Mindful Running How practising

HOW TO BE A MORE MINDFUL RUNNER

Adding meditation to your routine can enhance your running – and your life

AND BREATHE Train your mind to be stronger with meditation

MEDITATION HAS LONG BEEN used to promote calm and relaxation, cope with stress and illness, as well as manage anxiety and depression. Runners often call their time logging miles their moving meditation. However, if the disappointment of a slower-thanexpected mile split or panic over unexplained tightness in your calf can derail your race or ruin your workout, adding a formal meditation practice to your training routine can better prepare you to handle these feelings and emotions – both on the run and in life. Just as lifting weights can strengthen your hips or hamstrings, meditation can strengthen your mind – enhancing your running and overall wellbeing.

How to begin meditating Meditation, or simply bringing awareness to a specific focus, typically involves holding yourself with a comfortable posture, such as sitting, lying down or walking. And ideally, it’s practised in a place with limited distractions.

Once you’ve ticked those boxes, meditation exercises are simple. For example, you may focus on your breath, count or repeat a mantra. Or you can scan your senses and observe what your body sees, hears, tastes, smells or feels to centre your attention. When distracting thoughts arise – this is boring; my nose is itching; we’re out of milk – try to come back to that focus.

There is no time requirement to make a meditation ‘count’ , so meditate for as long as you feel comfortable. But know that the more you make an effort to meditate, the more you will ultimately get out of it.

Rebecca Pacheco – author of Still Life: The Myths And Magic Of Mindful Living and a meditation and yoga instructor – acknowledges that meditation will, at times, feel difficult, even for the most experienced meditators. ‘You may find you’re bored, anxious or fidgety, and that’s okay, ’ says Pacheco, a two-time Boston Marathon finisher. It doesn’t mean you’re ‘bad’ at meditation.

Meditation v mindfulness The two boil down to more specific descriptions: meditation is the practice, while mindfulness is a state of being. Practising meditation trains your mind to stay more present in each moment.

Mindfulness training uses meditation exercises in combination with informal practices, such as running, to incorporate mindfulness into daily life. Together, they train your mind to focus less on negative thoughts, emotions or worries.

Keith Kaufman, a clinical sports psychologist and co-developer of the Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement programme, describes mindfulness as a non-reactive approach. The challenge is that

‘MINDFULNESS TRAINING GIVES US A WAY OF ACCEPTING THE PAIN AND

HELPING US TO THINK, “RIGHT NOW THIS IS HOW MY BODY IS FEELING...

humans naturally react to feeling uncomfortable and try to minimise it. He related it to the discomfort in a race.

‘It’s called an ironic mental process, ’ Dr Kaufman says. ‘If you’re saying, “I’m in so much pain right now. I shouldn’t feel this pain, I don’t want to feel this pain” , what it does is actually brings more of your focus to the pain and can actually make it worse. Mindfulness training gives us a way of accepting [the pain and helping us think], “Right now, this is how my body is feeling, but I can still feel this, and I can still proceed. ”’

Why you should learn to tap

into your headspace

Researchers have studied the benefits of meditation and found wide-ranging advantages – from helping to reduce blood pressure to managing insomnia and quitting smoking. For runners, it has a few benefits in particular:

01/ It helps you to find your flow.

Meditation can help you get ‘in the zone’ – when you’re so absorbed in your run that it feels effortless; an experience that has been associated with peak performance. A study published in the Journal Of Clinical Sports Psychology in 2009 following long-distance runners showed improvements in mindfulness and awareness, as well as decreases in sport-related worries and perfectionism – factors that may aid runners in reaching that flow state.

‘If you’re thinking about your time and if you’re thinking about the end result of the race, it’s really hard to get into the rhythm, ’ says Dr Kaufman, whose programme was used in the study. On the other hand, letting go of the outcome and focusing on what’s happening right now, in the moment, can help you hit your flow.

02/ It messes with pain perception

and boosts recovery. Meditation can improve your idea of fatigue, which may prevent you from giving up or slowing down on the run. A 2021 study in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary And Alternative Medicine found that following the completion of a mindfulness-based training programme, female college students reported decreases in their perception of exercise intensity and other negative feelings, such as fatigue, following an 800-metre run. A study in the Journal Of Athletic Training from 2021 also found that mindfulness training – in conjunction with traditional physical therapies – reduced pain while running, improved coping strategies and decreased pain catastrophising in patients with knee pain. Another study in the British Journal Of Sports Medicine showed that runners who practised meditation as part of their relaxation training significantly decreased their blood lactate concentration after exercise, an indirect marker of fatigue in muscles.

03/ It can support your speed.

A study in the Journal Of Clinical Sports Psychology from 2011 showed improvements in runners’ mile times one year after they completed a mindfulness training programme. However, Dr Kaufman cautions, ‘It would be way overstating the science of meditation to say if you meditate, you’re going to be faster. But by meditating, it can change the way you pay attention in competitive moments, ’ he says.

The best part: there aren’t really side effects to trying meditation. So you may as well add it to your training plan and give it a go to see if it gives you the edge you’re looking to achieve.

4 MEDITATION TIPS FOR RUNNERS

You can always practise mindfulness on the run, but to really sharpen your mental skills, a formal meditation practice (in which you’re not moving your body) can go a long way. Here’s how you can tune into your mind…

EASE IN

If you were starting to run for the first time, you wouldn’t go out for a 10-mile tempo run. And the same goes for meditation. ‘Start with three minutes, ’ says Pacheco, ‘then try to string together days, then weeks. A little can go a long way. ’

USE SUPPORT

Apps such as Headspace, Calm or Apple Fitness+ have many guided meditations if you feel you don’t know where to start. Dr Kaufman’s podcast, Mindful Sport Performance, begins each episode with a mindfulness exercise.

JUST BEGIN

Set yourself up for success by designating a time to meditate when you’re most likely to actually do it, such as after a run. Just as it may take a mile or two to settle into a run, it may take time to get settled into a meditation practice.

DO WHAT WORKS

Meditation doesn’t have to look a certain way.

‘All it takes to be a good meditator is to meditate, ’ Pacheco says. She suggests using existing moments in the day to start, such as while sitting in your car if you’re early for a meeting. Or when you’re about to scroll on your phone, try two minutes of breath work.