Muscle Memory Emotional and Otherwise!

I found the web address of the article on Emotional Muscle memory.
http://www.grief.net/Media/Emotional_Muscle_Memory.htm. While 'grief' as dealt by this web site is of a very serious kind, it should not surprise us to see that grief and golf are interrelated.

(Quote: At the Grief Recovery Institute we coined a phrase that relates to the emotional muscle memories we all acquire in childhood: "In a crisis we return to old beliefs and the behaviors that accompany them.")

This statement is so true! While we want Golf to be fun, we do manage to turn it into an obsession and a game of golf becomes a perpetual crisis sooner or later! Once in this frame of mind, we go back in time and all those hidden and forgotten fears take hold! Some of us Indians, I am sure, would not fix our Tee time during Rahukalam (Time slot fixed in an almanac for each day, when it is inauspicious to start anything important!).

While we may not touch the ground on the first tee to propitiate as some of the soccer players and our own musicians do as they step in, it is possible we would say silent prayers to our own 'personal' deity! I plan to check with our golfing friends whether it is necessary to perform ‘ayudapooja’ during the Navarathri festival! It is common practice on that day to perform a pooja of our vehicles and the machines in our factories, so why not our golf clubs! We know our epic heroes performed a pooja of their weapons every time they went into war.

We all know how some phobias we had managed to submerge in our consciousness resurface again. My fear of water is a good example! I think my inability to chip from the fairway goes back to days when as kids we were forbidden to play on the lawns. I still remember the first time I played on a good course with a well-manicured fairway. Regretfully, I topped every chip I made from this fairway!

(Quote: The simple explanation is that our brains memorize passageways from stimulus to response at nearly imperceivable speeds. What is also obvious is that once the electro-chemical coding takes place and becomes entrenched, it is very hard to dislodge.)

This ‘simple’ explanation I believe needs a deeper study and analysis. I think it will also throw light on how we fail to improve in spite of all the hours we put in the driving range. More of this later!

External pressures you face on the course!

If I had worn this T shirt, I am sure the Marshall at a public golf course would have been little more considerate. He was literally shouting at me 'your group is holding up game and it is backed up all the way'! It was the first time for me and as I did not understand him, it made him shout harder and me totally uspet! This is how I learnt about other pressures in golf in additon to your own self-created ones!

In Bangkok I usually play with a group who are younger and are long hitters!
They wait for me to catch up and I am sure, on my bad days, it is testing them a lot. But not all are that patient. Recently in Bangkok, we were playing in a golf course which belonged to the Airforce. A gentleman, possibly a retired general, strode up to us as we were putting and gave us a dressing down and told us to speed up. It is not very usual in Thailand as people are very polite and circumspect. Normally a marshall would go talk to the caddies and we would get the message!

I also learnt rather quickly that we do not have all the time to line up putts and study the green the way pro's do. You are expected to putt fast and pick up the ball and move on if you have not two putted! If you want to practice putting, go home and putt on your carpet!

One experience was almost like a nightmare! I was on one of those rare par putts and must have taken more time than usual. As I lifted my head to line up one last time, I saw four young men in my line of sight. All were standing erect, with a club in hand, staring at me passively. It was reminiscent of movies where the hero wakes up from sleep in a strange country and confronts the menacing and impassive stares of the local warriors! Sure enough, I missed my rare Par opportunity and picked up my ball and walked towards the next Tee!

Some thoughts on Muscle Memory!

He who utters the Name of God while walking
gets the merit of a sacrifice at every step. His body becomes a place of pilgrimage. – Sant Tukaram

I am sure that Sant Tukaram had never heard of Golf, but he could have been a patron saint of golf, if he were around St. Andrews when it all began!
It is heartening that while salvation to our game seems to depend on muscle memory, it is amazing that salvation to our souls could be through a game of golf. In fact, it is pretty easy to think of God as you walk through an aesthetically well-designed golf course. But it may be tough to take his name while you slice your drive and the ball rises gracefully high and splashes into water just one yard short of land. There will be many such testing moments when you let yourself go and regret later.

I have been wondering how muscles could have memory; I thought brains (not all!) had a claim for this. I suppose so many experts cannot be wrong. Then if muscles have memory, could they have bad memories? Could there be jealousies between muscles? Understand there are at least 200 muscles that are involved in physical activity. Imagine our state if these muscles only remembered our bad shots or if our Tennis and in my case the Basket Ball muscles, became jealous of our Golf muscles. I am certain that some of these muscles, which are common for all sports, surely play a game other than golf on their own while we are on the course!

If you think I am kidding this is what I saw on the net!
“Oh yeah, we're sure Tiger would endorse this idea; practice, practice, practice, so you can develop a new emotional muscle memory that will hold up in a crisis.” (I know it is somewhere in the WWW)

Anyway, Glad to be back and to Blogging!