Mindful Happiness

Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

  • Home
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
    • About
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Contact

February 6, 2017 By Admin

Mindfulness Being Used in The NFL

Mindfulness in the NFL

Yes, mindfulness as part of sports psychology programming is being used in the NFL.  Yes, big and physically tough football players are being helped via a mindfulness component of sports psychology. There are some important roots here. Dogen, the famous ancient Japanese Buddhist meditation master, brought Chan Buddhism from China to Japan thus initiating Zen Buddhism there. One of Dogen’s famous statements was that enlightenment/awakening itself occurs every time you realize that your attention has wondered and you need to return attention back to your object of meditation. Therefore, paying and returning keen attention to any object of attention – the football players on the opposing team – has significance here. Bodhidharma, who brought Buddhism from India to China, noted that meditation includes being in and with your mind as sacred space. The sacred space of mind in meditation can occur no matter what you are doing and no matter where you are doing it. Yes, even on an NFL playing field. Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll is behind all this. The Super Bowl winners use mindfulness skills to quiet their minds in the midst of distraction. This is the basis of strongly focusing on what is right in front of you in the present moment, and doing your best to support your team’s effort here and now. Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory is also at play. Carroll and his sports psychology specialists use individual differences in personal strengths and self-actualization to nurture individual players to push their unique skills as part of a cohesive team effort. The idea is not to focus on an outcome, but to bring your best competitive energy and skills to this moment on the field.  Compassion for players and use of their personal strengths in a mindful manner most often leads to success. Mindfulness, compassion, and skill enhancement are used to reduce players’ fears and self-doubts. Being physically and psychologically ready requires much practice and a still/quiet mind.

Michael Gervais, a sports psychologist with mindfulness training supports Carroll’s efforts.  Players require full presence and complete attention in the present moment of the play.  Gervais uses various breathing techniques, visualizations, and imagery practices to develop tactical meditative states. Mindfulness and cognitive-behavioral approaches are being used to prepare players in physical, psychological and spiritual ways; it is about building individual confidence, improving attentional skills, and reducing negative self-talk while in the game. Players require a quiet mind, inner confidence, and focus to see with greater clarity. Part of the team thinking, feeling, and experiencing includes sensitive interpersonal and relational components that may look more like therapeutics than typical coaching.  Another aspect of this approach uses First Nations concepts and processes: the long body.  In this approach individual consciousness is molded and trained so individual members of the group becomes one. An intuitive feel for compassion for others implies each person is to serve the others on the team, thus making stronger integrated effort and energy. Having a successful NFL team use mindfulness as a core sports psychology component of training is certainly in keeping with the mindfulness revolution.

For more information refer to Delehanty, H. (December 22, 2014). The game changer. www.mindful.org/the-game-changer. Retrieved January 10, 2017.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Filed Under: Featured, Meditation, MIndfulness Tagged With: MINDFULNESS, NFL

Twitter

Mindful Happiness -Currently in Production

Mindful Happiness Posts

Helper Self-Care is Important In the most current issue of The National Psychologist (July-August, 2019) an article linked helper effectiveness, risk management, and clinical outcomes to helper self-care. To make a long story shorter, I will simply paraphrase and re-word the suggestions.  These recommendations support YOUR emotional survival and successful risk management as a helper as […]

Mindful Happiness Book Review The Awakened Introvert: Practical Mindfulness skills…  By Arnie, Kozak, Ph.D. Dr. Kozak begins his book noting the processes of mind that often cause people to suffer.  Critical judging, unhelpful story telling, over-attending to past suffering or losses and angst about possible future realities (the brain’s default mode), and auto-pilot inattention to important […]

The Principles of Nature and Natural Healing This is an advanced post on Eastern views of healing. From ancient shamanic traditions all the way to today’s AMA approved procedures in energy medicine, healers have been trying to discover and integrate the foundations of nature into healing. This reality exists from shamanic rituals all the way […]

  The Tao of Nature I have two interesting stories about nesting robins.  These stories tell of the bonds of birds and their young, and how intelligent these birds can be. The first story happened to me abut 15 years ago. The second story happened today, July 27, 2017. Story 1 I was working in […]

Meditation at the Deepest Levels In 2007 M. A. Singer’s The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, opened up a whole new, deeper perspective on why consciousness or pure awareness is the root of self. Even in a Buddhist  “no-self” view, Singer’s inquiries leave us with a great deal to unravel.  Here are some reasons why […]

Building Healthy Intimate Relationships: Intimate relationships are often the source of many years of happiness and satisfaction, and sometimes the cause of great pain and suffering. It depends! I will list various realities of initiating and maintaining a positive intimate relationship.  After reading these, ask yourself: Where is my relationship? If you are unhappy, do […]

Mindful Happiness:   Joy is Within Reach – It is Up to You to Choose It! We all live in a very troubled world with lots of greed, hate, warfare, and danger. Many of us use distractions (addictions, cell phone habits, eating, gathering, games, etc.) to make it through the days. This is true!  However, […]

I Have Questions Our spiritual traditions have many sources of powerful spiritual origination: Shiva, Buddha, Jesus, Saint Francis to note just a few.  The Roman thinker Seneca noted that our most feared day is our last on earth, but this is also the beginning of our eternity.  As a practicing Buddhist, a secular meditation teacher, […]

Many Benefits of Mindfulness and Vipassana Meditation The Dalai Lama (Gyatso, Tenzin), the world leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and Paul Ekman, the world famous Psychologist of human emotions, have teamed up to discuss how to use mindful emotional awareness skills to become more emotionally balanced and compassionate. These two highly skilled practitioners have listed 21 […]

Happiness #5 – Last Post on Characteristics This will be my last post for a while on the important topic of happiness.  Here I will hit a few highlights about simple joy and lasting inner experiences of true happiness. Simple Joy – We experience simple joy in simple experiences, small sometimes subtle events in our […]

The Meaning of the Present Moment in Mindfulness & Meditation Many mindfulness and meditation experts have commented on the meaning of the present moment.  Below I have noted some of the ideas presented by Eckhart Tolle.  In some cases I have added my own interpretations. What is the Present Moment?  What is the experience about? […]

Practice Approaches to for Mindful and  Enhanced Emotion Regulation Brought to us by way of  The Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont Mindful Approaches for Enhanced Emotion Regulation; here are some approaches to practice. 1)In some ways you could understand the progression from auto-pilot mind to greater stability and equanimity of […]

Advanced Meditations – Middle Way -Wisdom Path Between Extremes These meditation practices are advanced, and combine complex ideas from Nagarjuna (Indian Master), T’ong-Kha-Pa (Tibetan Master), and The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso).  In keeping with the mixed secular nature of my meditation center, I have decided to present these complex ideas with several of my […]

Vipassana Meditation – Emptiness One of the great insights from regular, long-term vipassana practice is the experience of emptiness. The actual knowing of it by the experience of it. This is not your typical conceptual emptiness of the West; it is not total void, negative beings, or nihilistic pit, or suffering in endlessness.  It is […]

Cognitive Defusion in Mindfulness Psychotherapy A well-meaning therapist might ask: What is cognitive defusion. Well this practice, as used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, is beyond cognitive restructuring of cognitive distortions and automatic negative thoughts ( I call “Red Ants”). The practice concretely de-literalizes the personal truth and meaning of unhelpful, repetitive thoughts and words. […]

Tips for Improving Your Mindfulness Practices The following practices may improve your mindfulness skills.  It all depends – it all depends on whether or not you will do regular, daily practices.  If you desire to improve your mindfulness skills, consider following the tips noted below.  Most of the practices below involve sitting meditation.  Likewise, regular […]

Interoception and Your Inner Self-Helper Interoception (sometimes called neuroception) is a sensory experience, in which you feel sensations in your body (viscera, heart, throat, etc.) that may be warning signs of limbic surveillance or inner continuity of your inner self-helper – that part of you and your brain that hopes to help you in whatever […]

Concentration, Contentment, and Loving Kindness I have written various entries on concentration meditations in prior posts.  Yes, concentration meditation is beyond pure mindfulness meditation.  Here I will present briefly two other forms of meditation that are quite intentional and also beyond mindfulness: contentment and loving kindness meditations. Let’s begin with intentional meditation of contentment. Contentment […]

Participate in Groups for Meditation, Problem-Solving, and Task Completion Meditation With The Sangha Among regularly practicing meditators and various meditation traditions, the sangha is the social, emotional and spiritual collective that continues to support ongoing serious practice and progress along the Path.  Given that so much has been written about the many benefits of practicing […]

Inner Workings of Self-Medication Process   To continue our discussion about the self-medication process we will first turn to the human brain.  The human brain is the most complex system known to science.  Here, my comments will be basic.  Self-medication often has roots in the quality of our earliest childhood experiences (attachment and object relations with […]

Mindful Happiness Tags

MEDITATION PRACTICE SELF CARE CONSCIOUSNESS ADDICTION SELF ESTEEM WISE MIND COMPASSION BREATHING ANTHONY QUINTILIANI CLINICAL SUPERVISION TRAUMA HAPPINESS SUFFERING MINDFULNESS PSYCHOTHERAPY EMPTINESS MINDFULNESS TRAINING VERMONT THICH NHAT HANH TRAINING THERAPY. MEDITATION PRACTICES ACTIVITIES ELEANOR R LIEBMAN CENTER BUDDHISM MINDFUL TRAINING SELF MEDICATION ACTIVITY MBSR MINDFUL ACTIVITIES INNER PEACE BRAIN DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI MINDFUL HAPPINESS DEPRESSION SELF COMPASSION PRACTICE EXERCISES VIPASSANA MEDITATION WALKING MEDITATION MEDIATION MINDFUL MEDITATION RITUALS VIPASSANA

Mindful Categories

Mindful Happiness Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Site Map

Copyright © 2019 · Mindful Happiness