GOLF-MEDITATION CONNECTION
The purpose of this BLOG is to inspire the golfer to become a committed meditation practitioner by launching daily meditation practice and searching for a meditation coach and a meditation forum. During ritual on every golf shot meditation will facilitate quieting the mind and offer a spiritual experience of becoming one with the environment, the club, the ball, and the target while creating conditions for zone performance and trust of the well-programmed subconscious mind to swing the club or stroke the putt.
In busy lives, meditation offers mindfulness—a quiet mind; awareness—the quality that differentiates golfers; and self-restraint—a learned, self-control skill. A nice place to start is with some definitions.
Meditation is a verb and is engaging in mental exercise, such as concentrating on the breath or repetition of a mantra, for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness. Meditation invites contemplation: learning, receiving information, watching the self in action; perking information, i.e., figuring out where and how the information fits in one’s life; and experiencing the contemplation in life.
Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by deliberately focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly and objectively seeing, acknowledging, and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. One becomes the sentinel, the watcher, the personal witness of reflections of the world.
Awareness is the quality or state of being, knowledge, and understanding that something is happening or exists.
Self-restraint is restraint imposed by oneself on one’s own actions, impulses, and emotions. It is self- control.
Ritual follows the pre-shot routine and is the momentary process used by the golfer to create a spiritual relationship with the environment, the club, the ball, and the target, while trusting the subconscious mind and unconsciously pulling the trigger. Example of ritual before a golf shot:
GROUND THE PHYSICAL SYSTEMS
Take a couple of deep breaths and visualize energy circulating between your feet and the earth below you. Feel static and dynamic balance with the feet; and sense a balanced, solid foundation, and environment surrounding you.
PASSIONATE INTENTION AND INSPIRATION FOR SHOT-STROKE
Take three-five short, explosive breaths into the upper chest to activate the sympathetic nervous system, increase oxygen, and intensify subtle energy currents. Charge the whole body, physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally; and make a final, visual touch of the target.
RELAXED FOCUS
On an out-breath, one-pointed concentration on the point of impact of club with ball—mindfulness—channeling all body energies into a laser beam of relaxed, focused concentration, letting go of everything—self-restraint—and sensing the synchronous, flowing swing to impact with a ball creatively floating to the target—awareness.
Squeeze Trigger, with absolute trust, unconsciously trigger the subconscious mind to unleash a well-programmed, tension-free swing.
The deep game is not about being dealt a better hand, but about playing the cards we are dealt with as much intelligence, care, and creativity as we possibly can. Now one is finally free to be the freedom they have been from the beginning. ‘Just this’ is the ultimate reward that comes from inhabiting the cartoon character drawn from this Kosmic deck of cards. Lao-tzu’s (Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchel, 11) wisdom is clear, concise, and complete:
We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.
We work with being, but non-being is what we use.
