Tag: stress

Becoming Healed by Nature

In the previous post, I discussed the stress-reduction effects of trees.  Florence Williams takes this discussion and research focus further when she explores the healing power of nature. Florence, a journalist and writer, is the author of The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative. She draws on the latest science, proven practices from around the world and individual case studies to promote the healing power of nature.

Experiencing “nature-deficit disorder”

In a TED Talk given in 2016, Florence described the effects of her own nature-deficit disorder resulting from moving home from the openness of the wilderness environment of Boulder, Colorado to the dense, built environment of Washington D.C. She explained that her sense of wellbeing declined rapidly – she experienced depression, anxiety, irritability and a “sluggish brain”. She was hyper-sensitive to the sounds of planes and noise pollution that surrounded her. However, her saving experience was to be assigned to write for Outside Magazine about the Japanese practice of “forest bathing” (Shinrin-yoku) – absorbing nature through your senses
(sights, sounds, smell, touch, taste). This, in turn, stimulated her interest in the power of nature to make us happier, healthier and more creative.

Global trend to use the power of nature to heal

Following on from the research and writing project in Japan, Florence undertook a global project on behalf of National Geographic. In researching practices involving the use of nature for healing, she discovered different practices in a range of countries. Besides Japan’s “forest therapy trails”, Korea has established “healing forests” along with “forest healing rangers” to take children on programs designed to overcome everything from digital addiction to bullying. Based on their experience and scientific research, Finland has recommended that people spend at least 5 hours a month in nature – a minimum that reflects how nature-deprived we are in the cities of the world. where so much time is spent indoors and on digital devices.

Florence describes the research and practices she uncovered in her global project in a video presentation titled, Your Brain on Nature. This video summarises her book on the power of nature to heal. She gives examples from across the world where nature has been used to help troubled teenagers, people suffering from depression, adults who have experienced trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and people working in jobs that create a lot of stress such as the role of firefighters.

In her introductory chapter, Florence points to Wordsworth and Beethoven as creative people who drew their inspiration from nature, thus serving as forerunners to modern day neuroscience research which is exploring the impact of nature on our brains – and on our health, happiness and creativity. She points out that the research from the Mappiness app (daily mood monitoring by thousands of people over an extended period) concluded that people are much happier outdoors in nature than they are in urban environments devoid of natural features. She notes the research by Elisabeth Nisbit and John Zelenski that suggests that because of our habitual “disconnection from nature” we tend to “underestimate the psychological benefits of nature”. Their research highlighted that even green spaces in urban environments can elevate mood and generate happiness.

Science shows us how we can be healed by nature

In a landmark article on the impact of time in nature on our wellbeing, Kevin Loria advances 12 science-based reasons we should spend more time outside:

  1. improves short-term memory
  2. helps us to de-stress
  3. can reduce inflammation
  4. reduces fatigue by restoring energy
  5. helps overcome depression and anxiety
  6. my have a protective impact on vision (e.g. reduced rate of myopia)
  7. improves capacity to focus
  8. enhances creativity
  9. improves the immune system
  10. lowers blood pressure
  11. promotes the production of anti-cancer proteins
  12. lowers the risk of an early death.

The science in support of the benefits of nature on health, happiness and creativity is building rapidly as scientists and medical professionals become increasingly aware of the negative impacts of “nature-deficit disorder”.

As we grow in mindfulness through mindful immersion in nature and growing awareness of nature’s healing powers, we can begin to enjoy the benefits of improved health, happiness and creativity. In turn, we can deepen our awe of nature – its energy, beauty and majesty.

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Image by Sven Lachmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Trees Can Help to Limit Your Stress

I have been fascinated by trees for a long time – amazed by their growth, their energy and their role in human ecology. At a metaphorical level, trees reflect the enigmas of human existence. Jill Suttie in her article, How Trees Help You to Stress Less, highlights the research that demonstrates the way trees can benefit us in terms of stress reduction.

The stress-reduction benefits of trees

  • Trees can reduce anxiety and depression and build positive traits such as enhanced energy levels. A research study, conducted in different areas of Japan and reported in 2018, showed that walking through a forest had greater positive effects than walking through city streets – the former environment serving to lower stress levels, elevate mood and generate more energy. The researchers concluded that forest environments would be an essential contributor to maintaining mental health in the future.
  • Dr. Qing Li promotes the Japanese practice of “forest bathing” as a way to reduce stress and blood pressure while strengthening the immune system. His promotion of immersion in the forest environment is designed as an antidote to what Richard Louv describes as “nature-deficit disorder” with its attendant negative effects of poor concentration, mental and physical illness and under-developed sensory perception. Richard argues that the intensification of city living and addiction to social media and mobile technologies, means that we are spending increasing amounts of our day alienated from nature and from the benefits of savouring trees in their natural environment.
  • A study conducted with Polish youths spending 15 minutes in “forest bathing” during a winter period showed, too, that the tree environment had significant positive “emotional, restorative and vitalizing effects” for those who participated in the study.

As we grow in mindfulness through exposure to trees and nature, we can experience reduction in stress, elevation of mood and improved energy levels. Meditating on trees can enhance the benefits of exposure to these natural sources of energy and life-giving oxygen. Reflecting on their shape, size and stature can increase our awareness of the enigmas of human existence.

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Image by Sven Lachmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

What Does Neuroscience Tell Us About the Benefits of Mindfulness?

Continuous neuroscience research into the benefits of mindfulness has revealed supportive evidence that should encourage you to persist with mindfulness practices. While the neuroscience research into the power of mindfulness, and meditation specifically, is in its infancy, there are enough studies and research review articles to point to some real, measurable benefits.

Scientists still do not fully understand how the mind works but they have been able to identify the impact of meditation on the physical brain through Magnetic Resonance Imagining (MRI). Dusana Dorjee warns us, however, that science is a reductionist approach to the study of the mind and cannot effectively measure the whole range of states of awareness that can be achieved by the long-term meditator. Dusana is the author of
Neuroscience and Psychology of Meditation in Everyday Life: Searching for the Essence of Mind (2017).

How meditation changes the physical structure of the brain

A comprehensive review of neuroscience research into the impacts of mindfulness meditation undertaken by experienced meditators showed that eight regions of the brain were altered. Significantly, the regions of the brain that were positively impacted relate to:

  • capacity to be introspective and manage abstract ideas and, importantly, the ability to be aware of our own thinking
  • body awareness including touch, pain and proprioception
  • attention, self-control and regulation of emotions
  • ability to communicate effectively between the hemispheres of the brain (between right and left hemispheres).

Mindfulness meditation and happiness

Happiness can be developed as a skill and mindfulness meditation has a key role in its development. Well-being is increased, according to scientists at Wisconsin-Madison University, when the following capacities are enhanced:

  • ability to maintain positive emotions
  • rapidly recover from what is experienced as negative
  • engage in actions that manifest empathy and compassion
  • sustain attention in the present moment (and avoid mind-wandering).

Richard Davidson and Brianna S. Schuyler (2015) in their chapter, The Neuroscience of Happiness, draw on their mind research to argue that these capacities can be developed through training, especially mindfulness training and kindness/compassion meditation.

Research on the Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation by
Tang, Y. Y., Hölzel, B. K., & Posner, M. I. (2015) demonstrates that meditation can reduce stress and increase performance because it switches off the brain’s anxiety- riddled, default-mode network (focused on the past/future) and activates the task-positive network. This latter network focuses on the present moment. As the brain can utilise only one of these networks at any one time, meditation – through creating the task of focusing on the breath, body scan or some other aspect – can activate present mindedness which leads to physical and mental health, while deactivating the default-mode which would otherwise lead to stress and ill-health.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and other mindful practices, we can enhance our performance and the wellness-generating structure of our brains and move from the stress-creating default mode to the task-positive mode of operating in our daily lives.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness for Life Challenges and Related Shock

I recently experienced a challenging event involving a relative, and both my wife and I were shocked by the unexpected turn of events. This led me to search for mindfulness resources on facing life challenges and related shock. My research turned up an article by Melli O’Brien, known fondly as Mrs. Mindfulness. Melli’s article is titled, How to Use Mindfulness in Times of Crisis and Challenge.

Melli shared her personal experience of challenge and shock resulting in a personal crisis for herself and her partner. In the space of one week, her partner’s uncle died, and his father suffered a life-threatening heart attack that resulted in many hours spent by Melli and her partner in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a local hospital. Melli recounts how she used mindfulness to deal with this crisis in her life.  She describes how she drew on techniques learned through the Mindfulness Summit (for which she is a host, co-founder and speaker), as well as her daily mindfulness practice. Melli summarises these techniques in terms of five main mindfulness methods that she and her partner employed to deal with the life crisis that was confronting them.

Five mindfulness techniques for life challenges and shock

  1. The 3-Breath Hug – Melli mentioned that this technique was introduced during the Mindfulness Summit by Kristen Race. It basically entailed hugging each other for the equivalent of three breaths. Melli explained how this simple mindfulness practice enabled her and her partner to ground themselves and provide each other with support and love.  In my recent crisis, involving a relative who rolled their car at 70 kph, my wife and I spontaneously hugged each other and the relative in turn, to express our gratitude, support, understanding and empathy. This simple process can be incredibly grounding when you are awash with multiple emotions associated with shock.
  2. A mindful mantra to accept what is – Melli used the mantra, “This Too”, as a way to express acceptance of the reality of the present moment and to overcome resistance to “what is”. She explains that it is self-defeating to fight the emotions of fear, anxiety, and a sense of loss that accompany a life challenge and the associated shock. In a previous post I discussed Tara Brach’s approach to this acceptance in terms of saying “yes“ to what we are feeling now.
  3. Conscious breaths – Melli describes this as “one conscious breath” but mentions that it may involve more than one breath taken consciously. Conscious breathing is a mindfulness technique recommended when people are experiencing anxiety. It is often used at the beginning of a meditation as a way of being grounded.
  4. Creative connection – Melli refers to the session at the Mindfulness Summit conducted by Danny Penman who introduced “colouring in” as a daily practice to develop creativity along with mindfulness.  So Melli and her companions used the time in the waiting room at the hospital to create coloured pictures to relieve the emotional stress of waiting and to provide some colourful pictures for the hospital room of her partner’s father.
  5. Maintaining daily mindfulness practice – Melli was able to continue her daily mindfulness routine to nurture and nourish herself as the life challenges and stress tended to drain her energy.  As she points out, our typical response in times of acute stress is to stop our mindfulness practices, over-indulge in food and alcohol and generally seek ways to substitute pleasure for the pain of facing up to our emotions.

As we grow in mindfulness through various practices that help to ground us and give us renewed strength, we are better able to handle life challenges and related shock.  We can develop acceptance of the challenges and learn to live with the intense emotions involved.

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Body Scan Meditation

Body scan meditation is a quick and easy way to access your relaxation response, an effective counter to stress and your automatic fight or flight response. Body scan meditation has the advantage of being flexible – you can use it anywhere at any time. You don’t have to undertake an extended body scan to realise its benefits.

Different purposes for the body scan

Olivier Devroede, author of the Mindfulness Based Happiness blog, explains that body scan in the yoga tradition is used for relaxation, whereas in some mindfulness traditions, the purpose is the development of acceptance. Jon Kabat-Zinn also provides a “bodyscape meditation“, incorporating a body scan, that is designed to enable you to become more aware of your body and its sensations and, through this meditation practice, become grounded in the present more readily.

Diana Winston, Director of Education at the Mindful Awareness Research Centre (MARC) offers a brief, 3-minute body scan that can enable you to quickly wind back your disabling response to a stressful situation. It can serve as a regular practice, too, that can progressively build automatic awareness of body sensations and emotional responses. Diana also offers a 13-minute body scan meditation for sleep when you are going to bed. At other times, you might actually be trying to avoid sleeping during meditation.

The basics of a body scan

Body scan is something that can be short or extended, incorporated into other forms of meditation and used flexibly for different purposes. While the intention of body scan meditations may vary, they have several basic elements in common. These relate to being grounded bodily and mentally, noticing your breathing and paying attention to your body and its sensations.

  1. Being grounded bodily – often this is achieved by paying attention to your posture, ensuring you are comfortable and relaxed, and upright if seated in a chair. There may be many times when you are unaware of your posture which can be a form of slouch, whether you are sitting or standing. Focusing on becoming grounded bodily, can help rectify this tendency to slouch throughout the day.
  2. Being grounded mentally – this basically involves bringing your full attention to the process of a body scan and your specific intention in undertaking it.
  3. Noticing your breathing – this can be a simple act of being aware of your breath and its characteristics (such as slow or fast, deep or shallow), without any effort to control your breathing. It can also be a more conscious approach where you take a couple of deep breaths to aid the process of relaxation and being grounded in the present. A deeper breathing approach is lower-belly breathing which can be incorporated into your body scan.
  4. Paying attention to the pressure on your body – this initial approach to increasing bodily awareness, involves noticing the pressure from the floor or your chair on your body at different points, e.g. on your back, feet, buttocks, shoulders. This is a form of conscious grounding – noticing the impact of your immediate physical environment on your body.
  5. Paying attention to your bodily sensations – this is the core activity in a body scan, the other activities serves as a warm-up or preparatory exercise. Here you are exploring your body, looking for any points of tightness, tension, pain or contraction. The aim is to progressively release or soften these points to free your body from its stress response. Developing your awareness about these points of tension, can help you to more quickly become aware of a negative emotional reaction to a stressful situation.
  6. Paying attention to your feelings – becoming aware of your bodily sensations can give you insight into how you are feeling about a situation or interaction. Often, we hide negative emotions, which further exacerbates the tension in our bodies. If you can get in touch with your negative feelings through a body scan, you can name these feelings and, over time, successfully control them. This last step represents the deepest approach to body scan meditation and the most time consuming method, as you need to undertake the precursor activities to get in touch with your bodily sensations and be in an open frame of mind to name those feelings.

As we grow in mindfulness through the different forms of body scan meditation, we increase our capacity to focus, enhance our self-awareness, develop our relaxation response, improve our self-regulation and increase our capacity to be in the moment.

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Image source: courtesy of Ataner007 on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Re-energise through Meditation

In this day and age of hectic living, people are constantly tired or exhausted – basically drained of energy. In the absence of a conscious effort to re-energise ourselves, we can become prone to all kinds of physical and mental illness. Meditation provides multiple ways to re-energise and restore physical and mental balance.

The daily pressures at home and work can leave us drained. Added to this are increasing financial demands, adverse environmental conditions (e.g. extreme weather reflected in floods, cyclones and bushfires), increasing violence in communities and the growth of terrorism.

The human impact of these multiple pressures is reflected in constant tiredness and fatigue experienced by people of all ages, even children who are experiencing the demands of exams, parental expectations and university entry requirements. This constant energy drain can be reflected in many illnesses, not the least of these being chronic fatigue syndrome. Alan Jansson, Japanese acupuncturist with more than 30 years experience, has noted that chronic fatigue syndrome, which used to be the province of elite athletes, is now being experienced by managers in large organisations and people of all ages, including teenagers.

Re-energising through meditation

It seems contradictory that meditation, noted for its focus on stillness and silence, should be a source of energy. In fact, there are specific guided meditations that focus on re-energising the body and mind. One such 10-minute guided meditation offers an approach designed to boost energy and build positivity.

Other forms of meditation help us to release tension and trauma, e.g. somatic meditation, remove the energy draining effects of negative thoughts, build positive energy through appreciation and expression of gratitude, and access the energy in the natural world around us through open awareness. Even mindful listening, being fully present and attuned to another person, can energise us through openness to their ideas and passionate pursuits and through the power of connection.

Reasons why meditation re-energises

The Exploration of Consciousness Research Institute (EOC), drawing on the latest resesearch, advances five reasons why meditation increases energy. These reasons are summarised below:

  1. Meditation changes the way we respond to stress: replacing energy-sapping fear and anxiety with resilience through a reduction in the “energy-zapping” chemical, cortisol.
  2. Boosts endorphins thus increasing calm and focus and reducing the need for energy-depleting, temporary stimulants such as “energy drinks” and coffee.
  3. Induces deeper sleep and energy restoration through increased awareness of the present moment (not locked into the past or the future) and through an increase in the sleep-enhancing hormone, melatonin.
  4. Boosts two key chemicals DHEA (develops overall sense of well-being) and Growth Hormone (GH) which increases our strength and energy storage. The overall effect of these two chemicals is a reduction in fatigue and an increase in the energy of motivation.
  5. Upgrades our personal battery and recharges it – by enhancing our emotional control centre (the pre-frontal cortex) and reducing our fear centre (the amygdala).

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, we can re-energise our personal batteries when they run low, build resilience, reduce energy-sapping emotions and chemicals, and increase chemicals that have a positive effect on our overall strength, the restorative quality of our sleep and our sense of well-being.

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Image source: courtesy of ColiN00B on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Meditation For Increased Energy: How & Why it Works – 5 Reasons

Reprioritising Your Mindfulness Practice

In my previous post, I identified five strategies I could use to establish and maintain a daily practice of Tai Chi. The strategies can be applied to any form of mindfulness practice, whether some form of meditation or a practice such as mindful walking, mindful eating or open awareness. In reflecting on these strategies, I realised that underpinning them was the need to reprioritise my mindfulness practice according to its level of importance to various aspects of my life. Reprioritising means
to arrange things in a new order of importance.

Identifying the importance of your mindfulness practice

A starting point for reprioritising your mindfulness practice is to identify what it brings to your life, how it improves your life in its various aspects and what its importance is to your overall quality of life.

You can ask yourself a series of questions that will serve to highlight the importance of your mindfulness practice:

  • does it give you clarity, confidence and creativity in your daily work?
  • how does it help you to manage your stress at work and home?
  • in what way does it improve your significant relationships, e.g. with your partner, your children or your work colleagues?
  • what does it bring to your favourite sporting activity? (e.g. my practice of Tai Chi develops balance, coordination, timing and control in my tennis game)
  • does it help you to appreciate your life more and build a positive outlook?
  • what does it do for your physical health?
  • how does it improve your mental health and sense of equanimity?

If you can truly and comprehensively identify the ways in which your mindfulness practice contributes to your quality of life, you will build the motivation to reprioritise your mindfulness practice so that it assumes a regularity and consistency that reflects its importance to you.

Reprioritising your mindfulness practice

If you want to reprioritise your mindfulness practice, it means that you have to create space in your life to enable this to happen. This means that you have to give up something else if you have a life characterised by busyness. Again, you can ask yourself a series of questions and be honest with yourself:

  • do you really need to spend the time getting and drinking the extra cup(s) of coffee or tea?
  • do you feast on the news, forever checking what is happening in the world around you and beyond?
  • how often do you access email and divert your attention from your task at hand?
  • are you wasting time by multitasking?
  • how much time do you devote to watching television shows, movies or sports events?
  • how much time do you spend on social media and what does this activity add to your quality of life?

If you review how you spend your time, you can invariably find a way to reprioritise your mindfulness activity so that it assumes a priority that reflects its importance to your quality of life.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can become more aware of the importance of our mindfulness practice for our quality of life, identify how we spend our time and learn to accord our mindfulness practice the priority it deserves. This is, undoubtedly, an ongoing learning process.

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Image source: courtesy of Alexandra_Koch on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Overcoming the Tyranny of Email

Every time I facilitate a manager development course, the topic of email arises along with an expression of hopelessness – people are suffering from the tyranny of email. They often feel out of control, overwhelmed by the volume of email and stressed by the “implied” deadlines involved. People sometimes perceive their inbox as a “ticking timebomb” if they don’t immediately process email as it arrives.

The emotional burden of email

Our communication patterns and related expectations have accelerated since the days of “slow mail” – the hand-written letter. The expectations of a timely response have grown with the increased speed of communication – how often are you asked, “I just sent you an email (or text message), didn’t you receive it?” The expectation of a speedy response is implied along with the underlying assumption that their communication is the only thing you have to deal with during the day.

Leo Babauta, author of the Zen Habits blog and related eBooks, found that reading his email before he got out of bed was actually a procrastination habit – putting off getting out of bed and also delaying doing something productive like researching, writing or planning his day. I have found that if I focus on writing a blog post before I read my email, I am much more productive and less distracted. I can relegate email to the role of a secondary, rather than primary, priority.

Recent research has shown that if you access your phone first thing in the morning (to check emails, texts and Instagram notifications), you are limiting your productivity and capacity for creative problem solving, adding stress to your life and making yourself unhappy.

The tyranny of email – capturing your attention

Besides adding to your stress, the volume of email and its implied deadlines serve to capture your attention and distract you from more important things that you are doing or have to do. Email is a form of disruptive technology more often driven by people who are actively trying to gain your attention to pursue their own ends. If you let it, email takes over your life, determines your priorities and undermines your capacity to focus.

Frequent checking of email takes you off-task and reduces your productivity because you have to take time to reset your brain when you return to your task at hand. Research has found that people who check their email only three times a day (instead of the average of 15 times per day) experience less stress, are more productive and achieve a greater sense of satisfaction during the day because they are better able to accomplish desired results.

How often do you find yourself following a “link-chain” in an email and going completely off-task to explore the latest news, social media post or “lifestyle” comment? Some people are driven by the desire for the latest news and pursuit of this desire consumes time and energy. If you find that you have no surplus in your life, you might find that your email-reading habits consume much of the space in your life.

A mindful way to handle email

Leo Babauta provides an approach to handling email which he calls, A Mindful Guide to Email in 20 Minutes a Day. The essence of his approach is to avoid starting the day reading email, allocate 20 minutes for reading email, have a system for sorting through your daily inbox, take action appropriately and reduce your inbox flow by unsubscribing from electronic newsletters, notifications, etc.

His system identifies three kinds of action that you can take:

  1. delete (or store in a folder for future reference if you are going to use it later)
  2. action in two minutes (brief responses where required)
  3. add to your to-do list (if you need to take action that will be longer than 2 minutes).

One of the problems with email is that we become indecisive and put off action on individual items, only to return later and repeat the process – this is a waste of time and a major source of distraction. Having a clear system enables you to regain control from the tyranny of email, so that you are in the “driver’s seat”.

Leo’s final piece of advice is to treat the process of email as a mindful endeavour – undertaken consciously, thoughtfully, with compassion and kindness. It is important to realise that email amplifies the message because of the proximity of the screen – so, for instance, writing in all capitals is effectively experienced as shouting. Mindfulness, too, is developed if we express gratitude for the opportunity that email provides, especially being able to connect with others and maintain valuable relationships.

As we grow in mindfulness by treating email as a conscious, mindful endeavour undertaken in a systematic (rather than chaotic) way, we learn to overcome the tyranny of email, regain control over our priorities and improve our productivity.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of geralt on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Why is it so Difficult to Serve-for-the-Match in Tennis?

I have been watching the live TV broadcast of the 2019 Australian Open. It is surprising how many players – great champions among them – who have great difficulty serving-for-the-match. The more they desire the win, the more often they fail at the final hurdle. There seems to be a number of contributing factors related to mindfulness that are behind this widespread difficulty – (1) anticipating the result, (2) negative self-evaluation for making mistakes and (3) fear of failure.

Living in the future: anticipating the result

Many players when they are so close to winning begin to think about what it would be like to win the prize money, hold the trophy aloft, receive the accolades of the crowd at the end of tennis tournament and gain new sponsorships. They lose focus on playing the game and instead begin to play the result in their head. The legends of tennis and other great players such as Sarina Williams emphasise the need to stay-in-the-moment and play each point as it comes, ignoring the score. Mindfulness training can help here because it builds that capacity to be in the moment and to stay focused.

Many quality tennis players develop their own anchors to remind themselves to stay calm and in-the-moment. The anchor could be a couple of deep breaths, mindful walking, stopping to focus on their breath for a few seconds or a speedy body scan and stress release, especially of the tension in their arms and shoulders. These anchors can be developed through mindfulness practice.

Living in the past: negative self-evaluation for making mistakes

So often even top players will make a double fault on their serve when serving-for-the-match. I have even seen both Nadal and Federer do this. The tension and stress of the moment can result in muscle tightness and weakness in the arms.

Mistakes at the final, critical stage can become more momentous in our eyes because of the potential consequences of these mistakes. So, the tendency to negative self-evaluation is heightened. This self-criticism can become self-defeating as it negatively impacts our self-confidence and self-esteem. The negative thoughts can swirl around in our heads at this time like a whirlpool -“Why did I do such a low percentage shot at this time?”; “What a stupid time to play a drop shot!”; or “Why did I go down the line when the whole court was open?”.

Under stress our judgement suffers, unless we have learned to manage the stress through mindfulness. If we continue with our negative self-evaluation, then we are sabotaging our winning position, as so often happens in tennis matches.

Fear of failure

Ivan Lendl is famous not only for his amazing achievements in tennis but also for his early failures in closing out matches when he was serving-for-the-match. He kept losing finals in major tournaments, but his real breakthrough came when he beat John McEnroe in the 1985 US Open final. He went from not being able to win a final to rarely losing one.

In reporting on Lendl’s 1985 US Open win, John Feinstein had this to say of the fear demons that had beset Ivan:

The demons have chased him around the world. From Paris to Sydney, from London to New York. Everywhere Ivan Lendl has gone, the fear has chased him. Burdened by his talent and penchant for failure when the pressure was greatest, he suffered with the knowledge that people respected his skills and questioned his courage.

Fear of failure can cause us to freeze, to intensify our negative self-evaluation and self-criticism for making mistakes. We can get into another negative spiral of thinking which is even more difficult to control – “What will people think/say about my failure?”; “I am letting down so many people who have helped me!; “What will my coach say?” or “So many people who have come to see the match will be disappointed (particularly likely if you are playing on your home turf)”.

Lendl overcame his fear, born of past failures to win major finals, and went on to win 8 major titles in all, and a total of 94 singles titles, achieving a match winning percentage of over 90% in five different years. Some commentators consider him to be the greatest tennis player to ever play the game

After his historic victory, Lendl commented about the destructive effect of fear in the closing stages of a tennis match:

The worst thing you can do is be afraid of something.

As I have discussed previously naming your feelings, e.g. fear of failure, can help you tame these emotions. The R.A.I.N. meditation is a specific meditation for addressing fear and overcoming the disabling effects that fear can have on you.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop anchors to help us stay in the moment at times of stress, to minimise our negative self-evaluation and face our fears so they do not disable us.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of mohamed_hassan on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog. 

Focused Attention: A Guided Meditation

In this era of constant, disruptive distractions we need to be able to develop the capacity to calm our minds and focus our attention on what is important in our lives. Without this capacity, we are at the mercy of stress and anxiety as we try to deal with the incessant demands on our minds. One way to restore equanimity when we are stressed “out-of-our-minds”, is to develop a simple practice of focused attention.

Rich Fernandez, co-founder of Wisdom Labs, provides a guided meditation that enables you to train your mind in focused attention. Rich’s meditation podcast is under ten minutes and provides a way to quickly and easily regain calmness when stressed through attention to the act of breathing which is an undervalued element of a healthy life.

Focused attention on your breathing

The focused attention meditation requires, in the first place, that you adopt a comfortable position and reduce visual distractions by closing your eyes or looking downwards. If you are physically uncomfortable or visually distracted, you will not be able to focus on your breathing.

Rich then suggests that you bring your total attention to the act of breathing as you experience it in your body. This experience will differ from person to person as levels of awareness differ immensely. For example, people who are trained in focused attention are much more aware of their breathing than others who have not undertaken this training.

To focus on your experience of breathing you begin to notice the flow of air into and out of your body and you identify where this bodily sensation is experienced in your own body – e.g. in your throat, chest or stomach. You can notice too whether your breathing is deep or shallow, slow or fast, even or rough. The intention is not to control your breathing, but just notice it in a very focused way.

As you bring your attention to your breathing, you can become more conscious of your in-breath, out-breath and the gap between these movements of breath. You can also rest in the gap to enhance your level of calmness and bring your bodily stress sensations under control.

Rich suggests that you end your focused attention meditation with a few deep, controlled breaths as a way to bring your attention back to where you are and what you have been doing before the meditation practice. Some people recommend that this practice of controlled breathing can also be used at the start of a meditation (as a way to release stress and bring attention to the breath).

Managing thought distractions

Everyone experiences distractions during meditation, whether you are an experienced meditator or not. Our thoughts wander endlessly, thousands of times a day. The art of developing focused attention is to notice your thoughts and “gently but firmly” bring your attention back to your breathing. The practice of managing your thought distractions develops the discipline necessary to control your thoughts so you are not held captive by them.

By focusing on your experience of breathing and maintaining your attention, despite the intermittent distraction of your thoughts, you develop the capacity to quickly and easily drop into a calm breathing pattern that enables you to wind down your level of stress and anxiety.

As we grow in mindfulness through focused attention meditation, we develop awareness of the level of stress we are experiencing and cultivate a way to manage that stress. This trained capacity builds our personal resilience and ability to respond appropriately in situations we experience as stressful.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of Antranias on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.