I am currently suffering from a painful lower back that has sidelined me from golf, and from much of life. I haven’t had a lower back issue in many years, so I’m unsure why it is hurting so much now. It may just be a perfect storm of several causes, which started with a desire to increase my rotation speed to gain distance, and take my golf game to a new level. I think I’m suffering because 1) I suddenly began increasing the rotation speed of my hips with, probably, less-than-correct form, 2) I lifted something heavy with a twisting motion at the same time, and 3) I was experiencing the stress of producing our university dance department’s big fall concert (which involved lots of organization and many late nights in the theater).

I have suffered through some fairly major injuries, and when I look back on them, I realize that each one of them has been a window into my weaknesses, and overcoming them has been a path to knowledge and greater strength. So I am looking at this current injury from the other side right away, not freaking out about it, knowing that if I treat it correctly, it probably will go away as quickly as it came on, and I’ll be better off for it. Trying to identify the lessons I can learn from this injury now is helping me to remain calm and equanimous while in such pain.

I am not yet sure about the philosophical lessons I might learn, as I am only now just beginning to heal. But the physical lessons are clear: I have exposed a weakness in my anatomy that needs to be addressed before I can move to the next level of golf scoring (and probably, by extension, the next level of philosophical awareness). So not only am I seeing the chiropractor and body worker, but I also am searching the web for golf-specific strengthening and and stretching exercises to incorporate into my fitness routine. I’m excited that these will start to take me to that next level of distance and confidence, which are essential to low scoring golf rounds.

Winter has just arrived here, and it will be months before I am able to get out onto the course with any regularity. Winter is the time to heal, to consolidate, to let the lessons learned over the summer settle deeply into my mind-body subconscious. And so, an injury at season’s end is perfect timing, giving me a few months to work it out. I look back at this time to my most worrisome injury, the tendonitis I developed in college while practicing rigorously for a piano competition (again, probably with bad form). Both of my hands gradually stiffened as I practiced the dastardly difficult middle section of Chopin’s Nocturne in F major. Worried, I saw a doctor, who diagnosed severe tendonitis, and counseled me to stop playing piano. Luckily, the next semester I was scheduled to study abroad. So after a summer of weeping and worrying, I was able to distract my self-pity and “get out of myself” with a lengthy trip to see the wonders of Europe. In Vienna, where my semester abroad was spent, I went to many concerts and was able to absorb a lot of music without any of my performer’s ego involved. When I returned to the US, my hands were feeling a little better, so I tentatively took some piano lessons. My piano teacher asked how I’d managed to improve so much, where I’d been studying! That’s how I came to the knowledge that time off is actually a very good tool for bodily learning. The body-mind was able to filter all the information I’d been gathering through the process of practicing, becoming injured, opening myself to other experiences, and listening to all that music, and then percolate it back up into a more fully realized musician. 

Nonetheless, with my hands still rather weak, I returned to college and began studying the harpsichord, which requires much less hand strength than the piano. I played my first note—and I was thunderstruck by the sound that rang in my ears! In magical wonder, I played that first note over and over again, listening, enchanted, as the world of music suddenly opened its secret knowledge to me. I had found my instrument! I’d always been a rather mediocre pianist, but this injury-instigated detour eventually led to a successful career as a harpsichordist. Thus, what had first begun as a rather tragic circumstance actually turned out to be a guidepost to a path leading to knowledge and success.

This profound experience has always since given me hope when faced with injury, and knowledge that injuries are actually forces for good. They are the windows into our weaknesses, and if you can only look through them to what is in store for you on the other side of healing, you can take comfort in the knowledge that something essential for your growth awaits you on the other side. I can’t wait to get started with my new exercises, and see what happens next season!

Yesterday's round of golf went not so well as Monday's, to be sure. It was the first time I went out this season with another golfer, my friend Terry M. Although it was pleasant being with another person on the course, my game sort of fell apart (49 today vs. 42 Monday). I was using extended vision again, but since I was negotiating the difference between conversation and hitting a golf ball, my vision extended a bit too far. My hitting was quite inconsistent; I felt like I wasn't able to get into a zone while hitting the ball.

So I wonder, is there a way to set up and navigate two separate flows on the course, one a social flow, the other a golf flow? Then you could jump from one to the other and not have to stop the flow mid-stream. Hit the ball, then open myself up to the other golfers: "Oh, I'm in the social flow now." My turn to hit?: "Let me jump into the golf flow now." I'll have to try this next round I play with another golfer. I have worked on this some in terms of the meditative global breath rhythm (more on this later), focusing in tight on the ball while hitting, then opening up the focus to nature while walking, then back again. But this in and out focus is still within my own perception of passive outside events. Receiving input from outside that demands a response, and then going back inside, is a much larger jump. 

A relaxing, easy flow within the body is another aspect of flow that I will be focusing on. The evening before this round, I went to the practice range and worked on my 5 iron and driver. During this session, I noticed—from the inside—how much tension I hold in my right shoulder. I tried to let it relax while swinging, but with mixed results. believe I was able to begin to do this in yesterday's round, and was able to hold onto it in my Pilates lesson immediately following. Figuring out how to relax it while swinging will be my next body-mind challenge.

Today's round of golf was a blast! I was in a groove, it seems; I shot a 42—no mulligans, no second shots, just an honest 42—which is one of my best rounds ever. There were few other golfers about, as the weather was overcast and somewhat chilly, and it was late in the day. I'd forgot my driver at home, so played most of the round with my 3 wood, which was treating me well, as were all my clubs. It even got so dark on the last two holes that I couldn't see my ball in flight, but it always found the fairway (or at least close), so I always found the ball as I walked towards the green. Interestingly, I was able to see the ball as it left my club, (maybe due to the intensified vision of the need to understand the path of the ball in the twilight?), so I was able to tell the basic direction of ball flight.

I believe that this, as well as the groove I was in, was due to working on what my good friend and creative partner, David Marchant, taught me about "extended" or "expanded" vision. I'd gone to a dance class he was teaching at the American College Dance Festival last week in Wichtia, KS, about Vision in Dance. While playing this round, I was working on applying what he taught us to golfing. With the ball as the central focal point, I tried to expand my focus from a laser-focus on the ball, to a broader focus which included my back swing arc, my spine angle, my right knee position, and my follow through angle. I found that this was working well, that indeed, I could focus on multiple things at once, to good effect. My back swing slowed down and became quite smooth, my right knee became more stable, and I was hitting the ball straighter and longer.

I am going to keep exploring extended vision as a way of making my golf meditation more inclusive of more of my immediate surroundings. And my swing better, too, of course.