Alan Watts, a philosopher/entertainer, lectured about a man who had a fight with a mind-reading circus bear 🐻
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Since the bear could read the man’s thoughts, it stayed one step ahead, dodged all attacks, and never got touched in the fight.
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The only way the man could have defeated the bear would have been to somehow act without deciding, a sort of unintentional, accidental attack.
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Archers 🏹 face a similar obstacle when trying to release a bowstring without “thinking first to release it”. To be as accurate as possible, an archer must let go of control and trust the arrow will release itself automatically given the proper conditions.
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If an archer fails to forfeit this control, the anticipation of the act leads to “target panic” and poor accuracy. This is the same reason people are taught to squeeze a gun’s trigger in target shooting instead of pulling it. The shot has to come as a bit of a surprise to be as accurate as possible.
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There is no way to simply decide that you will release the bowstring without thinking first to do so, or decide that you will fire the gun at an unspecified moment as this is what Alan Watts calls, “beating a drum in search of a fugitive”. The fugitive hears you coming...
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In other words, you cannot decide not to decide, you cannot announce that you will not make an announcement without making an announcement. Your decision is always one step ahead of your action like the fugitive staying ahead of the drum beating police.
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So what can golfers learn from archery and target shooting?
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- You need to learn skills to be able to be accurate
- You need an intimate understanding of your equipment to be accurate
- You need to create the proper conditions to be able to “let go” so the fluidity of the motion is untarnished by a decision for it to be so
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If you’d like to learn how to create these conditions for yourself, let go, and “play” golf to the best of your ability, come see me at The Marsh Lane Golf Center in Carrollton, TX.
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413.497.4653
claywonnell.com
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