How meditation can improve you golf

I am sure that over the last number of years you have probably heard or been told of the benefits of meditation.

It seems to be a buzzword in the health magazines and we hear of top companies in both the United States and in Europe employing coaches to teach their staff the importance of mindfulness or to give them coaching in meditation.

The word meditation for some can bring up all sorts of images of saffron robes and monks on the top of a mountain yet there is less mystery than we think and, for the benefits of your game, can be very important to look at.

Meditation itself has been highly scrutinised by the scientific community and overall it does seem to be of significant benefit for both our health and mental well-being.

In this social media attention-seeking world, it would appear to be a calm oasis in a sea of mental noise.

If I was to asked to define meditation – I am by no means an expert – my best attempt would be that it is a commitment to put you attention in a certain place for a certain period of time.

When you meditate you make a commitment to focus on your breath, or a mantra, or an object.

You make that commitment and then you begin your practice, and as your mind inevitably wanders away from your point of focus, you gently bring it back.

You allow thoughts to pass through your consciousness without attaching yourself to those thoughts as you gently come back to your commitment, be that the breath or whatever you choose.

In effect, meditation is a way of training your attention. You decide to put your attention in a place you deem useful and when it wanders, you bring it back.

We often say that golf is 90 per cent mental and I personally think that is so very misleading.

In my opinion, when golf is played well it is very much less mental and much more physical.

Time and time again when I have asked top players about their state of mind when they have played well they often say that they were very calm.

What does calm suggest? More thinking or less thinking?

I think the greatest mistake to make is to assume that a good mental game is about thinking more ‘positive thoughts’ because in trying to think more positive you are actually creating a busy mind.

The beauty of meditation is that it is, for me, a template for great golf in the sense that it is a way of slowing the mind down and quietening all of the chatter to allow your physical body to get on with doing what it is capable of doing.

On my podcast recently I interviewed legendary coach Fred Shoemaker and he made the statement that he didn’t think that more than one percent of golfers are able to keep their attention in one place for the duration of their swing.

Consider all of the ‘stuff’ we are telling ourselves to do in the second-and-a-half it takes to swing the club.

Is it any wonder that we struggle with the game?

Fred posed the question in a practice session: could you just make a swing and keep your attention on the clubhead all of the way through your swing from the start to the finish?

Not to try to do anything other than actually be present to the clubhead all the way through the swing. Does that not sound a little bit like meditation?

You have committed to put your attention in one place for the duration for the swing and you have kept it there. Aim to try this.

It is much harder than you think but what it does do is start to quieten a mind that may well have been overloaded with technical does and don’ts.

It need not be the clubhead, you could simply pay attention to a dimple on the ball as long as it is one point of focus and you keep it there for the time it takes to swing the club back up and down.

Begin to consider how you could explore the concept of training your attention.

To quieten the noise and allow the body to get on with the job at hand.

Don’t make the game more ‘mental’; aim to make it more physical.