Performance Anxiety
Management

Centering

Centering is a method for interrupting physiological and cognitive anxiety and promoting efficacy and self-control. It is often practiced from a standing position with legs spread to shoulder width and knees flexed slightly. Attention is then directed to a point immediately below the navel, or the body’s center of gravity. Then inhaling deeply, scan for tension in arms, shoulders, and neck muscles, and consciously let these muscle groups relax. When exhaling, allow the muscles in their thighs and calves to relax, the knees to bend slightly and your hips to lower. Thoughts of relaxation, heaviness, and the purging of anxiety are associated with exhalation (Nideffer, 1985). With practice, the purpose of centering is to shed excessive physiological anxiety and muscle tension in a single breath.

Let your mind rest on the experience of strength and balance. Briefly direct your attention inward to check your pattern of breathing and muscular tension. Do you notice shallow, thoracic breathing, anxiety and muscle tension? Replace thoracic breathing with deep, abdominal breathing.

It is recommended for use just prior to crucial points in a performance or competition when anxiety is likely to be highest. Its practice is also recommended during natural pauses in competitions, as well as prior to and after performances.

Centering has the secondary benefit of interrupting cognitive interference. From the standing position, athletes are directed to spread their legs to shoulder width and to flex slightly at the knees. It is a technique for gaining momentary control over physiological anxiety or arousal and concentration.

Characteristics of centering are similar to those of the relaxation response. Both emphasize attention to breathing and techniques are straightforward. Centering offers the considerable promise of being maximally “portable,” in that it can be practiced before, after, and during competitions.