“In the latter years of his boxing career, [Muhammad]
Ali spent much of his training time learning how to take
punches. He studied how to shift his head by just a hair
a microsecond before the connection was made, or where in
his body he could mentally deflect the punch so that it would
no longer hurt. He was not training his body to win. He was
training his mind not to lose, at the point when deep fatigue
sets in around the 12th round and most boxers cave in. Ali’s
most important work was being done, not in the ring, but
in his armchair. He was fighting the fight in his head. Excerpt
from The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change
Your Life and the World, by Lynne McTaggart.
Targeting your thoughts -- or what scientists continually
refer to as "intention" and "intentionality" – has
by now become a familiar topic in mainstream culture and media.
Browse any self-help section of your bookstore and you’ll
easily find a number of titles with the words “intention” or “mind
power” in them. Some of these books, however, (albeit
most of them) are based more on pop psychology and faddish
philosophies than on honest scientific evidence and results;
placing the topic within the dubious realm of being “new
age.”
Yet the techniques involved in mental rehearsal, visualization,
and intention have been studied and written about in scientific
literature and
popular
publications
for years. In 1990, for example, the National Academy of
Sciences examined all the scientific studies to date on these
methods
and declared them effective.
One recently-published book on the subject is The
Intention Experiment, written by science writer
and award-winning journalist Lynne McTaggart. By posing
the question: Can our thoughts
influence the world around us?; McTaggart makes a comprehensive
investigation of the subject in her study of athletes; analysis
of the leading evidence in neuroscience; psychology; and
the latest findings in physics.
Along with publishing The Intention Experiment, McTaggart
also teamed up with top scientists of our time, including
physicist
Fritz-Albert Popp of the International Institute of Biophysics
and Dr. Gary Schwartz, professor of psychology, medicine, and
neurology at the University of Arizona, to create a global “mind-over-matter” experiment.
Through to the end of this year, tens of thousands of volunteers
from around the world are currently participating in a series
experiments on mind intention and science, making it the largest
study of its kind in history.
The
art of intention
Intention in its highest form is often attributed to performance
in sports. At any level, athletes are regularly coached into
mental “rehearsals
or “practices” as a means to improve their performance.
Indeed, mental training is often considered the element that
separates the elite athlete from the amateur.
Soccer players on national teams, for example, are more likely
to use imagery than those at the provincial or local levels;
and virtually all Olympic athletes use mental imagery of
some sort to achieve their near super-human feats.
But when it comes to seeing the extent to how much intention
has marked the success of an individual’s achievements,
Muhammad Ali is a prime example. “Ali was a master of intention,” states McTaggart. “He developed
a set of mental skills, which heightened his performance in the ring. Before
a fight, Ali used every self-motivational technique: affirmation; visualization;
mental rehearsal; self-confirmation; and perhaps the most powerful epigram of
personal worth ever uttered: I am the greatest.”
The latest evidence in neuroscience concurs. An important
instrument in brain research, the electroencephalogram
(EEG), has shown that the electrical activity
produced by the brain is the same whether thinking about doing something
or actually doing it. Based on this research, one school of thought in the scientific
community
proposes that by mentally rehearsing through an event creates the neural patterns
necessary for the real thing.
The “Dual-code” theory, first advanced by Allan
Paivio of the University of Western Ontario, is another neuroscience
theory which posits that the brain
processes verbal and non-verbal information at the same time, but along distinct
channels. This means that information sent to the brain – both imagined
and real - is then organized as knowledge that can be “acted upon, stored,
and retrieved for subsequent use.” (source: wikipedia)
Mental practise has therefore been shown to be just as effective
as physical practice, and Paivio’s model is often
employed to help athletes with their mental training.
According to scientific evidence, the most successful use
of intention is the “mental
trial run.” One example of this is when athletes break down each part
of their performance into a number of different components and work on improving
specific aspects within each component. The intention behind this technique
is
to concentrate on the most difficult moments of one’s performance, working
out effective coping strategies in the face of adversity.
As McTaggart writes, “Like Muhammad Ali, star athletes
learn how to block out images representing doubt. If an image
of difficulty or loss pops into their
heads, they become extremely adept at changing the internal movie, quickly
editing the scene to imagine success. They engage all their
senses in their mental rehearsal.
They hear it, feel it, smell it and taste it… The most important intention
of all is to rehearse the victory, which appears to help secure it.”
How
can simply thinking about a future performance actually
affect the outcome of the event?
Electromyography (EMG) has benefited science by showing how
our brains send instruction to our bodies through electrical
impulse sent to specific muscles. So far, as scientists have
learned, neurotransmitters that signal to the muscles along
a particular pathway are stimulated by either an action or
a thought, and the chemicals that have been produced remain
there for a short period.
We therefore tend to become better
at certain tasks because the electric signaling for it has
been forged. “It’s not unlike a train track laid
down through wild country,” states McTaggart. “Future
performances improve because your brain already knows the
route by following the track.”
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