Your Mind Is All Over Your Body

There’s a saying in gyms, maybe you’ve heard it—that you have to use your mind to control your body or else your body will control your mind. But what’s even better than using one to control the other is appreciating that body and mind are not separate and that you can learn to leverage the connection for the benefit of your own (and your team’s) performance. Because, thanks to the integration of your nervous system with all your tissues and organs, your mind is effectively all over your body.

Often, when people talk about the mind in terms of control, what they’re talking about is a top-down process: the inhibitory function of the prefrontal cortex on subcortical regions of your brain—and the rest of your body, “mind over matter” so to speak.

But your body can also process information, and can do so much more quickly and without energetically costly decision-making and deliberation. “Bottom-up” (from your body up to your brain) processing refers to information from your sensory receptors flowing up to higher brain regions in a way that is not managed by your thoughts and expectations.

There are many ways to train your bottom-up processing, including allowing yourself to learn without explicit rules—to play.

And also to direct your attention outside yourself, as in when a distance runner focuses on the shoulder blades or the ponytail of the runner in front of her and moves toward her focus.

Eye Gaze and Performance

Gaze can play a powerful role in body-up processing, and there are many ways to experience and learn from the powerful relationship between visual attention, physical performance, and mental states. One way to experience the power of your gaze is through the ancient yoga practice of drishti, which involves intentionally directing your eye gaze in support of internal awareness, noticing how your gaze affects your balance, your breath, your internal state, your energy, and your thoughts.

A more contemporary technique for experiencing the power of your eye gaze is called Quiet Eye. Quiet Eye was developed by Joan Vickers over 30 years ago by observing athletes’ visual behaviors during performance. The practice of quiet eye involves fixing your eye gaze on a specific, task-relevant target before executing that task. Athletes learn when to focus and how long to sustain their gaze as they perform their task.

Fascia and Your Nervous System

Another way to explore bottom-up processing is through your fascia. Your fascia is the web of connective tissue that surrounds your bones, muscles, blood vessels, nerves, and organs. Your fascia supports the integrity of your whole body, as well as communication throughout your mind-body. Fascia is full of sensory receptors, allowing your body to respond to pressure, pain, threats, and spatial positioning.

There are many ways to connect with your fascia, including yoga and other mindful movement, progressive muscle relaxation, body scans, and any number of other techniques that can provide pathways for experiencing how your mind is not separate from your body.