Building The Muscle: Mindfulness & Performance (Part 2)

In part two of our conversation, Luke and I discuss the benefits of cultivating and applying mindfulness for individuals and organizations. We also talk about different modes of mind and how awareness practices can help us pause in difficult moments and reframe a situation that could otherwise overwhelm us.

Transcript

This is an area that fascinates me.

And one of my strategies working with business leaders is often it's quite confrontational when you're trying to meditate and you see how busy your mind is and see how active it wants to be and the habitual habit of that way of operating to most people actually can be quite confrontational to see in meditation practice and can lead to a feeling that you can't do this or my mind's too busy and only I've got this such busy mind,

It can be quite shocking.

So what I do is I get people to honor the doing mode aspect and see what function it serves and kind of honor it and look at the qualities and values that are in that way of being.

So it doesn't become like I'm here to meditate to push these thoughts away and push all that aspect away.

No,

That serves an important function and purpose.

We're learning to kind of come away from that and open up a space where you can learn to be still and activate more of your senses.

It can lead to a space,

Particularly after a meditation where you can go back into doing mode but you've got way more clarity.

You can see the problems more clearly.

You can feel and notice where your emotional reactions actually are within your work.

So it's like they marry up very well but it can't be this polarized approach that we're trying to be in being mode and with zenning out and blissing.

No,

We're trying to learn how to shift into a different way of being that supports the doing mode,

Makes it more healthy,

Makes it more grounded,

Makes it clearer what actions we take.

So yeah,

That's why I've been approaching it recently.

But also there's another point as well is mindfulness does open up a reflective space.

And I often invite very simple questions to try and tap into what are the motives behind the doing mode?

Like what is fueling that?

And for me personally,

My obsessive drive came from a lot of pain and trauma in my life.

So I've had to come to terms with,

Mindfulness has really helped me understand my motives and why being so driven,

Why being so successful,

Why being so active?

There was an avoidance in that of actually some pain.

So there's a deeper question there as well which I sometimes open up with people just to get,

Which can enrich mindfulness practice when you can become aware of some of those deeper patterns and learn to bring more balance in.

Yeah,

I love that.

Bringing kind of bits of being into doing and bits of doing into being and just kind of cross-fertilizing.

I mean,

I talk sometimes about,

If you're a scientist in some research center in Antarctica and you're going out for a day of research and you've got 20 instruments in your lab,

Do you go out with just one of those instruments to get a readout on the terrain and the environment or do you bring as many as you can carry so that you can get as many of those readings as possible and form a multifaceted kind of picture of the terrain?

And the same goes for doing and being mode.

I mean,

I know it's not very true to the literature because the literature will tell you,

Doing mode is about thinking and being mode is about sensing.

But whenever I talk about it,

I say,

Yes,

Doing mode is thinking.

Being mode is thinking and sensing,

Which you have to,

Because when people hear sensing,

Outside,

Those that haven't been exposed to kind of Buddhist psychology,

They think of sensing as the five,

You know,

The kind of conventional five senses.

They do not think of the mind as a sense organ.

There's another point within this,

Because when I was working at Harlequin,

I was thinking how they really adopt mindfulness in the sort of doing mode,

Busyness of things.

So I developed a series of three-minute meditations with the team to specifically help them,

You know,

Try and adopt the mindfulness practices when they're under real pressure moments.

And I used the same three-minute meditations with leaders.

Like,

For example,

Before really difficult conversations,

At moments where you really feel overwhelmed,

Can you have the courage to stop and turn towards mindfulness practice?

Not to negate the situation,

But to actually take a pause,

So then you can revisit the complexity of the challenge from a slightly more connected space.

And that's been really important with the business leaders.

So they start to work on that edge,

Like turning towards this kind of practice in those really tough moments,

Where intuitively,

It's counterintuitive to stop in those moments.

But I'm really getting some really good results where leaders are seeing,

God,

Just three minutes of pausing before that challenging conversation,

Whilst they felt overwhelmed in that situation,

Really bringing something back into the busyness.

Yeah,

That's great.

Disengaging from autopilot,

Disengaging from that driven,

You know,

We haven't really talked about driven doing mode of mind,

Which is kind of the evil twin of doing mode or doing mode on steroids.

But yeah,

Just because it's so easy when we are stuck in autopilot,

And this usually happens when we're faced with difficulty or challenge,

The fog descends,

Doesn't it?

And the clarity just disappears.

So those three minute pauses you're talking about can just help the fog to lift a little bit,

The veil is removed.

So when we do come back to it,

We're seeing clearly again,

And could perhaps think twice before we say or do something we might regret.

I wanna hear a bit about BAM and the way I found out about you,

Because,

You know,

A couple of people who I work with were judges on the Innovations in Mindfulness Award that you won.

So I do wanna hear a bit about BAM.

And you can decide whether to talk about BAM first or this philosophy that you have of mindfulness and wellbeing being two sides of the same coin.

So which do you think would be better to talk about first?

I think the two sides of the same coin is probably best talked about because it links,

I think,

To what we've been speaking about and then after Monte Brown.

Great.

Yeah,

I guess this,

You know,

This has come out of working directly with athletes and getting into some real conversations and asking people and finding out where are the real pressures in your life?

And a lot of the time it's to do with,

You know,

Performance and all the complexities of living that kind of high-pressured life and the selection,

Selection injuries,

All of the stuff that comes along with being an athlete.

That's extremely,

You know,

Has a big pressure behind it.

But also it can just,

It could be a conflict with one's partner or a fallout within one's family or something going on in someone's personal life,

Which often holds more of the emotion.

And that being hidden within the team and leading to people compartmentalizing how they really feel.

So a lot of my work was like,

Well,

Where is the real pressure?

And let's learn to bring some mindfulness strategies to that.

And a lot of the times it was nothing to do with sport.

And then that led me to kind of educating people that if you want to perform at your best,

You need to look at the whole of your life,

Not just your performance,

Your wellbeing,

Your relationship with your friends,

Your family,

Who are you reacting to?

Where is it?

Where's the energy being blocked?

So it just became more about holistic look at someone's life and the pressure points.

And then that made me realize that your performance and your general wellbeing have to be seen together.

And really encouraging athletes to see that the more they look after their mental health and wellbeing just generally,

And become aware of where they're kind of reacting to things in their life,

That's going to aid your performance.

It doesn't matter if it's specifically to do with your training or what's going on at the training ground in your profession.

It could be in a completely different direction.

We're just breaking that compartmentalizing thing that I guess is very natural and normal,

But getting people to look at their life as a whole.

Yeah,

This is so,

So important.

So much to say about it,

But I'll try to keep it short.

Yeah,

I mean,

We live such fragmented lives.

You use the word compartmentalized,

Right?

I think it's Jon Kabat-Zinn says,

Our idea of who we are is so much smaller than who we actually are.

It's rare that we actually tap into that whole being and all those different aspects of our life.

And it sounds very intuitive,

Mindful wellbeing and performance,

Two sides of the same coin,

Yeah.

But then you actually stop and think about,

I mean,

I was thinking about in my own life and then in just looking around society,

How often we sacrifice wellbeing,

Thinking that it's going to improve our performance,

Particularly in professional contexts,

Right?

I mean,

We sleep less so we can work more and achieve our KPIs.

We don't eat properly because we don't have time and that's going to take us away from projects that we're working on or whatever.

So yes,

It's kind of common sense,

But so uncommon in practice,

Isn't it?

Yeah,

A lot of what I teach is so basic and commonsensical,

But I really trust it because it's those decisions we make in those moments to honor our wellbeing.

That's so important.

But it does take quite a lot of awareness to see where you're overriding that.

Yeah,

And it's just another great example of something that's simple,

But simplicity does not always translate into ease.

You know,

It's not easy.

It's really not easy because it goes against conditioning from a very,

Very young age,

Right?

And then as we grow up,

Conditioning in the media,

Conditioning in society and education.

Great,

Now onto BAM.

Tell us all about BAM because BAM is,

That was my entry point to MPP and it's just so wonderful what you're doing with it.

So I think BAM,

Reflecting recently,

I can see how it was part influenced by working with athletes and seeing they adopt mindfulness very quickly because of this physical embodiment,

Because they're training a lot,

Because they're not behind screens all the time.

So that was one of my influences was,

Okay,

There's something in that that I can relate to as well as an athlete.

And,

But also on a personal level,

For me personally,

It really worked because I,

You know,

I've got a very sensitive,

Receptive,

Open aspect of who I am,

But there's also a very raw athlete in me that's got anger,

Aggression,

All these other things that I wasn't quite connecting those kinds of emotions in my meditation practice when I was at the Buddhist center.

So I started boxing and mindfulness with my brother and we were doing it.

And then just came up with this idea of,

Yeah,

This would really help young people.

This might be a new access point for young people who might not want to sit still or can't even sit still because they've got so much energy or there's stuff going on that means they don't really want to practice mindfulness and be still.

So,

Yeah,

We ended up piloting the first BAM session was on an estate in London.

We rocked up to this community center.

Nobody turned up,

No young people turned up,

But there was a group of young people outside who were being,

They were quite dismissive of us and like,

What are you doing here?

And we just thought,

Let's just give it a go.

Let's try and get these young people to do this boxing and mindfulness session.

And at the end,

They have this spark in their eyes.

They'd connected,

They did the boxing,

They did the meditation and the second meditation and they were hungry for more.

They were like,

What's happened?

Like,

They just felt more alive and that we got some really good feedback.

And then we got some funding from the mayor of London and piloted a,

I think it was an eight week course using some MBSR principles and mindfulness practices combined with boxing.

And it was just,

It was a brilliant success.

Things developed from there.

We developed a partnership with the Nardos to scale a project in lockdown and we've done various courses across London.

And now we've got into a position after winning the innovation award that we've partnered with MIDE and we're developing a BAM teacher training program.

So we're gonna be training youth workers,

Boxing coaches to learn how to teach BAM so we can start scaling it in that way.

Fantastic.

So I mean,

It's taking on a life of its own.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Do you see it?

Do you see it kind of spinning?

Will it always be housed within MPP or do you see this taking off and being a kind of a beast unto itself?

Well,

It's,

We only just started this project with MIDE and it's become clear that the way to scale this is to develop a teacher training program so we can have a bigger reach.

Right.

And I'm finding we've been up naturally over the last five years,

I've been teaching youth workers how to deliver this with really,

Really good results.

And I've realized that I'm not that good at working with young people.

Even though I've done loads of this and I can do it,

I'm better at empowering other people that are more authentic youth workers to be able to deliver this approach.

And I think the knowledge is there.

I think there's loads of youth workers,

Loads of boxing coaches that have got this way of being with young people that is really,

It's really,

You know,

I admire it.

So I've come to terms with the fact that I'm an empowering a teacher of this approach.

I think the knowledge and skills is out there and I want to empower people to take on meditation and boxing combos to support young people with diffusing some of the anger,

Lots of things that young people are facing at the moment that really speaks to.

When people hear boxing and meditation together,

I think it probably,

They can't quite compute it.

So what does that look like for people that are listening?

Is it boxing in a mindful meditative state?

Is it boxing punctuated by little mindfulness practice?

What is a mindful boxing session?

Yeah,

What makes them distinctive is this process.

We start with a check-in.

So how people are doing and trying to get people to just be honest with how they are.

Then we do a meditation practice.

Then we might introduce a theme like how to train your mind.

And so we start and then we bring people into a bit of a slightly calmer state of mind,

A bit more awareness.

Then we go into a warmup and then we go into the boxing session which is not training people to fight,

But it's using boxing training to release energy,

To connect physically.

And then we go into a second meditation practice.

And because there's been that release and that endorphin feeling is often there after training,

That then leads into a second meditation practice where there's usually a lot more connection.

And then we do an inquiry at the end and round off a session.

So that's a typical BAM session.

And it's that combination in that ordering that seems to really work.

I mean,

It just goes to show,

Doesn't it?

It's a great example of the fact that I don't think there's any activity that can't be enriched by punctuating it with some mindful pauses,

Whether that's a meeting at the office or,

I mean,

You see now,

I don't know if,

I don't think you're responsible for this worldwide,

Maybe at Harlequin or the Saracen,

Some other places,

But you see in a lot of,

And not just limited to rugby,

But you see in a lot of sports teams these days when there is a score,

Teams come together before the restart,

There'll be a moment of a pause and mindful breathing.

That's something that's only really come in over the last few years in elite sports.

But it doesn't matter what sphere of life it is,

Does it?

Having those pauses,

And you spoke about this earlier as well,

Having those pauses so that you can come back into more of a doing mode or come back to whatever it was you were doing and maybe remain in being mode with a bit more clarity and a bit more balance,

Yeah.

But I also think,

When I'm working with people,

It's like people do have a ceiling for being absorbed in things.

Like,

For example,

Working with an athlete and they were into fly fishing and they were describing that to me and it was like,

Yeah,

That's an absorbed state.

That's mindfulness.

That's mindfulness.

So people often relate to it more than they realize.

And so it's also trying to broaden out the notion of mindfulness to be like,

Well,

What is it when you're reading a book?

What's it like when you're really absorbed?

Like,

What are the things you're naturally doing that give you this connection?

So it's not such a foreign thing that's like,

I can't do that.

Often people do have a ceiling for what mindfulness is talking about.

Yeah,

I mean,

The activities that nourish us are usually the ones that we do in relatively mindful states.

And yeah,

As you say,

Fly fishing,

Gardening,

Reading,

Whatever that is,

Different things for different people.

But one of the kind of threads that's running through this conversation and what I really appreciate about the work you're doing in MPP is accessibility.

And I think BAM is the epitome of that,

Right?

How do you get these practices,

These tools,

These resources into the hands of people who otherwise might not come across them,

But who can benefit so much from them.

So that accessibility and the practicality of it as well,

Which is a sneaky way to segue to the next thing I wanted to ask you.

And you know,

I can wrap this up soon,

But you mentioned a few as we've gone through the conversation,

But if I'm a,

Not just a young athlete,

If I'm an athlete or I'm a business leader,

If I'm just a business person or anyone working in any organization,

And I want to apply mindfulness and do it in a way that's going to improve my performance without sacrificing my wellbeing,

What are some of the tips,

Practical tips that you might offer to people?

Well,

The first thing is what not to do.

And I think don't just rely on an app because I think it's a relational thing.

For me,

How I adopted it was in a very specific way.

I learned at Buddhist Center and it was in relationship to others and I could talk and there was a context.

So I think find a way of trying mindfulness out in relationship to another person or a group.

I think that's quite important.

That's a really interesting point in an age when so many people are accessing it.

And a lot of these apps are being lauded for this.

I mean,

I have a teacher profile on Insight Timer,

I use it,

But I think one thing about Insight Timer that's a bit different is you do interact in real time with teachers and it's a bit different from just playing the prerecorded tracks.

But yeah,

It's a really good point you raise about mindfulness is all about relationality.

If you're practicing in isolation,

Particularly if you're practicing only through technology.

Yeah.

Because it's quite subtle and you can end up sort of going in on yourself if you're not taught mindfulness in the right way initially.

It's important how you receive it,

I think.

And then once you've got an understanding of how mindfulness relates to your life and some of the pressure points and how it can support you,

Then of course there's apps.

This is all great stuff.

But I think the understanding that it's really important to also come into relationship with other people around it,

Whether there's a meditation center.

Obviously I do one-to-one coaching and group work.

And I always encourage that being really important when you set the foundations of mindfulness that it's in relationship to another person,

You ask them to experience.

So you get passed on how to do this in a relationship with somebody.

And then great,

Like start a daily practice,

Use Insight Timer,

Use these things to build the habit of having a daily mindfulness practice.

I think it was Vidya Mala who,

In case people haven't heard the podcast with Vidya Mala,

Is one of the co-founders of Breathworks where Luke has trained and where I'm a trustee at the moment.

I think it was Vidya Mala,

In the conversation I had with her,

She raised that old expression that mindfulness is caught,

Not taught,

And very hard to catch mindfulness from an app,

Right?

I mean,

It's the teacher or the group that you're practicing with who are embodying mindfulness,

Who model that.

And it's that that you absorb,

It's that that you catch.

So I think you're raising a really important point here,

Which is,

Yes,

The apps are all well and good,

But perhaps not as a starting point for people.

I think it's,

Yeah,

I think that's the point.

Yeah,

It's a core experience,

And that's a really,

Really important.

Caught,

Not taught.

I wanna come,

Because you mentioned earlier,

Before we wrap,

I wanna hear what,

You've talked about Bam,

But anything else that's exciting you at the moment,

Upcoming projects,

Perhaps.

Before that,

I wanna come back full circle to Buddhism and the role that it plays in your life,

Because I might have dismissed it a little bit earlier,

And I think you rightly kind of brought it back in and said,

No,

No,

It still plays an important role for me.

Yeah.

Could you elaborate on that a little bit more?

What role does Buddhism play?

I guess,

Because I spent so much time at the Buddhist center and that became a context where I learned a lot about what my ancestors lived,

Experienced.

I lived in a community,

I worked at the center,

I was away on retreat a lot of the time.

So I guess that's,

I learned about mindfulness in relationship to a Buddhist context.

And I guess I'm just figuring out more and more,

Like the,

How much that has impacted me.

You know,

It's,

I guess it's relational aspect of like,

You know,

Being in a context where all the people are practicing meditation and there's a dialogue around it,

It's part of the culture.

Also things like,

You know,

When I was working at the Buddhist center,

We would have this practice called rejoicing in merits where it's almost bringing to life compassion meditation.

So we would be a practice of kind of speaking out what we value about each other in the team or in the community we live in.

And it just creates a particular atmosphere where almost the compassion that you feel or you're cultivating a meditation can be directly expressed to the people you're working with.

And I guess that's what I tried to bring to Harlequins.

I tried to bring some of these practices or in our way day,

We do life stories where we,

You know,

And that's a practice of listening to someone's life.

That was a regular thing we do at the Buddhist center and also learning to rejoice and see the qualities,

Human qualities that people are bringing.

So all of these,

You know,

Living in that culture for that amount of time and these simple,

Very powerful practices have a real influence on me and it's speaking to the real humanness of how mindfulness can help you relate to each other.

And yeah,

So I feel like it's a deep influence on my work and I guess I see my mission is like trying to translate that and make accessible some of those principles accessible to high pressure environments that don't operate in a Buddhist culture that can lend from these practices and ways of beings.

Yeah,

Particularly in sports,

Right?

I mean,

Maybe less so in corporate teams,

But the concept,

The Buddhist concept of Sangha community,

You know,

A group that you move through the world with,

Practice with,

Support each other,

Translates quite easily across to the sporting team environment,

Doesn't it?

Also leadership teams,

Also like each other's life stories and seeing each other on a human level and seeing,

Getting more of an appreciation and empathy for someone's life can help you hold that person in a different regard when they might be reacting or you might be reacting.

There's a more whole awareness of the people you're working with at that level.

And I think that really,

That helps create a more mature way of relating when it is stressful.

Yeah,

You talked earlier about,

You know,

Mindfulness helping with our own personal fragmentation,

But as you say,

When you're seeing the whole other person as well,

Rather than just seeing them as their role at work or seeing them as their position on the field or whatever,

Then you're going to relate to them at a much deeper level and the connections can- And also because of the,

You know,

We live in a very online culture and I think a lot of emotion can get hidden behind that.

The reason why we do these away days with teams is we're trying to inject some counterbalance to the fact that a lot of organisations are now quite disperse with online working being the norm.

We've got to remember to come back in a human way to kind of balance that.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Okay,

Well,

Before asking you what projects you've got coming up,

I think maybe a word on the fact that,

Because we've been talking,

You know,

I've learned so much through the Buddhist tradition and teachings as it pertains to mindfulness,

But it's not like Buddhism has a monopoly on mindfulness.

I mean,

Every faith tradition,

Every contemplative tradition has somewhere at its heart this notion of mindfulness and mindful awareness,

But I think it's safe to say that it's in Buddhism where you've got the clearest,

Almost instruction manuals,

Right,

Of how to cultivate it,

The blueprints,

The frameworks,

The steps for cultivating mindfulness.

So it's probably,

I'd say,

Best articulated.

People can challenge me if they want to on that,

But I think that it's best articulated within Buddhism.

And what's really interesting these days,

I'm doing this master's now in teaching mindfulness,

And it's kind of,

It's at the intersection of neuroscience,

The psychological sciences,

The contemplative traditions,

And what I'm just blown away by is the fact that the cutting edge neuroscience,

The most cutting edge leading thinkers in psychology,

They're validating a lot of the mental maps that the Buddha gave us,

And these principles of Buddhist psychology from 2,

600 years ago are now being validated in terms of the way that our minds cause unnecessary suffering and the way out of that.

So I think it's great that you've held onto that,

And I'm sure you'll continue to view MPP with some of those principles.

Okay,

Luke,

Tell me,

What are you working on other than BAM?

Are there any other projects that you are working on or have got in the wings that are exciting you at the moment?

Yeah,

So I'm gonna be working with the Brentford Football Club Academy in July.

So I'm starting a workshop with them,

Which I'm really looking forward to.

I've done a bit of work in the past with Brentford,

And I'm looking forward to,

Yeah,

Seeing how I can make my influence accessible there.

And developing,

At the moment,

My focus is working with leadership teams and doing away days.

So they're kind of two focuses at the moment,

And we're starting a project later this year.

We started planning this partnership project with MIMES to see how we can scale BAM over the next couple of years.

Also working with Mia Chambers,

Who was a runner-up,

I think,

In the Innovation Award.

So yeah,

Lots of things going on.

And trying to also just keep my own practice spacious so I can keep bringing myself into my work and practicing what I preach.

Fantastic.

And if people wanna learn more,

We'll put some links in the show notes,

But you can go to MIMESFPPerformance.

Com,

Right?

MIMESFPPerformance.

Com,

Also LinkedIn,

My name on LinkedIn,

You can follow what I'm up to.

And that's updated quite regularly.

Awesome.

Luke,

Thank you so much for this conversation.

I learned a lot.

This is not the end of the conversation.

I'm so glad we've connected today.

I have a feeling that we'll be talking a lot in the weeks,

Months,

And potentially years ahead.

So really happy to,

Yeah,

To have just spent this time with you.

Yeah,

Great,

Thanks.

Really appreciate your questions.

And yeah,

Hopefully this gives people a bit of an insight into what I do.

Yeah,

Thank you,

Luke.

Well,

Go to MIMESFPPerformance.

Com to find out more.

And yeah,

Until next time,

Take care,

Everybody.

Thanks again for listening to the Back to Being podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode,

You can subscribe or follow to receive news about future shows.

Till next time,

Be kind to yourself and others.

I wish you well.

Reviews

Really interesting conversation. Lukes BAM programme sounds wonderdul and similar to Somatic Experiencing (which I've just come across), especially something called "The Class" by Taryn Toomey which is mindful exercise class. I was touched by the idea of the importance of relatedness in mindfulness, definitely something I feel I'm lacking in my own practice atm.
Thank you again Karim, hugely appreciated 🙏 😉😎