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Speaker 1: Basketball Etc. is a production of iHeart Podcasts, School of Humans, and Life Heroes Grant.
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Speaker 2: Have you ever.
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Speaker 1: Watched an NBA player take a free throw? I mean, obviously it happens a lot in a basketball game, so of course you have. But have you ever really paid attention to what's happening at the free throw line? Okay, close your eyes and imagine it with me. It's the fourth quarter, it's a tie game that's been back and forth for the whole time, the arena's going absolutely crazy, and the tension couldn't be higher. But someone gets fouled, and they're headed to the line. In all the commotion, all the chaos, suddenly everything becomes....
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Speaker 2: Still.
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Speaker 1: And something kind of remarkable happens. The free throw taker closes their eyes for a moment. Their shoulders rise up to their ears as they take a super deep, slow breath. In through their nose and out through their mouth. For that one moment, it's like everyone and everything in the arena just fade away. It's just them, the ball, and the hoop. And then they shoot it. And the crowd in the game and the noise all reappear. But for those few seconds at the free throw line, that player was meditating. At least that's what I see when I watch NBA games, because that's my job. My name's Claire DeLune, and I write about basketball for The Guardian. And it's my job to pick up on all the little nuances you might not notice on and off the basketball court. Because for me, there's so much more there to be interested in than just X's and O's and who got traded where. At this point, beyond it just being my job, I kind of live and breathe basketball. Or as much as you can without actually being the one getting paid to play the sport. Even though I started out as a touring musician who just liked watching basketball in my green room while I waited for soundcheck. And that's why I tend to notice things about the sport that go beyond the play-by-play and typical analysis. Don't get me wrong, I love listening to podcasts that cover that stuff too. But I did really feel like I was missing something else in my basketball podcast diet. Somewhere for basketball stories that might be a little too different or out of left field. Welcome to Basketball Etc. My version of the show I always wished I could listen to. We'll speak with players, experts, celebrities, journalists, podcasters, basketball insiders, fans, and more to go beyond the box score and tell the stories that make us fall more and more in love with this game. I'm your host, Claire DeLune, and today in our first episode, we'll be looking into the intersection of basketball and meditation. My fascination with what appeared to be a miniature meditation that almost every player does at the free throw line and that some of them, like LeBron James, even do while sitting on the bench waiting for the game to start, led me down a rabbit hole of sorts. How much are basketball players really meditating? And are they doing it on purpose or kind of by accident? I got a little obsessed and I started googling as much as I could on the subject. Pretty quickly, following that rabbit hole led me to a man named George Mumford, who, as it turns out, is kind of the godfather of mindfulness and meditation in the NBA. But who exactly is George Mumford?
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Speaker 2: Sometimes I've been referred to as a performance whisperer.
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Speaker 3: My philosophy is everybody has a masterpiece and their job is to access it and to share it with the rest of us.
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Speaker 2: I just help people unlock their masterpiece.
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Speaker 1: George Mumford is a mindfulness and performance coach who works specifically with elite athletes, teaching them all about the power of meditation and mindfulness and why it matters for both athletic performance and just life in general, too. He's even written books on the topic, including the Bible of this subject matter, The Mindful Athlete, which I read, loved, and informed a lot of what we talk about in my conversation with him. George has worked with people like.
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Speaker 3: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen.
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Speaker 1: So no big deal, just a pretty impressive roster of players. I wanted to learn more about how he realized there was a space, like an actual job, where he could combine his love of basketball and his passion for meditation. He started playing basketball as a child and always loved it. But some twists of fate, like injuries and subsequently addiction that came out of medicating those injuries, kept him from playing professionally. And recovering from that addiction ultimately led him to meditation and Zen. But basketball has been this through line in his life. He was even roommates with Dr. J in college. So even when he followed that path of meditation, it ultimately led him back to basketball, which we'll get into later. I talked to George about the sort of unpredictable, circuitous path that led him here. It sounds like from the book that you didn't have a ton of exposure to this type of way of life growing up, like mindfulness, meditation.
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Speaker 2: No, no.
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Speaker 1: Like there wasn't a whole lot of that. So when you first found it in the path in your recovery, were you reluctant to it at first? How did you perceive it at first? And how quickly did you know that it really resonated with you and it was something that you were going to end up spending a lot of your time doing?
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Speaker 3: So I think 12-step recovery pretty much saved my life. And once I got in this 12-step recovery and then finding out I had chronic pain, I had to look at things differently because these things were offered to me in college, obviously, but my thing was, you know, just give me a brew and get out.
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Speaker 2: Of my face. I don't have time for that soft stuff, right?
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Speaker 3: But I call it in my book, The Mindful Athlete, Secrets to Pure Performance, I call it the AOF method of motivation. I don't know if you remember what the AOF stands for.
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Speaker 1: Is it Bleep on fire?
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Speaker 2: Yes, that's it. You didn't want me to say the word. Oh, you can say it.
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Speaker 1: Posterior on fire.
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Speaker 2: Posterior, you know, ass on fire, basically.
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Speaker 3: It's like that old story about, you know, you could put a frog in a pan and keep the flame down low and the frog will stay in there and boil.
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Speaker 2: But if you turn it up, the frog will jump out.
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Speaker 3: And so it's nothing like adversity or like I like to say, there's no atheist in the foxhole. When you're in a foxhole and your life is on the line for it, then you say, oh, God, help me.
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Speaker 1: At this point, though, it looked like any dreams of playing basketball professionally were in the rearview mirror.
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Speaker 3: I had no idea what I was going to be doing, whether or not I was going to be involved in basketball. And then in 1987, I found myself when they were retiring Julius's number. And I'm at the presentation that came to me that, oh, Julius is retired. And if I would have made the NBA, I'd be retiring also. So maybe I can let that dream go.
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Speaker 1: So he worked in corporate America for a bit, but he was miserable and he knew he needed a change. This was around the same time he was actively going through recovery.
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Speaker 3: It's interesting because when I left my corporate job, it was right around the time I was watching The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell. And he talked about the idea of follow your bliss. And that's what I did. I followed my bliss. And when you follow your bliss, doors open where there were no doors.
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Speaker 1: And following his bliss meant pursuing mindfulness more seriously as a career path. George went to go work with Jon Kabat-Zinn, a legend in the field who he'd met through his studies in Zinn's mindfulness-based stress reduction program. And in the early 90s, they created the Inner City Stress Reduction Clinic together. It was during that time that Phil Jackson reached out to Zinn, a friend of his, and asked if he knew anyone who would be a good fit to teach some of these practices to the Chicago Bulls, the team Jackson was coaching at the time. And due to George's background playing basketball in high school and college and his connection to Dr. J, Zinn knew the perfect man for the job.
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Speaker 3: Back in those times, the catch word was Zinn, you know, that Zinn stuff. So, of course, Phil being the Zinn master and me helping him, teach the Chicago Bulls and that was about 32 years ago in 1993. I was still working at the medical center and he asked me to come in and teach the guys how to deal with the stress of success because they had just won three NBA championships in a row and the only other team to win more than two in a row up to that point were the Boston Celtics.
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Speaker 2: They won eight in a row.
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Speaker 1: It went so well with the Bulls and George that Phil kept him on to work with him down the line with the Lakers. With Phil as coach, both teams reached historic heights, winning multiple championships, all with George helping the players keep their heads.
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Speaker 3: When I first started doing it, it was like a secret, you know, a secret weapon because people weren't comfortable talking about this type of development. You know, the non-physical, if I may quote Yogi Berra, the great Hall of Fame New York Yankee, he said, Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.
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Speaker 2: So it's about performance.
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Speaker 3: And in my mind, performance is having an intention and being able to execute it, to bring it into fruition in a way that you feel like you were able to fully and creatively express yourself.
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Speaker 1: So how exactly did George achieve this focus on the mental with athletes who are so trained on the physical? His work with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, two of the greatest players in the history of the game, reveals so much about George's approach. I was curious, though, were ferocious, hyper-competitive, high-level athletes like Michael and Kobe accepting of these methods right away or skeptical? How easy were they to teach?
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Speaker 2: Well, I would say they were probably two of my best students with MJ.
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Speaker 4: It was.
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Speaker 3: helping him to understand why he was able to do things and what he was able to do and offering another level. And I believe he was playing at such a spiritual level at the end because he didn't have the same physical abilities in the late 90s as he had in the 80s and early 90s. And so learning how to play spiritually, learning how to be in flow, learning how to play at a level where it's It's more your mind. It's more about your spirit and your heart and your mentality.
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Speaker 1: One thing that was immediately fascinating to me about the idea of doing this specific type of work with players like an MJ or a Kobe is that there's a certain amount of ego and bravado almost required of being an elite athlete at that level. But this work is inherently about putting ego aside and becoming one with everything, so to speak, decentering yourself in a way. So how do you balance the necessity of that ego, but also the necessity of letting go of that ego?
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Speaker 3: I like to say you got to be selfish so you can be selfless.
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Speaker 2: So you have to take.
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Speaker 5: Care of you.
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Speaker 3: You begin with yourself, but you don't end with yourself.
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Speaker 2: It's got to be community. It's like emotional intelligence.
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Speaker 3: If you know anything about emotional intelligence, physical intelligence gets you so far, but then emotional intelligence takes you to the next level. But then understanding the social level, you know, the community, the team thing. And Phil always talked about the strength of the wolf is in the pack, and the strength of the pack is in the wolf.
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Speaker 2: And one breath, one mind.
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Speaker 3: This idea of, yeah, if you want to be a great player, you have to make those around you better.
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Speaker 2: It takes a village.
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Speaker 3: And so when Phil took over for the Collins, and we used the Wolves, it was fantastic.
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Speaker 2: They were pretty much looked at, Michael Jordan and the Jordanaires.
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Speaker 3: And so when Phil encouraged Mike to share more and to let the others, so we got to bring everybody else up. So we're not competing against another team. We're competing against potential.
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Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant, too, is on the record with how powerful he found George's teachings and the profound effect they had on him. He's quoted on George's website as saying, George helped me understand the art of mindfulness to be neither distracted or focused, rigid or flexible, passive or aggressive. I learned to just be. I asked George what he thought Kobe meant by that.
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Speaker 3: Well, he's really talking about coming from the eye of the hurricane or your masterpiece. You want to call it Buddha consciousness or Christ consciousness or divine spot.
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Speaker 2: You can call it whatever you want.
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Speaker 3: But when you can be still and know when you can just come out of that space, Joseph Campbell talked about it a little bit in The Power of Myth when he said when an athlete is in championship form, there's a place of rest inside of us that when you come out of that, you're not compelled by desire or fear. You hold your center and you just, you're in the moment and you do what you know to do. You express yourself honestly in that moment.
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Speaker 2: You're not worried about the result. You're just focused on what you're doing, not on how you're doing. Bruce Lee talks about that.
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Speaker 3: Martial arts just aren't the expression.
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Speaker 2: So there's a spiritual component.
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Speaker 3: Where you know it, but you can only know it by experiencing it. And even if you experience it, the words just point to it. And so my job is to give people a direct experience of what I'm offering.
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Speaker 2: So now they own it. So it's not something you have to believe.
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Speaker 3: It's something that you had a direct experience or it goes from faith to conviction because you know it to be true.
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Speaker 1: So much of this is about the mental, but if there's this mind-body connection, how does the body play into it all? More on that after the break. All of this talk about the mind-body connection made me wonder about the ways that this mindfulness stuff manifests in the body. Beyond just in the positive way, like the tools Kobe and Michael learned from George, how does the opposite, the stress and trauma we hold in our bodies, contribute to ailments or even injuries in sports? Can a disruption in the mind contribute to a disruption.
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Speaker 2: In the body? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, your immune system.
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Speaker 3: If I'm in a fight, flight, or freeze, what happens is staying in that high stress level, my immune function doesn't function. So I get more immune to disease and illnesses and accidents because my body is ready to fight, fight, or freeze. And there's a gentleman, his name is Bruce Lipton. He wrote a book called The Biology of Belief. And in that book, he said on a cellular level, a cell is either in survival mode or growth mode.
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Speaker 2: Can't be in both. So what's the lesson? Well, you're in this, you know, it's a fixed mindset. I'm screwed. I can't change. And I'm feeling the stress.
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Speaker 1: And then he mentioned something I had never even heard before. Eustress, defined as good stress, a positive physical and psychological response to a challenge.
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Speaker 2: We need stress.
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Speaker 3: We need the body to get uncomfortable. That's when we grow. And so there's the stress management. So we have to understand some people have low stress. And so they're, you know, it's like depressed or apathy or low energy, and then there's people that have hyper. So we got to balance those two. So you got to balance the eustress with this is where I am, this is where I'm going, there's a eustress, and then there's a distress where things are acting on us and we feel like we don't have the resources to meet it.
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Speaker 2: So life is.
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Speaker 3: The balance of eustress, distress, hyperstress, understress, and that's where the self-regulation comes in.
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Speaker 2: So I say no struggle, no swag.
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Speaker 1: So I once again turned to the internet and stumbled upon an interesting Instagram video. It was about Luka Doncic and his recent injury and the idea that it could be linked to all of the stress and emotional turmoil in his life lately.
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Speaker 5: Two weeks after the custody headlines peaked, His hamstring gives out. When your nervous system is in a chronic state of threat, your body literally changes how it functions. Your hamstring doesn't just randomly tear. It tears because the tissue has been under siege for months from a nervous system that never got to come down.
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Speaker 1: So I knew I needed to reach out to its creator, performance coach Stéphane Devivier.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, so currently I coach former athletes to help them restore their athleticism and get back to the body and even surpass the body that they had when they were in their 20s.
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Speaker 1: While he does work with individual players, Stefan emphasizes that this kind of mental work, what's necessary to prevent the negative sort of mind-body connection, needs to come from the top down, from the sports organizations themselves. It shouldn't just be on the athletes to understand and implement these connections.
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Speaker 5: You know, you see all these people on Instagram, social media, and then even the actual professionals that are on the ground with some of these really high level organizations. They're thinking about things from a purely physical standpoint. They're thinking about how can we stretch this muscle? How can we open up this range of motion? And they're not really thinking about those deeper aspects on the identity level, on the belief level of the.
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Speaker 2: Human in front of them.
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Speaker 5: It just comes down to having to do the work on all levels. The players have to do the work. The actual practitioners have to do the work. Everybody has to be involved. It can't just be this thing where people at the top are telling somebody else what to do, but they're not actually living that lifestyle.
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Speaker 2: The same reason why.
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Speaker 5: These players, in my opinion, are getting injured is the same reason why nothing is really being done about it is because the same people who are treating them are stuck up in their heads as well.
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Speaker 1: But why are we so reluctant to acknowledge the connection between mind and body? Stefan had some thoughts.
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Speaker 5: People really like to separate things. Maybe it's our human mind. We like to have everything in their own individual silos. Like this is, you know, the mind and this is the physical body and this is your emotions. But as I said before, there's a very clear link between all of those things. So if we're only attacking one level, there's no way that we're going to get the results that we want.
00:19:07
Speaker 1: People do love to separate and compartmentalize things. But to me, when I'm watching athletes compete, it's so obvious that everything is connected in the mind and body. It made me wonder how much athletes are already leaning into this mind-body connection, even to the meditation of it all, without even knowing it. I imagine that given the concept of meditation, a lot of athletes might sort of feel daunted by it or even put off by it, since it's so foreign to so many of them in their daily lives. But like we were talking about with the free throw line, or even when they're just sort of in that zone, it feels like there's so much deep breathing, centering, and all of these sort of mindfulness practices happening. So I went back to George to ask, how much of this stuff is already being incorporated without the athletes even realizing it?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think babies, you watch babies breed, do the belly breathing. You don't have to tell them. They know how to breathe and whatnot.
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Speaker 3: I would say that there's a misperception about what meditation is. So meditation, people say, OK, I'm going to sit in and be quiet. But there's a couple of philosophers I'll refer to. One is Snoop Dogg. The other one is Dr.
00:20:13
Speaker 5: Dre.
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Speaker 3: And they have a song, and the line in the song is, I have my mind on money, money on my mind. That's meditation. So the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep, we're meditating. To meditate means to contemplate. To contemplate means to look at repeatedly or look at closely. I would say we're meditating all the time. We're just not conscious of it. But I would tell you this, whatever you hold in mind will manifest. There's a book called The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale.
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Speaker 2: And you know what The Strangest Secret is? What is that? We become what we think about.
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Speaker 3: So you're meditating whether you want to admit it or not. So whatever you're holding in mind, whatever you put your attention on, that's your meditation. I have my mind on failure, failure on my mind.
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Speaker 2: I have my mind on love. I have love on my mind.
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Speaker 3: It's really simple, but we don't do this self-inquiry, the continuous self-inquiry.
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Speaker 2: We don't reflect on what we're thinking about.
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Speaker 3: And so when we hold something in mind, it has an impact on how we feel I found.
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Speaker 1: That incredibly profound and kind of mind-breaking. We're already meditating all the time. It's so simple, but it's so true. I needed to talk to other experts about this idea of athletes already participating in meditation without even knowing it. I admittedly don't know that much about meditation, even after all this research, so I wanted to talk to someone else who has dedicated their life to this work. So I spoke to meditation guru Hakeem Tafari, who's here in L.A.
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Speaker 4: Just by certain coincidences, causes and conditions, I got introduced to Zen Buddhism. For me, what really changed my life in such a profound way was the intersection of mindfulness and running.
00:22:00
Speaker 1: Hakeem works with elite runners and guided meditations for long distance running, which totally makes sense. running does seem so inherently meditative. So could other sports be considered that too? Even though there's so much more going on in a basketball game, could you consider that a moving meditation?
00:22:16
Speaker 4: The act of mindfulness within the sport, whether you're talking running, baseball, golf, basketball, there's a certain level of being mindful and bodyful in the motion of what you're doing. And that in itself, I guess, is the practice. And you get into a thing called a zone, right? You get into that zone where it almost becomes a meditation.
00:22:47
Speaker 1: I talked to Hakeem about this concept of getting into the zone, that super present place where everything else fades away.
00:22:56
Speaker 4: But the mindfulness, the being mindful of how you move, the way you move, the way you are anticipating another move, the way you are anticipating your opponent or whoever you're guarding. A lot of these sports.
00:23:11
Speaker 2: Are very mental.
00:23:13
Speaker 4: In Buddhism, there's a thing that we refer to that is coming back to the breath, coming back to the body. It's a way to recenter. It's a way to reset the central nervous system. And some of those are key examples of that practice. So when you're taking a penalty, Right. Before you're looking at the goalkeeper, there's an awareness that happens. There's a certain mindfulness that happens. You're taking a deep breath. And it's the same thing at the free throw line. You see a lot of these athletes taking a big, deep breath, coming back because it's a recentering, a resetting of the nervous system.
00:23:52
Speaker 1: What I'd noticed at the free throw line, intentional or not, was this exact notion of recentering. And what Hakeem is referencing here is something called the flow state, which no matter what people think about mindfulness is something they all seem to agree definitely exists. It's the state where everything is in harmony. Your body, your mind, your focus, all connected and totally at ease. And maybe unsurprisingly, in my many interviews to prepare for this episode, the concept of flow state came up time and time again. Here's Hakeem.
00:24:24
Speaker 4: There is a concept of the non-self. the non-attachment, and it's when you become part of that flow state. So in Tai Chi, we talk about the sword, we being the tip of the sword, right? So it's not just holding the sword, but I am the actual tip of the sword. And that can only be attained when you let go. So when you let go doubt, when you let go fear, when you let go insecurities, you become free, you become liberated.
00:25:02
Speaker 1: There's a letting go. And George agrees. There's something spiritual about that.
00:25:07
Speaker 2: You get to the place where you're doing something for the activity of.
00:25:11
Speaker 3: Being in the moment and doing the thing in and of itself for no reason, for no gaining idea. You're just being, you're just doing what you know to do and you're in the flow, you're in the rhythm and you lose yourself in the activity.
00:25:23
Speaker 2: Your sense of self, your self-consciousness, how am I doing and whatnot.
00:25:27
Speaker 3: Because you disappear and it's just you being in the flow of life, just being in the rhythm of what's happening.
00:25:36
Speaker 1: My journey to learn more about meditation gets a lot more personal after the break. After several days of deep diving on this topic and talking to all the experts, I realized something. I was learning so much about how powerful these practices are, how transformative they can be, what they feel like, look like, sound like, but I hadn't tried for myself. The few times I had tried meditating in the past, I wrote it off almost immediately. I felt like my mind was too busy and my inner skeptic voice was way too loud. But if I was going to really understand the power of meditation and basketball, I knew the ultimate truth. I was going to need to set my skepticism aside and try it for myself, with fresh eyes and an open mind. So I went to Hakeem's beautiful, sunny dojo in Larchmont Village. Immediately upon entering, it had incredible energy. There were plants everywhere, sun pouring in through a ton of windows, and the scent of warm, woody incense permeating throughout. It was hard not to feel calm immediately.
00:26:54
Speaker 4: So, why don't you sit comfortable.
00:26:57
Speaker 5: Okay.
00:26:58
Speaker 4: I want you to just relax. Be as comfortable as you possibly can. And from here, I want you to just take in a big, deep breath. Take your time. Just hold it. And then let go. Breathe out.
00:27:24
Speaker 1: At this point, I'm sitting on Hakeem's couch, still wondering if I'm even capable of meditating well, whatever that means. But I'm trying to quiet the doubts.
00:27:34
Speaker 2: And from here, all you have to do is just sit.
00:27:41
Speaker 4: I don't want you to think about anything from today, this afternoon.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: The garbage truck in the background.
00:27:54
Speaker 4: And that's all good. That's all good. All I want you to do is this. Be present and be aware of where you are right now. And take in soft breaths. In through the nose and out through the nose. Don't force anything. You don't have to force any thoughts. You don't have to move a certain way. Just be here now.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: This goes on for about two or three minutes before Hakeem gently brings me out of the meditation.
00:28:36
Speaker 4: We're going to do three cooling breaths. And on the last breath, we're just going to make a big sigh out the mouth. And we're going to slowly open our eyes. And with that clear knowing, Knowing that you're breathing in and breathing out. Taking a big deep breath in through the nose. And exhaling through the mouth. Letting anything and everything go that does not serve you. When you're ready, slowly open your eyes.
00:29:22
Speaker 1: That was so cool.
00:29:23
Speaker 4: Okay.
00:29:25
Speaker 1: I was holding the mic in my right hand and like the whole right side of my body felt heavier than.
00:29:31
Speaker 5: The left side.
00:29:33
Speaker 1: Like it was like the mic was like exaggerated where I felt the weight on this whole side of my body because I was just so like in it that this side felt light and floaty and this side felt like it was so tilted, but it was so cool. It was like being like anchored down and for a second I was like why does this side feel heavy and.
00:29:50
Speaker 5: I was like I felt the mic in my hand and I.
00:29:52
Speaker 1: Like have been forgetting that I was holding it that was so so cool wow thank you so much I was genuinely bowled over at how quickly everything slipped away at how my body and mind were able to completely surrender to this state of relaxation. Maybe meditation was within reach, even for me, whose brain seemingly never shuts off and who had to fight off so much skepticism. I went back to George to ask him how he handles a skeptical student. If he was given a team, for example, with an athlete on it who tells him, oh, I really can't do meditation, I get too distracted, my thoughts just wander, I just can't do it. What would he say to that athlete?
00:30:35
Speaker 2: Well, you are doing it.
00:30:36
Speaker 3: You just feel uncomfortable about it. You're actually acknowledging and seeing your mind is out of control. And so when you're sitting there and your intention is to be in your body, be breathing, like now just think.
00:30:50
Speaker 2: About you're sitting. Can you be aware of sitting?
00:30:54
Speaker 3: And you can be aware and you can, it's not something, you can have a direct experience of it because what does it feel like when you're sitting? Well, there's certain parts of my body that I'm making contact with the surfaces and whatnot, with my hands on my eyes and whatnot. You can do that even if it's just a little bit. But when you try to do that, your mind is going to wander off and you say, I can't do it.
00:31:13
Speaker 2: No, you're doing it.
00:31:14
Speaker 3: It's just that it's uncomfortable to see that your mind is out of control, but you're doing what I asked you to do. But at some point, if you stay with it, then you'll notice that, oh, If you know that your mind is distracted, then that's the practice.
00:31:28
Speaker 2: That's it. So that takes a certain level.
00:31:31
Speaker 3: Of courage, confidence, and just do it until you can do it and then you'll notice it. And so our job is to train ourselves to be able to say yes to whatever comes up, to see it and allow it, create space for it. And by seeing it and allowing it to be there, there's a freedom. There's an ability to actually see it and learn from it.
00:31:52
Speaker 1: It sounds so simple, but it really is so much about surrender. About saying yes to what comes up and saying yes to not being fully in control. Just being in your body and being aware. And that's the flow state. That's the free throw line. So yes, meditation and mindfulness are actually already happening in sports all the time. But it's so much more than that. Because all of us are meditating all the time without even knowing it. Like George and the prophets Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre said earlier, some of us are doing it in an intentional way, but we're all doing it all the time. Whatever we're dwelling on, we're meditating on. It's really about what we choose to do with that. How we interact with it, how we tune into our bodies, how much we're willing to slow down and listen. The things I learned on this journey from George and from Hakeem and Stefan can help anyone, not just famous NBA players, to uncover the best versions of ourselves.
00:32:57
Speaker 3: Michelangelo, when he, the artist, when he used to make these amazing sculptures and they say, well, how do you do that? And he said, all I do is chip away to get to the masterpiece that's already there. And so what we need to know is we have everything we need to succeed. I'm not trying to fix anyone. And when I look at you, Claire, I see a masterpiece. I see the vine spark. And so if I can see that and hold that for you and you can see it and share it with the rest of us, then that's dope. Then we're onto something. But we have everything we need to succeed. And it's just a matter of whether we're willing to access it. So my job is to know myself so I can be myself, so I can express myself, so I can share myself.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: And that self is the inside job. There's only one me. And that's the same for you. and everyone else.
00:33:45
Speaker 3: So I want people to know that they're a bad mofo and they just have to decide to be who they are, to follow their bliss.
00:33:58
Speaker 1: Basketball Etc. is a production of School of Humans, iHeart Podcasts, and Life Here is Grand. I'm your host, creator, and producer, Claire DeLune. My guests for this episode were George Mumford, Stéphane Devivier, and Hakeem Tafari. Amelia Brock is our senior producer and story editor. Kurt Guerin is our audio guru. Our theme song is India, India by Dosh. Executive producers are myself, Jason English, Peter Bauer, Raj Haldar, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. Special thanks to Will Pearson. If you enjoyed today's episode, tell a friend to tell a friend. Don't forget to hit that follow or subscribe button on your podcast platform of choice so you don't miss an episode. And please take a moment to rate and review. Tune in again next week for more basketball, etc.
Speaker 1: Basketball Etc. is a production of iHeart Podcasts, School of Humans, and Life Heroes Grant.
00:00:14
Speaker 2: Have you ever.
00:00:14
Speaker 1: Watched an NBA player take a free throw? I mean, obviously it happens a lot in a basketball game, so of course you have. But have you ever really paid attention to what's happening at the free throw line? Okay, close your eyes and imagine it with me. It's the fourth quarter, it's a tie game that's been back and forth for the whole time, the arena's going absolutely crazy, and the tension couldn't be higher. But someone gets fouled, and they're headed to the line. In all the commotion, all the chaos, suddenly everything becomes....
00:00:53
Speaker 2: Still.
00:00:57
Speaker 1: And something kind of remarkable happens. The free throw taker closes their eyes for a moment. Their shoulders rise up to their ears as they take a super deep, slow breath. In through their nose and out through their mouth. For that one moment, it's like everyone and everything in the arena just fade away. It's just them, the ball, and the hoop. And then they shoot it. And the crowd in the game and the noise all reappear. But for those few seconds at the free throw line, that player was meditating. At least that's what I see when I watch NBA games, because that's my job. My name's Claire DeLune, and I write about basketball for The Guardian. And it's my job to pick up on all the little nuances you might not notice on and off the basketball court. Because for me, there's so much more there to be interested in than just X's and O's and who got traded where. At this point, beyond it just being my job, I kind of live and breathe basketball. Or as much as you can without actually being the one getting paid to play the sport. Even though I started out as a touring musician who just liked watching basketball in my green room while I waited for soundcheck. And that's why I tend to notice things about the sport that go beyond the play-by-play and typical analysis. Don't get me wrong, I love listening to podcasts that cover that stuff too. But I did really feel like I was missing something else in my basketball podcast diet. Somewhere for basketball stories that might be a little too different or out of left field. Welcome to Basketball Etc. My version of the show I always wished I could listen to. We'll speak with players, experts, celebrities, journalists, podcasters, basketball insiders, fans, and more to go beyond the box score and tell the stories that make us fall more and more in love with this game. I'm your host, Claire DeLune, and today in our first episode, we'll be looking into the intersection of basketball and meditation. My fascination with what appeared to be a miniature meditation that almost every player does at the free throw line and that some of them, like LeBron James, even do while sitting on the bench waiting for the game to start, led me down a rabbit hole of sorts. How much are basketball players really meditating? And are they doing it on purpose or kind of by accident? I got a little obsessed and I started googling as much as I could on the subject. Pretty quickly, following that rabbit hole led me to a man named George Mumford, who, as it turns out, is kind of the godfather of mindfulness and meditation in the NBA. But who exactly is George Mumford?
00:03:59
Speaker 2: Sometimes I've been referred to as a performance whisperer.
00:04:03
Speaker 3: My philosophy is everybody has a masterpiece and their job is to access it and to share it with the rest of us.
00:04:09
Speaker 2: I just help people unlock their masterpiece.
00:04:12
Speaker 1: George Mumford is a mindfulness and performance coach who works specifically with elite athletes, teaching them all about the power of meditation and mindfulness and why it matters for both athletic performance and just life in general, too. He's even written books on the topic, including the Bible of this subject matter, The Mindful Athlete, which I read, loved, and informed a lot of what we talk about in my conversation with him. George has worked with people like.
00:04:37
Speaker 3: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen.
00:04:43
Speaker 1: So no big deal, just a pretty impressive roster of players. I wanted to learn more about how he realized there was a space, like an actual job, where he could combine his love of basketball and his passion for meditation. He started playing basketball as a child and always loved it. But some twists of fate, like injuries and subsequently addiction that came out of medicating those injuries, kept him from playing professionally. And recovering from that addiction ultimately led him to meditation and Zen. But basketball has been this through line in his life. He was even roommates with Dr. J in college. So even when he followed that path of meditation, it ultimately led him back to basketball, which we'll get into later. I talked to George about the sort of unpredictable, circuitous path that led him here. It sounds like from the book that you didn't have a ton of exposure to this type of way of life growing up, like mindfulness, meditation.
00:05:37
Speaker 2: No, no.
00:05:38
Speaker 1: Like there wasn't a whole lot of that. So when you first found it in the path in your recovery, were you reluctant to it at first? How did you perceive it at first? And how quickly did you know that it really resonated with you and it was something that you were going to end up spending a lot of your time doing?
00:05:54
Speaker 3: So I think 12-step recovery pretty much saved my life. And once I got in this 12-step recovery and then finding out I had chronic pain, I had to look at things differently because these things were offered to me in college, obviously, but my thing was, you know, just give me a brew and get out.
00:06:14
Speaker 2: Of my face. I don't have time for that soft stuff, right?
00:06:18
Speaker 3: But I call it in my book, The Mindful Athlete, Secrets to Pure Performance, I call it the AOF method of motivation. I don't know if you remember what the AOF stands for.
00:06:28
Speaker 1: Is it Bleep on fire?
00:06:31
Speaker 2: Yes, that's it. You didn't want me to say the word. Oh, you can say it.
00:06:35
Speaker 1: Posterior on fire.
00:06:36
Speaker 2: Posterior, you know, ass on fire, basically.
00:06:41
Speaker 3: It's like that old story about, you know, you could put a frog in a pan and keep the flame down low and the frog will stay in there and boil.
00:06:49
Speaker 2: But if you turn it up, the frog will jump out.
00:06:51
Speaker 3: And so it's nothing like adversity or like I like to say, there's no atheist in the foxhole. When you're in a foxhole and your life is on the line for it, then you say, oh, God, help me.
00:07:03
Speaker 1: At this point, though, it looked like any dreams of playing basketball professionally were in the rearview mirror.
00:07:09
Speaker 3: I had no idea what I was going to be doing, whether or not I was going to be involved in basketball. And then in 1987, I found myself when they were retiring Julius's number. And I'm at the presentation that came to me that, oh, Julius is retired. And if I would have made the NBA, I'd be retiring also. So maybe I can let that dream go.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: So he worked in corporate America for a bit, but he was miserable and he knew he needed a change. This was around the same time he was actively going through recovery.
00:07:40
Speaker 3: It's interesting because when I left my corporate job, it was right around the time I was watching The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell. And he talked about the idea of follow your bliss. And that's what I did. I followed my bliss. And when you follow your bliss, doors open where there were no doors.
00:07:57
Speaker 1: And following his bliss meant pursuing mindfulness more seriously as a career path. George went to go work with Jon Kabat-Zinn, a legend in the field who he'd met through his studies in Zinn's mindfulness-based stress reduction program. And in the early 90s, they created the Inner City Stress Reduction Clinic together. It was during that time that Phil Jackson reached out to Zinn, a friend of his, and asked if he knew anyone who would be a good fit to teach some of these practices to the Chicago Bulls, the team Jackson was coaching at the time. And due to George's background playing basketball in high school and college and his connection to Dr. J, Zinn knew the perfect man for the job.
00:08:34
Speaker 3: Back in those times, the catch word was Zinn, you know, that Zinn stuff. So, of course, Phil being the Zinn master and me helping him, teach the Chicago Bulls and that was about 32 years ago in 1993. I was still working at the medical center and he asked me to come in and teach the guys how to deal with the stress of success because they had just won three NBA championships in a row and the only other team to win more than two in a row up to that point were the Boston Celtics.
00:09:02
Speaker 2: They won eight in a row.
00:09:03
Speaker 1: It went so well with the Bulls and George that Phil kept him on to work with him down the line with the Lakers. With Phil as coach, both teams reached historic heights, winning multiple championships, all with George helping the players keep their heads.
00:09:18
Speaker 3: When I first started doing it, it was like a secret, you know, a secret weapon because people weren't comfortable talking about this type of development. You know, the non-physical, if I may quote Yogi Berra, the great Hall of Fame New York Yankee, he said, Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: So it's about performance.
00:09:42
Speaker 3: And in my mind, performance is having an intention and being able to execute it, to bring it into fruition in a way that you feel like you were able to fully and creatively express yourself.
00:09:55
Speaker 1: So how exactly did George achieve this focus on the mental with athletes who are so trained on the physical? His work with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, two of the greatest players in the history of the game, reveals so much about George's approach. I was curious, though, were ferocious, hyper-competitive, high-level athletes like Michael and Kobe accepting of these methods right away or skeptical? How easy were they to teach?
00:10:18
Speaker 2: Well, I would say they were probably two of my best students with MJ.
00:10:22
Speaker 4: It was.
00:10:22
Speaker 3: helping him to understand why he was able to do things and what he was able to do and offering another level. And I believe he was playing at such a spiritual level at the end because he didn't have the same physical abilities in the late 90s as he had in the 80s and early 90s. And so learning how to play spiritually, learning how to be in flow, learning how to play at a level where it's It's more your mind. It's more about your spirit and your heart and your mentality.
00:10:56
Speaker 1: One thing that was immediately fascinating to me about the idea of doing this specific type of work with players like an MJ or a Kobe is that there's a certain amount of ego and bravado almost required of being an elite athlete at that level. But this work is inherently about putting ego aside and becoming one with everything, so to speak, decentering yourself in a way. So how do you balance the necessity of that ego, but also the necessity of letting go of that ego?
00:11:25
Speaker 3: I like to say you got to be selfish so you can be selfless.
00:11:29
Speaker 2: So you have to take.
00:11:31
Speaker 5: Care of you.
00:11:31
Speaker 3: You begin with yourself, but you don't end with yourself.
00:11:34
Speaker 2: It's got to be community. It's like emotional intelligence.
00:11:37
Speaker 3: If you know anything about emotional intelligence, physical intelligence gets you so far, but then emotional intelligence takes you to the next level. But then understanding the social level, you know, the community, the team thing. And Phil always talked about the strength of the wolf is in the pack, and the strength of the pack is in the wolf.
00:11:54
Speaker 2: And one breath, one mind.
00:11:55
Speaker 3: This idea of, yeah, if you want to be a great player, you have to make those around you better.
00:12:00
Speaker 2: It takes a village.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: And so when Phil took over for the Collins, and we used the Wolves, it was fantastic.
00:12:09
Speaker 2: They were pretty much looked at, Michael Jordan and the Jordanaires.
00:12:13
Speaker 3: And so when Phil encouraged Mike to share more and to let the others, so we got to bring everybody else up. So we're not competing against another team. We're competing against potential.
00:12:28
Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant, too, is on the record with how powerful he found George's teachings and the profound effect they had on him. He's quoted on George's website as saying, George helped me understand the art of mindfulness to be neither distracted or focused, rigid or flexible, passive or aggressive. I learned to just be. I asked George what he thought Kobe meant by that.
00:12:53
Speaker 3: Well, he's really talking about coming from the eye of the hurricane or your masterpiece. You want to call it Buddha consciousness or Christ consciousness or divine spot.
00:13:03
Speaker 2: You can call it whatever you want.
00:13:05
Speaker 3: But when you can be still and know when you can just come out of that space, Joseph Campbell talked about it a little bit in The Power of Myth when he said when an athlete is in championship form, there's a place of rest inside of us that when you come out of that, you're not compelled by desire or fear. You hold your center and you just, you're in the moment and you do what you know to do. You express yourself honestly in that moment.
00:13:30
Speaker 2: You're not worried about the result. You're just focused on what you're doing, not on how you're doing. Bruce Lee talks about that.
00:13:36
Speaker 3: Martial arts just aren't the expression.
00:13:39
Speaker 2: So there's a spiritual component.
00:13:41
Speaker 3: Where you know it, but you can only know it by experiencing it. And even if you experience it, the words just point to it. And so my job is to give people a direct experience of what I'm offering.
00:13:52
Speaker 2: So now they own it. So it's not something you have to believe.
00:13:55
Speaker 3: It's something that you had a direct experience or it goes from faith to conviction because you know it to be true.
00:14:04
Speaker 1: So much of this is about the mental, but if there's this mind-body connection, how does the body play into it all? More on that after the break. All of this talk about the mind-body connection made me wonder about the ways that this mindfulness stuff manifests in the body. Beyond just in the positive way, like the tools Kobe and Michael learned from George, how does the opposite, the stress and trauma we hold in our bodies, contribute to ailments or even injuries in sports? Can a disruption in the mind contribute to a disruption.
00:14:51
Speaker 2: In the body? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, your immune system.
00:14:55
Speaker 3: If I'm in a fight, flight, or freeze, what happens is staying in that high stress level, my immune function doesn't function. So I get more immune to disease and illnesses and accidents because my body is ready to fight, fight, or freeze. And there's a gentleman, his name is Bruce Lipton. He wrote a book called The Biology of Belief. And in that book, he said on a cellular level, a cell is either in survival mode or growth mode.
00:15:21
Speaker 2: Can't be in both. So what's the lesson? Well, you're in this, you know, it's a fixed mindset. I'm screwed. I can't change. And I'm feeling the stress.
00:15:29
Speaker 1: And then he mentioned something I had never even heard before. Eustress, defined as good stress, a positive physical and psychological response to a challenge.
00:15:39
Speaker 2: We need stress.
00:15:40
Speaker 3: We need the body to get uncomfortable. That's when we grow. And so there's the stress management. So we have to understand some people have low stress. And so they're, you know, it's like depressed or apathy or low energy, and then there's people that have hyper. So we got to balance those two. So you got to balance the eustress with this is where I am, this is where I'm going, there's a eustress, and then there's a distress where things are acting on us and we feel like we don't have the resources to meet it.
00:16:10
Speaker 2: So life is.
00:16:11
Speaker 3: The balance of eustress, distress, hyperstress, understress, and that's where the self-regulation comes in.
00:16:18
Speaker 2: So I say no struggle, no swag.
00:16:25
Speaker 1: So I once again turned to the internet and stumbled upon an interesting Instagram video. It was about Luka Doncic and his recent injury and the idea that it could be linked to all of the stress and emotional turmoil in his life lately.
00:16:39
Speaker 5: Two weeks after the custody headlines peaked, His hamstring gives out. When your nervous system is in a chronic state of threat, your body literally changes how it functions. Your hamstring doesn't just randomly tear. It tears because the tissue has been under siege for months from a nervous system that never got to come down.
00:16:59
Speaker 1: So I knew I needed to reach out to its creator, performance coach Stéphane Devivier.
00:17:05
Speaker 5: Yeah, so currently I coach former athletes to help them restore their athleticism and get back to the body and even surpass the body that they had when they were in their 20s.
00:17:17
Speaker 1: While he does work with individual players, Stefan emphasizes that this kind of mental work, what's necessary to prevent the negative sort of mind-body connection, needs to come from the top down, from the sports organizations themselves. It shouldn't just be on the athletes to understand and implement these connections.
00:17:35
Speaker 5: You know, you see all these people on Instagram, social media, and then even the actual professionals that are on the ground with some of these really high level organizations. They're thinking about things from a purely physical standpoint. They're thinking about how can we stretch this muscle? How can we open up this range of motion? And they're not really thinking about those deeper aspects on the identity level, on the belief level of the.
00:18:03
Speaker 2: Human in front of them.
00:18:04
Speaker 5: It just comes down to having to do the work on all levels. The players have to do the work. The actual practitioners have to do the work. Everybody has to be involved. It can't just be this thing where people at the top are telling somebody else what to do, but they're not actually living that lifestyle.
00:18:22
Speaker 2: The same reason why.
00:18:24
Speaker 5: These players, in my opinion, are getting injured is the same reason why nothing is really being done about it is because the same people who are treating them are stuck up in their heads as well.
00:18:35
Speaker 1: But why are we so reluctant to acknowledge the connection between mind and body? Stefan had some thoughts.
00:18:42
Speaker 5: People really like to separate things. Maybe it's our human mind. We like to have everything in their own individual silos. Like this is, you know, the mind and this is the physical body and this is your emotions. But as I said before, there's a very clear link between all of those things. So if we're only attacking one level, there's no way that we're going to get the results that we want.
00:19:07
Speaker 1: People do love to separate and compartmentalize things. But to me, when I'm watching athletes compete, it's so obvious that everything is connected in the mind and body. It made me wonder how much athletes are already leaning into this mind-body connection, even to the meditation of it all, without even knowing it. I imagine that given the concept of meditation, a lot of athletes might sort of feel daunted by it or even put off by it, since it's so foreign to so many of them in their daily lives. But like we were talking about with the free throw line, or even when they're just sort of in that zone, it feels like there's so much deep breathing, centering, and all of these sort of mindfulness practices happening. So I went back to George to ask, how much of this stuff is already being incorporated without the athletes even realizing it?
00:19:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think babies, you watch babies breed, do the belly breathing. You don't have to tell them. They know how to breathe and whatnot.
00:20:00
Speaker 3: I would say that there's a misperception about what meditation is. So meditation, people say, OK, I'm going to sit in and be quiet. But there's a couple of philosophers I'll refer to. One is Snoop Dogg. The other one is Dr.
00:20:13
Speaker 5: Dre.
00:20:14
Speaker 3: And they have a song, and the line in the song is, I have my mind on money, money on my mind. That's meditation. So the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep, we're meditating. To meditate means to contemplate. To contemplate means to look at repeatedly or look at closely. I would say we're meditating all the time. We're just not conscious of it. But I would tell you this, whatever you hold in mind will manifest. There's a book called The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale.
00:20:40
Speaker 2: And you know what The Strangest Secret is? What is that? We become what we think about.
00:20:45
Speaker 3: So you're meditating whether you want to admit it or not. So whatever you're holding in mind, whatever you put your attention on, that's your meditation. I have my mind on failure, failure on my mind.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: I have my mind on love. I have love on my mind.
00:21:02
Speaker 3: It's really simple, but we don't do this self-inquiry, the continuous self-inquiry.
00:21:07
Speaker 2: We don't reflect on what we're thinking about.
00:21:09
Speaker 3: And so when we hold something in mind, it has an impact on how we feel I found.
00:21:14
Speaker 1: That incredibly profound and kind of mind-breaking. We're already meditating all the time. It's so simple, but it's so true. I needed to talk to other experts about this idea of athletes already participating in meditation without even knowing it. I admittedly don't know that much about meditation, even after all this research, so I wanted to talk to someone else who has dedicated their life to this work. So I spoke to meditation guru Hakeem Tafari, who's here in L.A.
00:21:44
Speaker 4: Just by certain coincidences, causes and conditions, I got introduced to Zen Buddhism. For me, what really changed my life in such a profound way was the intersection of mindfulness and running.
00:22:00
Speaker 1: Hakeem works with elite runners and guided meditations for long distance running, which totally makes sense. running does seem so inherently meditative. So could other sports be considered that too? Even though there's so much more going on in a basketball game, could you consider that a moving meditation?
00:22:16
Speaker 4: The act of mindfulness within the sport, whether you're talking running, baseball, golf, basketball, there's a certain level of being mindful and bodyful in the motion of what you're doing. And that in itself, I guess, is the practice. And you get into a thing called a zone, right? You get into that zone where it almost becomes a meditation.
00:22:47
Speaker 1: I talked to Hakeem about this concept of getting into the zone, that super present place where everything else fades away.
00:22:56
Speaker 4: But the mindfulness, the being mindful of how you move, the way you move, the way you are anticipating another move, the way you are anticipating your opponent or whoever you're guarding. A lot of these sports.
00:23:11
Speaker 2: Are very mental.
00:23:13
Speaker 4: In Buddhism, there's a thing that we refer to that is coming back to the breath, coming back to the body. It's a way to recenter. It's a way to reset the central nervous system. And some of those are key examples of that practice. So when you're taking a penalty, Right. Before you're looking at the goalkeeper, there's an awareness that happens. There's a certain mindfulness that happens. You're taking a deep breath. And it's the same thing at the free throw line. You see a lot of these athletes taking a big, deep breath, coming back because it's a recentering, a resetting of the nervous system.
00:23:52
Speaker 1: What I'd noticed at the free throw line, intentional or not, was this exact notion of recentering. And what Hakeem is referencing here is something called the flow state, which no matter what people think about mindfulness is something they all seem to agree definitely exists. It's the state where everything is in harmony. Your body, your mind, your focus, all connected and totally at ease. And maybe unsurprisingly, in my many interviews to prepare for this episode, the concept of flow state came up time and time again. Here's Hakeem.
00:24:24
Speaker 4: There is a concept of the non-self. the non-attachment, and it's when you become part of that flow state. So in Tai Chi, we talk about the sword, we being the tip of the sword, right? So it's not just holding the sword, but I am the actual tip of the sword. And that can only be attained when you let go. So when you let go doubt, when you let go fear, when you let go insecurities, you become free, you become liberated.
00:25:02
Speaker 1: There's a letting go. And George agrees. There's something spiritual about that.
00:25:07
Speaker 2: You get to the place where you're doing something for the activity of.
00:25:11
Speaker 3: Being in the moment and doing the thing in and of itself for no reason, for no gaining idea. You're just being, you're just doing what you know to do and you're in the flow, you're in the rhythm and you lose yourself in the activity.
00:25:23
Speaker 2: Your sense of self, your self-consciousness, how am I doing and whatnot.
00:25:27
Speaker 3: Because you disappear and it's just you being in the flow of life, just being in the rhythm of what's happening.
00:25:36
Speaker 1: My journey to learn more about meditation gets a lot more personal after the break. After several days of deep diving on this topic and talking to all the experts, I realized something. I was learning so much about how powerful these practices are, how transformative they can be, what they feel like, look like, sound like, but I hadn't tried for myself. The few times I had tried meditating in the past, I wrote it off almost immediately. I felt like my mind was too busy and my inner skeptic voice was way too loud. But if I was going to really understand the power of meditation and basketball, I knew the ultimate truth. I was going to need to set my skepticism aside and try it for myself, with fresh eyes and an open mind. So I went to Hakeem's beautiful, sunny dojo in Larchmont Village. Immediately upon entering, it had incredible energy. There were plants everywhere, sun pouring in through a ton of windows, and the scent of warm, woody incense permeating throughout. It was hard not to feel calm immediately.
00:26:54
Speaker 4: So, why don't you sit comfortable.
00:26:57
Speaker 5: Okay.
00:26:58
Speaker 4: I want you to just relax. Be as comfortable as you possibly can. And from here, I want you to just take in a big, deep breath. Take your time. Just hold it. And then let go. Breathe out.
00:27:24
Speaker 1: At this point, I'm sitting on Hakeem's couch, still wondering if I'm even capable of meditating well, whatever that means. But I'm trying to quiet the doubts.
00:27:34
Speaker 2: And from here, all you have to do is just sit.
00:27:41
Speaker 4: I don't want you to think about anything from today, this afternoon.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: The garbage truck in the background.
00:27:54
Speaker 4: And that's all good. That's all good. All I want you to do is this. Be present and be aware of where you are right now. And take in soft breaths. In through the nose and out through the nose. Don't force anything. You don't have to force any thoughts. You don't have to move a certain way. Just be here now.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: This goes on for about two or three minutes before Hakeem gently brings me out of the meditation.
00:28:36
Speaker 4: We're going to do three cooling breaths. And on the last breath, we're just going to make a big sigh out the mouth. And we're going to slowly open our eyes. And with that clear knowing, Knowing that you're breathing in and breathing out. Taking a big deep breath in through the nose. And exhaling through the mouth. Letting anything and everything go that does not serve you. When you're ready, slowly open your eyes.
00:29:22
Speaker 1: That was so cool.
00:29:23
Speaker 4: Okay.
00:29:25
Speaker 1: I was holding the mic in my right hand and like the whole right side of my body felt heavier than.
00:29:31
Speaker 5: The left side.
00:29:33
Speaker 1: Like it was like the mic was like exaggerated where I felt the weight on this whole side of my body because I was just so like in it that this side felt light and floaty and this side felt like it was so tilted, but it was so cool. It was like being like anchored down and for a second I was like why does this side feel heavy and.
00:29:50
Speaker 5: I was like I felt the mic in my hand and I.
00:29:52
Speaker 1: Like have been forgetting that I was holding it that was so so cool wow thank you so much I was genuinely bowled over at how quickly everything slipped away at how my body and mind were able to completely surrender to this state of relaxation. Maybe meditation was within reach, even for me, whose brain seemingly never shuts off and who had to fight off so much skepticism. I went back to George to ask him how he handles a skeptical student. If he was given a team, for example, with an athlete on it who tells him, oh, I really can't do meditation, I get too distracted, my thoughts just wander, I just can't do it. What would he say to that athlete?
00:30:35
Speaker 2: Well, you are doing it.
00:30:36
Speaker 3: You just feel uncomfortable about it. You're actually acknowledging and seeing your mind is out of control. And so when you're sitting there and your intention is to be in your body, be breathing, like now just think.
00:30:50
Speaker 2: About you're sitting. Can you be aware of sitting?
00:30:54
Speaker 3: And you can be aware and you can, it's not something, you can have a direct experience of it because what does it feel like when you're sitting? Well, there's certain parts of my body that I'm making contact with the surfaces and whatnot, with my hands on my eyes and whatnot. You can do that even if it's just a little bit. But when you try to do that, your mind is going to wander off and you say, I can't do it.
00:31:13
Speaker 2: No, you're doing it.
00:31:14
Speaker 3: It's just that it's uncomfortable to see that your mind is out of control, but you're doing what I asked you to do. But at some point, if you stay with it, then you'll notice that, oh, If you know that your mind is distracted, then that's the practice.
00:31:28
Speaker 2: That's it. So that takes a certain level.
00:31:31
Speaker 3: Of courage, confidence, and just do it until you can do it and then you'll notice it. And so our job is to train ourselves to be able to say yes to whatever comes up, to see it and allow it, create space for it. And by seeing it and allowing it to be there, there's a freedom. There's an ability to actually see it and learn from it.
00:31:52
Speaker 1: It sounds so simple, but it really is so much about surrender. About saying yes to what comes up and saying yes to not being fully in control. Just being in your body and being aware. And that's the flow state. That's the free throw line. So yes, meditation and mindfulness are actually already happening in sports all the time. But it's so much more than that. Because all of us are meditating all the time without even knowing it. Like George and the prophets Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre said earlier, some of us are doing it in an intentional way, but we're all doing it all the time. Whatever we're dwelling on, we're meditating on. It's really about what we choose to do with that. How we interact with it, how we tune into our bodies, how much we're willing to slow down and listen. The things I learned on this journey from George and from Hakeem and Stefan can help anyone, not just famous NBA players, to uncover the best versions of ourselves.
00:32:57
Speaker 3: Michelangelo, when he, the artist, when he used to make these amazing sculptures and they say, well, how do you do that? And he said, all I do is chip away to get to the masterpiece that's already there. And so what we need to know is we have everything we need to succeed. I'm not trying to fix anyone. And when I look at you, Claire, I see a masterpiece. I see the vine spark. And so if I can see that and hold that for you and you can see it and share it with the rest of us, then that's dope. Then we're onto something. But we have everything we need to succeed. And it's just a matter of whether we're willing to access it. So my job is to know myself so I can be myself, so I can express myself, so I can share myself.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: And that self is the inside job. There's only one me. And that's the same for you. and everyone else.
00:33:45
Speaker 3: So I want people to know that they're a bad mofo and they just have to decide to be who they are, to follow their bliss.
00:33:58
Speaker 1: Basketball Etc. is a production of School of Humans, iHeart Podcasts, and Life Here is Grand. I'm your host, creator, and producer, Claire DeLune. My guests for this episode were George Mumford, Stéphane Devivier, and Hakeem Tafari. Amelia Brock is our senior producer and story editor. Kurt Guerin is our audio guru. Our theme song is India, India by Dosh. Executive producers are myself, Jason English, Peter Bauer, Raj Haldar, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. Special thanks to Will Pearson. If you enjoyed today's episode, tell a friend to tell a friend. Don't forget to hit that follow or subscribe button on your podcast platform of choice so you don't miss an episode. And please take a moment to rate and review. Tune in again next week for more basketball, etc.
