Repeated photos of J.J. McCarthy meditating show rare moment in macho sport | Opinion

As a Wolverine alumna (and former Michigan Marching Band trombone player), I’ve loved watching quarterback J.J. McCarthy lead his undefeated team to the national championship game this season.

But it’s been nearly as thrilling for me to see something McCarthy does on the field that doesn’t involve a ball — which is to say, meditation.

The fact that media outlets have repeatedly photographed and filmed McCarthy seated in front of a goal post before each game — legs crossed, eyes closed — demonstrates just how rare it is to see a young man in one of the most unapologetically macho sports publicly meditate.

And think about it: McCarthy could meditate before leaving his apartment, or keep it inside the team locker room. But he’s not embarrassed by his practice. He does it regularly in front of a sea of cameras, knowing the world is now watching his every move. This is a deliberate choice. And he does it when and where he needs to ground himself the most: on the field on game day.

Cynics may argue that this is posturing, or that drawing attention to himself runs counter to the “focus inward” aim of a meditation practice. Yet speaking as a fellow meditator, I’ve cheered and applauded McCarthy’s choice not to hide this act of mental self-care. It de-stigmatizes meditation not only for up-and-coming athletes who might benefit from a regular meditation practice, but more broadly for men, who, in my experience, are more likely to dismiss meditation as “woo-woo” hokum.

Meditation’s roots are impressively ancient. It may have originated as long ago as 5,000 BCE, by some estimates, and it took root in different cultures along the Silk Road, adopted as a spiritual practice by several religions. It eventually grew more secularized in the twentieth century, and American scientists began to study the potential health benefits of meditation, which include stress reduction, increased attention span and lowered blood pressure.

McCarthy’s journey to meditation began during his senior year of high school, when he was living under tight pandemic restrictions and first experienced symptoms of depression. Online searches for help kept landing on meditation. So McCarthy developed and adopted a regular practice.

I first ventured into meditation while grieving the loss of a job I loved. I felt adrift, unsure of who I was without my work, so I signed up for an introductory meditation workshop. The practice didn’t suddenly make me feel whole or happy, but it slowly began to steady me in a tumultuous time. It taught me to breathe my way through the panic and overwhelm, and start again.

For that’s one of the principles at the heart of every meditation practice. Inevitably, because your mind is a busy, chaotic place, you’re going to repeatedly lose focus. (Pro tip: Don’t tell a meditator you could never do it because you wouldn’t be able to stop your thoughts. We can’t either, guys. That’s really not the goal.) Yet the word “practice” is contextually apt precisely because meditating is about developing the humility and willingness to start again, and again and again.

That’s one reason, I think, McCarthy doesn’t get derailed when a play goes sideways, or when the team gets down by a couple of scores, or when a scandal pulls his head coach from the sidelines. Because his meditation practice is so strong, McCarthy keeps adapting, staying focused on what he can control and letting go of what he can’t.

He keeps starting again.

As for me, I leaned hard into the meditation infrastructure I’d built when the pandemic indefinitely shut down the world, and when I found my father after he’d died alone in his apartment.

I kept breathing through it. I started again.

McCarthy, in an interview, said of his pregame meditation sessions, “I just want to spread awareness of the practice and let other kids out there that are struggling with mental health or looking to improve themselves in any way, they can try it out. It’s a practice in the West that isn’t very popular, and I was just trying to put it out there and hopefully inspire others.”

Mission accomplished, J.J. — whether you come home from Houston with a National Championship ring or not.

Though a ring really would be nice …

Jenn McKee is a Farmington-based writer with two daughters, two cats and one husband. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football QB McCarthy's field meditation is rare | Opinion