THE WHOLE PERSON
"How come my back hurts?" "Why can’t I go as fast as I did 2 years ago?" "How come I feel tired all of the time?" These are an example of some of the questions that we hear as coaches from our swimmers fairly regularly. I believe that too often we look for the easiest answer and try to deal with just the physical problems – or possibly the physical and mental; when we should be looking at the bigger picture!
Recently I attended a seminar on wholeness that was presented by Dr. Alan Demmitt, who teaches at the University of Dayton. As I listened to him speak, even though he was presenting to the group I was in as spiritual counselors, I couldn’t help but think of how well it related to dealing with competitive athletes. The whole person concept that he presented deals with six separate parts of our being and how they work together to make up the whole. This is an edited description of how each functions and affects the others:
The idea is that the others affect every aspect of our being. If our shoulder is hurting, than this will affect our peace of mind, and likely strain our relationships, and how we see ourselves as part of the team, etc. So we can look at this in the negative or choose the positive - as an example lets say we are having a relationship problem with our best friend. This is going to affect how we feel physically, and mentally, and how we feel about our environment, and possibly our faith in a higher power! On the positive side, we can use these parts of the whole to help. We can rely on faith to help us get through, we can take care of our body by eating properly and getting rest, we can use our institutions (church, raiders) to help support us. Each part of our being does have an affect on the others; the choice is ours whether we let it be a negative or positive affect.
Coach Rick Peters
Dayton Raiders