Alex Auerbach - Mindfulness Hacks to Improve Mental Health and Sports Performance

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Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

Why don't you give us a little background on the work that you're doing as a sports psychologist with the Toronto Raptors, but also what inspired you into this kind of work with this basketball team?

My current role with the Raptors is really two parts. One is managing mental health and mental performance for the entire organization, players, coaches, staff alike, and the other part is overseeing the off court development for our players. So that might be things like financial literacy, spiritual literacy, personal branding, those sorts of things. I joined 11 days before the NBA season shut down in March 2020 due to Covid. So it's been in some ways incredibly challenging and in other ways very rewarding. And mental health has obviously been at the forefront of a lot of conversations during the height of the pandemic and even early on in the pandemic as Canada was dealing with a very different level of locking down than the rest of the league in the United States. And so I had a cool opportunity to introduce mental health really early on into my tenure and was fortunate to follow a talented sports psychologist beforehand who had done some great work. And so it's been really cool and rewarding to see the way the organization has taken to this work. And then leading up to this, I've worked in similar capacities at the college level. So I was a sports psychologist at University of Arizona and really found my way into sports psychology after being a college football coach actually for a little bit of time and really just gravitated toward the relational personal development side of coaching more than the X's and O's and so long story less Long. I went down this path to go get my doctorate in counseling psychology and have been fortunate to have a nice career that's led me here. Getting to do some pretty cool work with some high level performers and really talented people.

Sounds like a great path. And I'm curious. There was one thing you mentioned that I want to come back to, which is spiritual literacy. I'd want you to define that for us. But before you do that, when you talk about mental health in sports, can you give us the lay of the land? Like, what are some of the challenges that athletes face that might be different from the general population and might be the same?

So I'll go with your second question first and then I'll come back to the spiritual literacy one. But in terms of the mental health concerns that athletes are managing, in many ways they're very similar to the general population. But I think an easy way to think about it is they manifest themselves a bit differently. So my easiest example to give is a person who's experiencing depression. So if someone in the non athletic population were to present for therapy looking for help with feelings of depression, we might do things like recommend social support, we'd recommend mindfulness meditation, we'd recommend exercise. Right? Those are some easy starting points and places where you can start to identify, you know, is this person able to do these things that can help restore some of that functioning in athletics? These players have all of that. We have exercise every day in the form of practice, we have social connection in the locker room, we have these different tools that we've introduced for mental health or mental performance. And so in some ways it becomes an interesting puzzle to solve and think through with these athletes who might not have the same low hanging fruit starting points that we might have in a general population. And obviously there are folks in the general population who are doing those same things and are still struggling too. And so that presents the same concern. But I think it's a bit dynamic in that way. And then I think the other pieces of this are the spotlight of the work these athletes are doing. Their work is very, very public. They're subject to the opinions of so many people who have never met them and who have things that they wish they could share. And these athletes are still people first and foremost. And so I think sometimes fans or media underestimates the degree to which that can impact these players. But I do think that's a unique way that mental health is showing up in my workforce. And then of course, we've got unique challenges to sport. So obviously in Athletics, there's different challenges around things like body image or eating issues. You might have different challenges around sport performance specifically. Um, and from my perspective, the work these athletes do is both performance, but also deeply personal. And so if the player's not playing well, for example, that's a really unique way that mental health shows up in the work that I'm doing. And so it's been an evolved conversation certainly in the last couple of years, with folks like Simone Biles talking about their experience and how mental health showed up for her, both pre performance and during performance. And you can see at that level what that means for these people who are trying to make a living using their bodies, putting themselves on the line, performing for others, and how mental health can maybe interfere with that or be exacerbated by the circumstances. And so it's been a testament to them and Kevin Love and some other folks like DeMar DeRozan, who have done some great work pioneering for their fellow athletes in this space. And it's a real privilege to have the chance to work with folks like that.

How do you identify a potential mental health problem, maybe related to depression, anxiety, perhaps addiction, other mental health challenges that the athletes are facing? Is it a requirement that all of the athletes on the team sit down with you and you get to know them and you have this rapport? Or does someone come to you because they have a problem? Or do you identify that someone might have a problem and call them out? How does that process work within a team environment?

It's a bit of all of the above. And so you asked about common concerns, Right. So the big ones are things like anxiety, depression, substance use, trauma, other forms of addiction, and eating disorders. Those are the simple places to start in terms of signs to look for. Right. So where I begin is just observing, trying to get a sense of how people are functioning or performing. And you start to observe through daily interactions with folks that there's a bit of a change in behavior. And that's usually through the first sign of, hey, there's something more here to pay attention to. But I also have folks who come and speak to me about concerns that they have or things that they're seeing. For me, it's about being a place where people can come and express their concerns. Obviously, my role involves a high degree of sensitivity and confidentiality, and I'm not really in the position to share information back, but I'm always in a position to receive information in the service of supporting athletes or staff. And people find their way to me, honestly, in their own Time. I think it's a bit of a personal journey and asking for help is a great step, but it can be a really, really hard step. And so we have different structural touch points throughout the year to make sure the players and staff know what's available to them. They understand how confidentiality works. There's opportunities to get to know me and get to know one another, but there's nothing mandatory really, because I want to be thoughtful about someone coming to do this work when they feel ready to do this work versus when I think or someone else thinks they need to do this work. It ultimately ends up being in better service of the client at that point.

It's interesting to me because you are working with young men and they are basketball players. And often when people have mental health challenges, and I think this might be particularly in men, but I could be wrong about this. They haven't even identified it themselves. Like they may feel horrible, or they might have anxiety, but feel like they've always had this. So they are used to it. And maybe they haven't even named or labeled what they're feeling. And so many people do that. They put their feelings in a little basket and keep going. And so JET programs that introduce these concepts of what it might feel like if you're depressed, what it feels like if you're angry, anxious, and what some of the things you can do. If you want to work with this on your own.

That's a wonderful question, and I think you're right. There is certainly sport culture is a bit hyper masculine. And then men in general, I think, are socialized to tuck away how they feel, not talk about that for fear of appearing weak or unable to meet the traditional gender role. And so that's a unique pressure for men, though women obviously have different pressures that they feel and experience that impact their mental health. For the folks that I'm working with, there is an ongoing education around these different concepts, whether it's self awareness, emotion regulation, putting words to how people might be feeling. And part of my role is just being intentional with the words I use when we're talking about specific things so that I can introduce some of these concepts. But we have different periods of the year where we're able to do a bit more intensive programming in IT education. And so during those times, we introduce the basics of mental health signs that people can look for in themselves or others, ways to ask for help, good questions that you can ask other people if you want to offer support. And we've started to touch a bit on what really is emotion and how do you identify that in yourself and express yourself in a healthy way? And it's all a work in progress, right? I can remember when I was a 19 to 23 year old male and I don't know that I felt like I would have had any of the language I needed to ask for anything I need at that point. And so using my own experience as a little bit of a proxy, I try to be really compassionate around that developmental process and again, let people arrive in their own time while trying to offer that indirect way of helping people learn these concepts. So whether it's naming the emotion in a conversation or asking someone deliberately how they feel versus what they think, these are all little ways that we can introduce more of these concepts into the language and network of thoughts that our folks have. And so again, try to be really intentional about it. But it's always a work in progress.

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I see spirituality as a core pillar of health, and so for me, spirituality doesn't necessarily have to be tied to a specific religion. I'm really thinking about being connected to something bigger than yourself. And we do know from a research perspective that having that sense of belonging and being a part of something bigger than yourself can be really healthy and helpful. And so folks find that through religion. Part of my role is to support that and help them get connected. If that's a really core part of their growth and the experience they want to have when they're part of the team, that's an important resource that we can help provide. But it's also introducing things again like mindfulness or other spiritual practices that are tangential to mindfulness. Right. Whether that be different forms of meditation or things like floating, There are these different things that you can do that connect you with. With that sense of a higher power, if you will. And so I'm always trying to bring that a bit into what we do, because, again, it helps people step outside of the role that we're playing. It helps people be connected to something bigger than themselves. And obviously, we're very fortunate to work and play in a place where we get to be around the game and have a lot of fun. But it's great to connect people with a bigger purpose, too, and make sure we're tying that all together and making the most of our experiences, developing people.

That makes so much sense. Tell me a little bit about what originally got you interested in mindfulness, and then maybe you can talk as well about how mindfulness has an impact on sports performance. What is the connection there?

My introduction to mindfulness was in my first year of graduate school. I was just really struggling with piecing together the workload from graduate school, plus having a new romantic relationship, plus moving to a new place and generally feeling on edge. I would say a person that lived a bit more in the future. And that had always been a bit of my set of limitations, if you will. But it really reared its head at that point, and it became a thing that was holding me back in terms of the work I was doing with other people, in terms of my learning and personal development. And so, after some research and thinking through what might help me get a bit more present and be a bit more connected to myself and the people around me, I was introduced to mindfulness and was fortunate to have a person who was over in the counseling center who did some training with us on mindfulness and was introduced that way. And I just really gravitated toward it and experimented with some different meditation practices, so experimented with loving kindness meditation, experimented with some transcendental meditation techniques, and was just interested in learning and finding what worked for me, and then found that there was something really simple and attainable for me in terms of practice around just sitting and being present with my breathing that I really gravitated toward. Like, this is something that you can take with you all the time. And that anchoring point in the meditation and mindfulness practice became really, really important for me. I mean, it became something that I used in my own work to help myself perform better, Whether that was working with an athlete or working with someone in the community. It became a way to anchor myself in the therapy process and be present with what I was feeling and figure out how to use that more effectively to help the clients I work with. In many ways, it became my launching point to, I think, becoming a better therapist and a better person. And I've been a fairly dedicated practitioner for the last 10ish years now because of that experience, and have certainly noticed some pretty important changes in myself just in terms of being able to identify how I might be feeling if I say, haven't slept as much as I would like to, what sorts of things do I need to be aware of and sensitive to and my behavior during that day, Knowing how I'm feeling, being able to identify my own emotion more readily, feeling like I'm more present, and even having people tell me that. And that's been really a wonderful change in myself that's come about through this committed practice. And it's something I really value and believe in because it's worked for me. And then of course, there's a lot of good data to support mindfulness practice as a great tool. And I think that is really where it leads into the sport performance side of things. So there's been some incredible research done from these different schools of thought around mindful sport performance enhancement and acceptance and commitment therapy for athletes and these different branches of therapy that have introduced mindfulness as a core pillar, pillar of what they're doing in their work with athletes. And it's been awesome from a general wellness perspective to see this. Mindfulness can help these athletes off the field or off the court, be more self aware, tune into how they're feeling, learn to accept difficult thoughts and emotions, identify with their values. There are these different pieces you can connect to the mindfulness practice that I just think are excellent for grounding someone as a person. But there's also been some great research that suggests mindfulness is actually really helpful for how we perform. And there's some interesting data around mindfulness being a precursor to flow, for example, or this really immersive psychological state where you're just fully in the moment, you almost lose track of time, you're just in it and responding. And that's the experience that people seek out when they're playing sport. And so it turns out if you practice more mindfulness, it's a little bit easier to tip yourself into flow. And I think that link is a cool way to introduce mindfulness to athletes and talk about how this can really help, because most athletes have had that experience of being really in the moment or in the zone, and this is a way to help you get a bit closer to that. Oh, and by the way, it's going to help you off the court, be a better partner, be a better brother, friend, whatever it is. And so it becomes this really nice anchor point where you can pivot into the personal and you can pivot into the performance and talk about this as a skill that's going to help in both spaces. And of course, it helps with things that come up in performances all the time. So dealing with mistakes or turnovers, having a difficult conversation with a teammate, zoning out during a timeout, all these things are things that mindfulness can help with. Bringing you back faster, helping you recover from a mistake more quickly, and effectively communicating better with teammates. And so it's become a really core part of the work that I do because I see its utility and application and all these different spaces.

Will you describe for There may be people that haven't heard the term ACT before. Will you talk a little bit about acceptance and commitment therapy and how it works with mindfulness and how you work with the team using these two techniques?

I will do my best to do justice to the incredible ACT researchers who have put together some good stuff out there. But acceptance and commitment therapy is a third wave cognitive behavioral therapy, and it was really born out of the idea that we don't have to focus so much on specific syndromes or symptoms, and we can really focus more on helping people have a meaningful, fulfilling life. And these researchers and practitioners have identified six core processes that help people move toward that more fulfilling and engaging life. And so that way of thinking about therapy, that way of thinking about personal growth and development, really resonates for me personally. And maybe that's attached to my mindfulness practice where I try to let go of the label of, say, depression or anxiety. And obviously you're looking for those things and you're concerned about how that's playing out for a person. But the reality is we're probably not going to get to a point where you never have a difficult thought or never have a difficult feeling. And so focusing so much on those symptoms, I think, can sometimes be a bit of a limitation. And so where ACT comes in is to sort of reframe those as part of the natural human experience and instead give you tools to work with that so that you can continue to pursue what's meaningful for you. So often what happens in clinical presentations is a person experiences feelings of depression and then they start to slowly shrink their life. They go out a little bit less, they stay in bed a little bit longer, they have generally less energy, and life becomes Grayer and grayer and more devoid of meaning. And there are certainly things you can do to help that. But I think ACT has tried to directly counteract that by introducing meaning as the thing to be after versus something like happiness. And there's some good research to back up that way of thinking about life too. And so these processes they've identified, many of them hinge on mindfulness as a core pillar. So there's this idea of being able to see yourself as more than your thoughts and your feelings. There's the idea of being present versus living in the past or living in the future. There's this idea of accepting what you're experiencing emotionally and not accepting in the sense of you just let whatever happens in the world happen to you, but accepting that at times these difficult feelings are going to arise and that's okay. Like you can contain that, you can work with that and continue to pursue your values. You don't have to let this feeling drive your behavior. You can let the values in that meaningful life drive your behavior. And then the fourth component that I think is really closely connected to mindfulness is the idea that your thoughts are not necessarily true. They're real, but they're not true. It's this idea that you can detach from your thinking and pick more or less helpful thoughts. And at times our thinking is great for moving us forward as a performer or person, and at other times it really hinders us. And being able to detach and the word they use is diffuse from those thoughts can really help people move forward. And then of course, the mindfulness practice blends into being more aware of who you are, what you value, what's really important to you, and gives you that pause between a situation and a response to choose a behavior that aligns with those values. And so ACT is really built around those six core processes which people tend to sum up in different ways. But I think it's open, present and engaged is a good way of thinking about it. And I think again, that model works really well for the folks that I work with. And certainly I've seen it work well outside of the sports space too. I think it's just a really powerful way of organizing the way that we move through the world in terms of translating it to the sports based guides. All of my work, really, that's what I'm thinking about all the time when people are coming to me or thinking about different things. It's what levels of these different factors does this person have and what's thwarting their sense of meaning? Essentially. And can we help them tap into their values, accept the difficulties, whatever it might be, and keep moving toward what matters for them?

It seems like there's so many layers of challenges or complications and also opportunities and alternatives. So there are the stressors for the individual players, like whether it's part of a training regimen or the stress of winning or losing, peer stress, competition, confidence issues. And then the other side of it is with the techniques that you choose to work with them, with mindfulness or acceptance and commitment therapy that work with potentially mental preparation for a game, or using imagery or positive self talk or relaxation, emotional regulation, goal setting or not setting goals so that you can be with the journey. How do you decide on the many different skills that you need to train for depending on a particular situation? Or do you have a protocol that encompasses all of the stressors and matches them with the techniques that you choose?

It's a bit of both. There are times when even as a practitioner, you're under time constraints, right? So a player has a really important event or a game coming up that they need to be ready for and you've got 30 minutes to help solve one really specific problem in that setting. I might be a bit more prescriptive and deliberate with what I'm teaching based on what the research suggests is going to be most helpful here. And at other times it's a bit more open ended. We have seven or eight months together to think through what this challenge might be. For me, the guiding anchor point in all of that work is who does this person want to be as a professional and as a person and how do they want to show up in that performance. And then that becomes my guidepost for whatever it is I introduce or whatever it is we're moving toward. And often it can be a simple way to help folks think through sometimes what they already know they need to do. Just coming to that, regrounding themselves in that particular space I think can be really helpful. That's really the way I guide most of my work in terms of the core tools and skills. Mindfulness is something and breathing is something I introduce to everyone I work with. In part because I think it can be really helpful and in part because there's a lot of really good data to back it up. And so it's a great one, two punch. I can talk about it from my own personal experience and folks I've worked with and I can also talk about it from a data driven perspective. And those two points seem to really resonate with folks. And then from there I Think that gives you the awareness that you need to build these other skills. And so if you're thinking about emotion regulation and performance anxiety, for example, I think to really do that work well, you first have to be able to identify what that is like, what is the performance anxiety, how is it showing up? What's happening for you physiologically, what's happening for you cognitively? What do you notice about yourself or your teammates or your coaches or the performers around you when you're feeling that level of performance anxiety? That all starts with having some self awareness because that then allows us to figure out what's really the best way to go about this. And it's not a one size fits all. Everyone has different things that resonate for them or might work better or worse for them. But until we build that self awareness up and get a sense of who we are and what we want to be about, it's really hard to figure out what to apply.

That makes a lot of sense. You had mentioned in our earlier conversation that you had tried Muse. I'm curious if you and or the players are interested and open to using technology that helps you get feedback on what's happening in your brain as you meditate. What are your thoughts on that? Alex?

I can speak more for myself than I can speak for the players, but I can say yes, I have been using Muse. I think it's been over a month now. I have really enjoyed it. For me, there's some really great benefit to getting live time feedback about the practice. I can say, honestly, I think it has helped deepen my practice of mindfulness because I have that feedback that indicates when I might be drifting away or not as present in ways that maybe I wouldn't have even caught before because I was just relying on myself. And so one of the challenging parts, I think, of mindfulness practice is you're trying to recognize when your mind wanders. But sometimes you're so caught up in the mind wandering that you can't recognize that your mind's wandered. And so having this tool to gently nudge you in your ear and let you know that you've wandered, I've found to be particularly helpful. Helpful. And there's also, I don't know if this is the intent, but there's like a degree of it that feels almost like a game. It's a bit more engaging. And for me it works really well. And I can imagine for. I'm just thinking about all the athletes I've worked with from the college to proto Olympic space, that level of gaminess of it, I think is really intriguing because it's no longer just, hey, for five minutes, put a timer on your phone and close your eyes and pay attention to your breath. It's now, put this cool piece of technology on for five minutes and see what happens and see if you can continue to enhance your ability to stay present. And obviously, you gotta be careful overemphasizing outcome over process of those sorts of things. But in general, it's a really cool way to introduce this technique and get people really into it. And I think the brainwave piece of it is interesting too, because it just again, it gives you. For me, it's about the data and the self awareness and figuring out, as I'm getting more into it, what kinds of things tend to distract me. For example, like, that's a level of my practice that I don't know that I would have gotten to without Muse, because I have that feedback in a really clear time point on the data that's like, okay, here's where you drifted off and then you go back and you reflect on that. And so I think that part is pretty unique and cool too.

So with Muse, we're focused more on focused attention meditation. So I look at this continuum of focused attention, and how does that lead into flow, potentially? And how does flow lead into peak performance for athletes?

Sure, yeah. It's a wonderful continuum, and I'm glad we're getting to chat about it. So what the data suggests is that focused attention, that mindful state of focused attention, like I mentioned, is a precursor to flow. And what they think is happening is a person is sustaining attention in the present moment. And flow is really about, again, being immersed in the present moment, losing your sense of self in space and time, and just responding really fluidly to what's going on in your environment. And I think the best way to get to that point is by being really tuned in. And so having that focused attention and really dialing into having that skill set to dial into whatever it is you need to dial into in sport to perform. That, to me, seems like the conceptual link, right? Where it's like this person has trained this focused attention. They know how to use it and leverage their attention. They know how to redirect attention when they're distracted. Now they can place their attention where they need it to be in the moment of performance. And if they can sustain that long enough, eventually you'll get closer or into that flow state. And then in that flow state is where we can see some of those peak performances. And I Think sometimes flow will happen without peak performance. It might still be a peak experience, but it might not be the best performance you've ever had. But it can be this. Really flow is like an intrinsically rewarding and reinforcing experience to have. And it becomes something that people seek out because for many of us, like when you ran around on the playground or were on the swing set or did monkey bars or whatever with your friends when you were a kid, that was flow. You just didn't know it then. And so flow really feels like play. And that's what a lot of people in my space get into the game for. Right. Most of these players play basketball because they love basketball, not because of anything else. And so being able to find that joy, that's a peak experience that comes from the flow process. And so giving yourself a bit of a way to get there sooner, I think is a great way for athletes to leverage this mindfulness practice. And like I said, I wouldn't downplay the other benefits to it too. Sometimes you're not going to find flow, and I think more often than not you probably won't. But that's okay because this ability to stay focused, to refocus, redirect attention, can still help you perform really, really well. And that's really what we're after.

Are there nuances to basketball because of the actual sport versus other team sports? I'm going to ask you about individual sports in a second. But in terms of team sports, are there some nuances to basketball that make it different or unique to you?

To me, it's like different time periods that you deal with. So football, for example, tends to work in 40 second increments because of the play clock. And then six to eight of those seconds will be the play and 30 seconds or so will be planning and strategizing. And so you need different skills there and you need to redirect your attention and shift your attention between different states or cognitive demands. That is a little different in basketball. Certainly basketball, they run plays and there's some time to recover in between plays. But by and large, basketball is a very up and go, fluid sport compared to say football or baseball. And so in some ways it can be great for using this as a way to get into flow. And in other ways it could be really tough. Right. If you're struggling, that struggle can maybe feel like it's piling on until you get a timeout or a break. Whereas a sport like baseball, where if you strike out, for example, like, unfortunately you're going to have time to think about that. Right. So you might be able to let it go, you might not be able to let it go, but there's different ways that the game is impacted based on where you are. Whereas in basketball, like if you're not fully present, it might be two or two and a half minutes with you on the floor where you're not fully there. And now the team is playing not without you, but without you a little bit. They're not playing with you at your best. And I think that's a unique aspect of basketball where it does demand a bit more sustained focus than some other team sports. All the team sports demand an incredible level of sustained focus, but basketball might have that a bit more, whereas other sports might have a bit different demands that they're juggling in a different way.

One of the articles I read talked about long distance runners and issues of fatigue or boredom or pain. And I couldn't help but think, wouldn't it be better for an individual long distance runner to have a wandering mind than to be in the present moment where it's so tedious and painful because of the repetitive nature of running? What do you think about that?

It's a great hypothesis. It's a bit nuanced, but what we know is that for some folks, that can work. Generally it turns out it's better for performance to engage in what's called associative running versus dissociative running. And so dissociative is what you described. Think about whatever except for running. And associative running is think about running. Well, I should re say that it's not necessarily think about running, it's be present with running. And where that's come down is when you're say, running a half marathon, it can be incredibly fatiguing. But what people often find if they engage in associative running is that the sensations that their mind is describing for them initially doesn't necessarily match reality when you unpack it a little bit more. So, for example, on mile 13, your legs might feel really, really heavy. On first blush or first glance, it's like, oh my gosh, I'm exhausted. I can't believe I've come this far. But if you really dive into that, what people will often find is, well, maybe it's just a small part of their leg that's a little bit tight, or it's a small part of their leg that feels a little warm. Or maybe their legs really don't hurt so much at all. This is just your brain's natural human Response to trying to get you to exert less energy. Ultimately, that's what brains are designed to do to preserve us and help keep us safe. They're not optimized to run half or full marathons. And so mastering that ability to stay present with what's going on in your body as a performer will actually give you better data to help you perform better. And that, to me is what it's about, is you've got the information to make the right decision. And so if you discover, say on mile 13, that you're actually feeling pretty great once you unpack it a little bit, then that maybe gives you the sense that, like, it's okay to push yourself for this last however far you want to go because you've got the energy to do that. Maybe more so than you thought, But I get the inclination to mind wander. And like I said, there are some folks that works for, But I think in general, breaking down these individual sports into these sustained chunks of focused attention can still work really well.

We talk a lot about autopilot on this show because mindfulness and meditation help us ease out of that. But what's the benefit of shifting out of autopilot for an athlete? And when is autopilot behavior helpful?

It's tough because in some ways we don't necessarily want an athlete to think. And what I mean by that is we know that conscious control over your motor movement can disrupt how your body moves. So try describing how to walk to somebody and you'll have that experience. It's pretty hard to explain in a step by step way how to walk. It's just something we know how to do. And so we don't want people to think about how to walk. We want you to just do it. And so I think the idea is autopilot, I think, can be helpful for athletes when we need to recover a little bit. I mean, the reality is it is really taxing to sustain attention and be fully present for a really long time. It's also not the brain's natural inclination. The data I've last seen is like we spend 48% or something of our time thinking about the future on autopilot. And that's in large part because our brains are predictive mechanisms. And so I don't necessarily want to have someone not engage in their natural brain state, especially when it helps with some level of recovering from that heightened awareness and sustained attention. But then I think it's this continuum. You can use the mindfulness to shift you back into that heightened mode of awareness. And really, what the heightened awareness is about in sport performance is about external focus. It's about focusing on what's happening in the environment that allows your body to do what it needs to do without you overthinking it or interfering with it. And so in that same way, autopilot is probably not going to help because you're not really going to be locked in the external environment. You're just going to be out there going through the motions. Then you can see that sometimes with athletes, let's say when they're recovering on the bench, for example, that might be a good time to just let your mind wander and do what it needs to do to recover a little bit so you can go back out there and engage in that heightened and sustained attention again.

And is there any positive impact that comes from performance anxiety? In public speaking, we're taught that a little anxiety is good because you're excited and do you care? And is that the same in sports?

What we know is that really it comes down to how you frame it or how you think about it. And so if you think about this physiological arousal that people call performance anxiety, so increased heart rate, sweaty palms, maybe you got a sweaty brow, you feel warm. If you appraise that as a threat and you start to go down this path of, oh, my goodness, what is going on? This is about to go terribly, horribly wrong. I'm going to forget my lines. I'm not going to remember what to say when I get to this slide for this pitch, whatever it might be, then that can have a cascading effect where you self fulfill that prophecy and you end up underperforming. But we know that if you take those same sensations and you appraise it as a challenge, like, okay, my body is getting ready for me to deliver. I'm getting ready to perform at my highest level. This is my body telling me it's time to go and giving me the energy I need to perform my best. If you can engage in that kind of thinking, it can be really facilitative. It can really help you with that heightened awareness. And so a lot of it comes down to really how you frame it and how you think about it for yourself. And there's a wonderful TED Talk about the upside of stress and how simply thinking about stress as helpful, and this is me being excited or me caring can go a huge, huge way versus thinking about it as, oh, my goodness, what's happening? I can't believe I'm so stressed out. And so I think the same is true for performance Anxiety and sport and all these other domains. It's really about the way that you're using this energy. And the way I think about it with the folks I've worked with is usually this kind of arousal is a sign that you care about this. And so that first sign, rather than worry about is this good or is this bad, Just recognize that this means that this is important to you. This is something you value. And now if you realize that you value it now, you can start to push yourself toward, okay, like, I want to do the best I can do at this. This is an opportunity for me to show what I can do in this area I really care about. Let's go out and give it my best performance. I think that can be a really facilitative way of dealing with that.

That's super helpful. And my last question, unless there are some other things that you would like to add, is how can you get coaches to learn to meditate? And is that helpful in terms of inspiring the players or how do you work with the coaches and the staff versus the players?

It would be great for everyone to meditate. I think I'm a little biased, but in general, I think it's a very helpful practice for coaches and staff. Really what we are is decision makers. And so our performance is making the best decisions that we can under the constraints that we have. Mindfulness is a core pillar of being a high performance knowledge worker. It's being able to be present, recovered, make the right decisions, engage helpfully and healthily in relationships. And so I think it can be tremendously important. We might use it for a different purpose. Coaches or staff aren't going out there and running around and jumping and dunking and all those things, but they are still engaged in a really people centric performance, centric space. And so the way I try to think about mindfulness is twofold. For staff and coaches. It's one as a form of self care, as a way to help you wind up and wind down from the start to the end of the day and really almost block your work day. Right. Like before you go to work, this can be a really helpful practice to get you into it after work, this can be a really helpful practice to help you transition to family life, because the time that we spend together is quite a bit. And so being able to be fully present with whoever you're with when you're home can be a really, really great way to recharge. And the second way, of course, is as an investment in performance. So this practice is going to help you lock in a bit more when you need to be locked in. Whether that's calling plays during a game or drawing plays up during practice, or cooking food or dealing with travel, whatever it might be. Everyone has a critical role to play and all of us perform our best when we're present, and so being able to stay locked in and get people to train that skill can be tremendously valuable.

Alex, I have learned so much from you today. I'm so grateful you're able to be on Untangle.

I really have appreciated the conversation. I think the work you're doing is tremendous and it's valuable to be able to share this. And so I just appreciate you giving me an opportunity to talk about something I'm passionate about and get to share that space with you.

Yeah, I love your passion for it. It's fantastic. Thank you so much. Thanks so much to Alex for being with us today. A reminder that the Muse headband is super helpful if you're looking to develop or deepen your meditation practice. So check that out and if you have suggestions or feedback, email us@untangleoosemuse.com have a great week and we'll see you next time. Hey, it's Patricia Karpus. If you're drawn to conversations that weave together insights from traditional wisdom, science and engaged real world action, you will want to listen to the Garrison Institute Presents the Common Good. This new podcast explores how inner transformation and outer change come together to shape a more compassionate world. Hosted by Jonathan F.P. rose, the series journeys through the threads that bind us all, exploring life, the mind and compassionate action. Discover the interdependent nature of life with environmental entrepreneur Paul Hawken, climate change pioneer Bill McKibben and Pulitzer Prize winning author Siddhartha Mukerjee. Explore the mind with psychiatrist Dan Siegel and experience compassion in action with meditation pioneer Sharon Salzberg. Listen, reflect and act for the common good. Follow the Garrison Institute presents the Common Good on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now. Shopify's Point of Sale system helps you sell at every stage of your business. Need a fast and secure way to take payments in person? We've got you covered. How about card readers you can rely on anywhere you sell? Thanks. Have a good one. Yep, that too. Want one place to manage all your online and in person sales? That's kind of our thing wherever you sell. Businesses that grow grow with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify. Com. Listen shopify. Com listen.