Exercise routine is more complete if combined with meditation

It was a sunny and windy day in southeastern Tasmania, and Heather Larsen, a professional slackliner, was balanced on a 1-inch nylon ribbon suspended between two of the tallest seaside cliffs in the southern hemisphere. Seals barked and waves crashed against the rocks 300 meters below her.

Larsen was tied to the ribbon with a harness and rope, but the gusts of wind and the height scared her as she crossed. Then she concentrated on her breathing. With her arms raised and knees slightly bent to absorb the vibration of the tape, she inhaled as she took one step and exhaled on the next.

“I’m here”, she thought as she lowered one foot. “Now I’m here.”

Larsen, 35, uses this type of breathing and mantra as a form of meditation to maintain concentration while balancing on a wobbly ribbon. “It helps me stay present in the moment,” she explained, and keep me from being distracted by things like shaky steps before or changes in tape tension later on.

Meditation is already proven to have many benefits, including increased concentration, reduced stress, and eliminating mental distractions. But it’s not always easy to find time to meditate on a busy day. For some coaches, doctors and athletes, however, meditation can be incorporated into the daily exercise routine, which is enriched.

With a clear and focused mind, you are better able to make quick decisions in a game of basketball or beach volleyball. And experts say meditation’s emphasis on the breath and the body shifts the focus from the outcome — whether it’s winning a race, increasing your mileage or losing weight — to the movement itself, making sports more pleasurable.

This meditation often takes the form of mindfulness, which Sara Lazar, an adjunct professor at Harvard Medical School, described as “paying attention to the present moment in an open, curious, nonjudgmental way.”

Their research shows that eight weeks of mindfulness meditation practice, including movement-based forms such as yoga, generated beneficial structural changes in the brain, especially in brain regions associated with stress and mind-wandering. For Lazar, incorporating mindfulness into physical exercise is simple and can bring unexpected rewards.

TO GET STARTED, BREATHE

Before a match or sports activity that requires concentration, a few minutes of intentional breathing can mentally prepare you, said George Mumford, performance expert and author of “The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance.” pure performance, in Portuguese).

He led regular meditation sessions with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers. During the activity, he said, deep breathing can calm what he describes as “the monkey brain”—a mind filled with emotions and thoughts.

“You’re agitated, you’re scattered. You’ve got your head in a thousand things, so you’re not present anywhere,” he explained.

Dr. Chiti Parikh directs the Integrative Health and Wellness Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. She teaches her patients to breathe deeply in a way that engages the diaphragm, the largest respiratory muscle in the body, which separates the chest cavity from the abdomen.

Studies indicate that deep breathing can activate bodily functions associated with calm and relaxation, quieting stress responses. According to Parikh, when doing physical activity people tend to breathe shallowly rather than from the diaphragm, filling the lungs more fully.

To train yourself to breathe this way, she recommended, lie on your back, relax your muscles, and place one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen. Take long, slow breaths, inhaling and exhaling through your nose, and notice how your hands move. Inhale in four seconds and exhale in six. Extend your exhalations little by little. Notice how your chest moves when you take shallow breaths, but when you take deep breaths, your belly moves too.

Once you know how to breathe deeply, you can incorporate that breathing into any activity: swimming, diving, or shoveling snow from the sidewalk.

FOCUS ON THE BODY

Focusing on the sensations in your body as it moves — for example, visualizing the parts of your body and thinking about the muscle groups involved in a movement — is also something that can calm a distracted mind, said Kalpanatit Broderick, who runs an art studio. fitness center in Seattle that combines strength and cardiovascular training with mindfulness meditation.

“If I pay attention to my body when I’m doing a pushup, I can feel my shoulders, my chest, my triceps, my quads,” said Broderick, who was once a nationally ranked long distance runner. Or, during a run, he recommended, think about how your arms are swinging, whether your shoulders are relaxed, whether you’re touching the ground with your heels or toes first.

This will force you to pay attention to the movement rather than the result, he explained. “The current fitness paradigm is results-based,” he said. But exercising with meditation calms the mind, connects you with your body,” and “then we can enjoy our surroundings.”

Lazar suggested using a meditation app. Some apps of this type have meditations created specifically for walking or other types of movement. Many are free, but others are paid monthly.

DEFINE AN ​​INTENTION

Two years ago, to combat the stress she faced working a hectic job and caring for her son alone during the pandemic, Imani Cheers began following a daily ritual of running, walking, yoga and cycling, all with meditation.

A key part of her meditation is setting an intention for each day, which she repeats to herself aloud as she exercises. For example: “don’t expect good results while repeating bad habits” or “finish this half marathon without hurting myself”.

His routine was affected more than just the way he played sports, said Cheers, who is the dean of undergraduate education at George Washington University. “I’m 41 years old and I’m healthier, stronger and happier than at any other time in my life. And who can say that after a pandemic?”

THE GOAL: FIND THE ‘FLOW’

Including meditation in your movement can have another benefit: it can lead you to a “flow” state.

In his book “Flow: The Psychology of High Performance and Happiness”, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the first to coin the term “flow”, describes it as “a state in which a person is so involved in an activity that nothing else seems matter”.

Anyone who exercises or plays sports, whether professional or amateur, has likely experienced some version of the flow state. George Mumford said that on the basketball court, the state of flow makes the basket “grow” and time slows down.

Csikszentmihalyi’s definition of flow closely resembles the benefits gained from meditative movement: inner clarity, intense focus, and a sense of serenity. And while meditating before or during exercise is not a guarantee of flow, it can create the conditions for achieving that state. “You’re not trying to make things happen – you’re letting them happen,” said Mumford.

Heather Larsen, the slackliner, agrees. She is known above all for her radical maneuvers, such as splits, handstands or hanging upside down from the ankles, all performed on a ribbon stretched over the void at a seemingly impossible altitude. One of her favorite slacklines near her home in southern Utah stretches over a canyon, with rocks and trees far below.

Ali Larsen can access the flow state easily, because through meditation she has learned to push away distractions, ego and focus on the result. And that’s the goal of meditative movement, she said, “Effort disappears, and movement just is. It feels wonderful, and it feels easy.”

Translation by Clara Allain