Athletics' effects on the brain have received much attention in recent years, mostly through coverage of the long-term damage concussions can cause. This month, the Counseling Service is taking note of a less well-known issue regarding athletics and the brain: the impact sports can have on the psychological elements of athletes’ mental wellness.
Staff Clinician Mindy Slovinsky and Director of the Counseling Service and Wellness Programs Bernie Hershberger will soon inaugurate a sports psychology program through the Counseling Service designed to help student-athletes cope with mental blocks and stress. In his past 18 years at Bowdoin, Hershberger has helped Bowdoin athletes exercise their minds as needed. The new program will operate as weekly group sessions for any interested student-athlete.
The program will start in mid-October and run for six or seven weeks. Slovinsky said she hopes the group will serve eight to 12 students. The sessions will guide the student-athletes through meditative exercises such as conscious breathing and visualization—part of what Slovinsky calls acceptance and commitment therapy.
The ultimate goal, according to Slovinsky, is not to improve athletic performance but to help student-athletes stay aware of their thoughts. When student-athletes start succumbing to internal pressures such as a fear of failure, she said, they may exhibit detrimental behaviors like cutting classes, skipping practices and not performing as well in games.
“The therapy strives to help people be more mindful, be more present in the moment—instead of up in their heads worrying about what might happen or how they’re feeling,” said Slovinsky. “[Student-athletes] worry about those things instead of actually being present in the moment, engaged and doing stuff that’s important to them.”
A study recently published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience by researchers from University of California, San Diego, found that mPEAK training, a mindfulness regimen similar to the new Counseling Service program, enhanced athletes’ awareness of bodily signals and allowed better anticipation of and recovery from internal impulses.
Student-athletes in Bowdoin’s new program will do exercises similar to those of mPEAK, in which scientists had the athletes “mentally scan their bodies, carefully noting how each limb and internal organ felt at that moment. They also had them breathe through straws and stick their hands in ice water to accentuate their ability to focus on immediate and stressful physical sensations,” according to a New York Times article published on Wednesday.
After the mindfulness training, athletes reported lower levels of alexithymia-the inability to recognize emotions and their subtleties and textures. The training also improved the athletes’ capacity to regulate psychological pressure by considering body sensations. This practice may help reduce anxiety, improve resilience and strengthen the sense of one’s body as safe and trustworthy.
Head Coach of Women’s Rugby MaryBeth Mathews said that meditative programming had been largely useful to her team in the past, and she welcomes a new program at Bowdoin.
“Mental strength and toughness are key to the foundation for any student’s success, both in the classroom and in sport,” said Mathews. “Athletes can learn to control their attitude and mental strength via exercising their minds so that the ‘default’ is a positive and high-performing discipline with less stress, more relaxation [and] more mind-body control.”
Women’s Soccer Head Coach Brianne Weaver pointed to Hershberger’s support as critical to their success.
“[Hershberger] has led guided meditations for us that help us achieve a greater ability to focus and approach the game from a positive state of mind, and those sessions have been central to our approach to the pressure of playoffs and the postseason,” Weaver said.