Get Some Headspace: 10 minutes can make all the difference (19 page)

How often do you perform at the very best of your ability? Whether it’s training in the gym to get fit, playing football with friends, jogging in the park, skiing down a mountain, doing yoga, swimming, cycling, or maybe even competing in a particular discipline, how often do you walk away thinking, ‘Wow, that was great!’ Of course, many people have a tendency to be self-critical, but even those people know when they’ve genuinely performed to the best of their ability. There’s a feeling of having been ‘in the zone’ or ‘in the moment’, as if all the necessary conditions came together at just the right time to allow you to perform in that way. There’s a sense of willing, of confidence, of focus. And the funny thing is, even if it’s a really tough, physical session, it’s almost as if there was an effortless quality about it. It’s no coincidence that so many of these qualities are to be found in meditation.

If you watch professional athletes, performing at their very highest level, you’ll notice that they spend a lot of time ‘in the zone’. Sometimes they may slip in and out of it, but when they’re truly performing at their best, it’s as if nothing could disturb their focus. It’s not an inward-looking focus, blocking out the sights and sounds around them. It’s a focus that is perfectly balanced between an awareness of their own physicality and movement, and the changing environment around them. And it’s not just the level of
focus
that seems to be perfectly balanced, so too is their level of
effort
. This doesn’t mean they’re applying maximum effort, but rather a
sustained naturalness
in which they appear to move gracefully and effortlessly. It’s as though they are putting in much less effort than anyone else, and yet performing that much better.

Of course, it may be that these individuals have a natural ability for these sports. In fact, they unquestionably do. And it may well be that you’re more interested in applying this technique to running on the treadmill at your local gym, than taking centre stage at Wimbledon. But a lot can be learnt about the relevance and role of meditation in sport by watching these individuals, especially when it comes to effort.

The image that best defines this for me is the slow motion shot you get as they replay the 100 metres sprint on television. You know the one, it’s where you can see every part of their body moving around in far too much detail. Those runners at the front are usually very relaxed, very composed. Their cheeks wobble up and down and sway from side to side. In that moment they’re the personification of the perfect mental balance between focus and relaxation. But if you look at those doing the chasing, they usually have very tight grimaces as they realise the race is getting away from them. The grimace is a response to that realisation, a tightening-up as they apply more effort. This is something to think about when you’re applying mindfulness in everyday life. How much effort are you applying? Not to the 100 metres sprint, but to the simple things, opening and closing doors, wiping down a work surface, holding on to the steering wheel, turning off the tap, brushing your teeth. As you go about your day, start to notice just how much effort you put into these things. One thing is for sure, the level of effort you apply to life will almost certainly be reflected in your meditation.

The body and mind are not separate. When we have presence of mind we have presence of body, when we possess mental focus we possess physical focus, and when we have an ease of mind we have an ease of body. It sounds so obvious when we talk about it in those terms and yet how often do you apply any of those ideas to your exercise routine? It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to improve your discipline, mental endurance, spatial awareness, concentration, pain management, or even your ability to perform under pressure, all of these factors rely on the mind. If your mind is present, alert and focused, yet with a sense of ease and relaxation, then you’ll see progress, no question. If your mind is off thinking about a conversation you had yesterday, or wondering what you should buy your friend for their birthday next month, how can you possibly perform at your best? As with the walking meditation the great thing about this meditation is that it doesn’t require you to take any additional time out of your day. Assuming you’re already exercising in some way anyway, this will simply provide you with yet another opportunity to practise the art of being aware. And hey, if it improves your fitness or physical ability in the process, then that can’t be a bad thing either.

While training at one particular monastery, there was a very physical meditation technique that we had to do all day, every day, for about the first eight weeks of a one-year retreat. It involved going from a standing position, to a lying position, and then back to a standing position again. It’s known as a prostration and is a skilful way of bringing together the body, speech and mind all at one time. It’s usually done on a smooth surface, making it easier to push the hands out to a fully prone position when flat on the floor. To help with this further there are usually two pieces of material to place your hands on, making it easier to slide. Now at the same time as physically moving through that action, there’s quite a long verse of Tibetan that needs to be repeated, which at times can feel like a bit of a tongue twister. This entire verse had to be repeated from memory and done quickly enough to match the physical movement of one prostration. Doing these two things alone was not unlike patting your head and rubbing your tummy in a circular motion at the same time. But there was more to come.

As part of the technique it was necessary to visualise quite a complicated image in the mind. It was a picture that involved lots of different people, sitting in various positions, wearing different clothes, holding different objects, all of which needed to be remembered and then visualised. This was at the same time as physically moving up and down from the floor and repeating the Tibetan verse over and over. In this way, the body, speech and mind all came together in perfect unison. At least that was the idea. When learning it was often the case that the body and speech would do as they should, almost habitually, but that the mind would wander off to think about other things. At other times it might be that the visualisation was very good, but that I’d suddenly notice that I was repeating absolute gibberish, not even remotely like the verse I’d rehearsed. And at times I’d be concentrating so hard on the
mental
aspect, that I’d not pay full attention to the physical movement and would fall flat on my face, which, when you’re doing it at high speed, can really hurt.

The more I practised this technique, the more I started to see a pattern. If the balance of focus and relaxation was just right, then what was essentially a very physical exercise felt truly effortless. You could say that there was an equal amount of awareness in body, speech and mind. But if that balance was not right, one or two of those aspects would suffer as a result. At those times, far from feeling effortless, it was as though I was walking through treacle. And simply adding more effort didn’t help at all. In fact, it only seemed to make it worse, even harder. As the weeks went by, I started to get a sense of how best to work with the mind on any given day – when to apply more effort, and when to ease my foot off the gas. And the mind became more willing too; it was getting used to this new way of focusing and was resisting a little less each day. Of course, the mind still wandered off sometimes, but it was easier to realise when it had, and to bring the attention back to the physical movement, the ability to speak coherently, and the visualisation of the image we’d studied. These changes seemed to coincide with me focusing less on the result, and more on simply being in the moment with each and every movement. If you can do the same thing with your favourite type of exercise, not only will you see big improvements in your performance, but you’re also much more likely to do it with a greater sense of ease and enjoyment.

Don’t be put off by the fact that it says ‘running meditation’ below if that’s not your favourite kind of exercise. The principles are equally applicable to cycling, yoga, swimming, or any other sport for that matter. But as you’ve already been introduced to walking meditation, applying the principles to running will provide the most natural transition. There’s no question that in terms of learning how to be mindful while exercising, it’s much easier to do it with a form of exercise that has a repetitive nature and in which you are not directly competing with anyone else. So sports such as swimming, cycling, dance, running, golf, skiing, yoga and so on are perfect for this. While there’s nothing wrong in starting off with games such as football, basketball, hockey and so on, there’s a greater tendency to get sucked into your old habitual patterns, perhaps running around like a crazy thing and trying a little too hard.