MINDFULNESS AND AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL

Mindfulness is playing an ever-increasing role in sports training and success in sports of all kinds.

Mindfulness and meditation have been identified as key contributors to the Richmond Tigers’ ability to find emotional balance this past season and win the AFL grand final.

Here is a link to an insightful article by Tom Cartmill published in The Sydney Morning Herald.

On a related matter, for those who are athletes or coaches, I thoroughly recommend the recently published seminal text Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement: Mental Training for Athletes and Coaches by Drs Keith A Kaufman, Carol R Glass and Timothy R Pineau and published by the American Psychological Association. I am honoured to be mentioned and quoted in the book as one of the few who has written on the subject of mindfulness and acting. 

What, you may ask, is the relevance of acting to sport? Well, in recent years sports psychologists have been turning their attention to the various mental strategies used by actors and developing ways in which those strategies can be used by those who play sport. 

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There’s a joke---there are many of them, in fact---about the basketball team, the New York Knicks. The one I’m thinking of goes like this. ‘What do you call a New York Knicks player with a championship ring?’ 

The answer? A thief. 

Well, the fortunes of the team may just be about to change---for the better, that is. You see, the New York Knicks are learning all about mindfulness.

Knicks president Phil Jackson (pictured above)---whose moniker is 'Zen master'---revealed on Sunday that he has hired someone to put the team through ‘mindfulness training’ this season.

Jackson has previously instilled the practice of mindfulness and other psychological and philosophical tools (including Zen and Lakota Sioux philosophy) in his teams in Chicago and Los Angeles, guiding those teams in to peak performance.  

‘There's a mindfulness training program that's very logical and very calm, quiet, and we've started the process with this team, and [first-year head coach] Derek [Fisher is] all for it. He's a proponent of it,’ Jackson said Sunday. ‘And yet I think that it's kind of what I am inserting in here as part of what I think has to happen because I know what effect it [has]. I think it's very difficult sometimes for a coach to do this because it's so anti what we are as athletes.’

Head coach Derek Fisher (pictured left) underwent mindfulness training while playing under Jackson with the Lakers.

Jackson also said, ‘We're about action; we're about this intense activity that we've got to get after. And this mindfulness is about sitting still and being quiet and controlling your breath and allowing you to be in the moment, and yet it's so vital for a team to have this skill or players to have this skill. To be able to divorce themselves from what just happened that's inherent to them -- a referee's bad call, or an issue that goes on individually or against your opponent. You've got to be able to come back to your center and center yourself again.’

Fisher has his own views about mindfulness. ‘I think it falls into the category of mental performance. We've seen that evolve in professional sports in recent years where instead of always focusing on improving your performance in just the muscles and the bodies and the shooting, there is a very big muscle up here that also needs training sometimes,’ Fisher said. ‘And so mindful training, mental performance, we take it seriously.’

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Mindfulness and sport? Yes, indeed. It’s a very powerful combination, especially in the United States of America where mindfulness has had a presence in sport---numerous sports---for several years now. Here in Australia, where I live, mindfulness is just beginning to make its presence felt in sport, but it will happen. Indeed, it already is.

The South Sydney Rabbitohs at work---practising mindfulness

Here are ten very good reasons why sport and mindfulness ought to go together. One: mindfulness improves concentration and the capacity to focus and pay attention to the moment. Two: mindfulness improves mental resilience. Three: mindfulness reduces distractedness. Four: mindfulness helps a person to empty themself of self-concern. Five: mindfulness fosters and promotes cooperation and team work. Six: mindfulness enhances self-confidence. Seven: mindfulness leads to a more stable and steady mind. Eight: mindfulness improves one’s ability to cope with and release stress---in positive ways. Nine: mindfulness fosters ethical behaviour. Ten: mindfulness enhances esteem. All of that is FACT. And all of those things are good for sport and for those who engage in it.

Last Sunday the South Sydney Rabbitohs won the NRL Grand Final against the Canterbury Bulldogs, 30-6, to claim their first premiership in 43 years.

The team totally deserved their historic win. They worked hard, and performed exceptionally well on the field throughout the season. It has now been revealed that the team also had a special training program that included, among other things, ‘mind resilience training.’ The latter included, in substantial part, mindfulness practice. Yes, for the last five months the players meditated as a group for twenty minutes, three times a week.

The approach, a combination of breathing, mind and body exercises, was devised by consumer psychologist Derek Leddie and Dr Samantha Graham, who has a PhD in learning and communication.

For more information please read this article from the Sydney Morning Herald.

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MINDFULNESS: YOU CAN’T SAY 'IT’S JUST NOT CRICKET'

In the annals of Australian cricket master cricketer Justin Langer AM (pictured left, and also below) is one of Australia's great top-order batsmen.

Justin's own website reliably states, ‘Originally playing at number 3 he moved to opener in 2001 and played 105 test matches scoring 7,696 runs including 23 test centuries.’ Not bad, to say the least. In fact, as we Aussies like to say, ‘Bloody beautiful, mate!’

According to this recent article in The Times of India Justin engages in daily meditation. (I also know he's into yoga.) He has his own little ‘ashram’ (his word) at the bottom of the garden of his home in Perth, Western Australia. From the content of the article, and its wording, I get the impression that Justin, who was known in the cricket world for his mental toughness, practises some type of mindfulness meditation, for it has taught him to ‘live for the moment’ and ‘focus on the present.’

I have an important confession to make. I am not a fan of cricket. Sorry, but I would rather watch paint dry than watch cricket. Actually, if I am forced to watch cricket, I try to watch it mindfully. Not being all that familiar with the rules, I simply watch ... and observe ... each 'shot' (hit, catch, bowl, etc). I observe the bat, its colour and position, and its spatio-temporal movement. Ditto each bowl, etc. All this is done without judgment, condemnation or analysis ... for I can rarely tell a good 'shot' from a bad one. Of course, if you happen to be someone watching the game who is 'serious' about the matter, or if you're an umpire or a commentator, coach or selector, you will of necessity engage in (hopefully informed) judgment and analysis. You must.

What if you're a player on the field? Well, I guess a certain amount of self-evaluation and self-analysis must take place, but never to the point that you take your eye off the ball, or (if you're a batsman) you look at where you're going to hit the ball as opposed to keeping your eye on the ball whilst making sure the bat is 'coming through' facing the ball. I'm probably not making myself all that clear to those who really know what they're talking about (ha!), but mindfulness ... in the sense of attention and awareness from one moment to the next ... is very important for any player regardless of their position on the field or in the team. This is so, even if you've never heard of the concept of mindfulness.

Although, as I say, I know little about the game of cricket itself, I do know this much – the successful pursuit of any sport like cricket, baseball or golf requires, among other things, confidence and, most importantly, concentration.

We need to be careful when using the word ‘concentration’ in the context of mindfulness meditation. Concentration in the form of a fixed and rigid, even ‘absorbed’, focus on some word, sound or object may be the ‘name of the game’ in some forms of meditation, but not so when it comes to mindfulness meditation. Here, the word ‘concentration’ is used in the sense of one’s being able to be attentive to what is happening in each changing moment ... and things can and generally do change very fast in sports of the kind in question.

This also needs to be kept in mind. Concentration means, not so much blocking out distraction – for that is not always possible or even necessarily desirable – but being attentive to and choicelessly aware of whatever is the ‘content’ of the moment having regard to the ‘need’ of the particular moment in terms of the overall goal. That way, one can play in the moment for each hit or shot.

One final thing ... effort defeats itself. Yes, one must be mentally tough, persistent, determined, and so forth ... but trying too hard to, for example, hit the ball is not the way to go.

Finally, here's some video footage of the man 'in action':

Good on ya, Justin!

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