A Meditation on Fear: meeting performance anxiety with a full mind

“When you’re in fear, you’re not in your body.”

My meditation coach, Danika Hendrickson, was explaining the concept of body-based mediation, also known as “somatic” or “yin” meditation. She’d talked about active muscle engagement and connective tissue and something called “comfortable discomfort.” But this business about fear and body is what really caught my attention.

Fear, you see, has been a part of my life, especially my life on the soccer field, from the beginning.

A memory: freshman year in high school, night of the county finals against our arch rivals, the Scotch Plains Raiders. Both teams are warming up, doing stretches, knocking practice balls back and forth, furtively sizing one another up from our respective sides of the field.

I was scared shitless and it showed. As the coaches called their teams in for a final huddle, one of my teammates jogged over to me. He was a freshman like me, so he should have also been experiencing some measure of dread. Instead, he looked me square in the eye and said, “Danny, don’t be scared out there. These guys are pussies.”

It wasn’t just a pep talk. This guy really believed the other team was a bunch of pussies. And that’s how he played every game, riding the confidence to one of the most decorated athletic careers in school history. He obviously had tons of natural talent to go along. But his state of fearless is what always amazed me the most, because it was something I could never muster.

I’m hoping meditation will change that. 

Mindfulness and the Modern Athlete
Mental preparation has always been a part of sports. Think of pro athletes using visualization to hit a curve ball or a crosscourt winner on the tennis court. Data-based proof showing the connection between meditation and athletic performance is still early-days, but it is starting to build. For example, psychologists at the University of Miami published a recent study that established a clear link between mindfulness and mental resilience.

Mental toughness is all well and good. But fear has always been my biggest hurdle. After hearing my story, Danika said that somatic meditation was the way to go. The discipline is often described as a yin-based "bottom-up" process, whereby you engage actively in the presence of bodily sensations, rather than tuning them out, as with yong-based "top-down" meditation. 

“It's about engaging those physical sensations in a way that is useful to coming back into the body,” Danika explained. She talked about how fear and anxiety often get trapped in the body’s fascia, or connective tissue. Sitting still, palms to the sky in a traditional meditation pose, might scratch the surface of the problem, but it won’t get to its root. 

After chatting for a few more minutes, Danika took me through a short meditation lasting a few minutes. We engaged the ears through deliberate listening, and the space between the nose and lips through conscious breathing, and the muscles in the legs through tactile awareness.

The first go around was a challenge, with plenty of skepticism and wandering thoughts on my part. But with the second meditation, I felt myself coming into my body on a deeper level. 

“I almost feel asleep there,” I said afterward.

“That’s a good sign,” said Danika.

Later, by email, I asked her what she meant.

“The fact that you almost fell asleep showed me that you were relaxed enough in the body to be able to let go," she wrote. "You were leaning in the direction of surrender, even if it was leaning toward sleep. Through practice, you’ll be able to relax physically and mentally while remaining alert and present to what is unfolding. Meditation is a balance between focus (mind) and relaxation (body). This is the state you want to be able to access in life—and on the soccer field.”

Devising a Plan
I’m excited to give it a go. Danika and I live a couple hours apart, so we can’t get together every day, or every week even, for guided meditation sessions. Fortunately, there are plenty of apps and online resources. I downloaded the Headspace and Insider Timer apps and have been trying out different tracks, including a bunch of somatic-based practices that are rooted in the body. (Here’s an example of one that’s also posted to YouTube.)  

The plan is to play around with them on my own and check in periodically with Danika, doing one-on-one sessions, by phone or in-person, when possible. Just as with soccer, yoga, and other components of The Second Half, solo practice is an important part of the process, but the guidance of an experienced teacher will be critical to success.