Practically mindful: 6 easy tips to keeping our minds in the moment
Lets try an exercise…
Welcome to the moment. Join me in a quick exercise to clear your minds, and help you ascend into the moment if you aren’t already here;) Now just close your eyes and focus only on your breath for 1 minute. Your breath keeps you alive, is constant and therefore, one thing that always exists in the current moment. Eliminate creeping thoughts from the past and what there is to come in the future. Focus on your breath while staying free of judgment and free of all external notions that pull you from that breath. The ability to maintain this mental state will keep your mind in the present and as I am going to tell you, help you enjoy life as it should be enjoyed while performing better physically and mentally in anything that you do.
I swear this is real stuff
Mindfulness is a term that is used often and it is not widely understood. I have used these concepts of mindfulness that I am going to talk about my whole life. But it wasn’t until I worked with people as a physical therapist, did I really learn why visualizing myself doing awesome things using ultra focus seemed to translate into my best performances. Treating patients, I have found improved pain levels and faster recoveries with improved, mindful thinking. I have had the unique opportunity of coaching high school football for the Lakeside Lions while applying these concepts of being mindful to our football players and helping them learn what that really means. A clinical sports-psychologist, Kevin Alschuler, has been an interactive part of our season, instilling concepts of mindfulness, visualization and staying in the moment into us coaches and our football players’ on-and-off the field. What I have seen has truly been inspiring and led to a 1-loss season, the best at Lakeside since 1985…It’s one loss currently with 7 wins and we are looking for our 8th against Roosevelt in our first playoff game tonight….GO LIONS!
In order to understand how mindfulness works, a quick look into how the brain works is in order…
We have a very impressionable brain and body that can change with practice and physical molding. Imagine our brain and body as a ball of plastic. What’s important about plastic is it can be molded and re-shaped in order to accommodate the needs around it. Our brains and bodies work in a very similar way, including the tiny little neural connections in our brain that create every thought, image, sound, or movement we experience.
Memories and experiences contribute to the “molding” of our plastic brain. For example, why are some people terribly afraid of clowns while others think they are hilarious? One person produces a fear-response while another person produces a joy-response to the same figure. How could that be? Well, some talented writers and filmmakers portrayed a clown as a psychotic killer very effectively. So effectively, that it created a physical connection in the brains of some people that associate clowns with fearful situations. To make matters worse another filmmaker re-made this movie titled IT, further solidifying some of those fears about clowns that many people have already deeply rooted in their brains (I’m sure the movies are well-made, but those clowns are just so creepy and I personally know folks who’s have deep, deep fears of them consequently because of those movies). While this is not true for everyone, personal circumstances like being abused by a clown, or having gone through any traumatic experience as a young person accompanied by the portrayals in those movies may have created these fears that do not just go away naturally without specific practice over a long period of time, secondary to the emotional impact they leave.
The changes are physical and chemical by nature. What I mean is anything that is sensed by our bodies stimulates releases of hormones that create appropriate physical and emotional responses to those events. This is how we physically protect ourselves against danger. These responses build connections in our brain to speed up the hormone response, build muscle, reinforce bones, and allow us to be more efficient physically and mentally in that particular event in the future. Mastering a skill such as archery is the culmination of repetitive reinforcement of the neural connections in our brain and body that fire while exercising that skill. Practicing specific muscle patterns, using visual cues and absolute mental focus, people are able to become experts. Not everyone is finely tuned to draw a bow. But with the neural plasticity we possess, it’s never to late to start.
This very small introduction into brain function hopefully helps you understand that we have the potential to exercise our brain and body in order to create positive changes in those areas. While physically practicing a skill repetitively will help mold your brain and body's ability to complete the task, mindfulness and staying present is a mental exercise that will mold our plastic brains to make them a little more efficient in any task.**
So what is being Mindful? Or present? Or “in the moment”?
Being mindful, being disciplined in the moment eliminates influences that our mind is constantly trying to bring to our consciousness. Those influences can be good or bad thoughts, they can be about the future or the past, but they ALL have a negative effect on our performance and mental clarity in the present. Here is a visual that shows the effects of performance when we are “too high” or “too low” in regards to the amount of pressure and mental activity that is going on in our brains. Reaching into the past, or thinking about the future will create emotions and responses that put us on extremes of this spectrum. The goal is to keep the perceived pressure of a situation or moment in a place where we care and put forth effort, while avoiding being anxious or overly excited. A lack of caring, being flippant, labeling an activity inappropriately as a low-pressure situation or having a low sense of urgency will pull your mind out of the moment while over-excitement, over-confidence, recklessness, and frantic worrying will do the same thing. Finding that balance between the two will give your mind the best opportunity to be present.
The next question to ask would be how does one get good at being mindful and staying in the present moment?
I would imagine the earlier exercise I put you through reproduced mixed results. If you have never tried an exercise like that, chances are it was probably difficult for you to prevent old emotions and thoughts from arising or influencing how you feel or react to a particular moment. I can imagine there were those of you who tried it for like 3 seconds, sank your eyes back into the page and forgot all about it. This type of mental exercise requires practice like anything else that we want to be good at. Many people assume that there are only a few ways to be mindful and that they are weird and difficult to relate to. I understand that. However, what is amazing is that I have found that being mindful and present does not necessarily require you to leave your daily routine to sit in a prolonged meditative state, contemplating for hours if you are even doing this correctly. All you need is something you are passionate about --- something that can maintain your focus and intrigue and leave a few minutes available in your day to exercise your brain.
Try these 6 things…or 5, or 4 of them. I don’t care; just remember the more you practice, the better you get.
1. Take a Minute- Spending 1 minute each day to clear your mind of external thoughts, or judgments and focus on your breath only. This exercise prepares your mind for staying present, a great exercise to do daily and before any activity that you want to be totally focused and present for.
2. Find Your Passions- The key is to make sure you are completing tasks wholeheartedly. In doing so, you will observe the task, get a sense of how it smells, looks, tastes, how it makes you feel. Embrace the task with open arms and you will stay in that moment. You can develop the ability to focus for longer spans of time, the efficiency will improve and the joy you receive from that task will rise dramatically. People have the capacity to live in the moment no matter what they do. Rapper Macklemore finds himself in the present, even when he is simply driving in his Benz, jamming to music. I’m a fan and use these lyrics to explain my point not because the song is particularly creative, but because he glorifies a seemingly boring activity and embraces the moment through his lyrics...It makes me bob my head and makes me want to hop in my truck and blast my own music. My point is, seize the moment and you will have no regrets.
3. Join groups- Try learning a discipline like Yoga or Martial Arts – These have instructors who guide you through the movements of their discipline while maintaining focus on your breath and staying in the present moment. I have done yoga for years and can attest to its efficacy for numerous physical and mental benefits. Additionally, martial arts and their teachings are used to treat numerous diseases and provide equally as beneficial physical and mental benefits. All of these can provide spiritual benefits that allow us to be more present and content in the daily lives we live in.
4. Meditate- Refer to #1 on this list. That’s all meditation is. Clear your mind of judgment, and thought, focus on your breath, close your eyes, and be calm. Ascend your mind into the moment. Practice often:)
5. Visualization- As a football coach, there is nothing more satisfying to see specific scenarios that your team practices play out in the games and for your team to win those scenarios on Friday night. One scenario we practiced visualizing prior to a game was our deadly onside kickoff. If you aren’t familiar with football terminology, that essentially means, we are kicking the ball off to the other team but secretly trying to kick it to our own players to get the ball back. Its very difficult and very rare in a typical game of football. The players were asked to think about the smells, sounds, visuals, and emotions of the game. They were asked to think about the position of their feet and where their eyes were supposed to be and go through the rest of their mental checklist before the play began. They then were asked to let the play go in their head from the start almost to the finish and repeat it over and over in their heads. Again, visualizing where they are on the field, what they see, hear and how they react. Finally at the end, they were asked to visualize the result of the play in order to complete the task in their heads. That particular night, our kicker placed a perfect onside kick, early in the game that was recovered by another one of our players. Our kicker came off the field and told coach, “That is exactly what I visualized would happen." There is power in our minds that we are not all tapping into. Visualize yourself completing tasks, winning games, being the most efficient, best version of you during that particular activity. Whether it is your specific job on a certain play in a football game, your ability to move without your chronic back pain affecting you, or your technique on a specific stitch for a blanket you’re making, scientific studies have shown that visualizing those tasks can be reinforcing. It can have a similar effect on your skill in that task that physically practicing the task would have. This ultimately leads to faster improvements and better outputs in those activities. Think about how much more practice you could be getting!
6. Be nice to yourself. When those thoughts are creeping into your head about how you compare with others, and why your life is so hard, practice being grateful for something around you in that current moment. “Damn, its really cold and wet outside where I have to work all day. Fortunately I have this amazing rain gear, this job is going to make me a lot of money when I get it finished, because I am out here busting my butt while everyone else is at home for the day. I love what I do and I am awesome. “ Vs. “Its really cold and wet, why am I the only one working today? Everyone is lazy and has no respect for me, which is why I am stuck with this job. ” These two quotes are starkly different but describe many of the same things. Focusing on the positives will yield better security with yourself, better trust and appreciation for the things around you, allow yourself to let go of things that give you anxiety and negative thoughts which pull you away from being in the moment.
Our head coach, Mike Lengel, developed a motto for the Lions football team this year in order to remind ourselves to stay present and in the moment while never relenting the uphill climb towards our goals. That word is “ascend.” You may remember my use of this word earlier. Living in the present means enjoying the climb towards the mountain peak. Memories are made during the climb, not at the top. Ascend is there to remind you that the climb never stops and to always embrace that climb as it is invigorating and how we grow as people. So be present, be calm, be adaptable, be free of judgment, free of the future and the past and allow your focus to be in the current moment. After all, we are only here for so long, is the present not the absolute best place to be?
#ASCEND
**For a more detailed explanation of the brain function that everyone can understand, check out Explain Pain by David Butler. The author uses metaphors and understandable language along with very useful drawings and diagrams that help explain the madness that is our brain and how it can change over time with different stimuli. I love this book and refer it with anyone who dealing with chronic pain or is simply looking to learn more about pain or our brain function.
Contact as always with questions/comments or to schedule a consultation.
DrBagbyPT@gmail.com
-Michael
