Response to a client's question: how do you clear your mind?

“I was wondering if you know a way for me to completely clear my brain. I’ve noticed some of my best bouts have been ones where I’m sort of blacked out. My worst bouts tend to be the ones where I overthink. Do you know a way or exercise to clear my head completely?”

A former client recently texted to ask the following question, and my response was so brilliant I had to share it with all of you.

Just kidding! My answer was a normal amount of smart, but I did think some folks might have the same question, and would want to see the answer. Here’s what I said:


Clearing the mind completely is difficult to do, period. The mind wants to respond to all the things that could be important—to keep you safe from any perceived danger, to have a little more control over what happens next, or to even predict the next few minutes / days / seconds more accurately. So, in general, the mind always wants to be working.

The more things you're thinking about that seem important, either to your conscious mind or to your unconscious mind (the amygdala, a.k.a. the 'lizard brain' for example) the harder your brain is trying to respond to all the different things, and the more difficult it is to get it to calm down and shut up.

So, when you're faced with the myriad stresses and pressures of a fencing competition, it's easy for the mind to go racing off in all different directions. On top of that there's the tendency most of us have to avoid discomfort, so when we get anxious, nervous, or scared, the mind often avoids that by fixating on something else, often trying to control something we can't actually control.

Essentially all of our work together was to help get to that point where you can clear your mind, and have it be empty as you're fencing. Even after months of training, though, it's often impossible to simply clear the mind at will, so we use some aids to get us there. 

Focusing on the process is a great example of this—when we pick one specific thing we *do* want to focus on, it helps displace some of the more distracting and unhelpful thoughts. When we can be confident in the things we *can* control, it helps the mind relax and release thoughts of everything we *can't* control.

Practicing mindfulness is another piece of this. The mind being full and cluttered is a result of it constantly reacting to whatever stimulus it receives, so when we become skilled at observing a stimulus without responding to it, we help the mind practice being clear and quiet—and it becomes easier to return to that state, even when we're upset.

Even the breathing we do, from the activation breathing to amp up, to the box breathing to even out, to the five-second resets to clear the mind for a moment, are all ways of taking one strong predominant focus (the breath) and using that to push out all the distracting BS you have running through your mind at any given time.

Beyond mindfulness and breathing, I find it important for myself to make sure I have, as much as I can, everything else off my mind when I'm going into a competition. If I have something important to get done the week before a competition, getting that done in plenty of time is more important than training for me, so I can release that metaphorical load of bricks from my backpack.

With all of that said—there are gonna be times you just can't clear your mind, even for a moment. When you've had a major upheaval in your life, (even if you don't think it was that major, sometimes it is and you don't realize) or if you're short on sleep, food, water, etc., or if something is weighing on your mind, those can all be reasons why your brain doesn't do what you want it to, and no amount of pushing it will get it to, until the underlying barrier is resolved.

I hope that was helpful, at least in understanding how this stuff works, even though it may not have given you a perfect way to clear your mind.