Your Putt
Watching golf tournaments on the television, you would have noticed that even golf professionals would miss some apparently simple putts. For the average amateur, this sort of happening is even more common. Why? The reason is that the final putt is often the deciding shot as to whether you win or loose a certain hole or even the whole tournament. Multiple thoughts will come into the mind as you putt and this would affect the putting stroke. Sometimes you are uncertain as to the correct way to putt: is the break from the left or the right? What is the gradient of the sloping surface of the putting green? The thing to do is to decide on a certain way to putt and not look back again. As you step up to the putt and align yourself, concentrate on nothing else but your breathing. As you take your putter back, breathe in and note that you are breathing in, and as you start to hit the ball, you breath out, all the time keeping your eyes on the ball.
Your chip
The chipping stroke in golf is in fact rather like the putting stroke and what is said about the putting stroke applies here as well.
Golfing Meditation and Mindfulness
The benefits of Mindfulness on your golf game must be apparent by now. It must be remembered that golfing meditation is just part and parcel of your meditation exercise in everyday life. Practising mindfulness during your golf game will definitely help you attain a higher level of Mindfulness, especially when most golf games last for 4 hours or more.
Epilogue
If you do not exercise your body, your muscles would waste away and your body would become weak. This is true of the mind too. If you do not exercise your mind to develop awareness, your mind would become dull and remain so unless and until you start doing something about it. Your mind will be an entangled mess especially at times of stress.
In this booklet, I have discussed how we can make use of some of the activities that we do regularly as an opportunity to cultivate mindfulness. At the same time, it may be noted that being mindful in our daily activities would enhance the quality of our lives. Just as being mindful during a heated argument in a boardroom meeting may save you from saying things that you would regret afterwards and perhaps contribute to the satisfactory resolution of the controversy at hand, so your golf handicap should improve with your cultivating of mindful on the golf course. Just note that there should not be any guilt or embarrassment about it. Nor should there be any attachment to it. As in the best Zen tradition, the way to look for happiness is realize that one cannot actually find it. As soon as you try too hard to find happiness, you are already on the road to unhappiness (Thynn, 1995).
References
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Kabat-Zinn J. (2003). Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Context: Past , Present, and Future. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, V10 N2, Summer 2003, page 145.
Linehan, M.M. (1993a). Cognitive-based treatment of borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press
Linehan, M.M. (1993b) Skills training manual for treating borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press.
Parent, J (2003) Zen Golf- Mastering the mental game. Doubleday, pp 71-80.
Salmon, P, Santorelli, S.F. and Kabat-Zinn,J (1998). Intervention elements promoting high adherence to mindfulness-based stress reduction programs in the clinical behavioral medicine settings. In S.A. Shumaker, E.B. Schron, J.K.Ockene, & W.L.McBee (Eds.), Handbook of health behavior change (2nd ed., pp 239-266). New York: Springer.
Smith, H (1991). The World’s Religons – Our Great Wisdom Traditions. Harper San Francisco, pp 103-112.
Teasdale, J.D., Segal, Z.V.,Williams, J.M.G., Ridgeway, V.A. Soulsby, J. & Lau, M (2000). Prevention of relapse/recurrence in Jamor depression by mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,68,615-623.
Thynn, T (1995) Living Meditation, Living Thoughts. The Dhamma Dan Publication Fund, page 56.
Golfing Meditation: Part 1
