SPORT SCIENCE Garrett Lucash, RFS, RM
Mindfulness and Awareness in Figure Skating BY L E E CA B E L L , E D D, M F F
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igure skating is a beautiful sport, but there is a lot of physical training behind it. Figure skaters devote a lot of time practicing at an ice rink and exercising in a gym every day, but how much time do they spend preparing mentally for the precious minutes on the ice during training or competition? How do figure skaters and coaches improve their cognitive control, making their minds stronger and strengthening their attention control? One answer can be found in taming their minds through the practice of meditation, increasing mindfulness and awareness. In the last 20 years, meditation and mindfulness/awareness have gone from being “kind of cool” to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from weight to relationships to achievement level. Cutting-edge research has revealed meditation’s many benefits and, as indicated below, how it can help practitioners achieve their goals. At its root, mindfulness is about staying focused on what is happening in the present moment. The mind is like a wild horse that needs to be tamed. Finding a “focal point” can help tame the mind’s wild tendencies. We can focus on any object, but breath is the best object to focus on because it is always with us. Mindfulness means attention to detail; however, our mind must be calm in order to be focused. Awareness means using your five sense perceptions at every moment. You are fully present sensing the outside world with the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin. You notice we are here, facing the external reality we need to relate to. Do I like or dislike this reality? What is my personal feeling about it? And we project our prejudices into this reality. We never see it as is, we only see our projection of it. That is why that it is like a dream, the rainbow or magic show. We only see our version of the external world. We can learn about mindfulness and awareness by practicing meditation. In the West, more than 10 million people practice meditation every day. What is meditation and how it can help us? There are many kinds of meditation that influence the body and the brain, and scientists have just begun to scratch the surface of meditation’s possibilities. There is no need to become Olympic-level meditators or a yogi in a Himalayan mountain cave to learn about meditation and how to be mindful and aware. We can do it
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in the comfort of our home if we can have a quite space to sit on a meditation cushion or a chair. You can begin mindful meditation by sitting with the back straight on a meditation cushion with legs crossed or sitting on a chair with both feet touching the ground and focusing your attention on your breathing. Basic and simple, is not it? Not quite. The breath is always with you and gives you a bridge between the body and the mind. If we are happy, sad, excited, or angry, our breathing patterns change. Our breath accurately reflects our state of mind. As we focus on breathing, our breathing gradually becomes slower, then the frenetic activity in our minds becomes slower. We cannot breathe in the past or the future, we can only breath now. If we are conscious at the time of breathing, then we are in the present moment. Your eyes should be semi-open with the gaze about three to four feet to the front. If you are too distracted at the beginning of meditation, close your eyes for a few minutes first then open them slightly again after you quiet your mind a bit. This can be repeated during your meditation session. I prefer my hands comfortably placed on my thighs to create a closed circle. Your sitting should be as natural as possible, not too tight and not too loose. As we practice mindfulness meditation and sit and focus on our breath, we suddenly realize we are not the masters of our minds, yet the mind is with us all the time! The mind feeds us with anything imaginary possible, and thoughts are coming and coming. We like these thoughts, dislike them or are indifferent; we do not have to follow our thoughts out. If our minds wander and we are aware, then we can notice our thoughts and bring our attention back to our anchor—our breath, “touch and go,” so to speak. We should not be judgmental or pushing our thoughts away during the time of meditation. We are becoming friends with our minds and with ourselves. We certainly do not beat ourselves up because we are not the “perfect” meditators. We accept ourselves as we are. We observe our minds and what our minds are doing. We can see positive and negative states of mind, so we become more and more the masters of our minds rather than our minds’ slaves. We are in control.
