The Progress of a Student and Teacher
Part 2
For most of the summer EM and I had
very little contact. Our first round of e-mails seemed very productive and I assumed that
he was out playing a lot of summer golf. It was a good chilling out period. I continue to
scribble in my journals and work on developing the Swing Thing. The night before I was
leaving on a family holiday, EM dropped me a note.
7/31/99-no
subject
8/11/99-no subject
8/13/99-Flow
8/15/99-Flow
8/16/99-Burned Time
7/31/99 No subject
TS,
Playing better golf these days
when I stay out of my way and just hit the ball. The demon of trying to do something with
my swing to improve still haunts me. It's a hard lesson to learn. When I clear my mind and
focus on the ball I hit good shots without any idea about the particulars of the swing.
You have been more help than the many books and instruction I have taken. What's new?
SOSDD. I haven't
been playing enough golf!
By the way, the illusion
article is brilliant - I have never read anything the touches on the concepts you explore
in it. If it is as original as it seems to me you should get credit for it. If it is not
please tell me where I can find more like it.
Yes, the Illusions
article is my original work. Now if I could somehow translate that into dollars, I would
be able to hit the links more often ...know any publishers? ;~)
Good to hear from you,
TS
8/11/99 No
subject
TS
I'm currently reading "Golf Dreams" by John Updike. You would love it. I highly
recommend it to you. The book is a collection of golf articles that Updike has written
over the years. Updike has been playing and thinking about golf for 30 years. He makes a
convincing argument that golf is a trip - a non-chemical hallucinogen. The article on
swing thoughts ends like this: "The difficulty is, all swing thoughts decay,
like radium. What burned up the course on Wednesday has turned to lead on Sunday. Yet it
does not do to have a blank mind: the terrible hugeness of the course will rush into the
vacuum and the ball will spray like a thing berserk. A swing thought is the golfer's
equivalent of the rock climber's "don't look down." With a particular focus we
reduce the huge circumambient room for error to a manageable somatic radius."
Just got your
message from 8/1/99. I've been away on a family sabbatical. I needed to recharge the
batteries and get away from the electronic world.
For me, the ocean is a great charging mechanism. I think it's the calming effect of waves
and the salty air.
For a body surfer, there's nothing like catching a good wave. There is great exhilaration
as the crest of the ocean wave crashes under your belly. The hands stay ahead of you in
air. They never submerge and it gives the surfer a sense of flying off the wave ...!
Yes! I read that book about five
years ago. I can't believe I forgot to put it in my book links! Thanks. I'll try to get it
in there when I have time. If I recall, Updike lives somewhere in the Northeast U.S. I
believe I had him on a contact list somewhere.
Yes, it's a great book and that's a great paragraph!
 Golf Dreams
To me it says that to switch the mind from one particular thought no particular thought is
dangerous. The mind must attend to something which gives direction to one's intent. If you
replace the word "focus" in Updike's paragraph with the words "attention to
the pure object" or with the words "attention to the ball," the direction
of one's intent becomes clear.
I hope I have forever left behind any marginal
utility a swing thought provides in exchange for connection with the ball and faith in
motion. It is a tribute to the game (or a warning of it's addictive nature) that people
can go on playing for decades being lifted up and smashed down at the high frequency that
results from the short life of swing thoughts.
You mean short half life of swing
thoughts! ;~) Or ...or the concomitant thoughts of many particulars!
I wonder what it would take to
get some of your ideas into the hands of someone like Updike?
EM
8/13/99 Flow
TS,
I noticed you mention your
local pro in one of your articles. What does he think of your philosophy? What's his?
I'm not sure he knows the full
extent of the philosophy. I presented the Swing Thing to him and demonstrated some basic
movements with it. Otherwise, I left the slate blank. To me the Swing Thing is an
experimental device; I hope that it remains so. I do however need to get back to him on
it. At the time of our meeting he was experiencing severe back problems and could not even
swing a club. Perhaps he was able to use the swing tool as a surrogate teaching device.
I re-read the "Witness
the Ball" article - profound. You expressed your dislike for hitting nets. I think
you should reconsider. The only downside of a hitting net is a curving ball flight is hard
to detect. We know that what must be practiced is entering into the state of emptiness and
witnessing the ball. Both are achieved with a hitting net. A purely struck ball is a
certainty before visual verification.
I have re-considered. You are one
hundred percent correct. I had the chance to use a hitting net in the living room of a
giant loft apartment. It can really help one to get comfortable over the ball and to
practice one's "easiness." I guess I just loathe having to hit off a rug. I
should qualify my statements a little better.
For the third time I must
object to your belief that what you are talking about has much to do with EJ. I was
hitting balls the other day and I thought I would "Swing the clubhead". It
doesn't work as well as "witness the ball." I tried to split my mind between the
two with different weighting -not good. I went back to witnessing - good. If you witness
you swing the clubhead without intent. If you consciously swing the clubhead you cannot
witness. For me swing the clubhead is a swing thought, one of the best, but still a veil.
I'm still searching for our point of disagreement. The thought "swing the
clubhead" tricks the mind into the urge to place a timeline on events. This is just
as bad as saying "turn around your center." Both statements may be true (just as
concrete formalisms are true) but both are defective in that they insure a domino effect
of the thought process.
What I'm talking about has nothing to do with Ernest Jones. But I use EJ to juxtapose my
philosophy. Yes, swing the clubhead. But swing the left wrist, the left elbow, the right
earlobe, the seventh rib, and so on. This process is not a thought but a reality. And this
reality can never be expressed until the clubhead is in harmony with the True Center. The
blurred half-life of a swing thought is what causes those sticking points in the reality
of swing. And the responses are predictable: "Well, you lifted your head,"
"you didn't get your left shoulder under your chin," "you cast your club
from the top," "you fell
back," "blah blah blah, la la, and la la la." These observations, though
handed down even from the most respected among teachers, cause a feedback loop of
self-observation and ultimately a loss of confidence.
This may just be a argument over semantics. That is why I use the words WHENING and WANING
to describe this event.
TS
8/15/99 Flow
TS,
Yes, it may just be a
discussion about semantics. I have had the impression since I first started reading your
articles that you considered the Spalding method an extension of EJ's work. I guess it is,
since EJ pointed out the futility of formalism and you have taken it a step further
pointing out the futility of conscious intervention into swing.
This is very difficult to express
because golf has a general form; it requires us to attend to the ball with a pre-set angle
of attack. This activity works against the new student (as well as the frustrated veteran
golfer) as he tries to put all the variables into the most favorable set position.
Instruction therefore breeds the tension that ensures both the overly passionate and
lifeless wooden swing. EJ was at his best when discussing these matters.
My impression of the Spalding
method is this: You do not build a swing by burning patterns of movement into your brain,
but by quieting the higher level functions that have grown strong by serving us well in so
many ways, besides golf.
Agree. I would prefer to say that we
must burn a time pattern into the brain, not a form pattern. I call this pattern WANING
and it can be expressed through any space. See "The Baseball Putting Technique."
With practice you can do that.
Then, You must find perfect, comfortable concentration on the ball that can best be
described as a connection. The ball, club and you are connected. Next, You must keep this
state throughout your swing. The last point is rather difficult.
EM
Yes. We have been conditioned to
believe that no positive outcome is possible without effort, or that the outcome of an
event will be enhanced through a little extra effort. This is where the entropy barrier is
broken and all manner of chaos ensues. It seems that when we get a taste of that
slipstream of freedom (when we experience WANING) The conscious mind wants to jump in and
take control. The conscious mind freaks out when there is no effort.
TS
"Always cast early, never late."
The Formalist
8/16/99 Burned
Time
TS,
I'm surprised by your comment
about burning a time pattern into the brain.
So am I :~o I get myself in trouble
when I write off the top of my head.
As noted in Illusions, there are measurable time differences between swinging a wedge and
swinging a driver. The differences in club length guarantee this. Yet there are no
perceptible time differences within the mind of the swinger. I used the phrase "time
pattern" as a substitute for WANING because when we WANE consistently through all
shots we set up the emergence of an efficient mechanism.
Perhaps I'm going a bit deep with this (why stop now) but when we release our control to
movement we must also release our control to time. The phrase "burning in a time
pattern" is probably not the best way to express it. I'll stick to WANING.
You said:
"You do not build a swing by burning patterns of movement into your brain, but by
quieting the higher level functions that have grown strong by serving us well in so many
ways, besides golf."
That's well stated.
For me, the quality of a golf shot is simply a
matter of how long I stayed connected ( which is witnessing in Spalding terminology)
during the course of the swing. With practice I have become fairly proficient at getting
connected at address. As the club swings back it's easy to get distracted by the clubhead
or left arm moving away from the ball. The other trouble spots are getting consciously
involved in hitting, which immediately breaks the connection, or simply not finishing.
When I stay connected I make a good swing. The idea that I am doing anything other than
getting out of the way of a swing that pre-existed my attempts at swinging is completely
at odds with my understanding.
EM
|
