Mindfulness: Worth Teeing Up

Words, names, places to travel, even root vegetables trend in an out, up and down. Ask your friends and colleagues for examples of each. I think kale and sweet potatoes are past their peak. I hear kalettes and broccoflower are on their way in. According to Forbes, Sardinia Italy is tops for 2024. The following questions arise: Does this mean that time, or a new house in Whitefish, Montana is on the way out? Will I still have at least three girls names Sophia and four boys named Jack in my classes in the future? And what will replace mindfulness in the years to come? Hopefully, nothing. How? Why? I hope it's here to stay. 

Mindfulness: Still Trending

To me, mindfulness is a word we hear often, but what does it really mean? I know it's a key concept in the PE/Wellness course required of all ninth graders at St. Ignatius College Prep. #Mindfulness is still trending. And this section of the bookstore (since I still frequent those!) has not slimmed down. I imagine we all have our own path toward understanding and appreciating mindfulness. I found mine through golf. Though some golfers might find this ironic as golf is such a demanding, exacting game—I found it helpful.

In the USGA Golf Journal reports 

Mindfulness isn't just a buzzword, it's a life skill—one that can help you enjoy the game more. 'Mindfulness is a quality of awareness, in which you consciously block past or future interpretations, judgments and fears from affecting the present moment,' said Sharon Salzberg, author of 'Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and Change the World."

Rather than allowing a bad hole to blow up your found, apply the practice of "letting go," Pause, take three deep breaths, say to yourself, I'm starting over, and...let it go.

This is equally important in golf as it is in life. Ask me to name three things which might need letting go, and I can give you thirty. Where should we start? Grievances, shoulds, should nots, numbers, and much more. You can list your own.

Mindfulness however calls us to live in the present. No wonder Salzberg also suggests learning how to "return." 

If you catch yourself thinking about that report you have to turn in tomorrow, gently say to yourself, Not right now. Doing so exercises the letting go muscle, which per Salzberg, "allows you to return to the present moment quicker and with more grace or clarity." 

Let go. Return. Repeat.

If mindfulness is still beyond your grasp, perhaps this example from Olympic Club golf columnist, Gerry Stratford will help. In "A Sojourn" he writes,

I suppose that I am a sojourner on the golf course, and therefore need to cherish not just the 20 minutes that it takes me to hit the ball 80 times, but the full four hours or more that I spend in that special place. 

I occasionally go for a walk in our neighborhood with my wife, and she sets a brisk pace. With long strides and swinging arms, we get terrific exercise, but I would prefer to saunter.

Hal French once explained to me that the word saunter probably derives from the term "saunterer," which was once applied to the traveler in the Middle Ages who was en route to the Holy Land (Sainte Terre). And, if a golf course is in a way our own Sainte Terre, should we not reflect on what is there around us? Not the distance traveled, but the place where we are in the moment. The shots already made are history. They are gone. The ones to come are not yet here. They are beyond our control. Neither of them matters in the moments in between.

All that we really have now is the present, and if in this moment we hear the call of a red-tailed hawk from high in a cypress tree, feel the wind on our face with a taste of fog, or see a rainbow in a bright blue sky, we should savor that. And then, when it is time to feel the slope with our feet and imagine our target line two balls to the right of that beckoning hold, be fully in that moment also.

Mindfulness teachers us to reach out, to become aware of our surroundings. To not be distracted by our recollection of someone's latest swing tip, but just to be the fall and fly with it on its journey home.

This excerpt from "Tee to Green" invites us to consider our own Sainte Terre. Where can you be present? When do you savor the moment? What helps you to become aware of your surroundings? And when you are, what do you see? 

The practice of mindfulness need not be a passing trend. It need not be esoteric or even unpractical either. It's as simple as letting go, returning and making time to saunter....

Photo Credits
Tee it up
Mind Map
Here and Now