I’ve been carrying an Achilles injury for some time now. Recently I had my first Feldenkrais session. Since then, my level of consciousness around how I move has elevated to new levels, such that I feel energised as I sense that this will both accelerate the healing of that injury and also build flexibility and strength.
I’ve been a Pilates aficionado for years, as well as done a reasonable amount of Yoga. Both of these inform my posture and movement at all times, ie not only during Pilates training or Yoga classes. Feldenkrais, I sense, will take that to a new level and I look forward to learning more.
So, from that, today my mind turns not only to how we can be conscious as we exercise our body but also how we can choose to run conscious exercises with our mind to stretch and grow that “muscle” too.
Let me start with a story about conscious mental exercise that links to physical exercise, then shift to a purely mental exercise that I feel can then link to asking questions of you the reader as to where you may apply this for yourself.
For well over a decade I played a LOT of squash. Whilst I was a reasonably good player and represented Cayman internationally, I also loved to do what I could to share, inspire and support players at all levels.
In my early years developing as a squash player, one day I had accepted an offer to play with someone a few levels under my standard and was about to go and play a relaxed match, knowing I would go easy on them and simply have fun.
Now, before I went on the court, I bumped into my coach, who asked me what exercise I was going to run while playing. I had no idea what he meant, then he explained that I could either just have a fun runaround, or I could consciously choose to set myself an exercise that would help my growth as a player whilst also helping my playing partner.
In order not to feel at all patronising to this less experienced player, he also gave me the challenge of making this exercise hidden to my opponent, so only I knew what it was. The exercise he gave me was to be conscious of every time I had the opportunity to choose to play a drop shot (as in the photo above) and then to only play one exactly at every fourth opportunity. To up the stakes, he said that every time I didn’t follow that sequence I would mark that in my mind and at the end I’d buy him one beer later for every time I messed up. Suffice to say I was buying him beer for some time!
This was many, many years ago, yet the power of setting a conscious mental exercise to stretch and grow my concentration stays with me to that day.
To add to that, I was never the most talented or athletic of squash players, but, from that early experience, I did constantly set myself such mental exercises throughout my squash career. Late in that career, one of the top players in the world came to Cayman and played a friendly game with me. In the end, they paid me a huge compliment around my shot selection, ie my mental awareness of what shot to play at the right time in the match and the rally. Perhaps it was partly an innate skill, and at the same time, I know that it also came from constantly running conscious mental exercises while I played each match, no matter how much of a relaxed and friendly match. This included for me when coaching the youngest juniors, and these were almost always invisible to others. They helped me and also maintained my concentration and so supported those I was coaching or playing.
Now to a mental exercise. As a coach and sounding board, my clients know me in a space where I listen a lot before speaking. My friends, however, can often experience me differently, as a bit of a chatterbox and storyteller!
It is an interesting dichotomy for me. I have loads of ideas, loads of energy and love to share both. At the same time, there is deep power in listening long and patiently.
A story around using a conscious mental exercise to bring attention to this for me was at the start of my journey to learning to be a coach. I was about to fly to the UK for a three-day internal coaches conference for our business. My mentor and coach told me he wanted me to treat it as a three-day exercise. For all of those three days, my exercise was to not initiate a single conversation but to wait for others to start interactions with me.
It was fascinating. Initially felt very hard, then over time, as I relaxed into it, it flowed effortlessly as people simply came up to me and started conversations. I then also found that as the three days progressed I listened more and talked less.
This then takes my mind to this time last year at the Kilkenomics festival. It was my first time there and I was so excited to be there that I raised my hand to ask a question at almost every panel discussion, and as the weekend went on I tended to raise my hand early and be one of the first called on by the moderators.
Now, I loved that, yet at the same time, a year on, that doesn’t feel right this year. I’m writing this on Friday morning before heading to the airport to fly from London do Dublin and then drive to Kilkenny. This post will go out on Sunday morning, by which time I will have attended loads of panels on Friday evening and throughout Saturday.
The conscious mental exercise I set myself for all of those panels? That when a question pops into my mind, rather than raise my hand at the time for questions, I dismiss that question entirely and wait for another question to come into my mind. To stretch further, the hand only goes up where I get to at least question number four. If I don’t get to a fourth level question, I shall not raise my hand at all.
So, with those last two examples, what conscious mental exercise you can do for yourself to stretch your own mind and how you interact with your mind and with others?