The Number One Benefit of Meditation for Athletes (Hint: It Isn’t Mindfulness)
As one of relatively few long-time meditators working in athletics, athletes and coaches often ask me things like:
- (How) should I begin a meditation practice?
- How can I integrate this into my training?
- What should I feel during/after practicing?
While these are all great questions, I think an important question to ask oneself before beginning a practice is simple:
What do I hope to achieve?
See, there are many schools of meditation, some that have been around for hundreds or even thousands of years, many that were coined this decade. Some say they are ancient, but in fact are appropriated modern renditions of an ancient practice, while others say they are based on modern psychology, yet are simply copy/pasted from a religious order. Some are based around improving quality of life, while others are based around achieving enlightenment or spiritual immortality. There are even now meditation apps for athletes, pain reduction, and performance. As you can see, meditation is not a monolithic practice — if you want to know which path to choose, it’s important to know what you hope to achieve.
That being said, having practiced a range of practices daily over the past decade (Daoist, Zen Buddhist, MBSR, Qigong, and Martial Arts-related meditation), I humbly feel I have a handle on at least some of the benefits possible. And there’s one benefit that stands out above all the others. I’ll refer to it as bringing the spirit back to the body. Parallel ideas could also be called building a center, or even achieving clarity and stillness.
While these are different names and represent somewhat different ideas, for our purposes their benefits are at least in the same ballpark. Because I have studied Daoism most seriously, I will begin with my very, humble understanding of bringing the spirit back to the body (or maintaining it inside the body). This is not a direct translation of a concept, rather a theme that has come up for me again and again with teachers I have studied from.
What does it mean to keep the spirit back into the body?
While giving an understanding of the Daoist/Chinese concept of the Shen is outside the scope of this article, we can begin by roughly equating Shen with our personality, the spirit that animates our heart/mind. We have all these little details in Daoist meditation that are specifically designed to keep the spirit from escaping out of the body — adjusting the breathing, eyes half closed, tip of the tongue held gently against the roof of the mouth, the posture relaxed and upright. Even the striking of a metal gong is associated with bringing the spirit back to the body, as the metal phase in Daoist five-phase (wu xing) is associated with the earthly spirit (po). What purpose do these things serve? They help us to turn our attention inward. When we can effectively turn our attention inward, without doing anything more, we are already accessing a state of deep rest and relaxation, a space where we can be fully ourselves.
Actively bringing our attention inward has literally never been more important. Our society has literally multi-BILLION dollar industries designed to, in this mode of thinking, draw your spirit outside of your body. Bombarding you with lights and screens. Advertisements that prey on insecurities you didn’t even know you had. If you cannot bring your attention back inward — if you can’t, as Zen Master Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams would say, “go get yourself”, how can you ever rest? If we do not have the ability to bring our attention away from outside influences trying to take our time and energy, can we really say we have free will? If your spirit is dragged away by an advertisement or idea (ex. “I will be happy when I buy that, achieve this, look like that”), then you can only react. If you can reserve some part of attention in yourself, you can be true to your own values and ideals and choose whether or not you even want to engage with that thought pattern — does it serve you? Where does it come from? Is it in alignment with your own values, or is it planted there by an outside source?
An example of this is with the former head of an organization I am a part of. A cartoonishly difficult person to work with, she sent all of us long, angry emails as she was upset that she was (unanimously) voted out of her position as president. In her email to me, she called me names, accused me of things that I did not do, told stories of other members to sow seeds of distrust, made veiled threats of legal action, and even put false words in my late father’s mouth, all in an attempt to draw me into conflict. Years ago, this would have worked to pull me completely off balance. However, as my meditation practice has developed, I now have an ability (well, on my better days!) to choose how to respond — I was neither affected internally by her lies and insults, nor did I feel the need to respond to them. Only kept my mind on next steps, and my reply was simply on the topic of moving forward. I can’t say that I am always this resilient, but it felt good to be able to read that email, write a quick draft of a response, and fall asleep immediately.
Our interactions with others are like two planets crossing each other’s’ orbit — whichever has more mass, will dictate the interaction. The planet with less mass will be drawn into the other’s orbit. In the example above, this woman has a very strong gravity — she hadn’t been voted out previously despite some egregious behavior, just because owners did not want to deal with her wrath. As a result, she often wins arguments. However, with practice, you can learn to develop your own presence, your own gravity and start to dictate how the interaction will go.
If you are a healer or a coach, this is crucial. If someone is struggling, they often have a strong gravitational pull influencing everyone around them. Sometimes it can seem like they are sucking the energy out of a room, or whomever is trying to help them. That is why we all need to develop our own gravity, by keeping our spirit rooted. If we can maintain our center, we both help someone more and suffer less ourselves, all while expending less energy.
Implications for Healing
Going and getting ourselves is the first step in healing from any trauma, whether emotional or physical. If we are not present in ourselves, how can we even make the correct choices to return to health? I have witnessed many times, someone who gets so swept away by the notion that their happiness depends on their return to health or a particular sport/activity — and this overwhelming desire leads them to try to convince themselves that they are healed before they are, thus reinjuring what was almost finished healing. Further, and perhaps more importantly, if we are not rooted in ourselves, we cannot actually rest. We know from research, stress and cortisol levels inhibit healing processes. Can we disengage with our stressors long enough for our stress levels to return to normal?
Implications for Performance
I sort of stumbled upon this technique my final year of college track & field, where after having spent a solid year injured and unable to walk without crutches my meditation practice really started to pick up. If I was ever in a slump at practice, I would simply just take a short walk away from the group. On my way, I would just keep my gaze steady and soft and notice the sights of our training facility, and listen to the buzzing of our LED lights. At a particular point, I would feel like I “dropped in” to my body, and I’d turn around and return to practice. It was basically like hitting a refresh button — as soon as I could return my spirit to my body, I had free will again to change my attitude and to some extent performance. Letting the sensations from sight and sound come to me, I returned to the moment. I didn’t formally learn this through the meditation school I was learning from at the time, it was just something I noticed when after hours of meditation, everything else fell away. Using a soft gaze, not grasping onto the sensations but just letting them wash over me, I was able to disengage from whatever negative thought pattern or performance errors I was attaching to beforehand and enter into a space where everything felt fresh again.
I hope that this is a helpful place to start in understanding how meditation practice affects performance, health and quality of life. There are many roads, but the most important thing is to follow one, specifically one that will get you where you want to go. My teacher runs meditation courses online listed at daoistgate.com
