Meditation Basics for Athletes

An athlete's beginning for meditation. I take you through a short meditation connecting to the breath and allowing you to start your road to relaxing.

Transcript

Hey,

I'm Ted McDonald and I'm here to talk to you a little about meditation.

So I'm an athlete,

An endurance athlete.

My first marathon was back in 2000.

Since then I was,

I got into more marathons,

Triathlons,

Adventure racing,

Long distance mountain bike rides,

Century rides,

Riding all the way up and down the coast of California,

And then half Ironman,

About to do my first full Ironman,

Which will be exciting.

And always for me,

Meditation has been a key aspect to my training and my racing.

So at the same time I did that first marathon,

I also became a yoga teacher.

And meditation comes along with practicing yoga.

It's part of the process.

The yoga practice is like a moving meditation.

And this is just going to be a simple,

Very basic thing to help you as an athlete really start to relax a little bit.

So many athletes,

Whether you're professional or just starting out doing a 5K,

It doesn't matter what level of athlete you are because you have the breath.

And if you're watching this,

You can breathe.

Congratulations.

And so what we want to do is connect with the breath first.

That's the first thing to do,

Especially now because there's so many things that come at us from a regular basis from our phones to noise to information and television and radio and internet and family and relationships and job and colleagues and all this sort of stuff.

So it's really hard to sift through it all.

Our dreams,

Our goals,

Our desires,

What we want,

What we don't want,

How do we understand all these things that are happening,

How do we juggle it all at the same time when we stay calm and we stay relaxed and we sort of go with the flow in a way.

So the first thing we have to do is connect with the breath.

As an athlete,

I can tell you that my performance,

Especially an endurance athlete,

So I've never been the fastest guy in the room,

But I can definitely go for a long period of time.

And part of that is understanding how to stay relaxed,

How to stay relaxed and connected to my breathing and connected to my body as I continue to move.

So the first thing we're going to do today is just have a nice,

Good,

Smooth,

Even breath.

So go ahead and sit up,

Find a nice,

Comfortable seated position,

Close your eyes,

And take a nice deep breath.

Big inhale,

Big exhale.

Go ahead and do it again.

Inhale and exhale.

Great.

And again,

Inhale and exhale.

So you can keep doing that where you are and just understand that just that connection to the breath,

If you extend,

Expand your lungs a little more,

You're going to increase the inhale and that gives you the choice to kind of slow down the exhale.

When you slow down the exhale,

You begin to slow down your mind a little bit.

And in the meditation world,

They say if you can control your breathing,

You can control your mind.

And what happens with all this information that's coming at us on a regular basis is we get caught up in it.

We get caught up in all the things we have to do and all the things we want to do and all the things,

All the news and all the shows and internet and TVs and phones and kids and relationships and work and colleagues and all that sort of stuff.

And the idea is it's fine.

That's not going anywhere.

We're now officially in the age of the new millennium and there will always be information.

But what I want you to do is start to develop this connectedness,

This place of peace and contentment that we all have.

So there's all a sense of calmness and contentment inside.

It's just sometimes we forget as a little kid,

You were just happy and just chill and you would get frustrated if you were hungry or if you weren't sleeping or if you needed your diaper changed.

And I know this is a first time parent,

But the idea here is to reconnect with that place of peace.

So continue your breathing and start to develop that from within a nice,

Good,

Smooth,

Even breath,

Relaxing the shoulders.

As you go from the bigger,

From the physical,

And then you bring it down a little bit more to the energetic,

The breathing,

And you start to feel maybe some tingling sensations as you breathe,

Relaxing a little bit more and a little bit more.

So the sound you hear,

My breath,

Is called the ujjayi breath.

It's the breath of victory,

Of victorious breathing,

Aka the dark side.

No,

Just kidding.

But the idea is that helps relax your nervous system and it helps build a little internal heat,

Which is good because it helps stimulate energy and the flow of energy,

And that is going to help you relax.

If you're all tight and stagnant and rigid,

It's going to be a lot harder to relax.

So just a few more breaths.

Go ahead and open your eyes and just take a moment and observe.

Observe whether your energy is a little bit more relaxed,

Your body is a little bit more relaxed,

You feel a little bit calmer,

More focused.

Ultimately,

One of the great benefits of meditation is to increase your focus,

Increase your awareness so that when you are in competition as an athlete or just in life in general,

That you can stay focused and when there is 10 things coming at you at once,

It's okay.

You can step back for a moment,

Take that breath,

And then you can stay focused and kind of get done what needs to be done.

So thank you so much for joining me and I will talk to you soon.

Reviews

Loved the Dark side reference! Big Star Wars fan!

Powerful Breath​ so.. Cool.
Thank U.Teddy

#Endurance #ConnectWithBreath #VictoriousInhaleExhale

Enjoyed the intro and looking forward to following along with more of his meditations. Felt like a conversation I’d have with another runner on the trails, very comfortable.

I appreciate the explanations on the science behind breathing.

Checking out the Victory Breath...

A great introduction for athletes! 🙏

Great Intro, thank you !

Gets me to do my push-ups when I'm not feeling it... Thanks!

I thought this was a brilliant beginners meditation especially for those who are woo-woo adverse.
Great thought that our thoughts are connected to our breathing and we can slow our thoughts down with our breathing.

Very instructive and helpful

Great basics. Well said. Peaceful.

Best yet. Short and to the point. A "real" person and not someone trying to be so spiritual. Good luck in your upcoming events, and thank you for keeping it real. You motivate me.

Interesting perspective and good intro to the benefits of meditation.

Very helpful for me

Always a good reminder

Good way to start meditating :)