I was watching the men’s British Open Golf Championship on TV this past Sunday and the commentators brought up a fascinating point. They said that in order to play golf well, a player must be in control of his emotions. They pointed out that many golfers are brilliant on Thursday, Friday and Saturday but, on Sunday, when all the adrenaline is pumping and they have a possibility to win the tournament, their games fall apart. They even have to take the effect of their adrenaline into account when they choose which golf club to use for a particular shot. My immediate reaction was that those golfers should learn to meditate!
Meditation really works. Meditation fills you with inner peace and I use it not only in my day-to-day life, but also to break Guinness world records. A perfect example is the record for doing the most deep knee bends on a Swiss Ball in a minute. When I can stay within myself, I’m able to balance on the ball and crank out the squats. However, as soon as I get a bit excited, I go flying backwards off the ball onto my back. So meditation keeps me centered, literally!
I’ve had lots of practice in using meditation to help maintain my composure while training for, or attempting, records. For some reason, there are certain activities which inspire people to become mischievous. Milk bottle balancing is one of them. Many years ago, I was practicing to break the record for the longest distance walked while balancing a full pint milk bottle on your head. I happened to be on vacation and my route took me alongside a major road that bordered many of the upscale hotels in Cancun, Mexico. Since the rules for the record state that the milk bottle can never fall off your head, I was trying to maintain that same standard in my training. It stretched my ability to remain inwardly focused to the limits. Tourists would drive by in cars screaming out the window, hoping I would be unnerved and drop the milk bottle off my head. One brave guy even snuck up behind me and barked in my ear like a dog!
The adventure continued. As I walked by a golf course, someone yelled, “Fore!”, and a golf ball bounced on the sidewalk, only five feet in front of me! (As I said, golfers definitely need to meditate!) But the best was the bus driver who must have been watching me for hours as I walked along his route. It had rained in the morning and there were still puddles in the road. At one point late in the day, this determined driver crossed the road and expertly sped his bus through a massive puddle so that the spray drenched me from head to toe. Submerged in a waterfall of warm, muddy water, I couldn’t keep the bottle balanced on my head. However, I didn’t lose my cool and I hoped that, at least, I had given his passengers something to chuckle about!
Another activity that seems to inspire people to try to distract me is upside-down juggling. You hang off a bar from your ankles and juggle 3 balls as long as possible. It requires a lot of concentration, especially when your abdominals tire and your throws become more and more erratic. Once, while trying to break the record in a shopping mall in Iceland, something unique happened. I had a big crowd around me and the noise was disconcerting. Suddenly, I saw an object falling from above. Someone from the second level of the mall dropped a coin and it hit me smack in the forehead. I managed to continue juggling, but I started thinking about what good aim the guy had, lost my concentration, and dropped the balls before breaking the record!
Just a few days ago, I made another attempt on the upside-down juggling record in a children’s playground in my neighborhood in Queens. The playground was packed with screaming kids so I decided to try to meditate this time. I apologized to the kids and said I only needed a few minutes to try to break a Guinness record. In front of the counters, timers, and video crew, I attached myself to a bright yellow bar and, hanging upside down like a sleeping bat, began juggling. Most of the children were extremely well-behaved, but one tyke, straddling his bicycle, became fascinated with me. Since the juggling balls I was using were red, he thought they were apples and blurted out to his father, “Look, Papa, he’s juggling apples.” Needless to say, this was highly distracting, especially since the kid continued yelling to Papa, who seemed to be ignoring him, about his great discovery! However, I immediately used a trick that I learned from practicing meditation.
The idea of meditation is to clear the mind of all thoughts and let your inner spirit commune with God. If a thought arises, my meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy, advises to imagine that the thought is a bird in the sky and to observe the thought fly through your mind-sky without getting affected by it. So, instead of letting the persistent kid’s declarations distract me, I just let them float by like sparrows soaring across the New York skyline! This worked fine until the rambunctious child decided he needed more attention and began crashing his bicycle into the vertical posts of the monkey bars that I was hanging off of!
Amazingly enough, even feeling the bars shake didn’t bother me and I managed to break the record by a significant amount. When I got off the bars and was right side up, I was full of joy and totally forgot about the restless kid’s antics until days later when I watched the video. Now that I’m finished with the juggling for a while, I’ve been considering taking up golf. I already know that a good player needs to have inner peace. And it would fit in perfectly with the technique I use to clear my mind since, from what I understand, the game of golf is all about birdies and eagles!
