Workbook Chapter Twenty

Get Centered

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Case Example:

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This case example is about me and how I have used centering in my life. I am an athlete and I found good use for centering when I played tennis with my friends. Tennis is a good sport to illustrate the power of centering. There are many lessons to be learned on the tennis court, if you are paying attention.

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For example, I found that if I missed a shot and had a reaction to my missed shot, it would definitely affect the next shot I made. Either I would hit the next ball out of bounds or into the net. I lost my center by dwelling on a previous shot. If I could refrain from thinking about the previous shot and return to center in my mind, the next shot would be right where I wanted it to be.

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This also happened, if I started thinking about something else that was bothering me from before I entered the tennis court. My objective became one of staying in the present moment as much as possible. In that way, it became much like a meditation and when I was able to do that, my game improved.    

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This showed me how powerful the mind is in controlling how centered I can be in any situation. The more I learned to let go of thinking about a previously missed shot, the better I was prepared to hit the next shot where I wanted to hit it. Some athletes report “getting in the zone,” which is reflective of their ability to stay present and not continue to think about the previous plays.

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Tennis provided me with immediately feedback when I was able to let go over dwelling on a previous sot and staying focused and centered on the current shot.. I can remember staying in the zone for a whole set of tennis and every shot I made went exactly where I wanted it to go. My game was surprisingly elevated to a higher level. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sustain this practice as much as I would have liked and my overall tennis game remained about the same. I challenged myself every time I entered the tennis court to see if I could do better. Some days I seemed to do much better at staying centered. Other days, it seemed hard to stay centered and my tennis game suffered.

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Now that I don’t play tennis anymore, I found another use for centering. The minute I notice that I am feeling stressed, usually by noticing tight shoulders and perhaps other bodily symptoms, I immediately focus on getting centered.

What I do is produce three slow, deep breaths in a row. When I do that I can feel the tension draining out of my body from the top of my head down to the bottom of my feet. After three breaths,  I feel completely relaxed. It took me some years to perfect this tool, but now it keeps me from experiencing stress for very long. I credit this tool for helping me reduce the effects of daily stress in my body, a known killer.