matthew sexton:
I spent a lot of time on simple sport-ish activities that require moment to moment awareness of the physical, emotional and cognitive aspects of the people around me, activities that require noticing and responding in kind; feedback is immediate because not noticing means 'dropping the ball'. I believe this was very helpful.
Yes! Was going to say something similar. Last year, I started playing sports again. Whereas in the past, I would just play, and either be happy if I played well or frustrated if I played poorly, sort of very much caught up in the drama, this time I have put a lot of thought into watching my thoughts and attitudes and how it effects play performance. Now part of the sport is as a mental experiment and the data is my actual performance. First I noticed that my mental scripts strongly influenced performance. Interestingly saying things like 'This guy is good, I've got to pay more attention' seemed to actually hurt performance. The more I chastised myself to concentrate more, the worse I got. Not sure but it may have been because I kept implying to myself that the shots were coming hard and fast and that's why I had to concentrate, thus constantly telling myself the shots would be hard to get, a kind of repeated mental programming. Conversely, telling myself things like, 'The ball is really not moving that fast, you can get it, you can get any shot that comes' seems to help a lot. Personal narrative alters perception. Tell yourself the ball is slower and easier to hit and believe it and it becomes true.
Lately Ive noticed a more detailed version of what is happening. I think you probably talk about this in meditation when watching breath, if you notice, there are gaps between when you are thinking about breath, attention is not constant, there are super tiny gaps when the mind is who knows where, like mini cessations, the mind is just not present constantly, it's gappy. Beats me where it is in that time, or I think the Buddhist interpretation is that reality itself is gappy. However you want to explain it, there appears to be gaps in awareness. So maybe the mind is normally looking at breath maybe 5 or 10 times per breath but inbetween are gaps. So the question is how quickly does this perception, gap, perception, gap situation cycle? When my concentration is worse, seems like the gaps are large and sometimes even other baloney sneaks in like off topic thoughts, maybe about some comment that happened earlier, the current score or whatever.
In sports, if the ball comes when your mind is gone in a big gap or thinking of something off topic, it's much more likely you are going to screw up the shot. But when the gaps seem short and there are lots and lots of perception revisits to the ball per second and the mind does not stray off topic, the ball seems to go much slower and be way easier to hit. To do this, you have to set aside stray thoughts about the score, any kind of feelings of inadequacy or impatience or pressure, etc. This is being in the zone or having your mojo on. The more this level of focus is achieved, the more there will be no errors and amazing shots can be achieved. Time seems to slow as perceptions per second increases, balls look slower and easier to hit. What was hard before seems easy now and you are also having fun.
When I achieve this kind of uber focus, it also tends to stay with me the rest of the day. Normally my mind is more oriented to like a vipissana style and more flighty and spazzed, the sports really seems to calm and ground my mind well, the more I achieve the uber focus, the more that feeling lasts all day with less stray useless thoughts. So what you said seems to hold from my perspective, more vippisana style yields more creative flighty energy and concentration yields a more calm balanced centered feeling. Perhaps knowing this, one can choose techniques according to one's weaker tendencies. For myself, it seemed I was lacking and really needed concentration practice compared to my other tendencies. What I was drawn to was what was easiest for me but what helped me most was the opposite. But fast paced sports constantly rewards or punishes you with your performance second to second so a flighty mind can get more motivated. The stakes of lack of concentration in sports are you missing the ball whereas in meditation, there are no repercussions to lack of concentration. (although according to some zen writings, the stakes could be you getting smacked with a stick) ;-P
-Eva