Carli Lloyd

"A lot of what we do is visualization. So to be able to go a year in advance, to the spot where we plan on winning a gold medal, and to take in the sight, the sounds, the stress, the excitement, that's going to serve us really well moving forward." - Kerry Walsh Jennings

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Noted Scottish author, poet and theologian, George MacDonald said "Seeing is not believing. It is only seeing." Tom Hanks is quoted as saying "Believing is seeing and seeing is believing." For the purposes of titling this article we will stick to the well-worn phrase used above. Whenever I suggest using some kind of visualization to players that I coach I'm often met with a certain amount of skepticism. One way I combat that is by providing plenty of examples of well-known people talking about how much the tactic has helped them reach their goals and improve their performance. Hence the rash of quotes at the beginning of this article just in case some readers may be a bit skeptical as well. The quotes by highly successful people across a variety of disciplines at the top of this essay describe the regular use of different imagery motivations and techniques. Some use a form of visualization that centers around long-term goal-setting and some use mental imaging that is for a more specific activity or competition. 

Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus promoted the notion of Negative Visualization ('premeditatio malorum' or premeditation of evils). The idea behind that approach is to encourage people to be prepared for struggles to come and plan ahead on how that adversity will be confronted (including some of the people you will deal with that day). David Goggins expounds on that sentiment in his book Can't Hurt Me, "But visualization isn't simply about daydreaming of some trophy ceremony - real or metaphorical. You must also visualize the challenges that are likely to arise and determine how you will attack those problems when they do. That way you can be as prepared as possible on the journey." Being as prepared as possible is the goal of any successful athlete, surgeon, soldier or performer. Visualization is an enormously important part of pre-event training regardless of the activity.

Commonly used mental imaging techniques center around career or health goals and more specific performance objectives. We will explore mental imaging by giving examples of specific performance ambitions in this essay but the strategies are equally applicable for career or health aims as well. During the 1976 Olympics, Soviet weightlifters performed so capably that the rest of the competing countries were quite eager for them to reveal the secret of such overwhelming success. That secret, they acknowledged, was visualization. Aristotle used the word 'phantasia' and Cicero coined the term 'mentis oculi' (mind's eye) to describe the idea of forming a mental picture of events real or imagined. That is exactly what the Soviets were referring to. They went to the event site in Montreal well before the contest was held. They visualized being at the Olympics in front of a live audience and hearing the crowd. They imagined approaching the bar loaded with a specific weight and they saw themselves chalking up, gripping the bar and lifting the weight. Every detail was visualized and the strategy helped produce seven gold medals and one silver in 9 weight classes.

Carli Lloyd has often discussed her use of meditation and visualization before each game in order to see herself in numerous situations that could occur in the match. After scoring three goals in the 2015 FIFA World Cup final she commented that she had visualized herself scoring four goals in that contest months prior, "...if your mental state isn't good enough, you can't bring yourself to bigger and better things...I've just constantly been visualizing, constantly growing confidence with each and every game and I was on a mission." Lloyd scored a hat trick in the first 30 minutes of play and was so in the zone that she felt as though she had "blacked out" during that period of time.

In his book, The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin recounts how he used imaging techniques to aid in overcoming a broken hand that occurred seven weeks before the 2001 Tai Chi Push Hands National Championships, "I had an idea that I might be able to keep my right side strong by intense visualization practice...I did a daily resistance workout routine on my left side, and after every set I visualized the workout passing to the muscles on the right. My arm was in a cast, so there was no movement possible - but I could feel the energy flowing into the unused muscles...My whole body felt strong, and when the doctor finally took off my cast he was stunned. Four days before the Nationals an X-ray showed that my bone was fully healed, and I had hardly atrophied at all. The doctor cleared me to compete." The will to recover or sustain physical capability in an area of the body that has been damaged or unable to train speaks to the potential of mental imaging and the discipline it takes to be successful on a large scale.

Dr. Larry Widman suffered damage to a facial nerve after contracting the shingles virus in 2014. He was forced to deal with facial paralysis, vertigo and tremendous pain. His doctors told him that he had about a 50 percent chance of regaining use of that nerve. In his book, Max Out Mindset he explains what he did to attack the situation, "I took my anatomy books out, visualized the regrowth of the facial nerve, and practiced five minutes every day." Dr. Widman combined visualization with goal-setting and meditation to successfully address his condition in a manner similar to what Mr. Waitzkin did with his broken hand. Aside from the imaging techniques that both men used, they each exhibited a mindset that was optimistic and relentless. Visualization apart from those two qualities will prove to be considerably less effective. 

In Steven Pressfield's book, The Lion's Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War, an Israeli reconnaissance pilot describes his pre-flight activities during the 1967 conflict, "Preparing for these missions, I would hole myself up in the operations bunker and go over every detail of the coming flight. This is not like studying for exams. You are running the mission like a movie through your mind, anticipating every possible emergency, then planning and mentally rehearsing your response." Including this detailed and cinematic approach to pre-flight training allowed the pilots to successfully confront danger, emergencies and potentially lethal events that could typically be unforseen and possibly fatal.

A number of examples of mental imaging in an assortment of pursuits have been presented above. All involve "seeing", "hearing" and "feeling" the circumstances of the proceedings prior to actually performing in that event. Jack Nicklaus once said the he never took a swing of any kind without first seeing it in his mind. He would do so during every practice and every tournament. Pre-event visualization is best done in a state of relaxation. After meditating for 10-15 minutes, take another five minutes to practice some mental imaging. It can be done in the morning and again at night before bedtime. Begin by sitting comfortably in a chair or on the floor and closing your eyes. See yourself playing or practicing your activity as intensely and clearly as possible. Imagine being surrounded by your teammates and fans, even smelling the popcorn being sold at the concession stand. Repeatedly see yourself taking swings, passing the ball, or receiving serve. Image the score and the context. Feel the pressure of the contest and imagine yourself effectively managing it. See yourself bouncing back immediately from an error. Envision yourself making a variety of shots, scoring goals and sinking putts. This mental practice takes advantage of the brain's ability to create new neural pathways. We can literally rewire our brains to produce more productive and efficient neural patterns. Another method is to see all of the above through the eyes of the participant as opposed to those of an outside observer (looking at yourself). Becoming immersed as deeply as possible in the imagining of your future performance will inevitably yield greater results. Unfailingly, one will get distracted while visualizing. When that happens, calmly and non-judgmentally return to your mental practice session. Don't allow the mental imaging process to turn into a negative by castigating yourself for getting distracted.

If you struggle developing a mindset of optimism, aggression or relentlessness, you can use mental imagery to improve in those areas as well. Visualization isn't limited to physical acts. It can also be used to improve mental states. See yourself being aggressive and imposing your will on situations and circumstances using some of the methods explained above.

Dr. Jim Loehr states that the brain "is unable to differentiate between something vividly imagined from actual reality." (The New Toughness Training for Sports) In that book he also recommends the use of "mirrors, photographs and videos to strengthen and improve the accuracy of the mental pictures you have of yourself performing." Many years ago I used to show a video to my high school baseball team of Rod Carew hitting a baseball over and over. It was set to some soothing New Age music and showed the hall of fame hitter taking swing after swing at different kinds of pitches from each side of the plate. We would sit in the darkened library and watch...well, some watched and some fell asleep. The point was to implant the images of Mr. Carew's swing in the minds of our players right before we would go practice in order to slowly change their motor patterns and improve performance. 

All of this has some applications for coaching and instruction as well. Using visuals of any kind is generally considerably more effective than using verbal instruction when it comes to teaching players how to improve a physical skill. W. Timothy Gallwey explores this matter thoroughly in his excellect "Inner Game" books (Tennis, Golf, Skiing and Work). He advises the learner to visualize the task and observe skilled participants engaged in that same task instead of relying on a coach to provide verbal cues such as "lift your elbow" or "bend your knees". He gives the example of a child learning to walk. They do so naturally without their parents standing over them providing verbal instruction. Children learn naturally by observing other people walking and then they begin to do so themselves. The reliance on verbal instruction often gets in the way of the natural learning process and is sometimes accompanied by feelings of being judged by the coach or instructor. Removing judgement from the quality of the effort is one key to unblocking the learning process and allowing for  natural learning to take place. Players tend to pass judgement on themselves while practicing or playing and don't need further judgement added to the mix. Instead the athlete should view an error as a fact-finding mission, learn from it and move on to the next play or repetition. Coaches should see themselves as guides in the learning process rather than assuming a sort of dictatorial presence in the sporting lives of their players. I realize that many coaches like to comment and provide a significant amount of verbal feedback when working with their athletes. I would encourage those coaches to try to add some visual instruction to their toolbag.

Visualization is one of many devices that can be used to train the mind and improve performance and it only takes a few minutes a day to get results. It is a form of preparation routinely applied across a wide range of fields from surgery to public speaking to special operations to golf. A bit of patience and discipline is all that is required. Human performance expert, Dr. Frank Niles comments "it's massively effective, as long as you practice it."

Daily Affirmation

By Jim Freeman

A popular 1991 Saturday Night Live skit "Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley" featured comedian Al Franken as a sort of self-help guru and routinely showed his character talking to himself in the mirror and repeating the phrase "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me." However, the sketches would invariably find Stuart also saying to himself "I don't know what I'm doing. They're gonna cancel the show. I'm gonna die homeless and penniless and twenty pounds overweight and no one will ever love me." The sketches were so well-received that they resulted in a spin-off novel and a feature film. The episode featuring Michael Jordan (pictured above) was a particularly entertaining example and can be found on YouTube.

We all talk to ourselves. Some of us may also do it out loud at times but we all have a nearly constant conversation with ourselves taking place in our heads. We talk to ourselves even when we're having conversations with someone else. What sorts of things are we saying to ourselves? What effect are those conversations having on our performance whether it's in the classroom, the boardroom or on the field? Are those conversations positive, helpful, and optimistic? Or do they tend to lead us into more negative and less productive territory? In It Takes What It Takes, Trevor Moawad describes this phenomenon as an "Ad Campaign in Your Brain". In my experience as a coach I've found that a significant percentage of my players have an "ad campaign" runnning inside their heads that is less than positive or productive when it comes to their performance. Players commonly say very critical things to themselves...things they would never repeat to a teammate. Greg Dale (Director of Sports Psychology and Leadership Program at Duke University) writes in It's A Mental Thing!, "Many athletes are much harder on themselves than they are on others because they know they can get away with it and they think it will help push them to avoid making the same mistake again. The reality is this type of self-talk is ultimately detrimental to consistent high level performance because it is detrimental to confidence." Harvey Dorfman states in Coaching the Mental Game, "The athlete must start to listen to himself, understanding that as he expresses these negatives each day, he increases the chances of a negative outcome." Many players that I know have an extremely difficult time gaining any measure of control over their self-talk and remain in a near constant state of being their own worst enemy. What can be done to control or change these internal discussions? Or are they hard-wired with little hope for alteration?

A player's self-identity too often revolves around competence and production. When performance lags behind what the athlete expects or what she believes others may expect then her internal conversations can quickly take a negative turn. Carol Dweck discusses this at length in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. She outlines two approaches to performance: a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. A fixed mindset is reflective of a line of thinking that sees our talents and abilities as unchangeable or immutable. The growth mindset takes the exact opposite approach. She describes the fruits of a fixed mindset thusly, "I've seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves - in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships. Every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character. Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser?" The growth mindset produces a different mentality and is centered around the notion that one's abilities can be developed and improved, that we're not just stuck struggling with the hand we are dealt. Dweck describes the thinking produced by a growth mindset, "...everyone can change and grow through application and experience...a person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable)...it's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training." Ultimately an individual with a fixed mindset is left fighting for approval and acceptance while the person with a growth mindset is working to develop and improve. The growth mindset allows for hope, optimisim and belief in the value of learning and work. With this approach we have reason to view our self-talk as not pre-programmed and unchangeable but something that can be controlled and improved upon.

Angela Duckworth points out in her best-selling book Grit that "High-performers and low-performers both have a running internal dialogue - the difference is what they use it to say." In order to perform at a higher level that internal dialogue needs to be helpful instead of detrimental. One self-talk strategy involves replacing negative self-talk with more affirming statements. Mike Voight has authored a series of books on mental toughness and he advises athletes to identify their most common negative thoughts and self-talk statements that occur before and during contests. He then suggests athletes compile a list of those thoughts and statements followed by a list of positive thoughts and statements to replace the negative ones. The next step "entails believing in the productive statements and not the negative ones. Players do this by 'building a case' for why these productive thoughts and statements are true." (Mental Toughness Training for Volleyball) This involves making a list of reasons why the individual has cause to feel confident or optimistic such as "I earned a spot on this team and I deserve to be here." As the case is built for believing in the positive thoughts and statements written down earlier the ad campaign in the player's head shifts to a more helpful one. Voight stresses the need to continue to review and revise the new more positive ad campaign so this productive mindset is able to be sustained.

W. Timothy Gallwey has written several "Inner Game" books including titles covering tennis, golf and skiing. In all of them he advocates lessening the impact of the conscious (Self 1) by removing judgement from the activity and trusting in the subconscious (Self 2). This means we don't necessarily have to fill our heads with statements like "I'm the best!". Instead Gallwey posits a more functional and neutral strategy. He suggests repeating the phrase "Bounce-Hit" (when playing tennis). "Say the word 'bounce' out loud the instant you see the ball hit the court and the word 'hit' the instant the ball makes contact with the racket - either racket" (The Inner Game of Tennis).  Thus the notion of a good swing or a bad swing is taken away and the athlete is allowed to feel the movement with no judgement attached in a state of what Gallwey calls "relaxed concentration". As this occurs more frequently trust is established between Self 1 and Self 2 and "eventually the basic but elusive ingredient for all top performance emerges - self-confidence" (The Inner Game of Tennis). 

A similarly neutral and non-judgemental approach to self-talk is discussed in Moawad's book It Takes What It Takes, "No one will be able to influence me like I will be able to influence me. This is particularly true when the words come out of my mouth and start immediately connecting to behaviors. Words become self-fulfilling prophecies. So if I created an internal ad campaign that presents me as a loser no would want to listen to, I would act as if my talents didn't matter. I'd wonder why anyone would want to read this book. And that would make it very difficult to write this book. Instead, my internal ad campaign during this process is a series of neutral statements explaining why I'm writing this book..." A negative ad campaign can cripple performance to the point of obliteration. I have watched the level of play of countless players and teams spiral out of control because of this kind of negative and judgemental thinking. As a result, all the work on skill development and tactics in countless hours of practice is rendered useless. Instead it is possible for performers in all arenas to create a more constructive frame of mind that allows them to trust their training and freely execute in an unconscious, non-judgemental state.

I am often reminded of a particular volleyball player I coached many years ago who really struggled in her attempts to move past mistakes on the court. She was an excellent student and went through her school day routinely scoring very highly on her classroom assignments, quizzes and exams. She didn't get much practice in coping with failure in her academic life. However, a sporting environment is rife with opportunities to practice dealing with mistakes and failure. I am certain that she ascribed a moral judgement to her athletic struggles....it wasn't just a pass that was off the mark...it was a bad pass. In hindsight it is easy to see that her identity was dominated by a fixed mindset approach to her performance. She expected herself to be consistently competent and I'm sure she felt it was expected of her by others as well. At the time we talked about the dehumanizing and unreasonable nature of that kind of thinking. Once she shanked a pass in serve receive, the odds of her continuing to struggle were quite high. She saw herself as having failed and let down her teammates. Her body language was indicative of an internal dialogue that was filled with negativity. We discussed what was happening and settled on a strategy where I would repeat the neutral, non-judgemental phrase "bounce back" when she erred and her competitive spirit waned. After awhile I didn't have to say it anymore. She was saying it to herself. When she made a mistake she would look down and then immediately look up with a focused and determined look in her eyes. She was controlling her self-talk and using it to produce a more consistently productive level of performance. I had much to learn regarding these matters (and many more) but it's one of my earliest memories as a coach concerning the impact of mindset on performance.

Marcus Aurelius (Roman emperor and author of Meditations) once wrote "I can control my thoughts as necessary; then how can I be troubled? What is outside my mind means nothing to it. Absorb that lesson and your feet stand firm." As discussed in prior essays, humans have been wrestling with these issues for thousands of years. Such struggles are not new to us. The human condition has remained constant in such matters and will continue to do so. The good news is that solutions to these problems are readily available and when applied on a consistent basis will yield desirable results. "The point is that you can, in fact, modify your self-talk, and you can learn to not let it interfere with you moving toward your goals. With practice and patience, you can change the way you think, feel, and, most important, act when the going gets rough." (Angela Duckworth, Grit)