Chi Gong is the power of slow. You slow down so that when you
go fast, you're going fast cohesively and everything's connected. So you'll see and
she gun cracked as we actually consciously moved the body slowly with breath as a
way to cultivate energy and as a way to train the body to move in
unison. And then the martial artists say, when you go fast, you
move quickly with relaxation, you can actually go faster because you've trained going slow.
So it's a beautiful thing. And they did this study in Stanford University
with crash test dummy outfits with all these different martial artists, and what they
found in the study was that the tight she master was able to punch the
fastest. Here's the guy who was just training on all these two for slow
movements, but when they tested his speed, he was the fastest because he
could go slow. He was able to relax so much that that fast movement
came with a lot of power and quickness because of the relaxation. Hi.
This is Ken Murdison from Augusta, or To and I play at Westlake Country
Club here in Augusta, Georgia. This is golf smarter number eight seven,
The Power of Slow Chee Gong for Golfers with master instructor leehold Of. This
is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf mines to
help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host,
Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast. Lee, thanks so much
for having me. I would love the Golf Smarter and I would love to
even start golfing in a more serious way, and that is my intention for
this year. Awesome. Well, I'm glad that you're here then, So
golf is new to you, but what we're going to discuss chee gong is
obviously not run away for thirty five, thirty sixty years now. So how
did you get started? You know? I I started. What I really
got into che gong was when I was playing collegiate soccer at UC Berkeley and
I had an injury. I had a horrible back pain injury, and I
did all the team doctors and the court of zone shots and the painkillers,
and it didn't help my back pain at all. I had still had back
pain and now I also had a stomach ache from taking the drugs. No,
I was like miserable nineteen year old is like hobbling around campus, and
you know, I was playing soccer and now I wasn't and I was super
bummed. And I remembered that a martial arts teacher when I had it,
I was about ten years old, I saw him break a big stack of
bricks, which is very impressive to a ten year old, and he told
me that the way in which he did it he used chi And I was
like, what's Chee? And he's like, she is your internal energy,
it's your power, and he said she is for healing. And so all
of a sudden, this thing popped into my mind. I was like,
I'm gonna go see that guy, and I did, and he did.
He gave me some acupuncture and he showed me Chee Gong exercises, energy exercises
to help with pain and low back pain, and man, after two treatments,
I was like eighty ninety percent better, and four treatments, I was
back playing soccer. I was back playing soccer in like ten days, and
everybody was like, how did you do that? And so I just got
really into it. I got into the exercises. I started studying with local
tai chi and Chigung masters, and then I U I got so into it
that I wanted to like make it my profession. And everybody was like,
you can't do that, that's che goung. You can't make a living doing.
I gotta go work in Silicon Valley. You went to Cal. They're
not teaching cheegung at Cal. You gotta go beat engineer, right exactly.
So I finished, I was like, I'm going to Asia, and I
did, and I became a ghost writer for a chie Gong and meditation master,
and I wrote like twelve books for him. I did twelve trips to
Asia, studied with all kinds of different masters China, Indonesia, Japan,
Thailand, and just had a great, great training. And then I was
like, I got to bring this back to people here in the West and
see if I can show them how to do it. And that's what I've
been doing for thirty five years. And all those people that we're telling you
you can't do that, You've got to go and become an engineer. What
were they saying? Then It's like, no, I'm writing, and like
you're writing, you know. It's like I'm like, hey, I'm in
hey, while you're sitting at that desk job. I'm here at the waterfall
and Thailand doing breeding exercises. Oh now I'm in China doing this. I
know you're making a lot more money than I am. But as soon as
I got back, you know, over the years, people all these Silicon
Valley friends of mine, they were all coming to see me for stress related
illnesses or are referring people to come see me. So I had a clinic
on an acupuncture clinic. I was teaching chigung classes all over Silicon Valley.
I started teaching to professional athletes and became known as the wellness director. I
was even hired to be the wellness guy on Hollywood movie sets, and so
it just kind of took off. And how did that happen? Right?
Funny enough, I was like on Deuced Bigelow Male Jiggalow. Rob Schneider had
hired me to help him with like the stress of being on set. I
was doing che gung glasses before we were filming, um, you know,
and the movies and and things like that. So I've got to meet a
lot of actors and give them acupuncture and show them chegung exercises. And I
still get emails or text from Hey, I'm doing this exerc I'm doing that
exercise. Thanks so much, man. But I you know, it was
like, you know, I could either stay in Hollywood and do more of
a focused on Hollywood scene, or what I really liked was the athletic scene
because that's kind of where my background was. So I stayed up in northern
California working with athletes at the local health club that I was working a lot
of the Olympians came through there as for training and they would get acupuncture and
learned. She going with me, and so I just really got jazzed on
on teaching athletes she gun practices as well as Silicon Valley executives, and then
it just kind of took off from there. Yeah, it's so funny because
I've been doing this podcast for me in my eighteenth year of doing this.
When I tell people, yeah, I do podcasts, they asked me the
question that you probably yet all the time, as well, you make a
living do that? You get paid to do that? No, I don't.
I don't make a living from it. I get paid a little bit,
but I don't make a living. It's it's more about the benefits that
I get from it, yea to do this. Then I talk to incredible
people with all kinds of lessons and learnings and just yeah, it's just it's
it's a gift. And then I get to me people like you that are
not necessarily golf people, but you have something to share for us to all
learn from and all become more centered and be a better golfer. And you
know, and you know, Fred, Over the years, I can't tell
you how many times students of mine come back after taking a class or two
or being in class for a few months, they'll say, hey, you
know, does this help improve your golf game? Because since your classes,
Mike, golf came is way better. And then just kept tapping over and
over and over again. So I kept so I started advertising to golfers way
back in the day, and sure enough everybody was just like, this is
amazing. And recently, I told you before the show an Australian golf pro
named Peter Croker. He was doing my class for for the last twelve years
and we finally got in touch and we created a Cheegong for Golf program that
we just filmed. It's not ready yet, but we filmed it. It's
going to be very cool. And he does the golf part and I do
the chee young parts and it all comes together so BEAUTIFU. Well and when
will it be available? Do you know? I think it'll be available somewhat
soon. I'm gonna say, you know, these production to being ready to
go live is you know a few month process? Yeah? Absolutely? And
how are you going to distribute myself? These are you going to be It's
just going to just be able. We'll put them up on YouTube, We'll
put some up, We'll have a like a website with free content, and
then then some courses. Um, you know, Peter's got some courses pain
free golf. Breaking eighty has got a very specific style. It's that he's
been showing me. And it's just so aligned with Chiegong principles, I mean,
pain free golf and you you just learn how to move from your center
with this zend state of mind relaxation. So it becomes this whole beautiful cohesive
practice from energy exercises to your golf game. Um, I just love it.
So it's got me motivated to play golf. Oh wow, Well,
that's that's really the kind of things that we've been discussing on this podcast for
years and years and years of not just how can I hit the ball farther?
But how can I be a better golfer? You know, it's like
how do I be a better golfer? How do I be a better human
being? How do I be a better person in this body? And I
think that's where Chigan comes into play. So so, well, how did
Peter find you? That's a good question he found why? Yeah, he
just saw the synergy and he saw a lot of golfers having repetitive stress injuries.
Um, there is probably this that that witnessing of golfers having golfer's elbow
wrisk pain, neck and shoulder pain, back pain. And then he himself
was really into like Tai Chi and Chi Gong. And then he reached out
to me some twelve years ago, and I've been on his mailing list,
he was on mine. He's taken all my courses and um, finally,
after somebody said you know, I did your cheek and then my golf came
got better, I was like, I think I need to just create a
program. I need a golf pro to to sync up with and talk about
the synchronicities in this and where he was in the States, and we just
filmed it and then you know, we we got connected you and I and
now I'm on the podcast. I'm like, Okay, golf is in my
orbit right now and I got to take this to the next level. Well,
please stay in touch with me because once the video is available, I'd
love to make make sure that everybody's aware of it too. Oh that'd be
great, Thanks so much, Fred, That would be awesome. Yeah,
absolutely absolutely, And we're going to talk about and hopefully you'll you'll give us.
We'll do some practice, we'll do some Absolutely, that sounds fantastic.
Yeah, sure, as we progress, Yeah, in this episode. But
there's so many more questions that I have, because that's what this podcast is
me asking a lot of questions. We're going to do those questions after this
commercial break. We'll be right back Lee before we continue. I think that
the most important thing is to define chi gung. What is chi gong?
What does it mean? And what is its history? You know the what
ill let you just pick it up from there. Yeah, absolutely, Okay,
Chi gong Chi means energy, life force, energy, and boy don't
we want more energy? Everybody wants a little more energy. So I say
Chi gong in a modern sense is a practice of less stress and more energy.
So Chi means energy. It's energy of your body, it's energy of
emotions, it's energy of mind. It's an integrated whole. And so the
practice, even though it seems like exercise, it really is a moving meditation.
It's great mindfulness training, but it's done through movement. It's a little
bit like tai chi, and it's a little bit like yoga. You know,
if if tai chi and yoga had a baby, it would be chee
gong. It's you know, it's a practice that's very accessible. You don't
have to have any fancy clothes, you don't have to stand on your head,
you don't have to have any weights. But it's it's good exercise.
It's great stretching, and then there's this beautiful part of the practice that's very
flowing. So you're doing these movements where the principles are relaxation, move from
your center, stay mindful of your body as you're moving. So I think
this is why it's so great for golfers. And it feels just so relaxing
and energizing kind of at the same time. By the time you finish gong
so chi life force energy. Gong means to work with in a skillful way,
work with the energy in a skillful way. So it's part of Chinese
medicine. It comes from the same roots as acupuncture, herbal medicine. In
fact, it was called the five branches of medicine acupuncture, herbs, sage,
therapy, nutrition, and then chi gong. And in the chi gong
category was also tai chi. So tai chi is actually a form of chi
gong. It's a martial arts form of chigung. So in chigong you have
you know, chigung for martial artists building power and energy in the body.
You have medical chigong how to use exercise like physical therapy to heal your body.
And then you have the more spiritual chigong, which was more the meditation
and meditative types of practices. And so that's kind of a bit of it
in a nutshell that the history of it's fascinating because it's it's the very first
time in recorded language where you see exercise as part of medicine. It dates
back some four or five thousand years, and it's in its written record,
and it's part of Chinese medicine. So Chinese medicine worked like this. You
would go see your doctor and they would the doctor which give you acupuncture,
herbs and chigong, prescript of exercises, and as long as you stayed healthy
or as healthy as when you came in, you continue to pay. It
was almost like a monthly fee. And as soon as you got sick or
sicker, then when you start it, you stop paying. So you got
a headache, you got pain, you got problems, No, hey,
I'm not doing my job. Don't pay me this month until you're back to
health, and then they start paying. So this is a practice of true
healthcare, where the focus is on vitality, is on health, it's on
wellness, it's on prevention, where it's exactly the opposite of our western medicine.
So it's very fascinating to me because nobody gets paid unless somebody sick in
our Western culture, and let me tell you, people are making a lot
of money on sick care. And if we want to really take charge of
our health and wellness, we need to do preventative health. And that's up
to us individually. Yeah, yeah, And of medicine is practice on ten
percent of the people, right, So is this practice still being used um
in Asian countries in China, yeah, Japan, these countries, they still
fascinating is the fact that chi gong is the most widely practiced form of exercise
in the world. Wow, you just think of like jogging, golf,
everything else. It pales in comparison, probably because there's just so many people
in Asia practicing tai chi and chi gong. You wake up and you just
see the parks are filled with people doing calisthenics and exercises. And there's three
thousand styles of chigan. So there's styles look like yoga, there's styles that
look like tai chi. There's more fitness styles, there's more flowy styles,
there's more meditative styles. So you know, when when I started training and
chigang, I was like, Okay, what is going to make the most
sense for Westerners for what we want? So I started focusing on more medical
style. So, how how can I design a routine that's going to get
rid of neck pain, back pain, stress, anxiety. What's a routine
to help people sleep better? What's a great routine to wake up in the
morning and charge yourself up with energy? So that's kind of my specialty is
real focused, conditioned, specific routines. And so what is the difference between
tai chi and Chi gung or and then the next question would be yoga and
right, yeah, you know, I think so tai Chi is a practice
that originated some eight eight nine hundred years ago by a family in China,
the Chen family. So you have Chen style tai chi, and it was
originated as a martial arts. In fact, the early tai chi masters were
excellent martial artists, and it got so popular in China because they would they
would invite their martial artists and challenge them to sparring contests and they would inevitably
win, and they won big competitions, and they would challenge people all over
China untell the Imperial Guard in China, the emperors, they summoned the Chin
and the Young style families to come and teach the royal guard. And so
what they did is they showed them the movements, but they didn't teach them
the sort of the secret energetic cultivation behind the movements, which is chigong practices.
So in essence, tai chi came about through the combination of martial arts
like kung fu and chigong exercises in combination, they became it became tai chi.
So when you see people doing tai chi, a lot of the reason
they're doing tai chi nowadays is as a chigong practice for health, stress management,
energy cultivation. They're not really doing it as a martial practice. I
see Bill. Then, how do you compare yoga to chigong? Right,
So, yoga is from India. It originated in India, and yoga is
very interesting because it started off with more breathing exercises, more energy cultivation.
So prana, the term for life force energy in Indian culture and ira Vedic
traditions is the same as chi as in Chinese medicine. So they have these
words life force energy, and both cultures, both yoga and chi gong,
cultivate life force energy through breath and body practices, through mindfulness and movement.
Now they go about it a little bit differently. In yoga you're gonna do
mainly stretches and breathing into stretches, and in chigang you're gonna be doing mainly
flowing movements, or if you are stretching, it's not static, you're flowing
through a stretch rather than holding a stretch. The difference. Also, the
martial artists really brought in a lot of joint mobilization to the chigun practice,
whereas in Indian yoga there's a little bit more focused on muscular lengthening. So
maybe as it relates to golf, because there's so much articulation in the joints
in the golf swing, that she going has a really great way of opening
all the joints in the body. We call it oiling the joints or silk
reeling. She gonna make your joints silky smooth and create joint flexibility, muscular
flexibility, but not overstretching, because in that martial arts tradition you needed that
resiliency, the combination of strength and flexibility to perform really well. So I
think it has a lot of application to athletics because of that training and resiliency.
Yeah, and I think that it makes sense then that it would be
really advantageous for golfers to be doing this type of practice versus a martial arts
because of the you know, like I do yoga, I've been doing in
yoga for decades, but I've been doing it for decades but still it's more
about for me dynamic static poses you know that stretch out various parts of my
body. Right, But as a for a flow for golf, this seems
to make a whole lot of sense. It makes a whole lot of sense.
We're gonna have fred. I'm gonna give you some courses and you can
try it out and let me know what you think. I will do that.
But we're gonna take a commercial and I'll do all the courses during this
break. We'll be right back. I have before we go on and talk
more about this. This you talk about the energy, life force and the
and the fact that this gets in. Do you drink coffee? Are you?
Are you a caffeine guy? Are you a caffeine guy? And I'm
gonna show you something right here. This is a this is a te Yeah,
of course, I'm a player. Tea drink or green tea. I'll
drink all kinds of tea. You know what when I drink coffee is when
I go to the coffee shop and I get a good latte. But I
don't make my own coffee, so I drink. I have a coffee maybe
once a week. So you do drink caffeine. You do consume caffeine,
and he has caffeine. But it's pretty it's a lot lighter than let's take
coffee. So I like, I like a little bit and and um,
I like to give my main source of energy through breath and movement and energy
cultivation. And I yeah, I supplemented a little with a little tea.
Nothing wrong with a little tea and coffee. Um, you know, it's
just it's a it's a poor substitute for long sustainable energy. And then what
we're thinking of energy, we need to think of yin and yong yin and
young energy. Coffee gives you young energy, being up and go go,
go go right. Yin energy is to turn it off and be able to
sleep really well, to be able to quiet your mind, to be able
to truly relax. If you can truly relax acts and you can sleep really
well, you're gonna have a lot more energy, so to speak. And
in chegong we talk about these two kinds of energy. They're they're essential to
one another, like a good night's sleep is essential to having energy the next
day, you go, you know, you sleep two three hours? You
know, parents, you know this. And then you try to get up
with full energy, you're just like, oh my god, where's my energy?
Well, you didn't. You didn't sleep enough, you didn't cultivate that
yin energy, that deep rest, and now your young energy is suffering.
So coffee is going to give you young energy, but you have to be
careful because it burns the energy supply without replenishing it with something like cheegong or
breathing or meditation or just good sleep, you can burn out your energy reserves.
We call it adrenal fatigue or just fatigue in general. And it's like
people are like, oh man, I'm so tired, and then they're hammering
the coffee. It does. It can create long term problems because you're not
getting to this source of it, which is nourishing, rest, inner,
peace less stress, all those things that will really feed your system with with
deep energy. And when you say yin and young and I've never heard of
as young, I've always heard of y yin and yang, right, uh
right, right, but yeah, so which is not why I thought,
Yeah, but I thought, I just want to make sure we're not saying
why a w N yng you're not and young? Like why a N g
and that's kind of pronounce it, you know. So that's yeah, now
now we're not as it. Yang is sort of like a recognized yeah,
we're really pronouncing it. Yeah, yeah, No. I was asking about
the caffeine because I haven't done coffee in I mean, i'll do decalf and
I even stopped doing that, but I don't have any caffeine and sodas and
drinks. I just stop doing that because you well, you know it.
I found out that if I drink it regularly and then take a day off,
I have severe headaches. Yea, I have really bad withdrawal and so.
And I've always been a pretty energetic person, so it's never been an
issue for me that I need that that boost that picked me up. So
I do we get to love chocolate. It's better to use less frequent and
have your own energy, but be able to cultivate in yourself for exactly the
reasons I was saying. And then actually, when you use it, it
works really well, Like I actually need a boost of energy. If you're
off coffee for let's say you use it a couple of times a week or
once a week. Man, it works really well. But we get we
get too dependent on it, so like people can lower you get dehydrated too.
Yeah, it's not a great yeah coffee, it's not a great thing
on the golf course or before it. Right, it's exactly not a good
thing. What have you heard of a practice called joga j oga? No,
I haven't jog joga. So it's uh yoga for jocks. This was
developed by a woman in Toronto and is um Well, you you're in the
Santa Cruz area, so you're familiar with Golden State Warriors and their league team.
Yeah, their g league team is right there in Santa CEUs. Their
mind the league team. Well, uh, Cabon Cavon Looney, who's the
center for the Warriors doing he's been doing joga daily for a couple of years
now, and in those couple of years he has not missed a single game.
He's the only guy. There's only like two, two or three guys
in the entire league that have not missed a game. And now he's gotten
other players on the team to do this. He doesn't an hour every morning
and it's yoga. It's yoga, but it's got a more um athletic movement.
Yeah, more cardio involved, but it's still yoga and so yeah,
yeah, there's an article recently that was in the New York Times about it,
but it was it's definitely fascinating. You've worked with a lot of athletes
though, Yeah, tell me about what your experience with that is. Um,
you know, Number one, get out of pain for athletes, because
you can't do your sport when you're injured. So um, so one,
get out of pain. That's usually the motivation to prevent injuries from happening.
Same as exactly what you said. I worked with a lot of Olympians,
Olympic athletes, runners, throwers, disc is, hammered throw you know,
shot put at all. You know, I worked closely with the San Jose
Sharks, the professional hockey team for some time. Um, both in chigong
and acupuncture. Okay, and it was just the results are just amazing,
they're outstanding, and all. The thing I love is to help athletes get
into flow state. Like you know, when you're in the flow, that's
when that's the most fun. When it's like you're energize, you're cohesive,
you're connected to your sport, you're one with the teammates, you're one with
the ball. It just feels like there's this great flow and that's in Chegong.
We we train flow state very directly. Interesting. Yeah, yeah,
so let's let's get into um how this can benefit golfers. Let's talk about
what we can do and why this is gonna be So I think of value
to golf, benefits your golfers. One, you know, pain free,
have less pain. Uh, keep your body energized, more flexible. Then
Chegung principles. Move from your center, move with relaxation, use your mind
and body in an integrated approach, so that when your bodies relax, your
mind's more focused. Like you know, just simple things like head down,
move from the center, you know, relax through the swing. All those
things can be so powerful. And when you train it with Chigung and then
you apply it in your golf game, it's a wonderful, synergistic type of
connection. And where does it all start? Does it start with breathing or
well, I think consciousness, mindfulness? Where does it? Yeah, there's
a few entry points. I mean breathing. Yes, In Chigung, what
we do is we always synchronize breath with the movement. So you know,
if we're doing a flowing movement, you might inhale, arms up, exhale,
arms down, inhale towards you exhale, push away, and then you
could just do some breath. You could just do some chegung breathing as a
way to breath will help to integrate mind and body. All your thoughts and
your emotions are always reflected in your breath. So when we're stressed out,
we're going to breathe quickly. When we're calm and relax we're gonna breathe slowly.
So if you can't take slower breaths, you're going to calm everything down.
Because when we're stressed, we're tens. We're tight. The moving with
your whole self doesn't work. We become kind of fragmented and constricted. When
you're relaxed, you move more like water. Everything's cohesive and flowy and unified.
So you can start with a movement. If you wanted to do a
movement, you could do that, and you could start with some breathing and
then integrate into a movement and then it just goes from there. Wow.
Wow, that's so interesting because I've seen so many golfers with they'll two on
their golf swing is take a breath, and hold it and then go to
your golf swing right right, and you'll see the tension. You'll see the
shoulders come up. You know, their their ears get smashed by their shoulders
there. You know the amount of tension in their neck and their back,
in all parts of their body. And I think it was like a year
ago, maybe just a little more than a year ago that once I started
to realize to breathe in on my back swing and out on my fore swing,
on my emotion, I was hitting the ball farther oh more accuracy.
But they're tying my swing to my breath. Made a huge difference. That's
that's che Gong right there. You just breath. You're doing che going,
you know when you move in synchrony with a breath, you know, and
now you're doing it more consciously, and now that breath is helping you through
the movement so perfect. And we just get more and more skilled at that,
adding more and more pieces, you know, just like in golf where
you're like, what are my hips doing, what's my shoulder doing, what's
my stance? Where my eyes? What's my focus? You know? Chee
Goong has a lot of that kind of thing. Those intricacies, and they're
really similar to what goes on in a golf swing. Yeah, and there's
a tendency, especially when things are not going well, which is the nature
of golf, that we speed up, we do things faster. Yes,
and we've got to we've got to find ways to slow it down, to
catch our breath to just you know, again, if we our breath to
the motion. You know, chee gong is the power of slow. You
know, you you slow down so that you can actually when you go fast,
you're going fast cohesively and everything's connected, you know, so you'll see
and she gung bract as we actually consciously moved the body slowly with breath as
a way to cultivate energy and as a way to train the body to move
in unison. And then the martial artists say, when you go then you
go fast, you move quickly. With relaxation, you can actually go slower.
I mean you can actually go faster because you've trained going slow. So
it's a beautiful thing. And they did this study at Stanford University with crash
test dummy outfits with all these different martial artists, and what they found in
the study was that the tight she master was able to punch the fastest.
Here's the guy who's just training on all these super slow movements. But when
they tested when his speed, he was the fastest because he could he was
describing it, because he could go slow. He was able to relax so
much that that fast moop movement came with a lot of power and quickness because
of the relaxation. It kind of defined and explains so much of what we
hear in golf of like swing slow, for it to go farther that,
you know, the less tension, having less tension, It really kind of
makes a lot of sense. All Right, we're gonna take one more break,
and then when we come back from this one, after we hear what's
going on in Golf Smarter Mulligans this week, let's do some practice. Let's
learn. It's a couple of practices from you. Okay, great? Perfect?
This Week on Golf Smarter Mulligans is Part five and the penultimate entry into
our continuing tribute to doctor Glenn Alba, who passed away at the age of
ninety one in February twenty twenty three. This fifth episode was originally published in
September twenty sixteen and talks about the truth about playing better golf using your imagination.
It doesn't take long to lock into a target, and target doesn't move
some people. She shapes and you see somebody landing. What we have to
do, scover Fred is how you see best, because it's not the same
for everybody. I can't tell you what you should see, but you're going
to tell me what you see when you trust your swing. The players a
player at highest level have wonderful imaginations. So as a guy, say eight
handicapped, we want to find out what you see best and then we can
lock in that particular visual image. It's the same with the feeling a swing
that matches it. Some people feel a fluid, fluid, fluid motion,
but whatever it is, it's a whole movement of the swing. It's much
like creative writers. They see things in paragraphs. They don't write sentences.
So when we're playing our best, we're playing in paragraphs. Whatever we feel
on our swing, it it's the whole motion that's golf Smarter. Mulligan's episode
two hundred and thirteen, the fifth of six episodes in our series featuring another
incredible mental game coach whom we recently lost but choose to let his legacy live
on Doctor Len Alba, author, coach and pioneering sports psychologists. You can
actually watch the full interview on our YouTube channel that's YouTube dot com, slash
at golf Smarter or on the blog post at golfsmarter dot com. Once there,
you'll learn more about Glenn, how to get either of his books,
and information about donations in his memory. Please subscribe for free to both of
our golf podcasts, Golf Smarter, published every Tuesday, and our sister podcast,
the revisits the best of the Golf Smarter podcast called Golf Smarter Mulligans,
being released every Friday. From wherever you're listening right now, Lee, The
listening to a podcast takes many forms. One thing we do know is you're
in someone's head most of the time. They're wearing headphones or they're in a
car the speakers. People don't listen to podcasts in a group, so that
means they could be at their desk, they could be walking the dog,
they could be doing the laundry, they could be cleaning the house, they
could be out. You know, there's many different ways people listen to podcasts.
But what see what we can do and if I need to stand up,
I will do that. I'm not sure how I'm going to be able
to manage that, but I'm sitting now. I'm sitting on a chair that
kind of gives me some bounce to its nice bounce. Yeah, it's like
those those balls you know. Oh, it's a cheat chair. Well yeah,
but it's it's actually a German design chair that has rock and roll and
bounce to it. But there's no back, so it forces me to sit
up great, and it's been great for my back. But that's a whole
nother thing. So let's see what we can do. Let's learn a couple
of these practices and seated. Let's if people want to if they're standing up,
you could do it also standing great, and I'll just guide you through
auditorially. Of course, don't do these practices if you're driving. You can
just wait till you get home. And let's teach people the beauty of podcasts.
You can rewind and play it again, light it again. Yeah,
So we'll do a couple exercise. I'll show your breathing exercise. I'll put
it to some movement, and then I want people to be able to feel
their energy even energize their hands and their wrists, because that's a big part
of the golf swing is that action do the wrists in the hands. So
let's first do breathing. So the first thing, let's do it like,
how do we want to breathe for better health and just clarity in our nervous
system. So it's going to come down to a slow breath. So you're
going to breathe through your nose about four or five seconds on the inhale and
four or five seconds on the exhale. And I want you to do that
diaformatically, which means that you start the breath in the belly. So put
your hand on your belly, put one hand on your chest, and now
inhale into your belly, let it rise up through your ribs all the way
to your chest, and then exhale through your nose. Let the chest relax.
That the ribs breathing, and we're breathing out through the nose as well
out through the nose as well, yep in out through the nose. In
general, that's the best way. There's occasionally, let's say you want to
breathe out through the mouth, but going through the day, most of the
time, you want to breathe in and out through the nose for more for
the benefits of energy cultivation and just overall health. So big, deep breath
through the nose, Exhale through the nose, nice and slow belly ribs chest
on the inhale, and then back down chest ribs out through the belly on
the exhale. That'll that'll automatically just clear stress. And you could even like
take it out into the golf course do do three of these breaths right before
you swing or while somebody else's swing in just and just get calm and relax
in your nervous system. That's a great benefit. Well, then let me
just insert here that it's also a really important thing to help you after a
bad shot, because that's when things start going haywire. That's when you start
speeding up, you start getting angry, you get frustrated. That's the moment
that's you want to start as you're walking or even sitting in your cart,
that's when you want to start breathing ah, perfect and then you'll realize,
hey, there's no bad shots, there's just results bad results. That was
a great shot. Sorry it ended up in the tree. Something from that
one all right. Now, let's put it to a movement. So you
could do this standing or a seat. It's called spinal cord breathing, and
it's great to just unlocked tension in your back. Take your arms by your
shoulders. Now when you inhale that deep breath, you look up and just
kind of arch your back and open your chest and the way you wow,
you feel that, oh man, everything's free. Chiropractic read. And then
in the hail you open and then exhale round your back. You can it
comes down, elbows come together, and you're just moving all the joints in
your spine. This is what we call oiling the joints. Exhaling round awesome,
inhale we open. We just can just do that for thirty seconds to
a minute. Another great exercise to do on the golf course and then relax.
Spinal cord breathing helps to articulate all those joints. See. The thing
with joints is if you don't move them in all the ways they're designed to
move, you get stagnation. Frozen shoulder is a great example. If someone
hurts their shoulder, you put it in a sling. The tissue that was
injured heels. Now you got frozen shoulder because you didn't move it. So
it creates a worse problem. And all the joints are like that. People
are like, why is my back stiff? Well, are you moving it
in all the different ways it can articulate most people not, And so that's
what we do in Chi Goong. We're gonna move all the joints in very
specific ways that oil the joints and create better range of motion, more mobility,
And it just feels like an anti aging practice. M let's let's people
something to feel their cheats. I want to feel you want to feel your
cheat. Here's a great one. You're gonna take your then the fingernails and
just touch them together and rub back and forth. Now these are all pressure
points acupressure acupuncture points, and rub the fingernail vigorously back and forth together.
We're gonna do it for like thirty seconds. Take one or two of those
deep breaths we just did as you're activating these pressure points, big deep breath,
long exhale. Go do that one more time. Rub vigorously. I
want you to feel what she feels like inhale ex shale. And then just
put your hands in your lap or just down to your sides and see if
you can feel that buzzing, tingling activation. Wow. It's like I remember
when I was a kid and they said to stand up against a doorpost a
doorway and press into the doorway as hard as you can for a minute,
and then step aside and your arm goes oh yeah, yeah, yeah right,
It's like I feel that tingling in my finger. Yeah, it's been
activated. So we can to activate the cheat and we do that like through
the whole body to get this energy circulating, and it's very energizing, extremely
stimulating. And then you know the ending kinds of practices and she gone are
more meditated, more meditated, more tight, she like, more flowy,
And it just creates a really well rounded practice where you get conditioning, stretching,
and flow all in one practice. Unbelievable. Can we do another one?
Yeah, just do one. To do another one? Okay, this
one, just arms at your side, will do a flow. It's called
pulling down the sky and it's again you've got a long breath through the nose
and let your arms lift up over your head and then when you exhale ittle
light Sorry there you're pulling down the ceiling. Yeah, you know, the
hands come down, Just write, palms face towards your body and just glide
down the front of your body. Inhale, arms float up with relaxation,
just very soft up over the head and exhale this float them down when you're
just moving slowly with breathing, and then just kind of imagine you're just pulling
in these nice waves of relaxation. So the relaxation feel. Yeah, I
can feel when I'm doing that, I can feel my shoulders going up as
well. And I don't know is that like creating tension by my arms are
up this high. So now when you come down, relax your shoulders.
And now when you come up, when you inhale, feel like you're there's
strings on your wrist. Just floating your arms up, relax your shoulders.
Relax the shoulders. Yeah, and then when you feel the shoulders rising,
that's when the arms come down. So you don't go into tension. You
just stay with relaxation. Awesome. Yeah, inhale, float the arms up,
egg shale, float the arms out, and everything's soft and relax And
that's good to notice. You notice when you when if you start to tighten
up. That's when he relax into it and make the move and even smaller
then m yeah, awesome, makes so much sense. Oh my gosh,
I can't believe we've never had this conversation before. This makes much sense for
golf. I love bringing it to the golf world because it just makes,
as you said, so much sense with this audience, with this particular sport,
and it just creates a great synergy. Yeah. Yeah, they really,
they really are married. It is a marriage that is made. It's
a happy marriage that that needs to be investigated. How can people get in
touch with you learn more about Come find me at Holden Chi gong so h
o l d e n q i g o n g q i Chi gong
go og. That's the hardest part of Chigong is spelling and dot com okay,
yeah, yeah. And we got a free two week trial to my
video class subscription, which is you just come to class, you just get
on zoom and you do. We have three classes a week and if you
miss the time, that's always on the website and you can be in class.
And we've got a free two week trial to that. And then I
have tons of conditions specific whether it's arms, wrists and hands, upper back
and neck, digestion, headaches, all kinds of conditions specific Chi Gong routine
routines for healing. Awesome. So I know somebody who's just had back surgery,
Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago. Wow, it is she
Gung's great because it's it's really great therapy, is gentle therapy and it keeps
your whole body moving so that you're not so stiff everywhere else because you've had
one procedure and it's going to bring a lot of healing into that, into
the spine. I will definitely let them know that. Yeah. And do
you have a YouTube channel as well or is Everything channel? Yep, it's
great, great free content on there as well. Awesome. Well, Lee,
I am so glad that we got in touch, and I'm I learned
so much in this conversation and will definitely be incorporating this into my life great
as well as my golf absolutely. Oh, Fred, it was a great
conversation. So good to be on your show. And I will definitely be
in touch when the golf program comes out to Gung for Golf, and I'll
put you in touch with Peter and some of the other people that are doing
Gong for Golf that are actual golfers, and I'm sure they'll have a lot
to say. Well, I'm gonna hold you to that one because I would
love to I would love to talk to him. Okay, great, perfect,
So thanks so much and best of luck, and I can't wait for
that video. Okay, perfect, Thanks Fred. I'm very excited about the
next few weeks of Golf Smarter because I've banked a bunch of interviews that I
really think you'll find fascinating. Next week, we'll talk to Michael Chopka,
who is the communications director for the Bandoned Dunes Golf Resort, to discuss why
that massive property on the Oregon coast has become the destination in the United States
to compete with Scottish Links Golf. Then for episode eight ninety nine, we'll
meet Charlie Meetcham, author of a very fun book called Arnie and Jack Stories
of my long friendship with two remarkable men. And that's going to be the
week of the US Open. Kind of perfect. We'll sell episode nine hundred
with a family affair. That will be the day that my wife's memoir is
released. And since I'm a central figure in the book I Thought like we
did on episode eight hundred, you can learn more about me, my history,
and my wife's excellent book. Actually, the audio book which I produced
is already available on Audible. The book is called by Accident, a Memoir
of Letting Go by Joanne Green, And on that episode you might even get
a chance to meet my two sons. Thanks this week go out to Ken
Murdison of Augusta, Georgia for being our newest Golf Smarter Ambassador. Ken has
chosen to receive Tony Manzoni's video of the Lost Fundamental and all you had to
do is leave a voicemail which you heard introducing today's episode. You know you
two are eligible to win one of three great prizes just for opening the show,
leaving a voicemail, and being a Golf Smarter Ambassador. Now you can
select Tony's video a glove storage compartment from Red Rooster golf dot com, a
unique glove storage service that offers many styles of gloves in twenty six sizes for
both men and women, Or you can choose a box of X one balls
with a Golf Smarter logo from Oden Golf. The golf brand that sponsors and
pays everyday golfers. These tour quality balls are a fraction of the price of
what you'll usually pay, and when you use the code golf Smarter a checkout,
you'll receive an additional twenty percent off the order. Their links are in
today's show notes. Send me an email and I'll get back to you as
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