Meditation Can Improve Your Sailing

Your fellow sailors would certainly look at you as a strange one if you sailed up the beat “OMMMing” your way from tack to tack. So let’s start with a word about meditation.

Meditation is simply a way to practice a particular way of being – having your attention on the present moment, the one that you’re actually in. Most of us spend our time thinking about what has happened or what might happen, not being a full part of what is currently happening.

Meditation isn’t mystical it’s just practice, like practicing tacking prepares you to tack effortlessly in a race. It’s time you set aside to focus your attention on something that’s happening right now so that you can more easily do it when you want to and perhaps spend more time focusing without having to even try.

In and of itself meditation might not add much to your sailing repertoire if you feel like you have to sit crossed legged while you charge downwind by-the-lee. Meditation has a number of cliché images like that, that stand in the way of understanding its power to help your sailing. So if you’ve never tried it, just think about paying attention to what’s happening all around you. The odds are you can’t do that exclusively for more than a few seconds at a time.

Paying close attention is as difficult for most of us as holding a wall sit. And if you really want a challenge try holding a wall sit (back leaning against a wall, legs bent 90 degrees) while you focus on nothing but your breath going in and out, or the pain in your legs – don’t get distracted by thoughts that you can’t hold it much longer (that’s not now, you are holding it, not holding it is in the future), stay with the pain or breath.

Meditation helps you focus on what’s happening now, that focus will help you sail your Laser better. A few examples:

·         When you’re anxiously preparing in the rigging area do you sometimes have to re-run your mainsheet because you forgot a block or ran it backwards through the ratchet block? Anxiety is fear of something that hasn’t happened yet. Can you temper the queasy bowels and the locked-up brain and instead feel the breeze on your skin and the lines against your hands? 

·         As you prepare for a start your anxiety may again increase. If you could pull your focus off your anxiety and refocus back on the moment at hand, say on your position relative to boats around you, you should have a better start.

·         As you hike max-out at the start, are you already wondering if you can hold the hike hard enough to not fall into the wind shadow of the boat to windward? What if you could just stay with the way your body feels as it leverages the boat flat?

·         It’s hard to keep in the groove up-wind. Most people end up pinched, or a bit eased and not working all of the power and lift out of their boats. What do you use as a cue that you’re in the groove? The sound of the water on your hull? The angle of heel? The feel of your mainsheet? The pull on the helm? How long do you go before you realize you’ve lost focus on whichever feedback helps you the most?

·         When you execute a maneuver poorly and lose a place, how quickly can you bring your attention back to the present moment of the race? Do you first have to beat yourself up and then talk yourself back up?

·         When you go out for a practice sail, do you use most of the time productively or do you find your thoughts drifting off to other things? How many tacks in a row before you stop noticing the rhythm of your “dance” across the boat? Or the feel of the wind as it crosses your face to the other cheek?

Sailing a responsive boat like a Laser demands and pays dividends to the sailor who can spend more time with her head in the moment she’s actually sailing in.

Now here’s the nice part for you beginning meditators; one way to practice meditation is to sail. It does sound like circular logic, but spending time in the boat focusing on things that are happening right then is a form of practice.

Some people do this while walking and it’s called “walking meditation.” The traditional meditation is called “sitting meditation.” So what we’re inventing here is “sailing meditations.” Can’t you just hear the gurus cringing?

Sitting in your boat listening to the sound of the water on the hull and how it changes at different speeds, sensing the fractional changes in the feel of the helm as you hike the boat flat or let it heel just a tad, noticing the angle of the mast to the horizon, recognizing how the small wind shifts change your Laser’s orientation to the ocean swell, or the white house with the big windows, all are similar to noticing how your breath feels going in and out.

The trick is to notice what you’re noticing. When your attention drifts to thoughts that aren’t about this moment in time, notice and redirect them back to sounds, sights and feels that are right here now. If you try to do better, you’re again out of the moment. Just notice and redirect and you will spend more time sailing well.

Now back to on-land meditation. To prep for sailing try taking a walk and keeping your thoughts on what is happening as you walk. When your thoughts grab hold of something else, redirect them back to the right-now moment. Practicing on land and particularly when you’re in motion will help build a base of experience that will make it easier on the boat.

Sailing isn’t just about the right-now moment; there are planning and strategy to consider at all stages of your preparation and racing. Being able to hold your attention in the moment is a skill you want to develop so that you can easily return to it after you’ve glanced around at other boats and you’re ready to refocus on speed and sail angle.

I also find that the more I practice being consciously aware of the feedback from my environment, the more developed my unconscious sailing becomes. I find that I’m responding to the cues from the sound of the water or the feel of the wind, without being aware of them. So, I can think about strategy and never lose some contact with the right-now moment.