Mindful Meditation and Sport Performance

February 15, 3:00pm

About the Presentation:

What do Steffen Peters, Simone Biles, Serena Williams, LeBron James, Michael Jordan, The Chicago Bulls, The Seattle Seahawks, Patrick Mahomes, Novak Djokovic and other elite athletes have in common? They all meditate regularly. Why do they incorporated regular mindful meditation practice into their training? Here’s what recent research shows about the benefits of mindfulness:

• Reduced anxiety and distracting brain chatter
• Improved “self-regulation:” alertness to what is happening in the “here and now,” ability to distance oneself from feelings, thoughts and perceptions and not get overrun by them;
• Heightened openness and curiosity to experiences rather than filtering them through the lens of one’s assumptions or expectations.

Meditation techniques are several millennia old but have only become popular in the US in the last fifty years or so. Beyond sports performance, mindfulness is being taught by medical institutions as part of programs to treat stress, chronic pain, PTSD, addiction, anxiety and other conditions.

About our Speaker:

Gelong Loden Nyima has been a Buddhist monk for over fifteen years. He lived at Gampo Abbey from 2009 – 2017 where he practiced intensively, completed a cycle of advanced studies (Shedra), and served in various roles including as a senior teacher. He then lived at Drala Mountain Center from 2017 – 2023 where he served as Resident Teacher, creating many new programs he continues to teach. He’s been blessed to receive teachings from masters of the Nyingma and Kagyu lineages of Buddhism, to spend over three years in retreat, and to have supported thousands of people in their practice. He is the author of Peace and Freedom: A Guide for Meditation. He now lives in his hometown of San Antonio, TX, where he has begun to teach regionally. His website is lodennyima.com.

More Resources:

• George Mumford’s website and book. He taught meditation to The Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers and many other teams and athletes: georgemumford.com
• Mindfulspsortperformance.org
• Equineguidedgrowth.com
• If you search “mindfulness and sport performance” you can find links to scientific research papers – lots of statistics, but the abstracts and conclusions are readable by the lay person.
• To learn about the application of mindfulness in healthcare, search for the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts med school: ummhealth.org, and Stanford University med school’s Center for Altruism and Compassion: ccare.stanford.edu.