Meditation was first developed in India many years ago (around 5000-3500 BCE). It took quite some time to become popular in the western world, but today it is celebrated as a therapeutic tool to ease stress, anxiety, depression, and addictions. In the past years, it has also become recognized to improve mental and physical performance, and it consequently became a multi-billion dollar business.
How something so simple as sitting with your eyes closed could deliver such incredible benefits? We are used to seeing the Shaolin Monks in a few popular American movies meditating all day and yet being able to do crazy things with their bodies but what’s the line between fiction and reality?
To answer this question, it’s important to first understand how meditation works.
How meditation works
Meditation is about training in awareness and getting a healthy sense of perspective over one’s thoughts. Many think that meditating is about trying to achieve a zen state of mind, but that’s not the point. Observing one’s thoughts, and then letting go of them – so that eventually you may start to better understand them – is the real goal of each meditation practice.
There are different techniques to go through this mental process. Some focus on the breath and bodily sensation, others make you visualize an object, and others want you to silently chant a mantra.
A typical meditation session involves you sitting on a chair or cross-legged on the floor with eyes closed. Once you assume a comfortable position and focus on your breath, you should start noticing your thoughts. At this point, according to what type of technique you’re using, you will try to let those thoughts go away by focusing on something else (this could be your breath or a mental image you created).
We all experience a multitude of thoughts that distract us from what's in front of our eyes. Maybe we're thinking about our to-do list, or simply hearing the sound of a song brings back an old memory; in any case, we tend to spend more time in our heads than in the present moment.
With mindfulness meditation, by repeatedly returning our conscious awareness to the present moment we are able to observe our anxious or depressive thought patterns.
The act of actively observing thoughts without judgment, and the effort of letting go of those thoughts by focusing on the body, acts as a sort of brain-training exercise. The more successfully we do that (both during our meditation and in normal life), the more we empower ourselves to make conscious choices rather than being mindlessly controlled by our negative thoughts.
To better understand this concept, you can imagine your mind being like an Ocean. On the surface, you have waves of any height and shape, but deep down, there is nothing but complete calm and stillness. Your thoughts are the waves.
In normal life you would swim around the waves of your mind, trying to face them head-on. Sometimes you can climb them and swim through, sometimes you feel overwhelmed by their power and end up drowning or feeling beaten up by their strength.
Mindfulness meditation is like having a surfboard that allows you to ride those waves effortlessly. The more you practice, the better you get at surfing, and the easier it becomes to manage your thoughts.
Sometimes, while going through this process, people may eventually get to a state of complete mental stillness. This state is "the second state of meditation" or transcendence.
Note that the goal of mindfulness meditation is not to reach this state. Instead, its goal is to actively train your mind in letting go of thoughts and develop the ability to make mindful choices and generally being less stressed.
I have personally practised thousands of hours of mindfulness meditation and taught it to many of my clients with fantastic results, both in reducing their stress levels and in improving mental and physical performance.
Despite the simplicity of this process, meditating for more than ten minutes is extremely tough for most. Many people that try meditation get discouraged by the fact that “they can’t stop thinking”. In fact, it has been proven that people spend most of their days being anything but mindful and peaceful.
In a 2010 study, Harvard researchers asked more than 2000 adults about their thoughts and actions at random moments throughout their day via an iPhone app. People’s minds wandered 47% of the time, and mind wandering often triggered unhappiness, the scientists reported.
They also observed that spending time observing our thoughts, without getting stuck on them, may help to better understand oneself, and possibly being able to reduce the number of negative thoughts one experiences.
Now that you know the basic principles of meditation practice, you might still be wondering how sitting and breathing can help you run your next marathon faster or break your deadlift PR. The answer is quite simple: visualisation.
Visualization is an often-taught mental rehearsal technique in sports that could be considered a type of meditation (as I previously mentioned). It is an extremely powerful tool and numerous studies have been done to test this. You may have heard of this basketball study or a different one with similar results.
A study conducted by Dr. Biasiotto at the University of Chicago was done where he split people into three groups and tested each group on how many free throws they could make.
After this, he had the first group practice free throws every day for an hour. The second group just visualized themselves making free throws. The third group did nothing. After 30 days, he tested them again.
The first group improved by 24%.
The second group improved by 23% without touching a basketball!
The third group did not improve which was expected.
Other studies have also shown that “experiencing negative thoughts” can reduce strength up to 30%. This phenomenon is quite easy to recognise when, in the middle of a workout, you receive a text or a call that triggers worries or anxiety. If it ever happened to you, you probably remember how badly your workout ended and how weaker and unfocused you felt.
People that regularly practice meditation can develop a deep knowledge of their own thoughts patterns and, consequently, greater resilience to performance-diminishing factors like stress, negativity, anxiety and lack of sleep.
World-class champions like golfers, tennis players and powerlifters often spend hours of their training in doing visualisation exercises and breath-focused meditations. By adding these meditations to their training regime, they’re able to better withstand the incredible psychological pressure they experience before competing.
This being said, meditation is not a cure for all evil. If practised consistently can help you improve many aspects of your life, including sports performance, but you will still need to exercise hard and eat well. Sitting cross-legged won’t make the latter unnecessary.
Can anyone meditate, and where to start when you’re a beginner?
Millions of people are practising mindfulness meditation every day with great results, but there are also as many people that have tried meditating and didn’t like it or didn’t manage to be consistent with their practice.
The most important part of developing a meditation practice is consistency. You don’t have to meditate every single day in a row, but the benefits are tied to regular, consistent practice.
Some studies claim that some benefits of meditation such as improved mood decreased stress and decreased blood pressure can be felt after a single session. Some other benefits like increased focus and decreased anxiety may be experienced after a few weeks and others take longer to develop.
Some people claim that as little as five minutes of meditation per day can make miracles, but research shows that a regular practice associated with benefits involves 10-20 minutes of meditation at least three times per week.
What’s the best way to begin a meditation practice?
A good place to start for aspiring mediators is Headspace. Andy Puddicombe, a former English student in sport science, that dropped his studies to travel to Asia and trained as a Buddhist monk, created Headspace with the goal of helping millions of people to live a more mindful life. Over 30 million people have downloaded and use headspace. This is due to his simplicity and its beautiful design and animations.
The way I like to introduce clients to meditation is this:
Download the Headspace app
Book 3x 30-minute slots in your calendar where you can be alone in any room this week
Set a reminder alarm on those days and times
Start by meditating 10 minutes each session
I suggest you block 30-minute time slots (not just 10) because it will take you time to find a quiet space, position the chair and “getting into the zone.” Once you become more efficient at it, you can raise the time of your meditations to 15-20 minutes.
Once you start to understand the mechanics of meditation and you get more used to the practice, you can start to add visualisation exercise to your meditation that is related to your sport.
Don't try to do this at the beginning. Carefully listen to what Andy says during his guided meditations and learn how to visualise a very simple thing like sunlight first.
When you master that, you can try to visualise your deadlift, your golf swing or your running.
If you manage to be consistent and make it something you look forward to, I can guarantee you that you would not like to spend a day without it.
Also, if you’re interested in the topic of meditation and stress management, I wrote an ebook on the topic that you can find on Amazon Kindle called “Stress-Free in 7 Simple Steps”.