Conscious Conversations: The Athlete Mind

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Thanks. Thanks so much, Sean. And welcome everyone. Thanks so much for joining today's session. We'll be beginning shortly, but before we get started, I'm going to run through some housekeepings as usual. So as usual, today's conscious conversation is being recorded. Now if you'd like to share today's webinar or listen again, we'll be sending you the recording in our follow up email and sharing it to our YouTube channel. Also, I'll make sure to send the link to our YouTube channel in the chat so you can subscribe if you haven't already. Now, today's session will run for an hour with the last portion dedicated to a Q and A with Sean and our four speakers. Everyone right now is in listen only mode, but we found these sessions are most engaging when they're interactive. So that's why we encourage you to use the chat and the Q and A functions that you'll see at the bottom of your screens. Also, like the last time, we'll be incorporating some of your live questions into each interview. So if you want to drive the conversation, please submit questions for Sean to ask the speakers via the Q and A box. And we'll also have some time at the end of the session for Q and A with our guests. So I realized the beginning the chat function was disabled. It is enabled now and it is for you to share your thoughts and answers to our questions. Simply click the chat button and you'll see a blue dropdown menu that says to panelists and like Sean said, please make sure to change it to everyone so that everyone can see your message. Now, if you have if you have to leave before the end of the session, not to worry. We'll be addressing all questions you submitted in a follow up to this webinar. So to kick everything off, I'd like to introduce our host, Sean Moore, who will get us started talking about the athlete mind. Sean, the floor is yours.

All right. Welcome everyone to our seventh Conscious Conversation, the Athlete Mind Optimizing Performance and Recovery. My name is Sean Moore, as David has mentioned, and as always, I'm excited to be here with you in conversation. I love to be in conversation around all things mindfulness, especially when we look at the tool as more than just a reflection space, but also an opportunity to enhance our performance. A little bit About Me I am new to Muse as the new Community Engagement Specialist and so hopefully I'll be hearing a little bit more from you all over the next couple of months to learn a little bit more about how we can continue to engage with you in our community. So with that being said, we're going to explore a few different points in today's session. We'll talk a little bit about the world of sports performance recovery and how elite athletes and high performers optimize their minds. We'll also be talking to experts who have worked with elite athletes about what goes into training elite mind and how you can optimize your brain for high performance. And we'll also be talking about the role of mindfulness in sports and what role tech can play in the field. With that being said, I want to make space for our amazing guests today. All right, so I'm going to begin by introducing each one of our guests, beginning with Alex Auerbach. Dr. Auerbach joined the Toronto Raptors after serving as the Director of Clinical and Sports Psychology for the University of Arizona. Dr. Auerbach has worked with NCAA Division 1 schools. He has provided clinical care, crisis intervention, and performance consultation for professional, collegiate and Olympic athletes, as well as coaching staff, medical staff, and sports administration. Alex, welcome to the panel.

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Excited, man, thank you. I'll bring up our next guest, Michael Robaska. Prior to joining the LA Galaxy, Michael Hrabaska was the Director of Cognitive Development for the Toronto FC his expertise is cognitive and neurodevelopment athletes, which combines his work experience as an occupational therapist and his history in soccer. Michael, thank you for being in the space with us today.

It's great being here. Thank you.

Yeah, of course. Next up, we have Dr. Greg Wells. Dr. Greg Wells is a health and high performance expert who as a scientist and physiologist has dedicated his career to making the science of human limits understandable and actionable. Dr. Wells is also a best selling author and a veteran endurance athlete. It's great to see you, Greg. Thank you for being here.

Good to be here, Sean. Thanks so much.

Yes, yes, thank you. And last but not least, we have Gina Caputo. Gina is a national board certified health and wellness coach, behavior change specialist and seasoned yoga teacher. She specializes in enhancing resilience and supporting your total physical, mental and emotional and spiritual well being. Gina, thank you.

Thank you, Sean. Thanks everyone.

Thanks.

Awesome. So let's hop in. Let's get into this. I think a very juicy conversation. I think a great place to start is to create some context around the discussion. And so what I'll toss out here as our first point of conversation is how have you seen the landscape of sports performance evolve over the last 10 years? Anyone care to get us started with this?

I actually, I'm unmuted, but Gina, you go first for sure.

I just laughed when I, when I looked at that question because my mind first went to Phil Jackson, like starting that whole one breath, one team, one breath policy. And I thought that was about 10 years ago. And I looked it up, that was 1999, so a little outside the scope, but I feel like that was the first time I remember sports performance, including things that are in my wheelhouse like yoga and meditation.

Greg, you want to hop in?

Sure. I guess the biggest thing I've seen probably over the last, and I hate to think of it as 20 plus years, you know, you're absolutely right. But it's that long is the fundamental shift from high volume training just who can do the most work the most often and whoever doesn't get injured makes the Olympics to now it's more recovery, regeneration, peak performance, but then deep recovery as well. Which is maybe why we're seeing careers last longer, world records be broken more often. So it's been a fundamental shift from a physiology perspective and how training has been approached over the last. I'll call it 25 years. I'm getting old.

No, I'll just, I'll share that. I, I think one of the greatest shifts, at least in the last 10 years is a real, real sense of action to actually use the things that are available to us that are known in the field. I think for a long time, even with an Excellent example 25 years ago of Phil Jackson, it was heavily reliant on a coach and his expertise and knowledge. I would say the field was heavily influenced in sports psychology and almost experts outside of the reach of many professionals. And what I see now, even though I am a department of one and outside of very well, outside of sports psychology, that doesn't exist in most organizations. There is an action. There is a little bit more of doing and less speaking to. We've heard for years how the mental side. The mental side for the athlete is super important, but unless they picked up a book or a professional was right there for them, I'm not sure that they got exactly what they were hoping for or looking for. Now, I think organizations and other professionals, this is not just the community. This is. Even for myself as an occupational therapist working for over 25 years, it took a long time for me to say, oh, what I'm doing in the clinic with spinal cord and traumatic brain injury, I don't have to have a damaged brain. I can have this nice healthy brain also to work with. And so it's wonderful to see the last 10 years the action part of what we get to do.

Yeah, you all have already hit on a bunch of high points, and so I'll stay squarely in my wheelhouse for the last one. But obviously there's been a lot more conversation about mental health in particular and holistic health and wellness for athletes in the last decade, ranging from the NCAA passing legislation requiring all institutions to have access to a mental health provider to now the NBA and NFL having similar requirements. You're also seeing, of course, like very famous elite athletes come out and talk about, you know, things that they're navigating as recently as John Wall last week wrote in the Players Tribune. So it's been pretty remarkable to have that shift in narrative and, you know, people starting to have a greater understanding and appreciation of mental health as a part of the normal human experience and not some aberration that we have to deal with in a. In a box or a closet off to the side. And so that's been, I think, a welcome change. And, you know, the appreciation of the athlete as a whole person has accompanied that, which has been wonderful.

Yeah, thank you all for your insight in this. And I know you've all spoke very specifically around how it's been embraced over the Last couple of years. But are there any challenges that you're noticing along the landscape?

Yeah, I'll pick up where I left off. As much as there's been progress and in the world of mental health, there still is like some stigma. And I think in particular people fear what they're not familiar with or what they don't understand or what they don't like seeing in themselves. And so unfortunately, you know, it becomes a place where there can be a little bit of a lack of empathy or just a lack of clarity about how the mental health component and even the mental performance component are linked and how it impacts athletes and how it impacts everything we do on a day to day basis. And so we still have some work to do in the field in terms of destigmatizing mental health, having people see mental health and mental performance as part of an integrated whole human body experience. But I think we're making progress. There's just still more work to do.

Yeah, Gina, I know you were about to tap in.

I was just going to say I think discernment is a challenge. You know, once something does become more upfront in your face, there's somebody who's looking to make money from it. So discerning between the things that are gimmicky and the things that are truly useful out there, I think that's a challenge for folks out there.

Thank you. I'll go to Greg and then Michael.

Sure. I think the biggest challenge is when you encounter culture where the stigma hasn't been completely broken down yet. And we run up against urgent versus important. There's the urgency of immediate performance, the urgency of immediate training versus the importance of holistic health to enable long term world class consistent training growth and development. And so that's definitely something that we see not just in sports, but especially still in the corporate realm, which is, I think, following the sports trajectory, but a little bit behind still. So that's where I would say the biggest challenge exists right now from my perspective.

Thank you.

Yeah, I agree with everyone. I know stigma is a, is a big issue here and I don't even. I. And when it comes to mental health, that is another area that we seek other professionals for. So in my environment, the biggest challenge is clearly explaining that we are interested in performance and stuff outside of performance is super important and we will certainly make sure the assistance or whatever they need is there for that. So we take a little more. The different approach or alternative is just to set people up to give them the tools they need so we don't wind up in those crises moments in my environment, there's a lot of explaining, a lot of paying attention to language to make sure that my space is described the right way as an organization, and then of course, to the athletes. But I think in terms of what everyone has said, that's I'd say 10% to 15% of my job on a day to day, week to week basis.

Yeah. Thank you, Michael. You actually started to tap into where I wanted to go next. But I know that the idea of like mental health, mental performance, and mental wellness sometimes get lumped together and there are sort of unique needs with each one of those spaces. Can, can you talk a little bit about maybe what the differences are between those three? We're looking at mental health performance and then. Well, and maybe help us shape the conversation around that a little bit. Anybody care to. To tackle that? See, Greg, you're shaking your head a little bit.

I'm gonna let Greg and I'm gonna let you guys go at this. We, we even in the question, we are very careful again about the words. So the word mental becomes this big ominous thing for us. And it unfortunately, the way it's been used or not unfortunately, but just the reality of the way mental has been used in the past has been used in terms of being sick or not. Well, let's say that and just getting people. Especially for myself, I work with a lot of individuals who come from different cultures, not necessarily North American. And so, you know, that culture can almost tenfold the stigma, if you will. So, you know, this is. It's purposeful that we've chosen cognitive. I've bounced back and forth. I've used the word high performance. That describes something else. So we've chosen a word to try and bring people in and to start to get away with it. It's not just the words. It's then the actions we take after that. And I think that has helped our environment. But in terms of the three categories, I'll let the experts be experts in this one.

Sure. Since you mentioned my name, I'll jump in. I've got the great honor and privilege to work with children at a hospital as a researcher, but then also with elite athletes. I span that spectrum. And the language that we've been using is that there's illness. Again, I'm a physiologist. That might be leukemia or cystic fibrosis or whatever, which then our goal is to get you healthy, which is free of disease. We then seek to try to get you to a point of wellness or, well, Being, which is where you can thrive. And then there's moving along the spectrum over to high performance. And the key message being it doesn't matter where you are on that spectrum from illness all the way through to world class elite performance, doesn't matter as long as we are, we are moving that needle and trying to make some degree of progress. Now I always tell people the greatest athletic performance I've ever seen in my entire life was a young 9 year old girl with going through chemo, getting up and walking up and down the hall at the chemo ward, at the cancer ward, and I've been to three Olympics. I've seen some pretty crazy stuff. Usain Bolt, all of it. But that was the one that I thought was the most incredible. So it doesn't matter where we are. We're just trying to make that move from illness to health, health to wellbeing and then wellbeing to be able to reach our true human potential.

Thank you.

I love how you framed it, Greg, because I think the same thing you're talking about physical health. I believe personally the same thing is true for mental health. Continuum from illness to flourishing or peak performance, whatever you want to call it. And so if you want to like break down the three categories you gave, you might think about mental health as navigating the one side of the continuum, trying to help people move from illness to well being. You might think of mental performance as trying to get people from well being to flourishing and sort of in between. And then wellness coaching or wellness work is sort of like keeping people centered. I think it's like nice to think about it that neatly, but the reality is that it's not quite that neat and clean in particular because like, if you're thinking about say elite athletes, for example, it's really hard to know if it's personal or professional or performance or mental health. When someone shows up and has a bad day and then they go home and they can't sleep for a couple weeks, you know, now what are we, what are we dealing with? Right? Is it a mental performance issue? Is it a mental health issue? And so I think, you know, conceptually that sort of continuum can help kind of frame the conversation. But I think in practice it might not be as neat and clean as that, which makes it both challenging and also super fun to figure out kind of like what are the right levers to pull to help people be their healthiest and highest performing.

Yeah, I'm so grateful to hear all of that. And in particular, Michael, I appreciate that opportunity for More sensitivity around the language. I think as you were saying that, I realized I kind of take that for granted. So thanks for that. When I reflected on this question, I was thinking mental health, at least for me. I always think of the word you feel resource, that no matter what comes at you, you feel like you've got inner resources to face it and a certain amount of resilience. Then I reflected on performance and I thought of the work of Mahali Csikszentmihaly about getting into flow state, where you've got to have mental health in order to drop into the flow state. And that was another, you know, where the challenges to your mental state were just like just above what you were comfortable with. And then when it came to mental wellness, the thing that jumped out at me is that seemed less about the individual and more about the environment. I think one could interpret that in many different ways. But mental wellness to me reflected like the environment that's being fostered, whether it's with a team or any group. But yeah, I loved the opportunity just to reflect on the differences between those. And I totally agree with that Continuum Image and what Alex said, that it's rarely that tidy.

Sean, may I just add one more thing?

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Gina, thanks for the. I'm going to take that as a compliment.

Yes, it was. It was.

I was just peering at the chat and someone mentioned philosophy. And I think this is a perfect example of perhaps sometimes how we can use a different avenue to call something philosophy rather than a treatment, to hand a book or to hand something over and say, study this. You had a bad day. And for most people, there are a lot of people have had bad days. Just happens that athletes do it in front of hundreds of thousands at times.

So.

Their error gets magnified. But at the end of the day, it's an error that sometimes everyone experiences.

Right.

And so sometimes if we just look at some other ways to approach this, like philosophy, rather than a deep down psychological approach with categories not to demean and not to take out the importance of that work, but to look back to the past and reflect on how people have evolved in their thinking, I think that's also important. Whoever put the question in there about philosophy and stoicism, I would just say that this is an excellent place to start on the wellness side, that you are inoculating yourself with some good ways to think or some other ways to think about issues. You can start with all of these small things before you're performing in front of millions of people and how that might impact your Mental health as you. As you move forward.

Yeah. I just want to say thank you all. I'm appreciative of this conversation, especially from the perspective of evolving language and really looking at this as a continuum on how we look at our health, wellness, and our performance in that way. I think that connects directly to another question which we all know in the wellness space, sometimes certain terms become a little buzzy and we see them navigate in the space. And so I guess what I would ask is, how do you all. Or how would you define, like, mental or cognitive resilience when it comes to sports performance? We can start with Alex, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, thanks for putting me on the spot. I wanted to think about it for a minute.

Sorry.

No, it's a great question. Resilience has definitely become more of a buzzword. I think for me, like, in its simplest form, resilience is the ability to bounce back and ultimately bounce forward in response to a significant event or adversity. I don't know that I quite view resilience in the way it's been, like, popularly talked about more recently. We're sort of like, every time you're managing stress, you're resilient to stress in general. I'm also not a person that believes stress is inherently harmful. As long as you have some recovery with stress, it can actually be helpful. So it's not necessarily something to be resilient to. It's actually something you need to perform. Right. Like, stress is just your body and brain energizing you to get ready to do something effortful. It's not something actually bad or harmful. And so for me, resilience really requires, like, a significant setback or adversity and then a coping with that adversity to ultimately restore functioning and then move past that restorative space.

Thank you.

Anybody else care to chime in on this one?

Sure.

I really liked the way that he put that. The bouncing back is exactly the way I think of it. And Alex said, if you have some time for recovery, a game changer I've realized in the clients I work with is when they understand what Alex just talked about, that all stress isn't bad. And so when you drop this idea that stress itself is bad and you embrace the different types of stress, eustress versus distress. I think it can really change the filter through which people see the challenges in their lives, and that in many cases, does tend to resource them. And I love that piece about having a little moment for recovery. Whether it's eustress, like you're going out for a game or a race or something like that, or distress, where you experience some loss or an accident, something injury, things like that. That recovery period, I think, is a great opportunity to recalibrate. And I always align that notion of recalibration with resilience, where you kind of are able to digest what's happened and you feel like. And this, too. I can use this, too. I can include moving forward.

Yeah.

And, Gina, just for the context of some of the folks that are tuning in, can you talk a little bit about the difference between eustress and distress in that way?

Sure. I mean, I think the simplest way to look at it is eustress. That's EU stress. Eustress is the types of stressors that do move us forward in life. Like, Alex was saying that those are the ways we grow. These are often things that we choose to do. So a personal example, as I signed up for an extremely difficult kettlebell certification course, and I know it's going to be really rigorous. I'm choosing to do that. It causes me a bit of eustress, you know, like, positive stress every day, where I think, oh, you know, I really gotta. I gotta rise to this challenge. I gotta put in the time. And while that stress, it's not creating, like, any kind of. At least it's the right amount, apparently, for me, because it's not causing me to get, you know, totally fearful or depressed or anything like that. And it kind of is like, you got to figure out what's the right amount that you feel resourced for. Distress is more the common. What we commonly think of as stress, where, you know, we were in a car accident recently, and it has been a lot of distress since then. These things that often we aren't expecting, they certainly didn't plan them, and they create hardships. So it's also like a continuum, you know, where you want to find where you feel resourced. And for each individual that their definition of. Is this eustress for you or is this distress? You know, what a great example is public speaking. For me, this is eustress. I like public speaking for someone else, this would be distress.

Thank you.

I'll just chime in and say I'm in distress right now. Just to add on Alex and Gina's excellent comments. And just to say that grit, especially in my environment, is a big, buzzy word. And we have a lot of coaches who will just start out. Our players need to be more gritty. We have an academy here, so we have 14 through 18, 19 year olds, about almost 80 of them who come and go to a school here and do all these things. So we talk about grit, and then the first thing the school does is cancel Mondays, Monday classroom sessions because they have played Saturday and Sunday on the weekend and they need a day off. And the reminder that the rest of the world does things on the weekend, highly evolved things, difficult things, whatever it might be, and they show up to school on Monday or they do some sort of event or something goes on. So I think it's a constant call to action, a constant reminder of how are you doing it, not just talking about it. That's what we try to. We love the word. I love the word grit. I love the word resilience. I love all that it represents. I love the research they've done behind it. And now there's the practical call to action. And how do we do that in very small ways. I've mentioned a very big way. But how do you do it on a daily basis? To practice that and understand it is where we are trying to move beyond just the buzz.

And I'll build on that a little bit and sort of maybe try to summarize everything that I just, just heard because there's so much good stuff in there. For me, resilience is, again, bouncing back. I learned that from a number of different people. The idea that Alex had recently, we were chatting in depth about this, was bouncing back faster. And so, for example, if you hit a bad golf shot, how do you recover quickly to get to the next golf shot, let that previous one go so that you can do a decent job on the next one. As a physiologist, I'm interested in how do we do a very difficult workout, but then recover and regenerate to get to the next session really, really well. And I think in the context of everything that we just said, it's also important to note that there is a natural ebb and flow to our mental health, to our physical health. Throughout the course of our lives, we're not always going to be thriving. There are times when we are going to encounter challenges. The game for us is to try to approach that with that sense of, I can bounce back or I can be the lighthouse in the storm for the people around me and find ways, as Michael was saying, about how do we actually recover from a physiological perspective that might be cold, that might be massaged psychologically, that could be things like meditation, mindfulness practices, gratitude, journaling, all sorts of different things that we can use to speed that recovery back up to baseline. And hopefully then have a positive adaptation. Because when we are physically stressed, we do and actually allow ourselves to recover and generate. We recover back above baseline, we become stronger, fitter, faster. I think it's the same thing on the mindset side too, when we consider that when we experience stress, but we allow ourselves and facilitate ourselves to recover, regenerate, and go through that resilience process, we end up being stronger and better, healthier as well, on the mental side as well.

Yeah. Thank you all. Just sitting here, like, soaking all this in. It's great, great information. I wish I was over here taking some notes, but I want to sort of shape our conversation and shift it in a way. And one of the things I'll say, as someone outside of the sports industry, I think it's been really refreshing to see so many pro athletes speak up and become very transparent about their mental health. We've talked a lot about this idea of sort of rebound and sort of identifying what that looks like. Can you share maybe your thoughts on this movement of transparency and what this looks like and maybe how from your respective areas, you're noticing the industry is maybe taking note of that and maybe making changes?

Yeah, I mean, I can jump in since there's a lot happening always. It feels like in the NBA in terms of mental health conversation. I mean, I think, you know, it's been honestly, like, incredibly impactful and really refreshing to have people speak up and share their story. Like, this is one of the most important things we can do to help destigmatize mental health, to get people to think about their own mental health differently, to interact with treatment providers, to reach diverse communities. Like, to have people from diverse backgrounds and varied experiences talk about how they are feeling. What they're thinking about, I think is super important. And then I think in a lot of ways, sports is kind of leading the way right now for how the rest of the world is thinking about mental health. Certainly as we've moved through the pandemic, I mean, there was a lot of talk about mental health in the NBA bubble and what players were doing to take care of themselves. That conversation has continued. And so you're starting to see companies do things like give mental health days or block work time. And I think those are good, positive changes to a larger cultural shift that's happening around the way we think about taking care of your mental health, where it's not this separate thing that you deal with outside of nine to five. Like, it's a thing that you bring with you when you walk into the building. And I think it's really, it's been awesome. I mean, certainly in my day to day life, it's changed the way that people are thinking about mental health generally. And it's become this thing where people recognize it can impact anyone. It's not reserved for a small subset of the population, but it could be happening right in front of us on a daily basis. And so being able to interact and talk about that more freely has been. Been awesome. And I think sports is going to continue like even as small as the NBA. Changing the scheduling up a little bit this year to have more time spent in one city so there's more opportunities for sleep and recovery. Like those little things actually do go a long way for helping people feel better. And so, you know, outside of the sport world, like, I hope this trend continues. Obviously, like, you know, there's controversy around everything like four day work weeks or mental health days or whatever. But like the bottom line is that people need time. People need time to recover. People do not solely want to like work until they reach the end of their life. They want an opportunity to experience other things. And so it's been neat to see sport kind of shape that dynamic and continue to lead and evolve the way that we know, sort of like in the western world think about mental health.

Yeah, I think Alex is spot on with sports leading the way. We've had these amazing examples. Simone Biles comes to mind. Naomi Osaka comes to mind just recently. And maybe Michael knows that. I read like the entire Spanish women's soccer team just like walked off because they had a toxic environment. That's all I know about that. But also people that we identify usually as really tough, like Ronda Rousey was very open about her challenges. And I feel like this idea of the show must go on because sports, it's a career, it's a job, but it's also entertainment for a lot of the rest of the world that's not participating. And that show must go on, I think has been harming not just athletes, but people that would be categorized as entertainers in the music industry. Now the only way to really make any music is through touring, which of course is stressful and rigorous in acting. I think that we've previously been maybe less sympathetic, more unsympathetic to the challenges that those folks face. And so when we have these really notable top of their game people coming out and communicating, it's an opportunity to teach us as the people taking in this, their work, you know, and also become more sympathetic and sensitive. And I love Seeing what looks like not only trickling from sports into things like music and other forms of entertainment, but to Alex's point, just normalizing it for the rest of us. You know, it's like, oh, well, Michael Phelps is having challenges. You know, it's okay if I do, too, or, you know, whoever.

Yeah, I've really noticed a huge shift as well. And I think the Michael Phelps example is perfect. And he goes from winning all of those medals and in 2014, is really struggling, but then does deep work and comes back in Rio. And what was the interesting thing about Rio was even though he didn't win as many medals as he had in the past, he was smiling on the podium, he was touching people, he was giving hugs, he was having a great time. Like, you can see that there was a computer, complete transformation there. And I think that's a pattern that we're seeing broadly in our society. If you break your arm and you have a cast, people ask you, like, hey, how's your arm? Are you okay? Can I sign your cast? But if you're struggling with depression, previously it was viewed as something you did not talk about. Certainly know that now. If you talk about therapy, for example, it's. It isn't just, oh, you're going to therapy, it's, hey, what kind of therapy are you doing? Like, everyone now knows, not just about therapy, but there's many different modalities and they're familiar with. So this stigma is being broken down. I would encourage everyone to talk about it. I would encourage everyone to speak to someone who is struggling because this is something that everyone goes through. There are ups and downs in life, and we need to break down the stigma as leaders. If you're on this call, if you're watching this call, this is definitely something that we can. We can impact and move forward for sure.

Thank you.

I want to. Before we open it up, because I always find that these conversations are great, but our audience has some amazing questions. I want to be able to bring those into the space, but I want to talk. I know we all are acknowledging this idea of the mind body connection. I want to talk a little bit about injury and pain management. What are you seeing in terms of innovation and maybe best practices in this space and how that's connecting to performance in that way. Let me get a quiet.

So, sure, I'll jump in. One of the really cool things that we've noticed and I spent a little bit of time at Sickkids Hospital in Toronto as a researcher. We run the exercise medicine program. But there's actually a pain program at the hospital as well, for obvious reasons. In speaking to those people, a really interesting thing that I've learned is that we don't understand pain very well. We don't understand the mechanisms, we don't understand what it is at its fundamental level. It's extraordinarily complicated. One of the really interesting things that we've seen in pain, and I say we being I'm an observer of a group of people that are doing some really incredible work, is the use of, in the hospital for children, the use of wearable technology to help the kids quantify their pain as they go about their day, to relate it back then to a clinical challenge that they're facing with. So I think it's actually a really interesting way that wearable tech is being used now to help people understand what's happening to their own physiology and psychology, to help the people that are helping those people with challenges to do a little bit better if it didn't come out right. But that's what I'm. That's what I'm seeing in the pain space, which I think is absolutely fascinating and really hopeful as well.

Yeah, I will say on my end, the. Sorry, Gina.

No, go ahead.

I am almost at the point where a discussion about pain, either as something that is impacting their performance negatively, it's not going to put them in danger of having a setback of pulling a muscle and now being out for months. That's not what we're talking about. Or as a way to understand their pain limits to push themselves. I'm almost at a point where unless I have the person meditating, the discussion of pain and me helping them is. It's ten times more difficult if I'm able to have someone who is a meditator or who has been practicing even moderately, I can get them into that. I shouldn't say I can get them into the space. It just seems like the discussions and the chats we have about examining that ailment, examining that pain point, along with a little bit of philosophy, in other words, you have run 90 minutes and you have hit over 16 kilometers. You have done some of the most difficult work you're ever going to do. And guess what? You came out of it. And within a half an hour, you were with, you know, you were laughing, you were, you were enjoying, you were doing all this stuff. So pain, the philosophy, along with some of the meditation stuff, has been. I just see a tremendous difference besides just talking to them or trying to look at what the medical department is doing to manage their pain. This discussion has been really interesting to me and fruitful. It's probably one of the more rewarding parts of some of the athletes, but if they're not meditating, it becomes something completely different. And I feel separated and not necessarily able to help them because it's in the medical department's hands.

Man, I love that. I was thinking also along the lines of pre pain management or pre injury management. We've certainly seen a lot of popularity with. One thing that comes to mind is mobility apps where part of your training now includes mobility as a way to perhaps prevent injury, possibly prevent pain as part of that. The Go Wad app, for example. And also, you know, things like Muse. But there's this emphasis on, as Michael is saying, you know, meditation, mindfulness, whatever label they might give it, being a part of that protocol. You know, I think social media has given athletes a platform to share their training beyond what we see on tv, you know, and that's been, I think that's been super cool because we're seeing that their training includes things like meditation, that it includes things like recovery, that it includes things like mobility work. So it's no longer as mysterious and we can see, you know, how full spectrum it is. And I think that's really beautiful for influencing other athletes and other non athletes to recognize, you know, it's not just about running drills and it's not just, you know, like the physical aspects of yourself that, you know, it's. It's full spectrum. I love that. Not limiting the definition of pain to like a physical injury. I think that's really cool.

I don't have a ton to add here. Everyone's given some really deep and great answers. I guess for me, maybe I would just draw a distinction between like acute injury and chronic pain.

Right.

And we do have some different data on the impact of mental health and psychology on chronic pain versus acute pain. And I think probably the biggest innovation in my work that's happened in the last several years in this space has been the evolved understanding of how our brain actually works. So we're learning more and more that the brain is a predictive mechanism. It's not a reactive three part brain that evolved from lizards. None of that is true. And so the more we understand how our brain is constantly modeling our internal experience, the more we can understand what role pain plays in that. And right now the best understanding we have is that pain is really a signal that there's something wrong in the body, but that something wrong might be not recovered enough. It might be an acute injury, it might be feeling really run down or being in a significant energy deficit. So obviously it manifests for different people in different ways. But I think as we continue to understand the way the brain works and the interaction between our brain and body, I think the more we'll understand the role pain plays and the role our brain pays in understanding that.

Thank you all. This has been super insightful, a very eye opening conversation. I just want to say thank you all. What I'm going to do is hand it over to David because David's going to facilitate some of the great questions that have been coming in from those that have been listening in on the conversation. So with that being said, one thank you. I know we've probably scratched the tip of the iceberg on your wealth of knowledge and information you have to share, but we'll hear a little bit more from the questions that will be offered. So with that being said, David.

Thanks.

Sean and thanks so much everyone. It's been an awesome discussion, just listening, so really appreciate all of your expertise. What a great discussion. But what we have throughout the webinar, we've been compiling some questions to ask you all from our audience who have been typing their questions into the chat. So just a note for our audience, we might not get to all the questions, but we'll be setting up a discussion group in our Muse community to address any questions we didn't have time to get to. So with that, I would like to share our first question. And this goes out to anyone, to everyone, whoever wants to take it, please feel free to do so. The first question is, you know, a lot of people in the chat, in this conversation listening in, aren't professional athletes. So just asking on behalf of one of those people, including myself, are there any actionable things that non pro athletes can do to optimize their everyday performance and recovery? You know, any tips or tricks that, that you could offer that could help people just do their everyday tasks and work to the best of their own abilities.

I think Michael's got it and they should start meditating. I think that's huge. But one thing that we didn't talk about is wearable tech. And one little thing that I really like about wearable tec for the non professional athlete is that it gives us these objective data points. Now there's some question how accurate they are, but I know I'm talking about just someone who like wants to work out every day and some days you just like, I just don't really want to. I think we can waste a lot of energy trying to figure out am I being mentally lazy, am I stuck in a rut, am I depressed or am I. Let's say my sleep has been terrible. And I just love, even if it's not perfectly accurate, having these objective data points because it's like, well, my watch or my aura ring doesn't lie. It might a little, but you know what I'm saying. It's not completely accurate, but I look at the sleep I had last night and it helps me understand, oh well, my recovery was horrible from yesterday. For whatever reason you can see things like the effects of booze on your sleep and stuff like that. And I think for athletes and non athletes, wearable tech can, can give you some, some helpful input. So you don't like spin your wheels mentally and waste a lot of energy trying to figure out what's exactly going on.

I agree with Gina. I, I would add that matching the objective data, you know, so first I would say sleep and meditation have been those two things alone are things that I think can dramatically improve our well being, our feeling of well being, our happiness, joy, whatever, whatever you word you might want to use there. I think, I think matching that objective that I think Gina just pointed out, accurate or not accurate, what algorithm is Aura using versus Fitbit and the way they program those algorithms are super important. Whether HRV is used, to what extent it's used, the movement you have in sleep versus not, the physiologist will be able to speak volumes to that. However, all that objective data matched with your subjective feeling when you wake up in the morning and having a clear sense of what those numbers mean as a constant self experimenter, having used oura ring, having used the watches, having slept on the mattresses and then tried to, you know, look at what each one of those numbers is telling me and then how am I feeling? All of those things I think are the subjective and then matching it I think have been the more powerful pieces to my personal experience. And then what I would say, I think some of the athletes will agree with me. There's nothing more disheartening to me than someone coming in saying my oura ring says I slept terribly last night. And then I look at it and say, well, how did you feel? Well, I feel great. Okay, that's all right. But let's dive into that a little more and let's have a good game because you're going to have a good game and not because the oura ring just I, I shouldn't disparage Aura not Because the wearable tech just told you and gave you a number that you weren't prepared for.

Morning.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. The. The mix of the two. Yeah.

Greg, you want to go or you want me to go?

And just so you guys, you don't have to all answer the question if you don't have anything. It's all good.

I'm gonna go.

Alex, you go first, and I'll try to wrap it up.

Okay, cool. So I think, like, we've covered the basics, right? Sleep well, move well, eat well, hydrate, like, foundational stuff for wellness and performance. Other things you can do, though, if you want to, like, work toward being kind of, like, mentally fit, like an elite athlete. Things that I think people find motivating, like setting and actually tracking goals. I don't know how many people regularly do something as simple as goal setting in their normal professional life, but it can be pretty engaging and motivating. You can work on your internal dialogue and how you think and talk to yourself. You can do things like meditation to work on emotion regulation. And mindfulness is so helpful in that way. And then other things I think are fun to experiment with might be things like imagery. So seeing yourself be successful, imagining yourself in relaxing places, like playing with the power of your mind to figure out how it can help you. I think these would be some simple interventions you could leverage in your own daily life that would help you reach higher and high performance.

Yeah, and I'll build on that. So sleep, obviously, massive meditation is huge. Healthy nutrition, gratitude, journaling, like, all of these practices are incredibly important, incredibly effective. And even though you might think that professional athletes have these complicated things that they're doing to recovery, generate, I think they just do the basics really well and very, very consistently, which is what I think I actually think is super exciting because it's very accessible. The one other thing I would add, when it comes to improving our physical, mental, emotional health, that I have seen across the world as a huge trend, shockingly, is actually decreasing the amount of alcohol that people are consuming. I'm really noticing a big shift in people's attitudes towards alcohol. And even though cannabis is being legalized, I think we're going to see probably an uptick, but then a downtick in that that will follow. And so that's another one that I will add in there is just reducing the number of those, let's call it negative physiological factors that might be hindering your ability to recover and to regenerate. That's the only thing I'd add.

I Thought of one more thing that Alex made me think of where he was talking about goal setting. I think for the athletes, they often have a very regimented schedule, certainly during their seasons. And for the non athletes, maybe our schedule isn't quite as regimented. And I think there's something to be said for time management. And as part of your time management, whatever tool you use often that will include having like a goal for the day and it could be just a tiny thing, you know, that I get this phone call done. But that can be a great way of managing stress, which of course has a tremendous impact on both our mental and physical health. Time management, using some kind of tool for that, really putting the goals in there for the day makes a huge difference in my experience.

Awesome. All right, so thanks so much for that question. We have another question from Jesse who asks how does one bring light to the issue of mental health for youth elite athletes? Jesse mentions that she doesn't think it's addressed enough in the youth ages. And as a former professional athlete, a lot of Jesse's trauma and insecurities as an athlete came from her youth years. But you find it hard trying to bring this to light at the youth level because clubs don't have the budget to support the mental side of the game. Michael, is that something you can address perhaps.

On the spot? It's what in general, I think there needs to be more education. Absolutely. To our coaches. I don't know how this plays out, but I just think that schools sometimes have to go through processes to verify or to make sure that they have people who are licensed and professionals and have a background in doing their job. In many sporting industries, we don't necessarily have this regulation to the extent that it's helpful and not cumbersome or difficult. I think there are some very basics that different governing bodies should promote and then our parents should use their best judgment in getting their children to those environments. I think that can be a first place because there's the old school mentality of take dirt, rub it on it and you're fine. And then there's more nuance, a lot more nuance out there so that some very simple things can be taken care of. And I just think that in the education, perhaps with this awareness of mental health, there'll be more sensitivity around it. And I would go from there. That's my best on the spot kind of thought.

I'm going to double down on it. I think it's right. You're on the spot thought is right. We have to educate coaches Administrators, school stakeholders, youth sports stakeholders about mental health signs and symptoms. Coaches in the US have like almost no training. There is no requirement to be a coach at all. Like you could just show up and do it. And in Europe and other elite sport, you have to go through several levels of licensing and training to get to the place where you're coaching. And so I think the US could really encourage a movement toward education. Some level of standardization, understanding how we motivate and engage people, I think would help. But the other thing I think is really important at this age group in particular is peer influence. We know that like at a certain point, the primary influence in a kid's life tips from their nuclear family to their peer group. And so figuring out how we educate kids about mental health signs and symptoms, how we create some level of support and ease of referral access for those athletes, right? So they feel like if they see something in a teammate or in themselves, they have someone designated they can go talk to to help. They don't need a dedicated mental health professional like the Toronto Raptors have to provide good support. They just need to be taught the mechanisms and the places where they can go to get the support they need with a designated person or professional who can help sort of be a liaison and help them move forward. So that would be my, my 2 cents on that one.

Awesome. Thanks so much. I think we have time for two more questions. Danette asks. I am wondering if anyone can comment on a person. Self regulation abilities impact on visualization skills to improve performance. For background, Danette is an OT working with kids with disabilities to improve ability to use motor imagery.

I'll take a stab. I was a great question. Yeah, so I mean I think like at its core imagery is a skill, right? So like any skill building self regulation and self regulated learning in particular can be helpful for developing that skill. So what I would encourage is thinking about it like training any other skill you're training, right? You want to set a goal that's a little bit further along from where you are now. You want to figure out how you're going to monitor and assess your progress toward that goal. Evaluate, adjust and begin again, right? So one of the mistakes I have seen from people who use motor imagery or any kind of imagery really is trying to go from like 0 to 100, right? Where you have someone who's never done imagery before. Now they're trying to engage all five senses in this really rich like internal image of how the mind works or how the body moves. And the reality is like you just have to get started somewhere.

Right.

You don't have to engage all five senses at the beginning. You can start with just sight or smell or taste, like whatever comes most naturally to the person that you're working with and then build on that, that set of skills. And then of course, like if you're doing something that's anxiety provoking, you want to be really thoughtful about how much you introduce how quickly because that could sort of like tip someone over into a place where they can't regulate or can't process as well as they would need to. So that would be my, my recommendation for leveraging self regulation and self regulated learning to improve imagery skill.

Awesome.

That was great. I think we have time for one more question and reminder to everyone. We will be answering all of your questions in our Muse community, so stay tuned. But for the last question Gavin asks. Do you see an increase in the understanding that we are not our minds in your fields or does Descartes still rule? Meaning like he sees much mental suffering due to believing that we are our minds?

I mean in my field that's what that's like rule number one, you're not your mind. So yeah, yoga is all about of destroying that illusion. Removing the veil.

Yes. I mean similarly there's been a proliferation of cognitive behavioral therapies and third wave therapies that have worked really primarily by targeting this distinction between like identifying with your thoughts and not, not being your mind. So I think we've made some significant progress that way. And there's a pretty good new book fairly recently that came out called Being you about consciousness that sort of helps further tease apart these, these differences. And so yes, I think there's, there's been a big movement toward appreciating that difference.

Awesome. Well everyone, thanks so much for joining us. It is now 1pm Eastern Time and the official end to our webinar. First, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today and sending through your thoughtful questions. Like I said, we will be setting up a discussion group in our news community to address any questions we didn't have time to get to. And you'll get an email within the next few days with all the details. I'd like to also extend a big thank you to our guests who joined us today. Alex Auerbach, Michael Rubaska, Greg Wells, Gina Caputo. Thank you all so much for the insightful conversation. Really appreciate you all joining us today and for just being great.

Thank you for the opportunity. Look forward to seeing you all in the future.

Likewise. Thank you.

Yes, thank you to my fellow panelists, too.

Awesome with that, everyone.

Thank you so much, everyone. Really appreciate it.

Awesome. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you so much.