Addresses the mental and physical benefits of sports, and how to pursue sport (and life) with more awareness and less resistance. Useful, but not the inspired effort of Millman's better-known The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.
Pair with any (or all!) of these much better books on sports psychology and training, like:
Peak Performance by Charles A. Garfield
Mental Toughness Training for Sports by Jim Loehr
The Mental Athlete by Kay Porter
The Psychic Side of Sports by Michael Murphy and Rhea A. White
The Upper Half of the Motorcycle by Bernt Spiegel
Breaking Out of Homeostasis by Ludwig Sunstrom
(Links are to my review posts)
Notes:
Prologue: Body Mind Mastery in the Arena of Daily Life
1) On how an infant walking his first steps was a "master"; in infancy you were in the present moment, free of concern or anxiety, you were relaxed, sensitive, elastic, uninhibited. "But then we lose touch with many of our childhood skills, through limiting beliefs, emotional conflict, and physical tensions."
Introduction:
2) On focusing too much on striving and thus forgetting why we're striving, which is "to experience the satisfaction of stretching ourselves toward our full potential."
3) See also how musicians or artists are "athletes" too in certain ways.
4) On seeing events of daily life, like your health, career, family, finances, relationships, etc., just like "events" like the 100m hurdles. You train/practice for these things too.
5) "I use the terms training and practice interchangeably as the intention and commitment to improve or refine a skill."
6) "You may practice a sport, but do you still practice handwriting, or walking, or breathing? How often do you fully engage yourself in each daily task, whether walking or washing the dishes, in order to fully experience the potential of each moment? This awareness is a reward far richer than any fleeting victory."
7) On the author's discovery of the "larger arena" and transposing the idea of developing fundamentals to create success in daily life, not just sport.
Part 1: Understanding the Larger Game
8) Map/Territory issues: On having a map of the terrain ahead: "Wherever you stand on your path, it is wise to have a clear map of the terrain ahead--a way of seeing your position in relation to your goals, a view of upcoming hurdles, and an understanding of the effort required to reach the peak."
Chapter 1: Natural Laws
"Nature's way is simple and easy, but men prefer what is intricate and artificial."
--Lao Tzu
9) The author watches his daughter and how her approach to play was as relaxed and "mindless" as the cat she was playing with; in other words, it was the absence of emotional obstructions that most adults usually experience; on grasping the principle of non-resistance and the law of accommodation; also the principal of balance; socialization had alienated me from the natural order.
10 ) He also realizes this is also true not just for his physical body but for his mind and his emotions as well. He starts to see the world as a world of subtle forces and flowing energy rather than as a material realm. "After fifteen years of gymnastics, my real training had finally begun."
11) Principal 1: Non-Resistance: Rather than surrendering to or ignoring the forces of life, or resisting them, use them and blend with nature. "Don't push the river." Applying softness.
12) Rejecting the adversarial mindset, but rather viewing opponents as teachers or partners who will help bring out your best.
13) Interesting metaphor of applying aikido to verbal confrontations; sidestepping the struggle instead of "winning" an argument or overcoming someone with reason. [This reminds me of another quote from Lao Tzu: "Wise men don't need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren't wise."]
14) Stress happens when the mind resists what is; emotional tension that something is amiss, that we're out of balance; see also the idea of resisting natural processes by trying or "trying harder": the moment you "try hard" you're already tense; whenever you try to accomplish something you produce internal forces in direct opposition to your goal [this is good reminder of the idea to "try softer" rather than "try harder."]
15) "In all activities of life, the secret of efficiency lies in an ability to combine two seemingly incompatible states: a state of maximum activity and a state of maximum relaxation." --Aldous Huxley
16) Principle 2: Accommodation: "Development follows demand": with no demand there's no development, with small demand there's small development, with improper demand there's improper development; look at this as a form of progressive overload which causes you to improve, in small increments, within your comfort zone. Development involves a constant stream of little failures. "Tolerance for failure comes from an intuitive grasp of the natural process of learning. Realism breeds patience."
17) Your body accommodates the increased demands you place on it, but you also have to remember to enjoy the process of striving towards those goals. Remember the ancient Chinese curse "May you achieve all your goals."
18) Principal 3: Balance: Much more than just equilibrium; balance in the sense of neither too much nor too little; dictating the pace, timing, recognizing your natural limitations, recognizing every action has a reaction, for every upcycle there will be a natural downcycle, etc.
19) Understanding that progress is intermittent and often has reverses; there are high-energy and low-energy days. "Understanding this, your mind and emotions remain calm when training has its ups and downs, buoyed by the higher wisdom of the law of balance."
20) Interesting application here: the next time you practice any game, spend a few minutes deliberately off balance, then back on balance, then off balance, and then on balance. You'll see the imbalance clearly this way. (Examples here could be playing with way too much aggression versus way too much passivity in tennis, overhitting versus underhitting a forehand, etc.). When you can play on both sides, then you can find the middle.
21) Principal 4: Natural Order: The human being is in a hurry, but nature follows its proper sequence without haste; humans set deadlines and rush.
22) "Humor is a good sign that you have a balanced perspective." Thus use more humor in life to handle each day, whatever comes. Likewise a good measure of your alignment with the natural order is your level of enjoyment during the process of training, thus you strike a healthy balance between pleasure and pain.
Chapter 2: The Power of Awareness
23) On being willing to make mistakes, even to make a fool of yourself, willing to accept feelings of embarrassment or awkwardness, and to continue practicing. Awareness is far more than just conceptual understanding, think of it as whole body sensitivity arrived at through direct experience.
24) On the process of awareness, "disillusion" and success, "awareness may be painful but it frees us from illusion and empowers growth." Also the feeling that you are getting worse is a sign of growing awareness.
25) Note also it's much easier to see physical mistakes than emotional or mental mistakes because we identify more closely with our minds and our emotions.
26) Awareness leads to humility, compassion and freedom.
27) "For children, errors are natural... Yet they learn with a pace beyond nearly any adult."
28) On your awareness expanding from the gross to the subtle; see the story (p. 23) about the old samurai warrior who tested his three sons for their ability to perceive and avoid danger.
29) On the fact that we can only indirectly influence our mind and emotions, we have little direct control over thoughts and feelings. But we have significantly more control over our behavior.
30) On improving your awareness by observing more advanced students, watching film or videotape of your own movements, getting a coach who has "journeyed further up the mountain" than you have
31) See also the technique of exaggerating your errors deliberately: this clarifies the error and helps your awareness expand; your errors become conscious rather than unconscious and thus easier to correct.
Chapter 3: Preparation
32) "If you don't prepare fully, you risk developing bad or compensatory habits." Bad habits are like a comfortable bed, easy to get into but hard to get out of.
33) "When in a hurry, take the long, sure way."
34) If you're stuck on a plateau, consider going back to do intense work on the talent foundation and allow yourself to progress slowly.
35) "The illusion of difficulty" on how difficulty has meaning only relatively speaking, it's relative to your preparation level.
36) On choosing a teacher who knows his limitations and his own weaknesses, and therefore will have insights into yours; see also the teacher who can communicate what he knows: per the author's metaphor of a teacher with 100 volts of knowledge who can only convey 20 volts compared to a teacher with 50 volts who can convey it all; also it may be worth investing in a teacher who can help you learn life.
Part 2: Developing Talent
37) On how we often compensate for weakness with a strength in another domain rather than developing a well-rounded foundation of talent; chains break at their weakest link.
Chapter 4: Mental Talent
38) On attention both outwards to the world and inward to our thoughts. "For most of us, attention bounces randomly back and forth between the inner and outer worlds."
39) On meditation practice to help you develop insight into the process of your thoughts and accept them and not let them drive your behavior or run your life. "This is the beginning of body mind mastery." On transcending the mind. On your mind's resistance to what is. On practicing the present moment.
40) Once again on how babies and very young children think and act: when they learn to walk they fall down a lot but they don't say things like "I'm such a klutz! I bet the baby across the street could walk circles around me!"
41) Four obstructions:
* Limited self concept
* Fear of failure
* Destructive self-criticism
* Lack of concentrated attention
42) Limited self concept: On self fulfilling prophecies; as you grew up you received signals that you were good at some things and bad at others, receiving praise or blame; On adults beginning Millman's gymnastic classes, acting out roles based on their self-concept ("Self-concept is no more real than the shadow of a shadow. It is an illusion imposed on you long ago.. you transcend self-concept through understanding--by seeing through it--opening your talent for body mind mastery.")
43) "The best self-concept is none at all."
44) Good examples of self-talk here: "I am an accurate putter" or "I perform well under pressure" [my personal favorite is "I love adversity"]
45) Fear of failure: "Failure is a natural part of the learning process"; "Not really trying" as a defense against failure.
46) Destructive self-criticism: On the idea of showing yourself the same kindness and patience you might show a young child; "If, when playing an opponent, you are also opposing yourself, you will be outnumbered." We would never tell someone else "you're stupid" or "you keep making the same mistakes, you should give up" but we have no problem saying these things to ourselves.
47) Lack of concentrated attention: On the idea of one-pointed attention, being completely present, in a state of flow.
Chapter 5: Emotional Talent
48) Emotional energy as motivation and inspiration; like all emotional states these come and go and rise and fall.
49) On intrinsic motivation, "blowing into our own sails."
50) On breathing evenly and fully, keeping your body relaxed, regardless of your level of stress or the conditions around you.
51) "You have much more control over your behavior than you do over your thoughts or emotions, so paradoxically the best way to master your emotions is to let them be, stay relaxed, and focus on constructive action."
52) The "tense, shake, breathe, and relax" exercise for regaining emotional equanimity, see photos:
54) Belly breathing/diaphragmatic breathing versus shoulder breathing/tension breathing.
55) On the concept of witnessing: "a learned skill consisting of recognition and release of old patterns." Examples, noticing anger, acknowledging and accepting it, but feeling good physically no matter what negative thoughts or emotions arise; contrast this with obsessing on an emotional state like your fear, dramatizing it, struggling with it, or "trying to fix it." These things merely reinforce the emotional obstruction. "You may feel afraid, but you don't have to behave fearfully."
Chapter 6: Physical Talent
56) "...developing and caring for the body also helps the mind and emotions."
57) On your body's alignment, posture, also possible compensatory reactions to injuries or stress etc. "Postural imbalance is a major source of energy drain."
58) "Chronic physical tension may go unnoticed, since you become accustomed to it over the years, but it results in a continual sense of discomfort, with shifting and fidgeting, nervousness, and even emotional irritability."
59) On hanging exercises to counteract gravity and it effect compressing your body.
60) On our body's resistance to change, "psychosclerosis, hardening of the attitudes." On dealing with the initial period of discomfort from your body when trying to make a change. [Homeostasis, basically.]
61) On feeding your body, how you eat is important as what you eat, being calm, eating properly, avoiding processed foods, noticing the difference between "what you want" and "what you need"; noting not just how food tastes but how you feel after eating it.
62) Some interesting examples of marathoners and Ironman triathletes who were vegetarians: see John Robin's book Diet for a New America. [Of course keep in mind this book is from 1999 and its first edition was 1994, so this is a different era, it's the "healthy whole grains" era of dietary thinking.]
63) The Four S's of physical talent: strength, suppleness, stamina, and sensitivity.
64) On staying relaxed so that you don't leak energy, efficiency in movement. "It does little good for me to advise people to relax until they know what relaxation feels like and they become aware of the degree of tension they carry."
65) Deep relaxation meditation exercise (see the three photos below):
65) [Now back to the four S's]: Strength: strength training versus effective strength which is "to relax the proper muscle groups while consciously tensing others." See the cat as a sort of metaphor for a being with very little tension, cats are never muscle bound or bulky.
66) On tense effort versus relaxed effort, the author gives an example from aikido of bending your arm under different types of tension, and then also tension push-ups (where you try hard, clenching every muscle in your body to do push-ups) versus relaxed push-ups where you imagine you're a puppet on a string where a giant puppetmaster above you does the work and you "let the push-up happen by itself."; On the use of energy flow, or moving happening by itself.
67) Suppleness: "The embodiment of non-resistance"; Requires stretching exercises; Recognizing and accepting chronic tension in your body, and now that you're aware that it exists, shake it out and relax until a new habit replaces your old one; "If you ask your body to grow more supple, it will, but you must ask nicely."
68) See also on strengthening exercises of the lower back, abs, hamstrings and quadriceps to eliminate back pain.
69) Sensitivity: "A master of Tai Chi was so sensitive to the forces around him that if a fly landed on his shoulder, he would sway gently under its impact. Legend has it that a sparrow was unable to jump from his open palm and fly, because as it pushed away, his hand would sink beneath its legs."; Includes our senses but also balance and kinesthetic awareness; "...it's wise to expose yourself to a variety of movement activities."
70) On learning to pay closer attention: pick up cues faster, feel errors and correct them, you develop an ability to imitate the experts, you free yourself from old patterns of tension as you become sensitive to them.
71) Stamina: In different forms, emotional/mental, physical; Natural response to training, as your body will adapt to demands placed on it; Stamina interrelates with relaxation ,strength and suppleness: strength helps you work more over a longer time, suppleness lets you move through greater range with less energy, relaxation releases tension reducing wasted energy. On developing stamina at a proper pace, instead of "pushing the river" and forcing things.
Part 3: Body Mind Mastery in Action
72) "The most efficient and effective training techniques are aligned with natural law." Accommodation, balance, natural order.
Chapter 7: Tools for Training
73) The warm-up, and the transitions of life: "Master athletes need to recognize and accept these periods of transition in training and in life." On in-between times: Driving home from work, walking down the fairway between hitting the ball, going to sleep at night.
74) "Learning to make use of these in between periods will bring more harmony to your life. You can create conscious transitions instead of abrupt changes, shocks, stops, and starts." On creating transition rituals that work for you.
75) On proper warmups for athletics; mental warmup/emotional warmup; determining a clear course of action for the day for example; a realistic training plan based on your energy level and the circumstances; turning your attention to the place of practice; cultivating the proper attitude of respect and gratitude (e.g.: bowing when you enter and exit the dojo).
76) "Focus on what excites you about training. Picture yourself succeeding at your goals... The whole process might occur in the space of a few slow, deep breaths or in a moment of quiet contemplation. Many athletes do something like this subconsciously."
77) Physical warmup: warm the body, get oxygenated, get it fully awake, get it energized and relaxed. What follows here is a 4-minute warm-up based on Millman's book Everyday Enlightenment, it's designed for the beginner who is still learning the importance of regular exercise:
* Big stretch, this is kind of like an exaggerated sun salutation
* Side reach: kind of a bodyweight squat with stretches to the side as you stand up
* Neck release: (see photo below) [this might be a good one to practice for neck tension]
* Shoulder roll
* Spine swing: this is just an upper body twist like you'd see in yoga
* Hip circles
* Heaven-Earth: this one looks kind of like an 80s dance move
* Leg swing into a lunge
* Arch-pike: hang your arms on a chair bending at your hips with your back horizontal and then arch up into a pike position to arch your back
* Kickboxing leg sweep
* Body mind balance: sit on a chair, belly breathe, let thoughts come and go and let your heart rate return to normal, experiencing centeredness and serenity
79) On learning how to learn: repetition to groove a behavior pathway, avoiding repeating the same error twice, awareness and the importance of practice--but also the importance of not practicing "too much," especially if you're a beginner and don't have kinesthetic awareness at first. "Practice is like gambling: you have to know when to quit."
80) [Great insight here: keep in mind that the "three" concept is a fractal] "I recommend practicing in threes. Learning studies have shown that we can maintain our best concentration for three attempts; the fourth try is generally not as good. So practice everything in threes, and then pause, reflect, relax, and take a break before practicing another series of three."
81) Overcompensation: Changes tend to undercorrect, you want to make a determined effort to overcompensate for a given error because we tend to undercorrect. Thus to correct "swinging too low" you want to swing too high on purpose, basically overcompensation is to work on "both sides of an error" in order to find the right middle ground.
82) Mental practice, visual imagery: "Ideomotor" action as an important component of mental practice/visualization. Other advantages of visualization: you can do it anywhere, it's free, it helps develop your powers of concentration and imagery, there's no fear of failure.
83) Slow motion practice: Performing an activity in slow motion amplifies awareness of every part of a movement, and also releases tension--which paradoxically will help you perform the movement faster in real time.
84) "PSP": first precision, then speed, then power.
85) Imitation: ("We have no friends; we have no enemies; we only have teachers." --Anonymous). On watching someone who has a skill you want to learn, studying their movements, habits, facial expressions; imagining yourself moving in the same manner, etc.
Chapter 8: Competition and Cooperation
86) Competition reveals your weaknesses [this is an interesting way to think about it... I never really thought about before, it frames it in a helpful way]
87) Competition as a type of "moving meditation" where you're focused on the present moment.
88) Negative components or aspects of competition: there's a winner and a loser; its specializes humans into extremely narrow categories; there's always way more losers than winners; you can "lose" in your quest to win.
89) Undoing the liabilities of the competitive mind: In tennis: seeing your opponent as your teacher and your student; on overcoming a combative state of mind; a game is just a game and also life too is a game. On focusing on the joy of the process of training, learning and striving, competition as a tool for this process, but when the competition is over we let it go, the outcome is history.
90) Overload-Cutback: Progressive overload followed by tapering before the main event; offers both physical and psychological value. Also: "Emphasize quantity for conditioning earlier in the season, and then as the season approaches a peak, stress quality."
91) Overload techniques:
* Training with extra weights, a pack, or legweights
* Going greater distances and/or faster than necessary
* Hill training
* Practicing without the use of one sense (eyes closed, etc)
* Practicing under deliberately poor conditions
* Increasing the normal demand (like having a pitcher pitch from three-quarters the usual distance)
92) Understanding the nature of the pre-competitive body: emotions, attitudes, nervousness, etc. Learn to overcome and use the symptoms of nervousness. Note that before a big match you should feel nervous. Remember to relax and breathe fully. "The only difference between fear and excitement is whether you're breathing."
Chapter 9: The Evolution of Athletics
92) "You can ask two important questions about any sport:
1. Does this sport contribute effectively to the physical and psychological well-being of the athlete?
2. Does this sport develop heightened capacity for daily life?"
93) On how certain pastimes involve one side of the body more than the other; e.g.: tennis, bowling, golf, each of which can create imbalances in the body. On modification of the rules to change sports, the author suggests one basic rule change: requiring athletes to use both arms equally, to make the sports symmetrical.
94) [Some of this chapter kind of unfortunately gets into the wussification or the millennialization of sports, you can see where it came from in this book: trying to make a sport less "mean" etc. The intentions are good on some level but...]
95) On altering your own perception of your sport: a diver who re-envisions his sport as sculpting energy as he moved through the air, then transposing this idea to other sports.
96) On finding other practices that fill in weak or missing elements in your primary sport: if you play football, practice tai chi or yoga; a musician might take up a martial art, etc.
97) The author offers a series of game ideas here: slow motion running, "Tai chi-do," "effortless tennis"; The author's idea is to give new dimensions to existing sports, to remove competition and replace it with mutual support, etc. A litle cutesy.
98) The aging athlete: On the author oscillating from getting an AARP mailing and thinking "I should slow down" but then reading about athletes in their 80s, 90s or 100s running 10K races; quoting Bernard Baruch "'Old' is always fifteen years older than I am."
Epilogue: Mastering the Moving Experience
99) The author describes a couple of extraordinary sports events he had; these sound analogous to something from the book Zen and the Art of Archery; "it shot"-type moments of peak experience.
100) On the story of the tea master and Myamoto Musashi.
101) "On the path of body mind mastery, physical skill mirrors our internal development. Master athletes may remain unnoticed by those around them because their internal skills are visible only to those who understand. Because they do everything naturally, they don't stand out. When observing them closely, you may note a certain relaxation, an effortless quality, and a kind of peaceful humor... They are invincible because they contend with nothing. Whatever they do, they practice; whatever they practice receives their undivided attention."
To Read:
Alfie John: No Contest: The Case Against Competition
John Robbins: Diet for a New America
Bob Anderson: Stretching
Dan Millman: The Laws of Spirit
Dan Millman: Everyday Enlightenment
F.M. Alexander: The Use of the Self