Just came back from a hol­i­day party where I met some avid golfers who thought the con­cept of man­ag­ing emo­tions through breath­ing, visu­al­iza­tion and tech­nol­ogy sounded like a bit far out.

First I tried to para­phrase the quote “Effec­tive man­age­ment of the emo­tions in your golf game will not only lower your scores, but is guar­an­teed to increase your enjoy­ment of the game”, by Lynn Mar­riott and Pia Nils­son, Voted Top 50 Teach­ers 2003–2004, Golf Digest.

Then, I promised to find some rel­e­vant arti­cle on Brain Fit­ness for Golfers.

Here you have a Golf Digest arti­cle–The Future of Golf: Spe­cial Report. Some quotes:

- “Jack Nick­laus was that way more than anyone—having that bal­ance of being uptight in terms of con­cen­tra­tion, with the abil­ity to relax and let him­self per­form at just the right time.”

- “In those moments, the equa­tion “per­for­mance equals poten­tial minus inter­fer­ence” loses its lim­it­ing com­po­nent. The zone results when a skilled actor metic­u­lously first uses the con­scious mind to com­mit lines to mem­ory and inhabit the char­ac­ter, then unleashes the intu­itive mind to deliver a per­for­mance full of spon­tane­ity, orig­i­nal­ity and emo­tional connection.”

- “Another sys­tem, this one devised by Heart­Math, focuses on con­trol­ling emo­tions and their neg­a­tive effects on per­for­mance by mon­i­tor­ing the heart and its path­ways to the brain and ner­vous sys­tem. Heart­Math adher­ents con­tend they can syn­chro­nize activ­ity in the brain and ner­vous sys­tem through the self-generation of a “coher­ent” heart rhythm pattern.”

- “The key tech­nique is called Quick Coher­ence. It begins with a per­son focus­ing atten­tion on an area of the heart and pre­tend­ing to breathe slowly and gen­tly through the heart to a count of five or six. While con­tin­u­ing to breathe this way, the sub­ject con­cen­trates on a pos­i­tive feel­ing or atti­tude like com­pas­sion or appre­ci­a­tion. The process pro­duces an even and more coher­ent heart-rate pat­tern that trig­gers opti­mum per­for­mance poten­tial in the brain. Pro­po­nents say the tech­nique works any­time or any­place a per­son feels ner­vous or irri­tated, includ­ing the golf course before or after a shot. The effect can be quan­ti­fied by Freeze-Framer soft­ware that pro­vides heart read­ings with the use of a fin­ger clip.

- “I use the tech­niques in my lessons, and I’ve seen them bring peace­ful­ness and flu­id­ity back into people’s swings,” says Laird Small, 2003 PGA Teacher of the Year and direc­tor of the Peb­ble Beach Golf Acad­emy. “It shows peo­ple the dif­fer­ence between being in and out of the zone, and they can take it from there.”

For more information

On How golfers may ben­e­fit from this program

On Freeze-Framer (the program)

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