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Re: Meditation and Recovery

Rob said Feb 8, 2007, 9:04 AM:

Rich,

Meditation within the athletic world has had a pretty well established seat at the table - at least from the sport psychology perspective.

The reason why meditation got this “seat at the table” and hasn’t been removed from the table has because of the relaxtion and recovery card meditation plays. And every time meditation plays the relaxation and recovery card, it pretty much dominates the playing field in terms of alternatives.

Here’s just a few of the many physiological results meditation has been shown to produce:

- lowers cortisol (stress hormone that tears the body down)
- lowers muscle tension (faster recovery time)
- lowers respiration rates (characteristic of a deeper relaxation)
- lowers blood lactate (measure of your muscles being, you guessed it more relaxed)
- normalizes blood pressure (again you’re relaxed…)
- organizes brain functioning (increased EEG coherence = increased creativity, intelligence and faster cognitive processing times)

Now this is only a small slice of the picture the athletic world is well aware of, but what they know is that meditation creates a relaxed yet more alert physiology and this is just the physiological side of the equation.

The psychological benefits are even more impressive - even from short bouts of meditation. I won’t go into that list (unless you’d like me to) simply because its so long.

Here’s my two cents on athletes using meditation. Most athletes are meditators, they just meditate in action and often don’t know what meditation is and thus don’t know what exactly they’re doing while they’re training and competing.

So when you get athletes to meditate in a more traditional form, they generally adopt the practice with more ease than the average person.

Why?

Because they’re used to practice. They practice all the time. What do they do? Practice. That’s what an athlete is, they’re practicing to put on excellence every day.
In order to perform at a high level they must get themselves into a performance state. All of which are meditative through and through (at least that’s my bias).

So in addition to the habit of practice, they’ve also been working on cultivating different states from their normal waking state. They’ve got to be “in the moment” - “focused” - “working intensely hard, yet relaxed and fluid” - and so on…

What do you think? Oh, and what kind of meditation seminar did you just lead?

Peace Rich,
~Rob

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Re: Meditation and Recovery

Rich said Feb 8, 2007, 1:19 PM:

Thank you. It is funny, I trained fairly hard until I was about 20 with a Vale Tudo champ. and moved away from it to give my energies to meditation. I felt that training was ok but I had 'grown past' that, and in a way I had but only because the reason I trained in fighting was I was angry with life and I was scared of it too. After training for a few years and facing fear and pain I didn't feel those feelings so much anymore and felt I was ready to move on, however I think I also dissociated and saw training as somehow, well, just an annoying thing that one had to do to keep the 'vehicle' in check. I was therefore really skeptical when I saw FIT and it's claims towards meditation. However after going down the gym and working with weights, concentration and openness I can see I was holding a partial view.

It never occurred to me the states I experienced during training had ANYTHING to do with meditation but now I feel training both these capacities have a mutually beneficial influence; sitting still and paying micro-attention allows something and also placing that attention into movement also develops an awareness that may not be as readily gained while sitting still. Although I don't want to draw any false dichotomies between the two, slow weight reps being similar (if more sensationally intense) to kinhin (walking meditation).

I would be interested in the psychological benefits you see in meditation, especially in light of the comment sometimes heard from Masters that “meditation doesn't change my life”, it seems appropriate to say it both does and does not.

I gave a seminar on witnessing, my only message really being that there is both a higher structure and state beyond the thinking mind, which is where we usually place our chips. Being boxers they are really comfortable with this notion because being punched hard has a great way of bringing up certain thoughts, such as “fuck this!”, and the boxer needs to see through them or he gives in. However I hope to give a different and more precise language and a practice to them that can be seperately cultivated, e.g. just sitting stably and looking for a while. I've been invited back in two weeks, which I'm happy about : )

What do you think?

warmly

Rich

Re: Meditation and Recovery

Rob said Feb 12, 2007, 9:18 AM:

I hear you on the dissociation trend with regards to body practices - especially the ones that touch some of the “earlier” parts of ourselves. Differentiation is such a delicate balance that invariably we often move a bit on the dissociative side of the street only to come back to integrate.

Regardless I’m glad to hear you’re seeing some of the potential in FIT as well as leveraging training as a tool for integrated development and not just that thing to keep the vehicle in check…

Slow reps - or super slow - I loved how you connected this to walking meditation. Beautiful! Suprisingly I’ve never bridged these two until I read your post, so thank you. Its such a clear connection… Ah, sometimes the most obvious and brilliant are the most difficult to see!

Check out Damon and I’s comments on the differences between classical sitting meditation and training meditation - I think you’ll find them interesting as we’re dancing around this topic…

On the Psychological benefits of meditation I’m going to rattle off quite a few, so have at it. This is coming from your more conventional scientific perspecitive (just an FYI from where I’m coming from).

Here we go baby!

DECRESES:
- Stress & anxiety
- Depression & PTSD
- Anger
- Emotional Numbness
- Neurosis / Psychological Problems
- Misconceptions and something called “preconceptions”

INCREASES (and/or improves):
- “restful alertness”
- self-actualization
- relaxation
- ability to focus
- comprehension
- multiperspectivism
- creativity (as measured by verbal and pictoral fluency, flexibility & originality)
- accuracy of perception
- IQ scores (one of my favorites for reaching out to non meditating populations)
- self & ego development
- self-sufficiency
- spontaneity
- productivity
- behavioral flexibility
- memory processing
- moral reasoning
- autonomy

…among others. But that’s a pretty good overview of what science knows about meditaiton.

In terms of practices that may be useful, the best athletes are the ones that can continually focus in on “process goals” - these are cues or aspects that they must focus on moment to moment to perform at a very high level. The best athletes develop the skills to create performance states (meditative states) in which they become one with their process goals.

Now I don’t know boxing, thus I’m not really in a place to suggest what process(es) to focus on. What I can say is that the process of leaving the process goals and the process of leaving the focus of meditation are very very similar if not identical in many cases.

So there’s an inner muscle that needs to be trained - the ability to set an intention (to follow X,Y and or Z) and the strength to follow this intention without interruption. That’s muscle number one.

Muscle number two is recognizing when you’ve drifted off. Noticing when you’ve left - or for more advanced athletes knowing when you’re about to distract yourself and settling back into the process of executing, nothing more - nothing less.

Muscle number three is this course correction - creating a routine such that every single time the athlete finds him/herself distracted, off center, off cue, etc. they perform a short simple routine that they’ve trained themselves to refocus, re-engage, etc. For most athletes this needs to be very fast.

Meditation is a great way to develop some of these inner muscles, and its the perfect holding environment to practice within their mind’s eye (visualization) following their cues, course correcting, executing, etc.

I’d recommend a simple mindfulness meditation before and after training in which they follow their breath, focus on cultivating their stability of mind (5 minutes or so) and then practicing their visualization practices (10 mins or so) and then returning to the mindfulness meditation for another 5 minutes.

5 - 5 - 5
2 - 5 - 2
5 - 2 - 5

Regardless of how you do it, meditation coupled with visualization is a dynamite combo. Ultimately, they’re the same process of “familiarizing yourself” with a particular state.

Let me know your thoughts - Good luck with your next talk.
~Rob