The Importance Of A Valuable Tool For Mental Skills And Improve Health

Meditative breathing is effective in treating anxiety for several reasons. First, meditative breathing reduced the person's heart rate and therefore has a positive effect on the physiological symptoms of anxiety. Second, meditative breathing is convenient and practical in that it can be performed in any location and takes little time to complete. Third, initial results are immediate- producing an instant calm when performed. Lastly, it can be combined with other treatment modalities (Vukovic, 2003).

Sports—which involve emotion, competition, cooperation, achievement, and play—provide a rich area for psychological study. People involved in sports attempt to master very difficult skills, often subjecting themselves to intense physical stress as well as social pressure. research has expanded into numerous areas such as imagery training, hypnosis, relaxation training, motivation, socialization, conflict and competition, counseling, and coaching. Specific sports and recreational specialties studied include baseball, basketball, soccer,

Our thoughts, diet/nutrition, exercise, rest, environment and physiology have a positive or negative impact on us which affects how well we perform and feel. In the world of sports, this is very easy to demonstrate because the mind/body connection provides you with immediate feedback. When you are positive, your performance excels. When you are negative, your performance is adversely affected. With various types of distress, or

The object of breathing mediation is to become calm and still the mind to become more lucid. When done every day a person will learn to relax better. It can aid in controlling what a person thinks as he sees a pattern to his thoughts and can stop negative ones.

I chose to use the ReachOut Breathe application for this assessment as I felt it would be more beneficial to me to try controlled breathing. I have done some meditation in the past however I found that it was not useful to me especially with my busy life style where I could not manage a meditation routine on a regular basis. When this assessment came up I was eager to try controlled breathing as another means to managing stress and anxiety as I have never tried it before.

The hypothesis was that mindful meditation was more effective than attending to the breath. The hypothesis was this because mindful meditation would allow more access for cognitive and emotion regulation instead of just focus’ There was a process to be put through for the experimental procedure. The procedure was The State Anxiety Inventory, The Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory, MRI session 1, Mindfulness-based mental training, MRI session 2, MRI acquisition, Statistical analysis, Analysis of behaviour, psychophysical correlation analyses and results. The State Anxiety Inventory and The Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory are both assessments made before and after both MRI sessions. In both MRI sessions the subjects had a pulse oximeter attached to the left index finger to analyze heart rate, around the chest was a transducer to monitor the rate of respiration and a thermal probe placed at the lower right leg testing pain for the study. Throughout the process there were many procedures done to evaluate and collect results from. The results of the study found “Twenty minutes of mindfulness meditation significantly reduced state anxiety in each session that meditation was practised” (Zeidan, et

Research has commonly shown that people who meditate have lower levels of stress and anxiety. Stress and anxiety are common sources or symptoms of depression, anxiety disorders, and a number of other mental disorders. Stress and

The first act in conscious breathing is sitting down somewhere quiet, comfortable, and where you won't face interruption. After closing your eyes, breathe slowing through your nose while counting to five (this number will increase over time). While breathing, don't focus on the presentation you have due at nine a.m. tomorrow, don't focus on your child's trouble at school, and don't focus on the new radiator your car needs, instead simply focus on one thing:

Sitting mindfulness meditation begins with mindfulness of breathing then expands to physical sensations, sounds, thoughts and emotions, and finally choiceless awareness. Expanding mindfulness practice with sitting meditation allows you to become more aware of your thoughts and feelings, also bringing more awareness to habitual patterns of behavior that may not be in your best interest. Looking at your behavior with a beginner’s mind allows you to explore other possibilities and chose a different approach.

Meditation that includes breath awareness facilitates a quieting of the mind that has been shown to provide, “(a) decreased negative emotional experiences, (b) reduced amygdala activity, and (c) increased activity in brain regions implicated in attentional deployment… Mindfulness meditation has been shown to: (1) decrease pain-related activity of the primary somatosensory cortex, (2) increase activity of the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula, and (3) reduce activity of the limbic gating mechanism with the thalamus (amygdala)”

(2015) states, “Stress costs American companies an estimated $200 billion to $300 billion in lost productivity each year, and research suggests that mindfulness could be an effective antidote.” According to Hansen (2012), many researchers have conducted tests with results suggesting that becoming mindful reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and decreases depression and anxiety levels. Other benefits include the ability to build self-confidence as a leader (Smith, J.A, 2014). “The Benefits of Meditation,” (n.d) suggests that there are many physical and physiological benefits when an individual becomes mindful: the following lists are suggested

Mesagno & Mullane-Grant studied the effects of pre- performance routines on 60 elite soccer players, their performance was looked at under both high and low pressure with some of the athletes being provided with pre performance routines, measuring levels of state anxiety (Mesagno & Mullane-Grant, 2010). The pre performance routine consisted of cue words, deep breathing, temporal consistency and extensive pre-performance routines that consisted of finding optimal arousal levels, behavioural steps and focusing on eternal zones of scoring (Mesagno & Mullane-Grant, 2010). Extensive pre-performance routines were the most successful form of intervention in Mesagno & Mullane-Grant’s study in reducing the choking in performance and decreasing the athletes levels of state anxiety (Mesagno & Mullane-Grant, 2010). This strategy is similarly seen in Wang, Callahan & Goldfine’s study looking at psychological interventions (Jin Wang, Callahan, & Goldfine, 2003). In which they suggested the use of psychological approaches including mental imagery, attentional training, self-talk in order to prevent choking in athletes, by decreasing distractions and anxiety levels (Jin Wang et al.,

The following articles will examine the relationship, if any of anxiety on athletic performance. The first study published by (Robazza, Pellizzari, Bertollo, and Hanin, (2008) discusses the impact of emotions on athletic performance utilizing the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model. Since this area of study is generally focused around this model, a majority of this paper will be based off of this article. The following articles are similar, but incorporate biofeedback, neurofeedback, and heart rate variability into their research. The major research question that will be addressed is the relationship between anxiety and athletic performance. The purpose of this literary review was to analyze the mentally demanding aspect of athletic performance to assist in helping them achieve their optimal performance. The following articles will assess this relationship in both a cognitive-behavioral perspective as well as a psychoanalytic perspective.

The saying “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is one way to put it. Or as Gucciardi, Gordon, and Dimmock, 2009 stated, “mental toughness is a multifaceted construct made up of multiple key components including values, attitudes, cognitions, emotions, and behaviors that refer to an individual’s ability to thrive through both positively (e.g., winning streak) and negatively (e.g., injury) construed challenges, pressures, and adversities”. Mental toughness is a concept that has had much attention due to the recent research that has been done. However, the construct has been referred to as an essential element in performing well for over 20 years (1987) when coaches first brought up the idea. There was an increase in research interest, which showed how important mental toughness was to coaches, athletes and sports psychologists. This importance was due to the relationship potential of mental toughness and good performances. Mindfulness has been described as “ . . . paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present and nonjudgmentally”

The meditation portion of our Wednesday discussions allows us to take a step away from the rigorous classwork and constant worrying about due-dates by instead focusing solely on our breathing. Since arriving at