Greetings!
I’m Becky Tellum, Editor-in-Chief at themindedathlete.com and you have obviously come to this page to find out who we are and what we intend to do. In response, I ask that you indulge me for a moment:
There is so often a deficit between a word’s general use, and the deeper meaning it intends to convey.
Take the Japanese word 元気 (Genki). As part of the common refrain ‘Genki desu ka,’ its use as a simple ‘How are you’ belittles the philosophical origin of the word. Formed from two characters ‘元’ (gen), meaning root or foundation and 気 (ki), meaning spirit or soul a more accurate translation of the question – used by Japanese as casually as we might say ‘Hey,’ to one another – is ‘how far is the motivating spirit within you up to the challenges of the day?’
The origin of such hidden context is easy to guess. After all the connection between mind body and spirit is one that we all understand on an intuitive level. Who among us hasn’t – even after a good night’s sleep – woken up to a day that we wish would ‘just go away?’ We toe the line of nutritional recommendations, drink down our allotted glasses of water and walk an extra block or two on the way home to meet our ‘steps’ goal for the week. We do those things, and for the most part, it works. It did for me.
Mostly.
But there were always those days when something was off-kilter when my ‘heart’ wasn’t in it when inner pep talks failed to motivate my ‘best-me’ into a higher gear. There were always those non-Genki days of unfathomable origin.
There was no single epiphany. There were no philosophical texts or moments of zen that led me to the connection between the body/mind/spirit paradigm and athletic performance. The physical side of things, I understood. I think we all ‘get’ that bit. The role of the mind was also opaque acting as you might expect it to; it made plans and performed the floating-point calculations that lie at the heart of all athletic prowess.
But the spirit was something else. Sometimes, no matter how hard I tried there was just no ‘there.’ I could measure my heart rate and order my thoughts, but if there was a metric for how I felt deep within myself, I had yet to find it.
Regardless of my ability to directly observe the spiritual component of athleticism, I knew how important it was. As I delved more deeply into the literature, I became convinced that spiritual well-being plays an important role in athletic performance. I finally realized that training the body, without reference to the motivating spirit within is like checking the air in the tires of a car with no engine.
I set about to explore ways of achieving inner harmony with an eye towards improving athletic performance.
And here we are.
Welcome to our community. Our team of writers and I are committed to helping you achieve harmony of body, mind, and spirit for a stronger you. We welcome your feedback and love to hear from you.