Golf & Yoga: The common threads

I often tell people that I would have never liked golf if I hadn't first studied yoga. There are numerous yoga/golf retreats, and an ever-growing library of books and videos about how yoga can improve your golf game. While I understood there were obvious physical benefits that would help, I didn't realize there were also many psychological similarities between the two practices.

Words like "quiet", "still" or "precise" are not words that would typically be chosen to describe me. There are quite a few things that both yoga and golf require of a person that I don't come by naturally. Thankfully by the time I had the opportunity to learn golf, I had learned some important lessons that uniquely prepared me to not only learn without frustration, but to enjoy myself and the experiences even while being a beginner.

Here are a few of those lessons:
1. Releasing expectation and accepting where you are today
2. Understanding the underlying mechanics of the body, of motion, and the mindfulness to control those two things
3. Allowing the mind to be quiet and be able to quiet yourself at will
4. Appreciating your surroundings. . . hearing the sounds, smelling the different aromas encountered, noticing beauty in subtleties, feeling the sky above and the earth below (unless you're in the sand/water)
5. Honoring your practice and effort, without a relationship to outcome

You were probably expecting to see patience on this list, but if you can do these numbered items, you're already practicing patience. There are many situations in life that study of yoga has prepared me for. Things like balance between exerting effort and accepting resistance, balance between what I can do now, and what I would like to do (and understanding what needs to happen in between those points), balance between honoring others and honoring yourself, the balance between giving and receiving, etc. etc. etc.

I wonder as I practice golf more, and take it into my life as part of who I am, "What will golf teach me about life? How will my approach to people and situations change because of what I've experienced?" A few things I'll expect as I've seen them foreshadowed are a sense of courtesy and integrity. Playing for yourself rather than against others. The rest of the lessons are still waiting between the greens!