A Mind Body Perspective In Sports

Somatic trauma therapist and clinical researcher, Dr Patricia Worby, leads this week with her insightful lecture on brain development, trauma and adverse childhood experience (ACEs), and therapeutic psychosomatic strategies, plus live workshop interaction.

Lecture content

Athletes are human and therefore experience the same psychological challenges as everybody else: sometimes, however, these psychological challenges become the driving forces for athletic pursuit…

Topics covered include:

• Brain development and stress adaptation: How brain development determines how we perceive emotional threats and our stress resilience, a study of the limbic system and HPA axis (linkage between mind and body), plus the Polyvagal theory of autonomic adaptation to threat.
• Emotional trauma and Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs): Toxic mind-body stress in the context of the overachieving athlete, attachment wounding, high sensitivity and personality types, and how to deal with unresolved emotions.
• Physiological impact of psychological stress: How unresolved emotional stress impacts the body (through a lens of the mitochondrial ‘Cell Danger Response’), and a discussion of excessive allostatic load in the context of an exercising body.
• Emotional regulation for resilience: An exploration of somatic psychosensory processes (potentially more powerful than talk therapy since the emotional trauma is stored in the body), neuroplasticity and emotional resilience, plus heart and brain entrainment for mind-body resonance.

Yoga and Qi Gong teacher, Paul Carlos, leads this week with his philosophical and practical lecture on harnessing the power of the mind through mindfulness, ego awareness, meditation and breath work, plus live workshop interaction.

Lecture content

This lecture provides specialist strategies that support mind-body resonance and physical excellence. In addition to revisiting goal setting and values, Paul aim to teach us how to engage the intuitive heart and integrate it with the logical mind.

Topics covered include:

• Mindfulness philosophies: Paul talks about attaining the bird’s eye view within a person’s life. Being able to step back and view their bigger life picture can help to put athletic endeavours into perspective, meaning they can make choices that are supportive of their health and physicality in a very mindful way.
• Mediation and breathing: Appropriate use of the breath, including mindfully chosen breathing techniques and meditation practices can help to calm the (often) over-active mind of an athlete, including better apportioning of energy use throughout the day.
• Living and training with the intuitive heart: Paul observes how we currently live our lives more within our mind than with heart, but makes the point that if we are to excel at something, it needs to resonate deeply within ourselves. He also furthers the goal setting discussion from lecture 1, noting that how and where we place our attention can massively affect how the athlete progresses towards his/her goal.
• Management of ego: “Competing with” or “competing against” sound similar, but the way athletes view the process of training and competition can either be isolating to their energy, or it can help them tap into a collective athletic spirit…

WEEK 4 – Action Learning Workshop

Your learning is now flipped from a state of expert-led presentation to participant-led discussion, where you will tap into your prior life learning and experiences, along with that of your peers, to move towards ‘action’ steps of professional development before departing from this module.

• You will firstly be asked to reflect on what you already knew about REDs before the beginning of this module i.e. what did you already bring into the classroom?
• As a team, you’ll then be asked to question what aspects of your thinking were potentially challenged and modified by your recent study of REDs.
• Finally, you’ll be asked to consider how you might now think and act differently as you carry your collective knowledge forwards with you towards the action steps of working with a suspected REDs client.
• Done well, this kind of workshop amasses the knowledge and experience of the whole group in addition to what has already been learned from the lecturers.

Module assignment

In a concise 1000 words, you will be asked to write a flowing essay on a case study of an athlete, or active individual, who has the goal of improving signs and symptoms associated with REDs, while undertaking a challenging exercise training programme. Honouring the professional practice style of your base career, you’ll look to incorporate learnings from this module in your case description and intervention strategies.