Zen in the Art of Gymnastics

From Custom Gymnastics Cartoons by Marc Jacobs

It takes some athletes a fair amount of time to mentally train themselves to live and compete "in the zone"- that state of mind where everything quiets....

I noticed something else.  When the Soviet gymnast was doing her routine, her mind was quiet.  When she finished and returned to her chair, her mind started up again.  It was the same for the East German gymnast on the rings and the American on the horizontal bar.  Furthermore, the best performers had the quietest minds during their moment of truth.

One East German fellow was distracted by a noise while he swung through handstand after handstand on the parallel bars.  I sensed his mind drawn to the noise; he thought, "What?..." as he muffed his final somersault to handstand.

A telepathic voyeur, I peeked into the minds of the audience.  "I'm hungry...Got to catch an eleven o'clock plane or the Dusseldorf plans are shot...I'm hungry!"  But as soon as a performer was in midflight, the minds of the audience calmed too.

For the first time, I realized why I loved gymnastics so.  It gave me a blessed respite from my noisy mind.  When I was swinging and somersaulting, nothing else mattered.  When my body was active, my mind rested in the moments of silence."
-Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, pg 50-51

A zen parable:

After winning several archery contests, the young and rather boastful champion challenged a Zen master who was renowned for his skill as an archer. The young man demonstrated remarkable technical proficiency when he hit a distant bull’s eye on his first try, and then split that arrow with his second shot. “There,” he said to the old man, “see if you can match that!”

Undisturbed, the master did not draw his bow, but rather motioned for the young archer to follow him up the mountain. Curious about the old fellow’s intentions, the champion followed him high into the mountain until they reached a deep chasm spanned by a rather flimsy and shaky log. Calmly stepping out onto the middle of the unsteady and certainly perilous bridge, the old master picked a far away tree as a target, drew his bow, and fired a clean, direct hit. ”

Now it is your turn,” he said as he gracefully stepped back onto the safe ground.

Staring with terror into the seemingly bottomless and beckoning abyss, the young man could not force himself to step out onto the log, no less shoot at a target. “You have much skill with your bow,” the master said, sensing his challenger’s predicament, “but you have little skill with the mind that lets loose the shot.”

 Sometimes I've had a girl who is having a particularly rough time on a skill.  She gets rattled and snippity by any distractions from her teammates that are unwelcomed.  Or, more commonly, a gymnast blows a skill and scapegoats the reason it happened, like so: "(Fill in the blank) made me laugh!"

No one can "make" you laugh, unless your mind is a willing participant to it.

Chris and Miss Val at Bruin "Meet and Greets" have described how they will train their Bruin team to become desensitized to outside distractions- like shouting rival team names and chants during their routines.  Check out my old roommate Mike Chaplin and bars coach John Carney with a makeshift boom camera to train their Oregon Beavers to ignore the distractions.

There's a story I recall reading as a teenager in a book "about" zen.  Here's a version:

It happened that a Zen master was invited as a guest. A few friends had gathered and they were eating and talking when suddenly there was an earthquake. The building that they were sitting in was a seven story building, and they were on the seventh story so life was in danger. Everybody tried to escape. The host, running by, looked to see what had happened to the master. He was there with not even a ripple of anxiety on his face.

With closed eyes he was sitting on his chair as he had been sitting before. 

The host felt a little guilty, he felt a little cowardly; it does not look good that a guest is sitting there and the host is running away. The others, the other twenty guests, had already gone down the stairs but he stopped himself although he was trembling with fear, and he sat down by the side of the master.

The earthquake came and went, the master opened the eyes and started his conversation which because of the earthquake he had had to stop. He continued again at exactly the same sentence – as if the earthquake had not happened at all. 

The host was now in no mood to listen, he was in no mood to understand because his whole being was so troubled and he was so afraid. Even though the earthquake had gone, the fear was still there. He said: Now don’t say anything because I will not be able to grasp it, I’m not myself anymore. The earthquake has disturbed me too much. But there is one question I would like to ask. All other guests had escaped, I was also on the stairs, almost running, when suddenly I remembered you. Seeing you sitting here with closed eyes, sitting so undisturbed, so unperturbed, I felt a little cowardly – I am the host, I should not run. So I came back and I have been sitting by your side. I would like to ask one question. We all tried to escape. What happened to you? What do you say about the earthquake?
The master said:

I also escaped, but you escaped outwardly, I escaped inwardly. 

Your escape is useless because wherever you are going there too is an earthquake, so it is meaningless, it makes no sense. You may reach the sixth story or the fifth or the fourth, but there too is an earthquake. I escaped to a point within me where no earthquake ever reaches, cannot reach. I entered my center.

This is what Lao Tzu says, hold firm to the basis of quietude. If you are passive by and by you will become aware of the center within you. You have carried it all along, it has always been there, only you don’t know it, you are not alert. Once you become alert about it the whole of life becomes different.

You can remain in the world and out of it because you are always in touch with your center. 

You can move in an earthquake and be unperturbed because nothing touches you.

For some reason, I am reminded of that story whenever I see this video of Ludmilla Tourischeva at the 1975 World Cup.

This is a disciplined mind, maintaining poise, composure...focused calm....cool as a cucumber and unflappable:


 Note to my gymnasts:  Learn to hide your (negative) emotions until AFTER you step off the competition floor and out of the view of judgmental judges.

She won bars, by the way....in more ways than one.