Are You Having Trouble Focusing During Your Sport?

1)   Are you apprehensive about winning and losing?

2)   Do you lose your focus during a game and wonder what happened?

3)   Are you distracted by external occurrences such as the weather, noise, and people watching you?

4)   Are you troubled with interfering feelings of nervousness and uneasiness?

5)   Do you hold onto mistakes and cannot release them?

6)   Do you judge yourself negatively by the way you play, including feelings of not being worthy or saying mentally, “I’m going to quit”?

7)   Do you over analyze and end up choosing the wrong action, and knew you did not listen to yourself?

If you have answered yes to any of the questions above, you realize that self-inflicted negativity, loss of focus and clarity, and being “zoned out” can lead to frustration and lack of optimum results.

However, do not feel hopeless, as we all go through these difficulties at various moments. But there is a solution to lessening the severity and to actually dispelling the distractions.

Our minds are sponges and the adage “As you think, so you become” is accurate. Our thoughts create our emotions and our emotions are what guide us moment by moment in or out of the zone. We can alter our thought patterns, we can encourage optimism, we can accelerate mind/body awareness and integration, and we can have plain good old fun just like we did when we were kids.

When we allow our minds to focus on unwanted thoughts that create negative or unwanted emotions, we stray from our natural state of composure and balance. If we are wondering what is for lunch or why we did not score, we are no longer playing our sport. Training the mind is as important as training the body. The key elements of Tai Chi allow the mind and its thoughts to relax. The gentle breathing and dynamic movements of Tai Chi help one to focus on the action at hand. The mind and body then become aligned in the sport we are playing. When this happens we are brought into the present moment. This feeling of being present is what energizes and exhilarates us. This is how it feels to be in “The Zone”.

Sports-Tai Chi enables us to be self-assured, self-reliant, and self-energized. Literally, the word “chi” means our vital or essential energy, and “tai” means harmony and peace. Therefore, distributing chi-force throughout our being helps to promote harmonious and well-functioning capabilities. Sports-Tai Chi is concerned with increasing the chi dynamic within each of us, allowing our personal rhythms to return to a state of equilibrium. This has a tremendous affect on the dynamic quality of play in sports.