IJGA Newsletter: The Oaks September 2019 | Page 18

HEALTHY MIND/HEALTHY BODY
THE MIND AND THE BODY ARE
CONNECTED
After all, the mind has to tell the body what to do
before it even does anything.
How important is the mind in relation to the
body?
The mind can affect whether the body is
healthy or unhealthy. With the mind and body
being intertwined, stress, anxiety or any other
psychological issue can help or hurt the body.
If it is acute, or short-term stress, then this can
actually be helpful for both the mind and the body
to become stronger. If you want to think of it like a
muscle, you have to experience some discomfort
in order to grow from it.
For example, an athlete shoots way above her
average on the first day of her tournament. She
becomes stressed thinking about her performance,
but also acknowledges what she did well. She uses
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this to motivate her for the next round and creates
a plan to improve. The next day, she shoots a score
she is proud of, and has an effort she is even more
proud of.
However, if stress or anxiety continues to occur
over a long period of time (let’s say months at
a time), this can be very harmful to the mind
and body. This can lead to lack of sleep, panic
attacks, rapid heart rate, increased risk of injury,
nausea, tightness of muscles, constantly thinking
negatively about the past (brooding) and more!
For example, an athlete thinks he needs to be
perfect constantly. Every part of his swing, every
shot he has, every practice he has, every tournament
he has. He fixates on the idea of perfection and
thinks it’s attainable if he continues to think about
it. Consequently, he begins to overthink about
how bad his swing is, how bad his practices have
been, and how bad his tournaments have been.
He starts to lose sleep over the stress he has put
on himself, only sleeping about 4-5 hours every
night. He becomes more and more agitated as this