When athletes learn how to be more aware of their bodies they may also change the workings of their brains and become more resilient to stress, according to a new study of the effects of mindfulness meditation on brain function in serious athletes.
The study, which was published recently in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, had its unusual origins in a balk at the starting gate by one of the top riders for the U.S. Men’s National BMX team. Watching, his baffled coach wondered how he could help his riders to better handle the anxiety and psychological rigors of competition. So he approached scientists affiliated with the department of psychiatry and the Center for Mindfulness at the University of California, San Diego, near where the team trains, and asked if they might be interested in working with and studying his seven-man team.
They were. Not long before, the scientists had completed a brain-imaging study of Marines who were about to be deployed, during which they had scanned the soldier’s brains while subjecting them to physical stress. The soldiers wore masks that made it slightly difficult for them to breathe — the body finds breathing difficulties acutely stressful — and then taught them various mindfulness techniques before scanning their brains again. After the training, portions of the soldiers’ brains responded quite differently to the same physical stress. The changes in brain activity, the scientists felt, should enable the soldiers to respond with less anxiety to difficult situations.
Athletics, of course, is hardly combat, but serious athletes can feel considerable stress when anticipating competition. The U.C.S.D. scientists wondered whether focused mindfulness training might likewise change athletes’ brains and potentially help them cope better.
So they agreed to work with the elite BMX riders and teach them how to be mindful of their bodies. The scientists defined mindfulness to mean an absorbed concentration on signals to the brain from elsewhere within the body.
To test how well the athletes attended to stress-related signals at the start of the study, the researchers first fitted the riders with masks that, at the discretion of the scientists, could be made to hinder breathing slightly, thereby inducing stress.
Next they had the young men lie in a brain-scanning machine and watch images of various colors and images flash across an overhead screen. When the color yellow appeared, the scientists would often — but not always — make it harder to breathe. The athletes quickly learned to anticipate that yellow could mean trouble. Their brains responded accordingly. The scientists watched.
Then the athletes completed seven weeks of mindfulness training, during which they were taught to focus intently on their bodies and not on noise or disruptions around them. Among other exercises, the scientists asked them to mentally scan their bodies, carefully noting how each limb and internal organ felt at that moment. They also had them breathe through straws and stick their hands in ice water to accentuate their ability to focus on immediate and stressful physical sensations.
The scientists generally did not refer to this work as mindfulness training, though. “We called it ‘tactical training,’” said Lori Haase, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry who led the new study. The athletes “rolled their eyes if we called it mindfulness,” she said.
After eight weeks of tactical training, the cyclists again lay in the brain-scan machines while more images flashed by overhead and the scientists tracked their brains’ responses.
In general and in interesting ways, the responses were different. When the color yellow appeared, the athletes showed increased activity in a part of the brain involved in motivating future actions and controlling attention. But the flow of messages between that part of the brain and another that can initiate abrupt increases in bodily arousal actually slowed.
Essentially, their response to impending stress seemed to involve greater recognition that they were about to be in a potentially stressful situation but without attendant physiological panic — a response that, in real life, could translate into desirable physical results, such as a whip-quick start to a race’s starting buzzer, instead of freezing.
However, the experiment did not look at actual, subsequent athletic performance, Dr. Haase said, so that possibility remains theoretical. The study also was small and involved only young, fit, male BMX riders, which is a very specialized sample.
Still, the results could mean that closely attending to our bodies might help us to be better, calmer athletic performers.
Should you wish to put that possibility to the test, Dr. Haase and her colleagues offer specialized, on-campus mindfulness training courses for athletes.
Or, she said, simply try “thinking about your feet.” The goal of mindfulness training is focused attention and bodily awareness, she explained. “And,” she said, “when you are concentrating on your feet, you aren’t thinking about other things.”
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