Most people have heard of meditation, but have you ever considered archery meditation?
Whether you know it or not, there are a number of similarities between the two and why so many people consider archery a calming experience. Meditation also improves your focus and focus plays a large role in your accuracy.
The below information will help you understand what meditation is, the benefits of meditation, and how archery is simply another form of meditation.
Archery is an active form of meditation and works well with any style of archery!
What Is Meditation?
Meditation is a technique used to teach yourself how to focus your attention and improve your awareness. It’s is a breathing regime that you can perform to help you return to or remain in the current moment. Doing so keeps your brain focused, allowing you to be mindful in the moment. Mindfulness is an overall state of being aware, living in the present moment.
Basic breath meditation helps you train your mind to focus on the moment. When done right you can modify your thought process, increasing your individual awareness.
Active Meditation
There are two forms of meditation. Most people are aware of passive meditation, where you sit in place and practice the techniques. However, there is another form that many people are not aware of and that is active meditation. Active meditation is simply meditation in motion. It’s all about bringing focus to the task at hand and brining mindful meditation to the activity. It’s a great option for those who have a difficult time sitting in place for an extended period of time.
Active meditation requires you to be mindful of your senses while doing an activity. For example, you can practice active meditation through something as simple as cooking a meal. You can place focus on different things such as the feel of the knife in your hand, the sound of the cutting board, the smell of chopped parsley (or whatever you’re cutting), and choose to be mindful on any one of them.
Much of our behaviors occur on autopilot. By taking the time to practice active meditation, you will learn how to control your mind to your benefit. Mindfulness encourages focusing on the present, allowing you to feel much calmer because the stresses of future and past are minimized.
Reasons To Practice Meditation
People practice meditation for many reasons and the results are backed by science. If you’re considering practicing traditional/passive meditation for archery, know that the results may work well in your favor. Archers who are mentally clear and emotionally calm are much more likely to improve their accuracy.
Why practice meditation as an archer?
- Provides A Sense Of Calm
- Helps Reduce Stress
- Helps Change Bad Habits
- Increases Patience
- Helps Focus On The Present Moment
- Reduces Brain Chatter
Simple Steps Of Meditation
If you’re interested in passive meditation for archery, these simple steps can help get you started. When it comes to how often you should meditate, strive for at least 12 minutes a day five days a week. This is the amount of time required for you to best experience the benefits that meditation can offer, like increasing your ability to focus.
Tips – Meditate at any time that works for you. Breathe naturally. Eyes can be open or closed. Practice by yourself or with a group.
1. Find A Quiet Place
Choose an area that is quiet and calms you. You can sit on anything, including the ground. Settle in and get comfortable.
2. Set A Time Limit
When first starting out, choose a shorter amount of time to meditate, no more than 10 minutes. Use a timer so you’re not concerned about the time.
3. Notice Your Body
Start by paying close attention to your body – how it feels, its position, your energy levels, your breathing, etc.
4. Notice Your Breath
Start by breathing deeply in through your nose and out your mouth. After doing this a few times, begin to breathe normally through your nose. Notice the sensations you feel while breathing, your diaphragm moving in and out, the rate of your breathing, etc.
5. Notice When Your Mind Has Wandered
Your mind will wander. It may wander a little or it may wander all over the place. Whenever it does, focus on bringing your wandering mind back by once again focusing on your breathing. This step gets easier with practice.
6. Gently Pull Your Focus Back
No need to judge yourself or get flustered every time your mind wanders. Whether it takes a few seconds or a few minutes for you to notice when your mind has wandered, simply refocus once you take notice. This helps develop discipline while being empathetic with yourself. This discipline will help you reduce the stress of the future and past.
7. Close With Care
When your time is up, start to slowly bring yourself out of your meditative state. Start focusing on surrounding sounds. How does your body feel? Your thoughts? Your emotions?
Archery Is Active Meditation
While traditional meditation can be helpful for archers, the process of shooting is active meditation. Archery is a mindful practice. You must be aware of what you’re doing and focusing on what’s most important. Done correctly, the process of doing this helps provide archers with calmness, relaxation, and a clear mind. The result is improved accuracy and an improved state of mind.
When practicing archery you must be aware of a thousand different little details. Are you anchoring correctly? Is your stance the same every time? Are you aiming consistently? What are the weather conditions? The trick is to have all of these things in your mind, but placing focus on the most important part. Personally, I believe aiming requires my focus and everything else takes care of itself. Experiment and decide what works best for you.
Top Benefits Of Active Meditation through Archery:
- Improves Focus
- Releases Mental Stress
- Increases Self-Awareness
- Increases Physical Awareness
- Improves Attention Span
- Helps Reduce Mistakes
Meditation Through Archery
If you have trouble focusing your attention, learning active meditation through archery can help. When your mind wanders, you need the tools to bring your focus back to what’s most important. The steps below can help improve your focus and results. In turn, you will experience an improvement in self-control, self-awareness, emotional control, and over time, self-esteem. You will experience these improvements because meditation trains your conscious mind, in effect putting your autopilot brain on the back burner.
1. Find A Quiet Place
Choose a shooting area that is quiet and calming. Find your comfortable shooting position. If the area is not as quiet as you would like on any particular day you can always try archery meditation with a focus on eliminating nearby distractions. If you’re shooting on a field course, you can always walk to a target on the course and practice there.
2. Set A Time Limit
Consider each shot a mini meditation. You prepare, draw, focus, hold, release and follow through, bringing attention back to your surroundings. There’s no need for a timer, but be aware of your holding time. If you’re holding too long, it likely means you’re focusing on too many things. It’s better to let-down and re-attempt the shot with better focus.
3. Notice Your Body
Pay close attention to your body at first – how it feels, its position, its form, how your bow feels. Be mindful of how you are going to aim, focus, etc. This allows you to take notice of what’s comfortable so it becomes second nature and doesn’t require much focus later on.
4. Notice Your Breath
Once you’re in your shooting position, pay attention to your breathing. Correct breathing requires you to use your nose as you slowly breathe in and out, allowing for calmness. Concentrate on using your diaphragm when inhaling as this deep breathing method supports your ability to remain relaxed throughout the entire shooting process. Do not hold your breath before releasing like you might with a rifle, this will only stifle your results.
5. Notice When Your Mind Has Wandered
When just beginning, your mind will wander, it’s to be expected. The first step is to draw awareness to the fact that your mind is wandering. Like I said previously, I like to focus on aiming, but do what needs focus for you. If you have bad habits, these will require more attention until they are corrected, so your focus may change over time.
6. Gently Bring Your Focus Back
When your mind wanders, gently bring your focus back to what’s most important. There’s no need to feel agitated when your mind wanders, it happens to all of us and you simply bring your focus back. This is a skill that you’ll develop and it will become easier and easier to the point where you hold strong focus.
7. Close With Care
Always release and follow through with care. After taking your shot you should slowly bring yourself out of your meditative state. Start by taking in your surroundings, how you felt about your shot, where it landed, your emotions, etc. It’s important here to close with care and to not criticize yourself. I wrote an entire article about how to recover after a bad shot because it happens to all of us!
Conclusion
Meditation quiets the mind. Since you always want to shoot your best, you must learn how to clear your mind so you can focus. Since one of your goals as an archer is to keep your mind completely focused, knowing how to remove distractions makes you a better shooter. You should use mediation to quiet your automatic brain so you do not get caught up in your thoughts. Instead, be present in the moment and with time and practice, you can learn how to use meditative practices to keep yourself in the moment.
Most of our behavior is automatic and by engaging in active meditation, you are teaching your brain new behaviors that improve your shot. You may not have considered it before, but archery is a form of meditation and with practice, you’ll shoot your very best.
0 Comments