The theory of concentration
(from The Inner Game of Tennis)
THE THEORY OF CONCENTRATION
The practices mentioned above can speed learning to play your best tennis. But we have come to an important point that should not be passed over quickly. Though focus of attention helps your tennis, it is equally true that playing tennis can help your focus of attention. Learning focus of attention is a master skill that has unlimited application. For those interested, let me elaborate briefly on some theoretical aspects of concentration.
Whatever we experience on a tennis court is known to us by virtue of awareness—that is, by the consciousness within us. It is consciousness which makes possible awareness of the sights, sounds, feelings and thoughts which compose what we call “experience.” It is self-evident that one cannot experience anything outside of consciousness. Consciousness is that which makes all things and events knowable. Without consciousness eyes could not see, ears could not hear, and mind could not think. Consciousness is like a pure light energy whose power is to make events knowable, just as an electric light makes objects visible. Consciousness could be called the light of lights because it is by its light that all other lights become visible.
In the human body the light energy of consciousness does its knowing through several limited facilities—namely, the five senses and the mind. Through eyes, it knows sights; through ears, sounds; and through mind it knows concepts, facts and ideas. All that ever happens to us, all that we ever do, is known to us through the light energy of what is called consciousness.
Right now your consciousness is aware through your eyes and mind of the words in this sentence. But other things are also happening within the range of your attention. If you stop to listen closely to whatever your ears can hear, you will no doubt be able to hear sounds which you previously weren’t aware of, even though they were going on while you were reading. If you now listen to these sounds closely, you will hear them better—that is, you will be able to know them better. Probably you were not aware of how your tongue feels in your mouth—but in all likelihood after reading the foregoing words, you now are. While you were reading or listening to the sights and sounds around you, you were not aware of the feeling of your tongue, but with the slightest suggestion, the mind directs the focus of attention from one thing to another. When attention is allowed to focus, it comes to know that place. Attention is focused consciousness, and consciousness is that power of knowing.
Consider this analogy. If consciousness were like an electric light shining in a dark forest, by virtue of this light, it would be possible to see and know the forest within a certain radius. The closer an object is to the light, the more it will be illuminated and the greater the detail that will be visible. Objects farther away are seen more vaguely. But if we put a reflector around this light, making it into a searchlight, then all the light would shine in one direction. Now objects that are in the path of the light will be seen with greater clarity and many objects which were previously “lost in darkness” will become knowable. This is the power of focus of attention. If, however, the lens of the searchlight was dirty, or there were bubbles in the glass that diffracted the light, or if the light was oscillating, then the beam would be dispersed, and some focus would be lost and with it clarity. Distraction is then like dirt on the lens of the light or like the light jerking around so quickly that illumination is effectively reduced.
The light of consciousness can be focused either externally to objects available to the senses or internally to thoughts or feelings. And attention can be focused in a broad or narrow beam. Broad focus would be an attempt to see as much of the forest at one time as possible. Narrow focus would be directing attention to something very specific like the veins on a particular leaf on a particular twig of a branch.
THE HERE AND NOW OF THE TENNIS COURT
Back to the tennis court. Watching the seams of the ball is a narrow focus of attention, and can be effective in blocking out nervousness and other possible irrelevant objects of attention. Sensing the feel of your body is a broader focus, and takes in a number of sensations that might aid in the learning of tennis. To take in the wind, the movement of your opponent, the trajectory of the ball and the sensations in your body is an even broader focus, but perhaps quite relevant to the task at hand. It is still focus because it leaves out all that is irrelevant, and illuminates all that is relevant. One thing that can be said about focus is that it is always here and now—that is, in present time and present space. The first part of this chapter suggested several “here”s as objects of concentration. The seams focus awareness more exactly in space than merely the ball itself does, and as you add awareness of one element of the game of tennis after another—from the sound of the ball to the feel of each part of each stroke—greater knowledge is gained.
But it is also necessary to learn to focus awareness in the now. This simply means tuning in to what is happening in the present. The greatest lapses in concentration come when we allow our minds to project what is about to happen or to dwell on what has already happened. How easily the mind absorbs itself in the world of “what if”s. “What if I lose this point?”it thinks; “then I’ll be behind 5–3 on his serve. If I don’t break his serve, then I’ll have lost the first set and probably the match. I wonder what Martha will say when she hears I lost to George.” At this point it is not uncommon for the mind to lapse into a little fantasy about Martha’s reaction to hearing the news that you have lost to George. Meanwhile, back in the now, the score is still 3–4, 30–40, and you are barely aware that you are on the court; the conscious energy you need to perform at your peak in the now has been leaking into an imagined future.
Similarly, the mind often draws one’s attention into the past. “If the linesman hadn’t called that last serve out, the score would be deuce and I wouldn’t be in this mess. The same thing happened to me last week, and it cost me the match. It made me lose my confidence, and now the same thing is happening again. I wonder why.” One nice aspect of tennis is that before long you or your opponent is going to hit a ball, and this will summon you back to the present. But usually part of our energy is left in the thought world of past or future, so that the present is not seen in the light of one’s full awareness. As a result, objects look dim, the ball seems to come faster, appears smaller, and even the court seems to shrink.
Since the mind seems to have a will of its own, how can one learn to keep it in the present? By practice. There is no other way. Every time your mind starts to leak away, simply bring it gently back. I used to use a ball machine with a wide range in velocity, and had a simple drill which helped players experience what it means to be more in the present. I asked students to stand at net in the volley position, and then set the machine to shoot balls at three-quarter speed. From being initially casual, they suddenly became more alert. At first the balls seemed too fast for them, but soon their responses quickened. Gradually I turned the machine to faster and faster speeds, and the volleyers became more focused. When they were responding quickly enough to hit the top-speed balls and believed they were at the peak of their concentration, I moved the machine to midcourt, fifteen feet closer than before. At this point students would often lose some concentration as a degree of fear intruded. Their forearms would tense slightly, making their movements less quick and accurate. “Relax your forearm. Relax your mind. Simply relax into the present, focus on the seams of the ball, and let it happen.” Soon they were again able to meet the ball in front of them with the center of their rackets. There was no smile of self-satisfaction, merely total absorption in each moment. Afterward some players said that the ball seemed to slow down; others remarked how weird it was to hit balls when you didn’t have time to think about it. All who enter even a little into that state of being present will experience a calmness and a degree of ecstasy which they will want to repeat.
The practical consequences to your volley of increasing your alertness are obvious. Most volleys are missed either because contact is made too far behind the player, or because they are off center. Becoming more aware of the present makes it easier to know where the ball is at all times and to react soon enough to meet it at the instant of your choice. Some people think that they are just too slow to return a hard shot when they are at net. But time is a relative thing, and it really is possible to slow it down. Consider: there are 1000 milliseconds in every second. That’s a lot of milliseconds. Alertness is a measure of how many nows you are alert to in a given period. The result is simple: you become more aware of what is going on as you learn to keep your attention in the now.
After practicing being present to the moment, I found that I could change my position on the return of serve from standing at the baseline to standing only a foot behind the service line. If I stayed focused and relaxed, I could see even fast serves well enough to “slow them down in time,” respond and pick up the ball just a split second after it bounced. There was no time for a backswing and no time to think about what I was doing or even where I would hit the ball. There would just be a calm focus and a spontaneous response to meet the ball and follow-through, giving depth and direction to the ball. At the next instant I would be at the net—well before the server!
The server, seeing me standing at the service line to receive his serve, would have to deal mentally with what he might take to be an insult to his serve; he would often double-fault more than once in an effort to teach me a lesson. His next problem would be hitting a volley passing shot from somewhere within no man’s land.
The reader might quite naturally think that this tactic would be impossible against a really first-rate serve. Not true. After only a few months of experimenting with this return of serve, I found it possible to use it to great advantage in tournament play. The more I used it, the quicker and more accurate my reactions became. Concentration seemed to slow time down, giving me the necessary awareness to see and place the ball. The fact that I met the ball on the rise cut off all the angle that a server usually gets on his serve after it bounces. And the fact that I could reach the net before the server gave me control of the commanding position on the court.
FOCUS DURING A MATCH
Most of the ways for developing concentration mentioned earlier are best employed during practice. In a match it is usually best to pick one focus—whatever works best for you—and stick with it. For example, if the seams of the ball tend to keep you centered in the here and now, there is no need to focus on sound or feel. Often the fact that you are playing a match will help you to focus. During the course of a point, you often find yourself in a state of relatively deep concentration in which you are only aware of what is happening at that instant. The critical time is between points! After the last shot of a rally, the mind leaves its focus on the ball and is free to wander. It is at this moment that thoughts about the score, your erratic backhand, business, the children, dinner and so forth tend to siphon your energy away from the here and now. Then it is difficult to regain the same level of concentration before the next point begins.
How to stay concentrated in the here and now between points? My own device, and one that has been effective for many of my students,is to focus attention on breathing. Some object or activity which is always present is needed. What is more here and now than one’s breathing? Putting attention on breathing simply means observing my breath going in, going out, going in, going out in its natural rhythm. It does not mean intentionally controlling my breath.
Breathing is a remarkable phenomenon. Whether we intend to or not, we breathe. Awake or asleep, it is always happening. Even if we try to stop, some force will soon overpower our efforts and we will take a breath. Thus, when we focus on breathing we are putting our attention on something closely connected to the life energy of the body. Also, breathing is a very basic rhythm. It is said that in breathing man recapitulates the rhythm of the universe. When the mind is fastened to the rhythm of breathing, it tends to become absorbed and calm. Whether on or off the court, I know of no better way to begin to deal with anxiety than to place the mind on one’s breathing process. Anxiety is fear about what may happen in the future, and it occurs only when the mind is imagining what the future may bring. But when your attention is on the here and now, the actions which need to be done in the present have their best chance of being successfully accomplished, and as a result the future will become the best possible present.
So after a point has ended and I’m returning to position or going to pick up a ball, I place my mind on my breathing. The second my mind starts wondering about whether I’m going to win or lose the match, I bring it gently back to my breath and relax in its natural and basic motion. In this way, by the time the next point is ready to start, I am able to be even more concentrated than I was in the midst of the previous one. This technique is not only useful for me in stopping the mind from fretting about bad shots, but keeps me from being self-conscious about unusually good shots.
PLAYING IN SELF 2’S ZONE
In the first chapter of this book I referred to the ways people tend to describe their state of mind when they are playing their best tennis. They used to use such phrases as “playing out of my mind” or “playing over his head.” The current phrase is “playing in the zone.” The interesting fact about this state of mind is that it really cannot be described accurately because at the moment you are in that state, the one that usually describes is not present. After you are out of the state, you may try to remember what it was like. But it is hard. All you may know is that it felt good and it worked like magic.
However, even though you don’t know much about what is happening in that state, you can know a lot about what is not happening. You can remember that you weren’t criticizing yourself; you weren’t congratulating yourself either. You weren’t thinking about how to do the stroke correctly or how not to do the stroke. You were not thinking about past shots or about the future score, about what people would think or even about the results to be obtained. In other words what was missing was Self 1. What was left was Self 2. Because Self 1 is not in the picture, sometimes we say, I didn’t do it, it just happened. Commonly students use language like, “I wasn’t there,” “Something else took over,” “My racket did this, or did that,” as if it had a will of its own. But the racket wasn’t missing, and the great shot was not an accident, even though you didn’t plan it. It was Self 2 hitting the ball. It was in fact you hitting the ball without the normal interference from Self 1.
Interestingly, this state of being, when Self 1 is absent and Self 2 is present, always feels good, and allows a more vivid consciousness and usually great excellence in performance. It may not feel the same as ego gratification, a feeling which we all too often like a great deal, but there is a feeling some call harmony, balance, poise, even peace, or contentment. And it can feel that way in the middle of a very “intense” tennis match.
Phil Jackson, coach of Michael Jordan and the four-time NBA Champions, the Chicago Bulls, describes the state of Self 2 focus very well in his book, Sacred Hoops: “Basketball is a complex dance that requires shifting from one objective to another at lightning speed. To excel, you need to act with a clear mind and be totally focused on what everyone on the floor is doing. The secret is not thinking. That doesn’t mean being stupid; it means quieting the endless jabbering of thoughts so that your body can do instinctively what it’s been trained to do without the mind getting in the way. All of us have flashes of oneness … When we’re completely immersed in the moment, inseparable from what we’re doing.”
I was reading a description of the zone by Bill Russell, the famous basketball player for the Boston Celtics: “At that special level all sorts of odd things happened. … It was almost as if we were playing in slow motion. During those spells I could almost sense how the next play would develop and where the next shot would be taken. Even before the other team brought the ball in bounds, I could feel it so keenly that I’d want to shout to my teammates, ‘It’s coming there!’—except that I knew everything would change if I did. My premonitions would be consistently correct, and I always felt then that I not only knew all the Celtics by heart but also all the opposing players, and that they all knew me. It seems less odd to me now. It seems more like, yes, that’s the way it is, that’s the way it should be all the time. We can be focused. We can be conscious.”
One caution about “the zone”: it cannot be controlled by Self 1. I have seen many articles that claim to provide a technique for “playing in the zone every time.” Forget it! This is a setup. It’s an age-old trap. Self 1 likes the idea of playing in the zone, especially the results that usually occur. So Self 1 will try to grasp onto almost anything that promises to take you to what everyone agrees is a wonderful place. But there is one catch; the only way to get there is to leave Self 1 behind. So as long as you let Self 1 be the one that takes you there, it will be there too and you will not be able to go into the zone. If you do, even for a moment, Self 1 will say, “Good, I got there,” and you will be out again.
Another way to look at the zone is that it comes as a gift. It is not a gift you can demand of yourself, but one you can ask for. How do you ask? By making your effort? What is your effort? Your effort depends on your understanding. But I would say it always involves an effort to focus and an effort to let go of Self 1 control. As trust increases, Self 1 quiets, Self 2 becomes more conscious and more present, enjoyment increases and the gifts are being given. If you are willing to give credit where credit is due and not think you “know” how to do it, the gifts are apt to be more frequent and sustainable.
This may not sound scientific, or may not sound as in control as you might like. But I can say that I’ve been courting Self 2 for a long time now, over twenty-five years consciously, and it comes at its own timing, when I am ready for it—humble, respectful, not expecting it, somehow placing myself lower than it, not above it. Then when the moment is right, it comes, and I can enjoy the absence of Self 1 thought and the presence of joy. I like it a lot. Grab for it, and it will squirt away like a slippery bar of soap. Take it for granted, and you will be distracted and lose it. I used to think that whatever was present in that state would leave me, was ephemeral. Now I know that it is always there and it is only I who leave. When I look at a young child I realize it is there all the time. As the child grows, there is more to distract the mind, and it is harder to recognize. But it, Self 2, may be the only thing which has been there and will be there your entire life. Thoughts and thinking come and go, but the child self, the true self, is there and will be there as long as our breath is. To enjoy it, to appreciate it, is the gift of focus.
LAPSES IN FOCUS
It is perplexing to wonder why we ever leave the here and now. Here and now are the only place and time when one ever enjoys himself or accomplishes anything. Most of our suffering takes place when we allow our minds to imagine the future or mull over the past. Nonetheless, few people are ever satisfied with what is before them at the moment. Our desire that things be different from what they are pulls our minds into an unreal world, and consequently we are less able to appreciate what the present has to offer. Our minds leave the reality of the present only when we prefer the unreality of the past or future. To begin to understand my own lapses of concentration I had to know what I was really desiring, and it soon became clear to me that there were more desires operating in me on the court than simply to play tennis. In other words, tennis was not the only game I was playing on the court. Part of the process of attaining a concentrated state of mind is to know and resolve these conflicting desires; the following chapter attempts to shed light on this process.