Strong Mind

In this episode, Hazel speaks with Allison Vest about her struggles and progress with mental training in climbing. They talk about how she found competitions hard psychologically and how some of those struggles have carried over to outdoor bouldering which is her main focus. They talk about the gains she's made with her mindset recently and the work she still has left to do. They talk about her recent sends and the psychological tools she used for those sends. They talk about how to balance the desire for the outcome with being focused on optimal performance in the moment. If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

In this episode, Angus Kille interviews Hazel about how to leverage mental training for performance and their course Performance Hacks. If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

In this episode, we talk a lot about breath! We look at the physical and mental benefits from 2 different perspectives with 2 experts in the field. If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mindDr. Michael Melnychuk is a neuroscientist and climber who has conducted seminal research on brain plasticityand how the breath and brain activity are interrelated. He has engaged in meditation and breathing techniquessince he was a child, and his scientific work is heavily influenced by his practice. He has also been a rock climber for 30 years and suffered a near-fatal fall while free soloing, and because of this has a keen personal interestin Hazel’s methods which leverage the breath and mind control to overcome fear while climbing.Dr. Sundar Balasubramanian is a cell biology researcher from the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Medical University of South Carolina, USA, and is a renowned yoga researcher specializing in breathing exercises. He is the Founder & CEO of PranaScience Institute and the Yoga Specialist at the MUSC Health & Wellness Institute. Sundar’s Yoga research provided evidence linking salivary biomarkers and Yogic breathing (also called Pranayama). He studies how breathing practices could promote well-being in health and disease. His current studies include testing a Yogic breathing app for cancer survivorship funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has developed several tools to improve the practice of Yogic breathing for employee wellness, cancer survivorship, ageing, and scleroderma.  Sundar is the author of four books and several book chapters and his popular TEDx talk has over 1 million views.Jiri Balas' fascinating study on hormonal response to potential fall distance (adrenaline, catecholamines, skipping bolts):https://repository.derby.ac.uk/download/c8973104899db7691ac8c30cf3465bbb48d572e7c222b8ec1eb529873b142ab7/209907/Balas_2016_Hormonal_response_during_climbing_accepted_manuscript.pdfKox's study of Wim Hof Technique on e-coli toxemia challenge; examines many of the same markers as Balas (above) and also cytokines (pro/anti-inflammatory markers):https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1322174111Decreased blood lactate following respiratory training:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Urs-Boutellier/publication/13199745_Decreased_exercise_blood_lactate_concentrations_after_respiratory_endurance_training_in_humans/links/02e7e52cb02331649b000000/Decreased-exercise-blood-lactate-concentrations-after-respiratory-endurance-training-in-humans.pdfIncreased lactate (anaerobic) capacity with pranayama:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321338797_Effects_of_yoga_Pranayama_on_lung_function_and_lactate_kinetics_in_sedentary_adults_at_intermediate_altitude1. Mr. Feelgood magazine's recognition as seen here: https://mrfeelgood.com/articles/the-worlds-leading-breathwork-experts
2. Our new app called Humma, for improving breathing with humming: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pranascience.humma

Lor Sabourin is a professional climber, mental training coach, and Training Leader for the Warrior’s Way, an organization that uses climbing-based mental training to optimize performance and improve mental health. Lor’s work is trauma-informed and they have just finished a Masters's degree in mental health counselling with an emphasis on somatic therapy and adventure-based counselling.Hazel and Lor cover many areas with the main focus being mental training and Lor's work. They cover psychological risk, trauma, working with trauma and somatic therapy, resilience (and how climbing fosters resilience), how they define success in climbing and how we can change what success means to us, how to manage failure, self-worth, and self-love among many other topics.

If you are having a hard time, there's help available. Check out http://findahelpline.com to be directed to your country's helpline.

If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

This is the second part of a conversation Hazel had with Aiden Roberts about mastery, flow and motivation in high-level bouldering. Check out part 1 first if you haven't listened to it yet.

If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

In this conversation between Hazel and Jeff Charno. Jeff is the founder and host of Being & Doing online conferences where he has interviewed more than 100 spiritual teachers, scientists, creativity gurus and thought leaders. They talk about awakening from our narrative egoic selves, spontaneity and connecting with an uncensored version of ourselves, flow, intuition, how we connect with our deeper freer selves and bringing awareness to how crazy our internal world looks sometimes.

If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

In this episode, Hazel speaks with Cameron Norsworthy (PhD in Flow and director of the Flow Centre) about flow. This conversation is a little bit of a deeper dive into flow. Hazel gets Cameron to challenge some of the misconceptions and common doubts about flow. They also talk about barriers to flow, how flow differs from other areas of sports psychology, how we can access flow by learning more about it and whether accessing flow is more about upskilling or removing barriers to flow. How finding flow in life doesn't have to just be about performance but also more of a lifestyle or life philosophy.

If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

In this podcast, Hazel speaks with musician, researcher and lecturer in philosophy of mind Lauri Jarvilehto. This is a more academic conversation but there are also practical takeaways. They talk about what intuition is, creativity and intuition, and the difference between system 1 (non-conscious mind) and system 2 (conscious mind). What processes in climbing require systems 1 and 2 and how expertise allows us to commit to system 1, the difference between skill and conceptualising that skill, how system 2 can distract us (choking in sport), flow and good performances in system 1, the differences and similarities between flow and intuition, pattern recognition, the difference between instinct and intuition, how to better access intuition and flow with this knowledge.

If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

This episode was recorded live as a SHAFF (Sheffield adventure film festival) event, so it's a little different in format compared to our other episodes. Hazel talks to Adam about what makes a good climber, flow state, his childhood, motivation, mastery, processes, competitions, outcomes, the problem of under-eating in climbing, big goals and much more. To check out more about what we do head to strongmindclimbing.com

Also, if you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind