In 1967, Pam Portugal Walatka joined a group mentioned in Golf in the Kingdom—the Esalen Residential Program “astronauts of inner space,” and became a life-long friend and student of Dick Price and Michael Murphy. Starting in 1968, Pam was Esalen’s first yoga teacher. From 1987 to 2003, she was an award-winning technical writer under contract to NASA. Her name is on a pending NASA patent. She now is a yoga teacher and freelance writer living with her husband in Los Altos Hills, California.
GESTALT GOLF by Pam Portugal Walatka
I took a swing and hit the big ball first. My golf club hit the earth before it hit my ball. The little ball skidded a few feet and stopped annoyingly close to where it started. Maybe I should have been paying more attention to where the ground was. Every golfer knows you are supposed to look at the ball as you swing, but what about looking at the grass as well? The location of the ground
matters as much as the location of the ball—your club needs to swing in an arc with a precise relationship to the grass.
I started thinking about seeing foreground and background at once and I was reminded of gestalt psychology, which emphasizes seeing the interplay of foreground and background, becoming aware of the whole picture, not just the parts. A tiny mental hop brought me to gestalt awareness practice, techniques for training one’s awareness of the whole gestalt. Combine gestalt awareness practice with the kind of golf described by Michael Murphy in Golf in the Kingdom, and you have gestalt golf, which is the practice of being aware, finding the location of the ground, and catching a wave of energy.
Gestalt golf is something fun to try on the golf course.
Practicing Awareness
A long time ago, when I was young, I was walking down a city sidewalk and noticed a little grocery store. I went in and bought a chocolate candy bar. A few minutes latter, as I was continuing down the sidewalk, I noticed a trash can and deposited my candy-bar wrapper. As I put the wrapper in the trash, I realized I had had no awareness whatsoever of eating the candy bar. I bought it and then it was gone. My mind had been elsewhere. I wasted all those calories without getting any pleasure from the experience of eating chocolate.
Not long after that I had the good fortune to find myself at Esalen, where I studied meditation and participated in what we now call support groups—I began to learn how to notice information pertinent to being alive. Being aware of what is going on inside and around oneself is an art that requires decades of practice. The golf course is as good a place as any to practice.
The time you spend walking toward your ball can be used to gather information about the energy fields through which you are passing. In Golf in the Kingdom, Shivas Irons talks about “true gravity” — the conglomerate of all the forces at play in any given moment. Although these forces are deep and complicated and mysterious, they manifest in signs that can be seen if you look. Sensory awareness offers a direct path to comprehension of true gravity.
What is the wind doing? Can you hear it in the trees? Can you see which way the leaves are being pushed? Can you feel the temperature of the wind against your skin? Can you feel where your pants are being pushed against your thighs?
What else do you hear? Traffic? Aircraft? Voices? Birdsong?
How does the ground feel beneath your feet? How are you feeling? What sensations are coming from inside you? Are you breathing deeply? Can you smell the grass?
Locating the Ground
There is no such thing as a perfectly straight line and there is no such thing as a perfectly flat golf lie. The ball is always to some degree below or above your feet, and the ground is always sloping to your left or right. Golf is a game of nanometers—the slightest variation of where the club meets the ball can make a tremendous difference in the flight of the ball.
You need to know where the ground is.
The interesting part is that the ground is not holding still. If you were at Pebble Beach, California, the ground under your ball would be rotating around the axis of the earth at 454.668 miles an hour. The whole earth is zooming around the sun at approximately 66,600 miles an hour. We don’t notice this speed because it is always there, but we can learn, though practice, to become aware of very subtle changes in true gravity, the result of all the deep and mysterious and cosmic and ordinary forces at play.
As Shivas says, the contingencies are “too numerous to calculate ever.” But you can stand there over you ball and notice where it is and where the ground is, right now. When you take your practice swing, you can notice where your club hits the earth, and make a change in your grip or stance. You can stand with the sweet spot of your club against the ball and notice how that position feels in your arms.
Gestalt golf means staring at the grass as well as the ball—seeing foreground and background at once, and really seeing them. As you swing, you are seeing the individual blades of grass around your ball. You may see a glint of sunlight off your club as it passes through your field of vision. Then you may see the dance of the tee as it flips up into the air and descends. It’s rather interesting actually, to observe the details. And amusing.
Catching a Wave of True Gravity
A few decades ago, when I was middle-aged, I had the delightful experience of learning how to catch a wave on a surfboard: you have to start paddling as fast as you can at exactly the right moment, when the wave is gathering power—it’s something you feel. I think golf is like surfing—you try to catch a wave of energy—but you can’t see the wave.
When you are standing over your ball with your club waggling, your swing thoughts should all be behind you. You already have opened your senses to internal and external information. You already have determined the location of the ground. Tell the verbalizing part of your brain to shut the eff up. Now all you have to do is catch a wave of energy.
An ocean surfer can wait for half an hour for the right wave to come along, but a golfer has only a breath or two. You are standing there waiting for unseen forces to gather power, to swell like a rising wave. You wait for a flux of energy to pull you into your backswing and then to push you into your downswing. The feeling to swing may come immediately, with no waiting at all—go for it—or maybe you wait for the duration of a breath. If you are still waiting after two breaths, you might as well go ahead and swing.
Sometimes the wave of energy will tumble you and make you look like a fool. This is the time to exercise your sense of humor, without which we are all doomed. If you were someone else watching your goof-up, would you not have to stifle a giggle? On the great ocean of energy forces, we are all just bobbing up and down. Sometimes I am above you and sometimes I am below. Nobody gets to be up all the time.
True gravity is real. You can learn to feel it and you can learn to let it take you for a ride.
Conclusion
The next time you have the opportunity to play golf, you might want to try practicing gestalt golf: let your senses drink in the situation, take a moment to notice where the grass is, and catch a wave.
©2010 Pam Portugal Walatka
Contact: pamwalatka@yahoo.com
See also: gestaltgolf.com