Are you having problems concentrating, focussing or balancing when taking shots? Or are you interested in becoming more consistent, accurate, disciplined, and skilled in your game?
Either way, we’re here to assist. We’ll give you practical tips that will help you become a better golfer, and improve your overall well-being through meditation.
Discover what meditation is and why it is important
Learn the most important benefits of golf meditation.
Discover general benefits of meditation off the course
Some helpful free tools to get started meditating
List of the infographic and article sources and studies used
First things first. For you and me, Meditation is not some magical technique used by monks in the himalayas to find enlightenment.
In fact, for I think the most helpful way to see it when starting out is as being just a tool.
A very powerful tool, but a tool nonetheless.
Meditation is a set of techniques intended to help you bring awareness to the present. By doing this you train your focus and awareness, which has been shown to have significant psychological and health benefits.
Many cultures, religions and ancient civilizations traditionally practiced meditation because of its neurological, physiological, and psychological benefits.
You have plenty of time during the round, and a lot of time to think about your game. This time is usually the most destructive. Therefore, one of the most important elements of mastering your game is controlling your mind and staying focused.
On the green, your meditation practice gives you several benefits to help you play better golf, consistently. In essence, it...
Essentially, mediation is a powerful tool with many benefits to players who practice it. Some of the benefits include mental and health benefits that enable you to play better. Let’s look at some of them in detail.
Golf is an outdoor sport. On the course, you walk long distances between shots, which gives you a lot of time to think and distract yourself before making your next shot.
A clear mind is one of the most useful tools for better performance on the course. With a clear intention you focus better, have better mind balance & composure, listen to your instinct more clearly and refrain from external distractions, which enables you to hit the ball just right.
Meditation helps you to monitor cognitive processes related to attention & distraction, prevents mind wandering & shifting, and enhances sustained attention (source). A clear mind helps you to withhold external distractions between shots and allows you to focus on your inner thought, which enables you to take accurate shots easily.
Golf is a game of patience. In a game of golf, you don’t always hit perfect shots because of internal factors like your mood and rethinking your day at the office and external factors like the course terrain, your golf buddies and more. Sometimes, your timing, rhythm, and groove are off, which affects your game. It is during this time that patience becomes essential (source). Our natural tendency is to speed up, to “push through” in order to force a great shot, but wait. Pause instead. Take a deep breath, then take a focused swing instead of a rushed one.
Patience is essential for all golfers because it helps you to wait in position until luck comes your way and overcome the ever-present challenges that golf presents (source).
Meditation boosts patience and calmness by allowing you to maintain emotional equilibrium and reduce the chances of despondency (source).
Through meditation, you improve patience levels and maintain composure, which enables you to grind opponents down during a long round and simply play your best game calmly.
A double bogey stings for most ambitious golfers since it could be have been avoided most of the time. As Entrepreneur and avid golfer Keith Cunningham points out in his book ‘The Road Less Stupid’, a double bogey is a ‘Bad shot, followed by a stupid shot’.
Composure, grit, and resilience are useful virtues that help you to avoid double-bogeys during your game. Frequent mindfulness meditation cultivates resilience, grit, and composure according to this study (source). When you are composed and resilient, you evaluate your options more effectively. This gives you a better chance to avoid ‘high risk’ shots out of impulse, which lowers your risk of ending up with stupid shots on your scorecard.
Golf is a game of strategy that requires you to stand still and remain calm to take accurate shots. Agitation, arousal or anxiety negatively affects your game and results in poor play like double or triple bogeys.
With all these distractions and challenges, you need to be a calm, relaxed and composed player to get the best out of your game and meditation proves to be a useful tool. Meditating regularly helps you to reduce distress, anxiety, and agitation, and improves composure and mind relaxation (source).
A calm, composed and relaxed mind enables you to take better shots and ultimately improves your mastery in the game.
Although multitasking boosts productivity, it depletes our levels of concentration and focus (source). Another study also confirms that concentration levels drop every time you attempt to come back to a task.
Many distractions affect your level of focus during your game including obstacles and the time between shots. Meditation, however, helps you to concentrate and maintain focus during moments in which you would have otherwise been distracted (source).
Meditation benefits golfers to focus in two significant ways. It helps you to:
Let’s face it, Golf is a challenging sport that requires self-discipline, consistency, and dedication for you to master the game. There are many rules & regulations that every player is expected to adhere to as a player. So, lack of self-discipline and reliance affects your game, your relationship with other players, and your consistency on the game (source).
Self-discipline is one of the virtues that you gain from playing golf regularly. Meditation, however, has been linked to increased levels of discipline and emotional intelligence (source).
Meditation benefits golfers by imparting strong self-discipline and reliance (source). Self-discipline and reliance help you to remain consistent, follow the rules of the game, establish sound relationships with other players, stay decisive, and play better (source).
Being self-conscious enables you to understand your strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and motivations, which boosts your productivity and improves your skills when performing tasks.
Meditation increases your awareness about yourself by helping you connect with your true inner self; your inner essence as opposed to your personality (source). By boosting self-awareness, frequent meditation enables you to handle emotions effectively and balance your thoughts to match your motivation or goal (source).
Gaining self-awareness through meditation is beneficial because of a couple of reasons. Self-consciousness helps you to understand and master your tricks on the course. Some shots like plugged bunker shots and downhill putts are challenging to take and require more than just mastery (source).
Self-awareness allows you to take difficult shots more easily by enhancing your capability to control emotions, anxiety, and fear of a mishit. Taking downhill putt shots, for example, requires immense balance and consciousness to beat gravity and putt the ball on the first shot (source).
How does meditation build self-determination and actualization?
Meditating frequently helps you to become more resilient and patient when making important decisions. The practice boosts your understanding of success and helps you to make the right choices geared towards achieving your goals according to this research (source).
In a game of golf, the goal is to put your ball in the hole by taking the least possible shots on every round. Meditation builds patience and resilience: virtues that help you to remain calm when taking shots and resilient when you make mistakes. By breeding determination within you, meditation helps you to play and complete your game without giving up.
A healthy mind and body are essential when playing a sport like golf or undertaking other forms of physical activity. By increasing your cortical thickness, regular meditation improves your attention, focus, and ability to perform under stress according to a study carried out by the University of California (source). Meditators also have large amounts of gyrification, the folding of the cortex, which boosts information processing and memory formation according to this research (source).
Regular meditation sessions boost your immune system & functions and fight against diseases and infections (source), which affects your performance on the course. A healthy immune system prevents diseases, allowing you to have more time for practice and play.
Meditation also keeps body organs healthy and functioning, which amplifies your performance. According to a 2012 study, it was revealed that frequently meditating significantly reduces the risk of heart disease and improves overall heart health (source).
Moreover, research shows that meditation helps in the prevention, treatment, and management of various illnesses and conditions including
Mediation benefits golfers mentally and physically by boosting performance and keeping you healthy, which translates to improved play, skill, and mastery in the game.
Your body needs to rest after a long day at work, and sleep is its way of doing so. You need at least 6 hours of sleep every day for your body to remain healthy and body systems & functions to run smoothly.
Busy schedules, smartphones, and unlimited internet connectivity limit your sleep; affect your sleeping patterns, and put you at risk of disorders like insomnia and narcolepsy. Inadequate sleep leaves your body and brain fatigued, which affects your concentration, focus and overall performance on the course.
Forget sleeping pills and practice meditation every day before bedtime to get enough sleep and rest. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a potentially effective intervention for sleep disturbances and insomnia (source). Meditation also improves sleep by helping you to stay away from electronic gadgets and other distractions that affect your sleeping patterns.
Having enough sleep improves your performance on the course by enabling you to relieve stress, concentrate, focus, and take better shots.
A calm and clear mind can be a life-saving tool during stressful occasions on the course and in general life. Sometimes, you will need to take difficult shots from tricky places like sand bunkers and under trees, which require you to be extra calm and composed. In these situations, having a quiet, clear mind helps you take better shots and improve your performance.
Meditation helps in many ways including clearing your mind to give you peace of mind. Many meditators practice it to relax and clear the mind (source). Meditation gets rid of clogged thoughts and stories you attach during life events.
Meditating regularly before your game allows you to tap into your intuition, boosts creativity & energy, and helps you to develop enthusiasm for your game. That way, you improve your overall performance on the course.
When you play golf, you meet and engage different people on the course. You establish healthy relationships with other players, which enables you to network and close deals easily on the trail. Regular meditation also helps you to have good relations with loved ones through ego-resilience, self-acceptance and ‘a loving attitude.’
Although it’s a solitary exercise, meditation improves your personal and social relationships. Metta, for example, is a loving-kindness type of meditation where you focus on developing a sense of care and benevolence towards living beings (source).
Nurturing healthy relationships through regular meditation on and off the course helps you play better and reduces the chances of developing social anxiety disorders, loneliness, worry, and isolation (source).
Maintaining focus consistently on the course can be difficult thanks to distractions like the environment and your golf buddies. The time between shots also affects your attention and consciousness, ultimately affecting your performance.
A study done by Emory University demonstrated that meditating regularly increases connectivity within the brain networks that control attention. It also develops cognitive skills like maintaining concentration and disengaging from distraction (source).
Consistent focus and attention during your game enables you to maintain a low score, good play and improves your performance on the course.
Let’s face it! Skill and mastery are essential for you to be at the top of your game, but without confidence, your game can be greatly undermined. Golf is a challenging game that requires you to be confident to perform at your level best.
True self-confidence is based on a foundation of self-awareness by understanding your strengths and weaknesses at an intimate level. One core tenet of meditation is to disregard judgment & negative thoughts and instill a sense of self-appreciation and confidence.
Meditating before a game helps you to condition your mind to refrain from judging your limitations and mistakes, and instead use them as hidden strengths (source).
True understanding of your strengths, limitations, and mistakes ultimately becomes powerful, subtle, and effortless self-confidence that improves your performance on the course.
It is not unusual for you to feel tense before a game whether during actual tournaments or friendly matches. Tension results from many things including the fear of losing, making mistakes or intimidation from better players. Tension affects you focus, accuracy, and overall performance, which results in poor play and high scores.
A study conducted on 32 adults by All India Institute of Medical Sciences revealed that practicing meditation regularly before stressful events limit the adverse effects of tension and stress (source).
You significantly reduce stress and tension before your game by meditating frequently beforehand, which enables you to play better and improve your overall performance. You can practice tension-relieving meditation through these three ways.
Anxiety occurs in many golfers during different stages of the game, but it’s most common when putting your ball in the cup; a feeling golfers refer to as Yips. Both skilled and amateur players suffer from yips (source).
Yips, which is a common anxiety problem amongst golfers affects your game and may lead to mistakes that prevent you from putting your ball from a mere 3 feet away.
Anxiety is a cognitive state that limits your ability to regulate emotional responses to threats or stressful events. When you meditate, you strengthen your cognitive abilities and curb anxiety.
Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Center conducted a study with fifteen volunteers to establish the effects of mindfulness meditation on anxiety. According to the findings, meditating for at least 20 minutes every day helps with anxiety relief (source).
Reduced anxiety and yips enables you to play better, reduces chances of mishits, and helps you to put your ball in the hole comfortably.
Planning and preparing for your next shot can be a huge advantage especially when you need all the luck you can get. Failure to have a strategy before every shot leads to poor hits or mishits that affect your performance. Visualizing and strategizing about your next shot improves performance and limits chances of distraction between shots.
According to a study, long-term meditation improves your visuospatial processing and executive functioning (source).
Improved visualization not only helps you to take better shots, but it also limits distraction between shots. That way, your mind stays focused on the game and enables you to perform better.
Seldom does a golf game lack situations where you experience increased pressure. Pressuring conditions include putting, hitting your ball out of bunkers or playing a timed game. During such moments, you require increased calmness and composure to take winning shots and perform exceptionally.
A study done by the University of California confirmed that meditation training helps you to remain focused and attentive during stressful events and when performing tedious repetitive tasks (source).
Meditating before your game improves your ability to focus, remain attentive and calm when paying under pressure. You can take better shots and perform better during such situations.
Time is of the essence during every golf game. Observing time is a rule in golf that requires you to take as less time as possible when it’s your turn to play. Some of the everyday events that cause you to waste time include distractions, anxiety, stress, double bogeys and more. Negative thoughts also limit your performance and force you to take too much time when playing.
If you can handle most of these situations, you perform better and save time on the course.
Meditation helps you to deal with all these time-consuming events including limiting distraction, stress, anxiety, and negative thoughts. It also improves your focus and enables you to play better as seen earlier in the article.
You will not always have a good time on the course. Sometimes you take bad shots, miss some hits or suffer double bogeys that affect your performance. Resilience and patience are essential qualities that you should have whenever you suffer such setbacks.
Resilience helps you to continue playing when you don’t feel like or when your performance is poor, and patience enables you to remain calm during such situations.
Meditating regularly allows you to be more resilient and increases your levels of patience, which help you when you suffer setbacks on the course (source). Practicing meditation before every game can also limit the chances of suffering setbacks, which allows you to perform better.
Meditation has numerous benefits both psychological and physiological. When practiced over a long period, meditation improves your health and mental well-being. Having a sound body and mind improves your moods and leaves you happy, stress-free, and relaxed, which improves your overall performance on the course.
Meditation limits instances of stress and low moods and improves your psychological well-being, which increases happiness according to this study (source).
Playing golf when relaxed and happy influences your game and helps you to perform at your level best.
While in this state:
A free app to get you started with guided meditation using headphones. The Calm App comes with over 100-guided meditation techniques that help you manage anxiety, lower your stress levels and sleep better. It is an ideal choice for beginners but also includes numerous programs for intermediate and advanced meditators.
This another free app to get you started with guided meditation using headphones. It comes with a basic pack to guide you through the essentials of meditation in the form of a 10-day beginner’s course. The’re hundreds of meditation techniques for beginners, intermediates and advanced meditators.
Great Channels such as “The Honest Guys” provide free, high quality guided meditations.
This book offers various awareness and visualization techniques to help your game and meditation practice.
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