The Practice Of Mindfulness

DEFINITION:

Mindfulness is awareness of one's internal states and surroundings, our thoughts emotions and experiences without judging or reacting to them. About focusing one's awareness on the present moment.  The intentional act of giving your undivided attention to the present moment.

Famous mindfulness author and practitioner Jon Kabat-Zinn defined mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way:
 on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” Mindfulness is about shifting out of autopilot and awakening to the here and now.  

Other ways of describing mindfulness:

“Being present” “Awareness” “Awakening” “Concentration plus attention” “Seeing  clearly” “Compassionate awareness” “Openheartedness” “Loving presence.”

USE MINDFULNESS IN A TENNIS SENTENCE:

Good concentration when playing tennis is a form of mindfulness. Being able to focus on the matter at hand, blocking out all outside interference yet not reacting or judging to our play as it unfolds

Meme Cartoon or Drawing:

    1. How often do you incorporate mindfulness techniques into your tennis training?

    2. How often do you practice mindful breathing during a tennis match?

    3. How often do you use visualization exercises to enhance your tennis performance?

    4. How often do you engage in mindfulness practices to improve your focus on the tennis court?

    5. How often do you take mindful breaks during your tennis practice sessions?

    6. How often do you use mindfulness techniques to manage stress and pressure during tennis tournaments?

    7. How often do you incorporate mindfulness into your tennis warm-up routine?

    8. How often do you practice mindfulness while analyzing your tennis game?

    9. How often do you use mindfulness techniques to improve your mental resilience on the tennis court?

    10. How often do you engage in mindful body scans to improve your physical awareness during tennis matches?

Why is this important:

Mindfulness involves focusing your awareness on the present moment. Could anything be more important in tennis? It means paying attention to your sensations, feelings, thoughts, and environment in the here-and-now with an attitude of acceptance. 

Benefits of Mindfulness

Mindfulness can offer several benefits for tennis players, including:

  • Mindfulness practices can help tennis players stay focused on the present moment, enabling them to concentrate better during matches and training sessions.

  • By being more present and focused, tennis players may experience improved performance on the court, including better shot selection, decision-making, and execution of techniques.

  • Mindfulness techniques can help tennis players manage stress and anxiety, allowing them to stay calm and composed during high-pressure situations in matches.

  • Practicing mindfulness can enhance a player's ability to bounce back from setbacks and stay positive even in challenging circumstances, such as losing a match or facing tough opponents.

  • Mindfulness can help tennis players regulate their emotions more effectively, leading to improved self-control and a balanced mental state during matches.

Overall, incorporating mindfulness practices into your training regimen can help tennis players develop a stronger mental game, leading to improved performance and well-being on and off the court.

Educate: PowerPoint or Whiteboard

Cultures around the world have recognized the wisdom of openhearted, present-moment awareness or “mindfulness,” for thousands of years. Everyone can be mindful. You have probably already experienced moments of natural mindfulness. Perhaps you’ve had times, without even trying, when you were deeply aware of what you were doing; the only thing that mattered being the present moment, so much so, the past and the future seem to disappear. Maybe this happens for you when you play sports or when you play a musical instrument or when you listen to your favorite song or just spend time with your favorite pet. Whether you realized it or not in those moments, you already knew how to be mindful.

Action Steps to enhance Mindfulness

  • Breathwork is a classic mindfulness activity, which typically refers to purposefully manipulating the breath while mindfully focusing on it. This particular activity refers to deep, slow breaths. This cadence of breathing encourages your body to relax.

  • There are many types of meditation, which typically involve keeping one physical position and paying attention to one thing, like your breathing, a mantra, or physical sensations. When your mind wanders, and it will, nonjudgmentally bring it back to that point of attention. It can be uncomfortable at first, and may not be appropriate for all ages. If it feels too uncomfortable, it’s OK to try other mindfulness activities.

  • Completing a body scan is another simple mindfulness activity. Bring your attention to various parts of your body, perhaps spending 10-30 seconds on each part (e.g., toes, bottoms of feet, tops of feet). Notice any and all physical sensations: warmth, coolness, tension, tingling, pressure, pain, or textures. There are many guided body scans to help facilitate this as well.

  • Journaling can absolutely be mindful, especially when it is given full attention without judgment. Journaling can be done in a free form style, where you write whatever comes to mind without editing or censoring. Prompts can also be used to guide the writing toward specific topics.

  • The repetitive movements of exercise can become meditative when given one’s full attention. Really any physical activity can become a mindfulness activity when approached with the attitude of mindfulness. Take a mindful walk and notice everything around you: sounds, the temperature, how it feels to walk, bodily sensations, nature and sights of the area.

  • Either listening or playing an instrument:  Listen to a favorite song with your full attention. You can close their eyes and listen to everything. You should try to notice how the music makes you feel as well.

  • Drawing painting sculpting, whatever the artistic endeavor. Bring creativity and playfulness to your art.

Tips for sustaining Mindfulness Practices

  • If you enjoy the practice itself, it’s much easier to return to it. If one mindfulness activity does not resonate, try another and find something you like.

  • If the mindfulness practice is too long or onerous, pare it down. It's fine if it’s only 1, 2, or 5 minutes! While 20 minutes of meditation is wonderful, so is 5 minutes of drawing or painting. Start small and allow the mindfulness practice to grow organically. No weekend retreats in silence quite yet.

  • Through the Gamification on our App, we can positively reinforce the habit by creating some sort of reward. The reward has to be motivating. Habit-tracking functions are commonplace within an APP. where its easy to chart our progress and successes.

  • Love reading about authors writing habits. the when, the how. Create your own. some of us are morning people, and some of us are night owls. This is fine! Use this knowledge to complete your mindfulness activity at the time of the day where your energy is right. For example, if you’re too tired in the morning, don’t do it then.

  • Having some companionship and accountability can help you dedicate yourself to a mindfulness habit. Find someone to partner with to make it more fun!

  • There was a movie out some years ago...A Beautiful Mind. If a movie were to be made about the everyday tennis player, it might be titled... "A Not So Beautiful Mind."

    We all have our personal stories here. The esteemed Dr. Allen Fox once said to me. "You won in spite of yourself." I believe I'm not alone here.

    Anxious, edgy, manic thinking. Our heads can get going pretty fast when competing intensely, yet the fast thinking seems impossible to prevent. With our bodies exerting at full speed for extended periods, it only makes sense our emotions and thinking would intensify too.

    I reflect back on my years of playing and some of my memorable collapses. I can laugh about them now, but it wasn't all that funny back then. They caused me to burn out terribly, with a lot of meaningful tennis not getting played.

    I've had a few years to reflect upon those days. Our minds need not be liabilities, they can be assets too. They do not have to conspire against us.  As a coach, I struggle when I see my students succumb to the anxiety of competition.

    We all know better. Nobody wants to be all panicky on a tennis court, but our emotions can be quite involuntary. For those of us who trend that way, tennis isn't all that fun sometimes.

    That said, wherever one resides on the panicky mind continuum, I have found that players can improve quickly and dramatically in this area by applying the simplest of mindfulness tools. The trick is getting players to consistently execute rituals that quiet their minds, for the panicky mind's default position will always be a state of unease.

    A major part of our work will be to achieve a quiet mindful state on the tennis court. Not only does a quiet mind help us learn and observe better, it most certainly helps us compete better, all the while dramatically improving our overall tennis experience.

    Obviously playing well puts us in a positive state of mind. I believe also that a positive state of mind provides us the best chance to play well. Our goal here is to work on both simultaneously.

    Here is one of the problems unique to our current age with achieving on court mindfulness. I think I speak for a generation by saying we have entered the Age of Distraction.

    You see it everywhere. People of all ages incapable of putting their phones down for even a moment to be present. Under attack is our ability to concentrate for extended lengths of time. The length of movies, the length of print articles, the lightness of literature prose, all restructured to appeal to the easily distracted mind. But its more than just the length of our concentration under attack. Its also the depth.

    I see it in myself in a variety of ways. I don't read as deeply as I once did, my capacity to watch and analyze shows is nothing like it used to be. My gadgetry affects my ability to deeply focus.  I still enjoy everything, but the connection is different, a more lateral, on the surface type of connection, nothing too deep, for my focus is too easily distracted.

    As a tennis player from the pre-distraction Era, being able to remain deeply engaged for hours and hours, day after day, was our training normal. Today, that seems a near impossibility. Even the little tennis I play now, my concentration isn't anywhere near what it needs to be to perform at my highest level.

    How does the constant distraction affect your tennis? To learn everything we need to learn, we have to be able to engage deeply and at length, both mentally and physically. There is so much important information occurring right in front of us that will enhance performance, if we are paying attention and know what to look for.

    But the problem of distracted-ness is real and everywhere. Honestly, name me one activity we perform better at when not focused? Why would learning something as complex as tennis be any different. Taking this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, if we can't focus, we are not going to improve. And nobody will want to keep investing time and energy to learn a complex skill if they're not getting better.

    Pure and simple, we must improve our mindfulness to get the most out of ourselves on a tennis court. Our inability to focus is a handicap. We did not get in this state of constant distraction over night, we are not going to get away from it over night. There is no switch to flip. Creating the proper state of mindfulness to compete your best needs to be part of your training just as much as anything else you do on the court.

More Action Steps to Enhance Tennis Performance

  • Take a few moments before each tennis session to focus on your breath. Practice deep, slow breaths, and use this time to center yourself and bring your attention to the present moment.

  • Visualize yourself executing successful shots and playing your best tennis. Engage all your senses and imagine the sounds, sights, and feelings associated with a successful performance. This can help improve your focus and confidence on the court.

  • Pay attention to the sensations in your body while playing tennis. Notice the contact of your feet with the ground, the movement of your muscles, and the feel of the racket in your hand. This can help you stay grounded and connected to the present moment.

  • Incorporate short breaks during your tennis practice or matches to check in with yourself. Use these moments to observe any tension or stress in your body, and take a few deep breaths to release it. This can help you stay more focused and present during your game.

  • Notice any thoughts or judgments that arise while playing tennis, such as self-criticism or frustration. Instead of getting caught up in these thoughts, practice observing them with curiosity and without judgment. This can help you maintain a more balanced and positive mindset on the court.

Q and A Session

Famous quotes about Mindfulness

"The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle." – Jack Kornfield

"You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." – Jon Kabat-Zinn

"Do every act of your life as though it were the last act of your life." – Marcus Aurelius

"Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor." – Thich Nhat Hanh

Here are five short mindfulness mantras that you can use for quick moments of centering and grounding:

  1. "Breathe in, breathe out."

  2. "Here and now."

  3. "Peace in, stress out."

  4. "Inhale calm, exhale tension."

  5. "Be still, be present."

These short mantras can be repeated silently to yourself whenever you need a moment of mindfulness and relaxation throughout your day.

Lets RETEST.. 

    1. How often do you incorporate mindfulness techniques into your tennis training?

    2. How often do you practice mindful breathing during a tennis match?

    3. How often do you use visualization exercises to enhance your tennis performance?

    4. How often do you engage in mindfulness practices to improve your focus on the tennis court?

    5. How often do you take mindful breaks during your tennis practice sessions?

    6. How often do you use mindfulness techniques to manage stress and pressure during tennis tournaments?

    7. How often do you incorporate mindfulness into your tennis warm-up routine?

    8. How often do you practice mindfulness while analyzing your tennis game?

    9. How often do you use mindfulness techniques to improve your mental resilience on the tennis court?

    10. How often do you engage in mindful body scans to improve your physical awareness during tennis matches?

CONGRATULATIONS