The Mental Game

Golf Mind Games
by Jack Rickard

One can imagine the verbal retorts in the office when I said, "I'm going out for a brain massage." It was a statement that I knew would lead to mild ridicule. But this was a serious assignment. It involved improving my golf game.

My appointment was with Patricia Chamberlin at Tucson National Golf Resort. As we got acquainted, she explained the she is a Canadian writer who came to Canyon Ranch Spa Resort in 1988 to do a feature article on mind fitness.

"They were pioneering a program called Mind Fitness at the time," she said. "I spent a week attached to brainwave monitors, sitting alone in a dark closet, watching my brain waves on computer screens in front of me, and hearing my brain's activity. My task was to train -- or should I say tame -- my brain waves, and to learn to create certain brain waves at will. It was a profound beyond belief - literally a life changing experience."

Until then, Ms. Chamberlin was a health columnist whose two health and fitness columns Well Street Journal and Fitnotes were syndicated in Canada and the United States. "After the Canyon Ranch experience I moved here from Toronto to focus my writing on the topic of achieving human potential," she said. "I am now working totally in the area of personal potential - being the best you can be - particularly athletic excellence, peak performance of all kinds and reaching personal potential goals. I've done mind training with everybody from Playboy Bunnies increasing their bust size, to PGA golf pros decreasing a handicap of a different sort," she smiled. "I've worked with [maximizing every area of garden-variety personal potential goals up to and including] Olympic athletes in training. I found myself with a mind training clientele after I wrote the book "Be SomeBody!" which is about achieving the body you have always wanted."

Ms. Chamberlin had an easy and confident manner as she discussed her background. And she was obviously enthusiastic about what she was doing. "I teach self-direction and self-mastery," she said. "From the very beginning mind training is centered on self-training. It is very individual. Initial mind training acquaints you with how powerful your mind is and how to work with it - for example, specific mind management techniques and mental vocabulary - from then on you can use your trained mind to enable you to achieve any goal you ever desire.

"With very little training, you can learn to access different brain wave states," she said as a lead-in to explaining the four brain wave levels - beta, alpha, theta and delta. Mind training is a well-known skill among Olympic athletes and other kinds of super achievers, but it is just coming to the awareness of the general public now with the availability of affordable mini mind-computers and brainwave training machines." She showed me an article from Forbes magazine on the subject. It was titled "Brain Cocktails".

And how does she work with golfers? "It's as individual as you are," she answered. "Whatever your most-hoped-for outcome is, this is what we apply our mind training to. Wherever your mind skills are now is where we begin. It is about finding your level of peak performance and body-mind skills. We will learn how to access the detailed memory of the most perfect golf game you have ever played and go from there."

"You create brainwaves and thoughts all the time now anyway, so you might as well start steering your mind instead of letting it steer you. And golf is very much a mental steering kind of sport.

We'll write a script together about what you want to achieve. Then you'll relax with headphones on and listen to gently beeping binaural audio tones. Binaural means you will hear it in stereo with both hemispheres of your brain. Each beep will be at a certain frequency, leading the brain to accompany the rhythm, much like when you listen to music. This intentionally creates specific natural brainwaves. For example, if our intention is to learn a better golf swing we'll create the brainwaves most conducive to enable that learning -- low beta or high alpha brainwaves. I will program the binaural beeps to play somewhere in the 10 cycle per second range. The brain will naturally "entrain". That's the new word of the 90's. Entrain means your brain will fall into step with the beats. While you are listening to this, you'll be wearing goggles that will be gently flashing lights into your closed eyes in the same rhythm as the sounds. While you are relaxing in this mental state, I will read to you the script we have written together, into your headphones, and I will record the entire experience for you to keep and use again later."

"You see as you listen to the tones and watch the lights, your brain will automatically go along for the ride, creating brainwaves that correspond to the experience," she continued. "We can choose whatever brainwave we would like to create for whatever learning we would like to achieve. Each brainwave state has a distinct way of learning, processing information, knowing, remembering, experiencing, etc. With a little practice you will be able to identify one from another, and put them to use in your service instead of the usual drifting in and out of brainwave states randomly and purposelessly. For example, we are in beta now - beta brainwave states are easily identifiable by the logical, linear, analytical type of communication we are engaged in now. Beta is where we learn in logical mode - such as our education system fosters today. However if we intentionally slow down our brainwaves we enter the day-dreamy alpha brain wave state, a mind state characterized by 'big-picture' thinking, creative problem solving, 'sub-conscious learning', the 'eureka' phenomenon etc. Einstein and Edison for example, habitually went into day-dream states for these purposes. You will begin to easily recognize your own alpha brainwave state once you can identify it. Alpha is that spacey-yet-aware state you have often experienced while driving when you suddenly find that you have gone miles without 'consciously' being aware. Losing touch with time is a common clue to identifying your alpha states. An alpha mind state can be created intentionally and used to enable you to achieve your goals just as surely as if your goal had been to invent the light bulb.

When we talked on the telephone Ms. Chamberlin said to come with my goals in golf definitely in mind. That sounds like an easy assignment, but it wasn't. She took notes as I talked about what I'd like to improve in my golf game: getting rid of negative thoughts, creating a positive attitude that I can make a good swing and hit a particular shot, and enjoying the challenge and the joy of hitting a good shot. She asked me about my favorite course, who I'd like to be playing with and even my favorite golf outfit. It would all be part of her dialogue that would accompany my session with the earphones, goggles and background music, she explained.

"Would you like to hit a few putts?" she asked. "It'll be interesting to see you put before we do this and then again afterwards."

I made one of three puts from 15 feet on her plush carpet. Now it was time for my mind massage.

(Next Issue: The Mind Massage and the Results)

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The Mental Game

Seeing the Swing in Your Mind's Eye

The introductory conversation had finished. It was mind massage time.

After I was comfortable in a reclining leather chair, Ms. Chamberlin adjusted the goggles and earphones that were an integral part of the total experience. She had told me what to expect: her voice guiding me, soft music in the background, accompanied by binaural audio tones that had been set at a predetermined frequency; the goggles emitting synchronized flashing lights through my closed eyelids.

She had decided on a 10-cycle-per-second beat for the tones and the lights, a frequency that would take me to alpha (creative thinking, problem solving, accelerated learning -- relaxed day-dreamy brainwaves). I remembered her prediction, "Your brain will go along for the ride."

Suddenly the ride started. The flashing lights, the tonal beeps. And her voice. So soft, so relaxing accompanied by background music.

"Just begin by allowing your eyes to close. Allow the surface you're resting on to support you completely and let go…" the soothing voice said. "There is nowhere else you need to be, but here. And there is nothing else you need to do, but be here." The slow quiet voice continued to talk of relaxing and letting go. My mind wanted to relax, but it was difficult at first to concentrate. Thoughts like "what am I doing here?" would creep in. Always the hypnotic of the music and her voice and the flashing lights would bring me back into clear focus. As if on cue, the voice told me that in this wonderfully relaxed state, any outside thoughts are completely unimportant to me now. How did she know that? I wondered.

The wonderful voice instructed me to relax every part of my body, by teaching my mind to do a body scan from head to toe. My mind was instructed to start at the top of my head, stop at each tense area as it scanned the length of my body, and let go of any tension it found. This trained my body to move into a high level of physical function.

My mind would wander in and out just for a few seconds, then I'd slip back into synch with the music, the lights, and that voice. Completely physically relaxed and in peak function, the voice was next taking me up five steps to the "most beautiful golf course I've ever seen." For a second I wondered what course I'd pick. Then it didn't matter. I'd create my own. "Notice the sky. Feel the sun on your face, smell the freshly mowed grass …" gently, the voice instructed.

I was there. My own beautiful golf course. The voice quietly reminded me that I was in a state of high level function now and inner calm, and that my mind could now enable me to experience myself making the perfect swing. I'd made that swing many times before and my new mind skill would enable me to recall the sights, the sounds and the feel of those best shots. I was now giving my body and my mind permission to make that perfect swing, completely free of any past obstacles. I was positive, confident in my natural ability and enjoyed the challenge of the game more than ever before. "Because you have a new sense of high level function, of focus, of calm that will be with you forever." the voice promised. "This new body-mind skill is with you now wherever you go. And you will recall this every time you step up to take a shot."

Afterwards the voice led me quietly from my course, back down those five steps, positively accentuating and reinforcing each aspect of what I had just experienced. I 'awoke' with the feeling that I'd had a full nights sleep.

My homework was to listen to the tape she had been cutting during the process, for 21 straight days. I remembered another mind-control exercise from years back which also required 21 days. There is something magical about that number.

And what has happened in the month since then?

It's difficult to listen to the tape every day, especially when the dogs start pawing me. That definitely breaks the mood. I'm still trying to get past seven days in a row. But within a week, I went back to hitting my driver, a club I had put away for almost a year. And with good results! The handicap has dropped a stroke. I've posted some of my best scores of the year in the past month.

Jack Rickard is an avid golfer, seasoned editor
and popular contributing writer of many golf magazines and publications.