| Mindfulness on the Golf Course |
Mindfulness is awareness of ourselves and our surroundings without the distraction of conscious thought. We engage in mindful activity every day -- opening a door, slicing a tomato, writing our name, catching a set of keys thrown to us. Our bodies were designed to move mindfully, guided by input from our senses, but not over controlled by complicated thoughts or worries. This website does not include swing tips, nor does it tell you specific mechanical swing changes to hit the ball straighter or farther. But it can have a big effect on your game. Like most physical activities, golf can not be taught, someone can not tell you how to do it. You need to learn it. To perform any movement well and confidently you must be able to feel that movement and instinctively know when you have done it well. What this website is designed to do is give you a better understanding of how your mind and body work together to perform and learn athletic activities. With this understanding, and with a series of exercises that buildnderstanding, I think you will find it easier to feel your swing. And here is the pay off. When you can feel what you are doing in your swing when you hit a slice (or any bad shot), your body instinctively makes subtle but important corrections. This trial and error method is your body's natural approach to learning. Let's start with a simple demonstration. Pick up a golf ball and throw it toward a target. Notice how little goes through your mind as you make your throw. There are no "throw thoughts." You do not concentrate on making a precise movement with your arm, yet you can easily feel your arm and others parts of your body as they move. You have no real worry that you might miss the target, but you are very aware of your target throughout the throw, and it seems to guide your motion. If you want to throw it farther you just let your body move more forcefully. If a throw goes off-line you can sense the error even before the ball leaves your hand. You intuitively adjust the wind up and throw on the next attempt, and feel the improvement in your aim immediately. Compare this with an experience most golfers have had -- hitting a pure shot, where the motion just flowed. Maybe you had just put a shot out of bounds, dropped another ball and just hit it. No thoughts, no worries now that your chance of par was gone, just a pure motion. That was a mindful swing. Was your experience during that magical shot more like your experience throwing the ball, or your experience during your average golf shot? I do not mean to suggest that hitting a golf ball can be as easy as throwing one, but maybe it doesn't have to be as hard as we make it. Maybe we can learn something from our throw motion to make it easier to learn golf. What Is In This Website This website is designed to show you how to use mindfulness to make it much easier to learn and play golf. The How We Move section describes the process used by your central nervous system to control motion, and demonstrates how swing thoughts interfere with the swing they are intended to guide. The How We Learn section reminds us of the natural, experiential learning process of our youth and contrasts this with the unproductive technique of “learning by tips.” The Balance section looks at how the body anticipates the forces required for a movement and intuitively positions limbs and tenses muscles in preparation for a smooth and efficient motion. The Mindfulness section combines the different concepts of this website to help you develop a different way to learn and play golf. The Exercises section provides simple drills and exercises to help you improve your awareness, the most important tool for bringing mindfulness to the golf course. The explanations in this section also will clarify the concepts in this website. This is a hands-on section is designed to help you use mindfulness to understand and improve your mechanics. |
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