#50: [Inside the Mind] Jim Waldron: Super-Slow Motion Swings, Golfing Like a Buddhist, Decontaminating Swing Thoughts, and Your Yips Solution.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (00:01.91)

Jim Waldron, thank you so much for tuning in and joining us for an episode of the Scratch Golfers Mindset podcast. How are you today?

Jim Waldron (00:08.983)

Great, thanks. Thanks you for having me, Paul. Looking forward to it.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (00:12.094)

Absolutely. And hey, if your resolve and patience with the technical issues is any indication of how great this conversation is going to be, I am excited. So thankful we were able to work through that. Yeah. So let’s yeah, let’s dive in and I want to go ahead and just set the stage. Who is Jim? What is his background? His experience? What do our listeners need to know about your unique gifts that you bring to the game of golf?

Jim Waldron (00:22.711)

Sure, absolutely. Yeah. Let’s get started. Yeah.

Jim Waldron (00:37.793)

Well, started, I’m 73 years old. started playing when I was 10. My dad was a decent player. think he got down to around 11 handicap, although he was like a plus three at putting. He practiced putting all the time. My, one of my early golf mentors was the former number one player in the world, Chick Evans. He’s actually known more nowadays for his, he started the Evans caddy scholarship fund, which a lot of caddies get a full ride to college from.

But he, from about 1910 to about 1920, she was the number one player in the world. And kind of like Bobby Jones, he, he retained his amateur status, but he went all the major tournaments. so he was an influence. I got the bug really early. knew by age 11, I started at age 10, but by the end of my first year, I knew I wanted to, to teach the game for a living. So I was lucky to be able to do that.

I’ve been teaching full-time professionally for, this is my 30th year. I did it sort of part-time for five years prior to that. So total almost 35 years in the instruction business. And I’m kind of fairly well known as being a pretty vocal critic of what I’ll call traditional golf instruction ideas, concepts, know, the overall ethos.

mainly because it’s a body only approach. It’s not a mind-body connection approach. So that’s one of the distinguishing aspects of my teaching philosophy. It’s always both mind and body. It’s not mind only either, it’s mind and body, right? So your body and your mind work together. They’re two sides of the same coin. They’re not separate. And I had a strong early interest in classical Buddhist philosophy.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (02:12.255)

You

Jim Waldron (02:26.603)

particularly the psychological part, the mindfulness practice part. Grew up in the Asian martial arts tradition. I started at age 11 with one of the world’s leading Japanese martial artists as my first karate teacher. And that had a big influence on how I teach the game of golf. Yeah, and that’s kind of where I’m coming from. I see the incredible influence of how the mind affects the body in the golf swing and in the putting stroke.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (02:56.948)

Yeah, absolutely. And let’s dig into that a little bit more, because I know many of our listeners are coming from a background of body, body, body feeling into their body as they’re learning the ins and outs of the technical aspects of the swing, help them better understand where and how does the mind enter the equation? And why do they need to give more time and attention to it?

Jim Waldron (03:19.425)

Well, you mean that’s a huge, huge topic. that could be like 10 podcasts easily, but I’ll give you the short version. So it comes down to in Western society, starting with the Greeks, 2,500 years ago, there’s a belief. And if you’re grew up in a Western society, you were conditioned to have this belief because you’re a member of the society. starting in childhood, you were conditioned to believe that mind and body are two separate things, right?

And in philosophy, that fallacy is called mind-body dualism. Now we know from today, from modern neuroscience, although the ancient Buddhist tradition, which is also 2,500 years old, agrees with modern neuroscience that mind and body are two sides of the same coin. When you change your consciousness or your psychological state in any way, instantly your body physiology also changes.

Or if you start with the level of the body, when you change how your body moves, it affects your psychological state, including your emotions and your ability to focus. you know, and I think the flip side of that would be the way golf instruction evolved as a coaching philosophy, especially, mean, in the West in general, but especially in the game of golf, there’s this strong belief.

which is false, is provably false, that your conscious mind can create a new movement pattern just through thinking. And not only that it can create a new movement pattern through thought, it can create that new movement pattern that might take place in a tiny fraction of a second at a certain point in the swing using visual imagery or language, meaning what we call the three sensory channels, which are kinesthetic or field channel.

know, internal visual channel where you’re seeing a visual image or internal auditory where you’re talking to yourself or in this case, talking to your body or talking to a part of your body. And so that created the phenomena we have today, which is almost all amateur golfers believe that in order to play golf, you have to think about what your swing is doing or direct what your body is doing during the swing using visual images or, using language.

Jim Waldron (05:43.017)

And that’s what I call, I came up with this term 35 years ago, contamination. And that is a thing now, almost all amateur golfers think it’s quote unquote normal to be what I would call contaminated, right? Trying to use conscious mind thinking to somehow direct your body to do a movement pattern that can take place in a tiny fraction of a second. It’s just not true. That’s not the way it works.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (06:07.436)

So what’s the antidote to that contamination? Because this is right up my alley. mean, there’s so many, you’re right. This is 10 podcasts, episodes in one, but give us an insight into your approach to begin crafting or providing the antidote to that contamination.

Jim Waldron (06:23.179)

Well, you know, I think the first step is to, it’s the first, you know, when I’m working with a new student on decontaminating him or her, they have to buy into what I just said, that there’s, that there’s truth to it. And so, you know, I could recite the motor learning research on this, but you can get actually get a PhD in motor learning, but the concepts of closed loop versus open loop and what a reaction time studies, which started back in the 1850s, right? That long ago, literally middle of the 19th century.

We know there’s a body of research in Western science as to how much the conscious mind can direct new movement pattern changes in the body. When the body in any athletic motion, when the body’s moving very fast at high rates of speed in short intervals of time from start to finish, what’s called ballistic motion, right? When you’re doing a ballistic type motion in any sport,

The evidence is overwhelmingly clear. You cannot make the body do what you want it to do strictly by starting with conscious mind and thought. It’s a much more sophisticated process than that. So once someone understands sort of philosophically, they buy in that why being contaminated is not a good thing. And by the way, it’s not just that it’s not successful in actually creating the new movement pattern. It’s worse than that. It’s not neutral. It’s toxic because

Not only does the new movement pattern not happen through a swing thought, but rather on top of that, your body flinches. And in my understanding of, of, athletic motion, when, you know, term flinch and Yip are synonymous in terms of quality, but they’re on a spectrum. So a Yip would be a high intensity flinch and a flinch would be a low intensity Yip. Right. So.

When you flinch, it disrupts your body motion, which disrupts your club motion, which disrupts impact, which causes the bad shot. So swing thoughts are not neutral. They’re not only not positive, but they’re not even neutral. They’re toxic. They create bad golf swings. So it starts with that. And then I guess it begs the question, right? Well, then what’s the alternative? And the alternative is there’s a sophisticated system that I’ve created, which is partially based on how Asian martial arts are taught.

Jim Waldron (08:45.217)

And I’ll just give you the main highlights for a minute or two. One of the rules is you don’t do any movement pattern training over a ball using the golf ball. More on that in a minute. And the other is you do the movement pattern training in slow motion because your conscious mind only has the ability to get your body to do the new movement pattern when you’re moving slowly. As soon as you’re moving at normal speeds,

The Golf Hypnotherapist (08:48.844)

Please.

Jim Waldron (09:11.306)

The only part of your brain that can actually get the body to do the new movement pattern is your unconscious mind, not your conscious mind.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (09:18.912)

Yeah. So, and this reminds me, I’m to go on a tangent, but I promise I’ll bring it back. So I have not nearly the background of you in martial arts, but I have three years of very consistent Krav Maga experience. And I had an incredible instructor and what drew me to him being, you know, a collegiate level university level teacher myself, as well as a coach for 15 years is, was his teaching style. And literally describing similar to what you shared is

Jim Waldron (09:25.366)

Sure.

Jim Waldron (09:32.898)

Uh-huh.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (09:45.846)

how much time and repetition we spent in slow motion, slow motion. And we would drill it under stressful situations, of course. So I wanna hear more about both aspects you described because I’ve seen the benefit in my life away from the golf course. And to be frank, I haven’t even thought to include it consistently as an option for training. So first, let’s dig into no golf ball training. Why? Help me understand.

Jim Waldron (09:52.109)

Yep.

Jim Waldron (10:15.789)

Well, I’ll give you an analogy. So imagine you were taking your martial arts instruction and you were a beginner and it was your first day in the, the, in the studio, in the dojo. And you took it and you told your coach, I’m taking this training because I have a bully in my neighborhood. Let’s say you’re like a high school kid, like a, like a 14 year old kid in high school. And there’s a bully that’s been harassing you and your friends and you want to learn self-defense. And you took a class, your first class and the first class was about

You know, which it typically is you’ve released a little bit my first class. can vividly recall we were taught how to form a fist, right. And how to stand and just real, simple stuff. but let’s say, you were explained, the coach explained to you, okay, we’re to do some slow motion, you know, punching in a mirror. And here’s our, here’s the checkpoints. but

You know, it’s going to take some time. It’s going to take some reps. Maybe it might take you six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks of reps to be halfway decent at punching at full speed because it takes time. Right. And you kind of dismiss that, which if you were a typical golfer, you would, if you were a contemporary golfer, you would just go, don’t think the coach knows what the hell he’s talking about. Right. And then on the way home, if you leave the karate studio and on the walk home, you get assaulted by the bully again.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (11:25.746)

Yep.

Jim Waldron (11:38.261)

And you’re starting to think when the fight starts, what, what did the coach say again? What’s the checkpoints for a proper reverse punch? You get your ass kicked instantly because when you’re thinking about the mechanics of how to do it, you can’t do it fast and you have to do it fast along with proper form to be successful. Right. Does that make sense? So yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (11:46.048)

Yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (11:56.532)

Yeah, it totally does. Because yeah, we fall back to our level of training, our knowledge, you’re right, which is stored in the unconscious mind at those ballistic speeds or the higher speed repetitions. Side note, my first move learned in my Krav Maga was a groin kick, but I digress. That’s just how we started. So talk me through, I’m understanding, I’m picking up what you’re sharing here on the slow motion aspect. How do we then begin to…

practically integrate slow motion swing training into our practice and training regimen.

Jim Waldron (12:31.319)

Well, have to, first of all, have to set it. You have to have enough time in your lifestyle to, commit to making a swing change, which means in my system, you need at least 20 minutes of home practice. That’s mainly slow motion mirror work. We know looking at your reflection in the mirror. Yeah. You have to know what that proper form should look like, which is the whole point of taking instruction. So the goal of taking a lesson is to be able to remember what are the checkpoints? How am I, how are my body and club supposed to look?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (12:45.292)

Okay, the mirror,

Jim Waldron (13:01.025)

when I’m doing the takeaway segment of the swing, for example, in slow motion, right? And by the way, slow motion, we have a definition is 30 seconds for the entire swing from start to finish. And then we also have a slower speed called super slow-mo, which is 60 seconds. So again, you have to know what we call it the outer form, what you’re supposed to look like with body and club when you’re doing any of the six swing segments, right? So we’ll start with takeaway.

So that’s the starting point. The reason why you don’t want to use a ball, obviously, slow motion and ball are incompatible on the face of it. But even at full speed, eventually you’re going to go to the range, you’re going to work on what I call dynamics, which is a different part of the brain. Learning mechanics should only be done, also called movement pattern training, is only done away from a ball in slow motion.

But there are things you can’t do in slow motion, which Hogan and I call dynamics, which is balance, rhythm, tempo, release timing, a few other things. You can work on grip pressure. You can work on triangle pressure with a ball. But even when you’re doing dynamic training, I don’t want my students to put too much emphasis on bad ball flight results. And the reason why is if you’re doing a balanced focal point, if you’re focusing your mind on

The Golf Hypnotherapist (14:21.578)

Hmm.

Jim Waldron (14:27.565)

a particular way that you learn from your coach to maximize balance. You could shank five balls in a row because of something else that’s going wrong in your golf swing. And since you can only focus your mind on one thing and you can only work at one change at a time, you have to have the understanding that the golf swing itself is so complex just at the physical side of things, not to mention the mental and the emotional dimensions, right?

In other words, we have a physical dimension, an emotional dimension, a mental dimension, and all of those three main dimensions have various factors that can affect the quality of the ball flight. You’re only working on one thing, right? So something else in your swing that’s not right could cause you to shank the ball, would be an extreme example, right? So in other words, if you use the negative ball flight result as feedback, as soon as you have several bad shots in a row, you’re going to start losing

The Golf Hypnotherapist (15:14.624)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Waldron (15:25.063)

A, credibility in the change you’ve embarked on itself. You’ll give up on it too early, right? And B, it’ll affect your confidence too much. It’ll wreck your confidence, right? So learning how to take negative ball flight results off the table is, I think it’s a really important step. And it is a thing in other sports, right? But golfers are obsessed with that immediate gratification you get when you hit the

The Golf Hypnotherapist (15:31.884)

Mm-hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (15:39.029)

Absolutely.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (15:49.93)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Waldron (15:54.475)

hit really good shot after really good shot. We’re all looking for that sort of dopamine endorphin rush we get from going to the range and seeing those really good ball flight results. So that’s the main reason why using a ball is counterproductive.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (16:08.778)

that makes total sense. then walk me through like if my math is correct, we’re getting 10 to 20 slow or super slow speed swings in a daily 20 minute session. We’ve got a mirror we’re well aware and educated on the proper checkpoints that we’ve learned from our coach, of course. And I guess I’m curious in any words that come to mind, describe the intention like I hear you know, my peak performance brain goes to this is a great example of deep work.

We are just lost in the present moment, so focused, but where particularly is our focus as we’re executing a 30 second swing?

Jim Waldron (16:46.475)

It’s on your reflection in the mirror. Yeah, in the first step. I’m giving you the simple version. It’s a little bit more complex. We wouldn’t even have time in an hour podcast to go over all the steps. But the first step is to verify that you’re actually doing the proper movement pattern that you’re working on. When you can do it pretty well without a lot of effort, you’re

The Golf Hypnotherapist (16:49.759)

Okay.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (16:54.772)

Of course.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (17:05.33)

and

Jim Waldron (17:12.449)

what I would call say semi mastery when it’s even though it’s semi mastery at slow motion, not full speed yet. But when you can do it pretty easily in slow mo, then you would close your eyes. Then you would go into what we call kinesthetic awareness or field channel awareness. So now you would ask yourself, when my body is doing this slow motion takeaway, for example, what does it feel like? So you do say maybe five or six reps in a row at slow motion speed.

Remember, this is just a segment of the swing, not the entire swing. So we’re talking about seven seconds, six seconds, something like that, to do your takeaway in slow-mo. So you do say, you know, five or six of those in a row, and you’re verifying, because you can see your eyes are open, that you’re doing it correctly. Then you would close your eyes and do it, and you would ask yourself while you’re doing it, what does this feel like? You would be in field channel noticing sensations. Then you would hold your position at the end of takeaway, open your eyes, make sure you’re in the proper

position at the end of takeaway, which you may not be. If you’re not, then you have to go back to doing a few more eyes open. Right. But let’s, let’s assume, which is mostly the case that you’re, did it correctly. You finished the takeaway and you’re in the perfect position with body and club. And then you would, again, you would ask yourself, what did that just feel like? It felt like X and then you would do it. The next step you would do it your old way, the bad movement pattern way, the wrong takeaway on purpose with your eyes open to see yourself do it wrong on purpose.

And then you would do the same thing. You would close your eyes and you would do it wrong the old way, the old wrong way on purpose. Ask yourself, what does that feel like? Well, that feels like why, right? And then the next step you would go back and forth between doing it wrong on purpose, doing it right on purpose to deepen the recognition. So we’re imprinting into memory the difference, the precise difference in feel between the old bad move and the new correct move. Yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (18:42.528)

Hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (19:02.378)

Yes.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (19:10.492)

so well said and I love that approach. mean, I know if you could see me now, my mind is moving 100,000 miles an hour right now. This is incredibly fascinating. I’m already picturing myself in front of my mirror over there in my living room. And I love how you describe the intention behind contrasting what it feels like when it’s correct.

versus what the old outdated counterproductive pattern is. I think that’s huge because for me, I also hear an opportunity to then self-correct, self-coach and diagnose during practice sessions or even out there on the course when you recognize something isn’t quite right.

Jim Waldron (19:40.332)

Yes.

Jim Waldron (19:44.503)

Yeah, the idea that you can learn the swing from someone else is a huge fallacy. All actual effective coaching is geared toward helping the student be his own coach. The learning takes place only in the mind and body of the student. So all instructional advice are just roadmaps to get you headed in the right direction. We’ll call it headed north in the right direction of the ballpark. But actually getting in the ballpark, that’s a self-referential.

not just self-referential, but it’s sensory-based learning. And the visual sense, when it comes to actual normal speed, not slow-mo, where you’re standing in front of a mirror looking at your reflection, obviously that’s visual sense. But you have to get to the point where you can feel, when you are moving at normal speeds, what your body parts are actually doing and recognizing whether the body parts match the model.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (20:38.9)

Hmm.

Jim Waldron (20:42.733)

swing that you’re learning from your coach or are failing to match the model. So eventually that’s the part where it takes it to a higher level when you switch from visual learning to field-based learning. And part of that is you have to tape yourself using your phone camera. I always recommend maybe if you were going to go to the range and do dynamic practice, but you want to of see how much

the new movement pattern, the slow motion pattern is transferring over to full speed. Maybe every 15th or 20th swing you could tape it. And then when you go home later that night, you could play it back in slow-mo and say, look, my takeaway is now it looks like when I’m moving in slow motion in front of the mirror, even though I’m moving at full speed using a golf ball, right? You’re verifying. And that’s because your field channel in the early days will lie to you.

It won’t lie to the extent your visual and auditory channels will because basically your visual, this is a big one for your audience if they can grasp it. Your visual and your auditory sensory channels do not have any capability of providing accurate objective feedback as to what your body’s doing. Because in the case of the visual channel, if you’re trying to picture what your body’s doing, just hallucinate, you just created a hallucination or a fantasy. If you’re using your auditory or your voice channel to talk to your body parts.

You’re not paying attention to your body and the body parts aren’t listening. You’re hearing a voice in your head, right? In other words, the phrase, keep my left arm straight has no actual impact on whether your arm is straight or not straight, right? Does that make sense? In other words, you don’t have any way of knowing what your left arm is doing. If you’re talking, using words in your head about your left arm, you’re not paying attention to your left arm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (22:22.752)

Hmm. It does.

Jim Waldron (22:36.629)

You’re paying attention to a voice in your head. Sounds kind of obvious when I make it that blunt, right? But most people don’t know that. Most people think if I’m picturing my body, then my body’s doing that thing. Or if I’m talking to my body part, then my body part’s probably doing that thing. It’s not. The only way you can know with objective accuracy what your body is doing is to be in field channel awareness in the first place. But again, that has to be trained. That’s why you use video to make sure that over time,

The Golf Hypnotherapist (22:39.18)

Can I?

Jim Waldron (23:04.065)

what you’re feeling will eventually match what the video record shows on the video, right?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (23:11.212)

Correct. That was so well said and address kind of what my next point what what is the the answer solution there? So that’s brilliant and building off of that slight transition, but you’ve already alluded to it. What do most golfers get wrong in their understanding of and their attempt to overcome the yips? What are the yips and where do we go?

Jim Waldron (23:20.727)

Go.

Jim Waldron (23:32.491)

Well, that’s a big deal. I work with people with the hips from all over the world every day. It’s, it’s the bulk of my practice for the last decade or so. the Yips is the old school term is it’s a serious psychosomatic disorder. new, the new term is neuropsychological disorder. It’s not neurological, which would be essential tremors or say Parkinson’s disease, but it looks kind of like essential tremors or Parkinson’s in that one or more muscles instantly tighten up or spasm even.

Right? So there’s a jolt of physical tension in one or more body parts that disrupts your body. Therefore your club motion, therefore impact. it’s quite common in all sports. It’s more common in golf than any other sport for sure. Although surgeons can get it like dentists can get it. Doctors can get it. Musicians can get it. Actors, comedians can get it, which affects their performance. so it’s, in other words, it’s a mind body connection disorder.

that’s triggered by very powerful negative emotions. the way I explain it, the best analogy is it’s a bomb that goes off in your mind and especially in your body. And the bomb has two parts, are the negative emotions, which are the explosive material, and then the switch. If you don’t press the switch, the bomb doesn’t go off, right? So in the system I developed for curing the YIPS, which is very, very effective.

I have a close to 100 % cure rate for people who work with me in person for at least one to three days. And my online cure rate is 94 % for the remote program. But I teach people how to have more control over their ability to focus their awareness and their attention. So once you recognize what your triggers are and you have a measure of control over your attention, if you don’t…

go to where if you don’t press the switch, if you don’t press the trigger, the bomb doesn’t go off, right? So in the short term, I teach people how to be better at the skill of focused attention. In the long term, I do basically heavy duty psychotherapy with the students so that they can learn to better manage those powerful negative emotions that comprise the explosive material in the first place. And the big one for that is this applies to all, to some degree, to all neurosis.

Jim Waldron (25:56.041)

all, especially all, psychosomatic type of syndromes or disorders, which is when you link your sense of personal identity, especially for an athlete or a musician or a, actor or comedian, when you, when you have too much linkage of your ego to successful outcome, or even more commonly fear of a, of a catastrophic failure, right? That’s the main explosive material in the Yip bomb. So learning how to.

Be better at separating it, decoupling your sense of self-esteem, self-worth from outcome of the shot and score is a big part of the program for Yip’s Cure.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (26:36.17)

And I’m so grateful you shared and expanded upon that because I wholeheartedly agree. It is an emotional based, a mind based challenge at the core. The fear is a predominant emotional energy that spreads, creates the tension, the tightness. And I’m thrilled to hear you say that. And for those of you listening, there is a detailed article in All Things Yips that’ll expand upon what Jim has shared below in the show notes that fear of success, the fear of catastrophic failure,

Jim Waldron (27:04.119)

Mm-hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (27:04.534)

How do you help these individuals who come to you presenting with this YIPPS challenge begin to diffuse those triggers so they can develop that focused attention and awareness?

Jim Waldron (27:15.383)

Well, the learning to not trigger it is mostly not only, but it’s probably 80 % classical Buddhist philosophy and especially badass classical Buddhist mindfulness practice. And so I start with a beginner level Buddhist teaching is mostly what’s called Samatha in Pali language, the ancient Buddhist language, which means.

The closest translation to English would be focused attention or focused concentration in a narrow mode. So you focus on one thing. And the beginning level I use exercises, you light a candle and you sit on your couch or your chair in a dimly lit room and set your phone alarm for two minutes. And you stay in external visual channel. So you stay on your eyeballs focusing on the flickering candle flame. And the goal is to have after

at the time the two minutes is up is to not have your mind go internal. Now, that’s easy to say and really hard to do for most people because normal human consciousness, when someone has free time and they’re not forced to focus for say work, the normal tendency for almost all human beings is to go internal and to do what in psychotherapy is called rumination, right?

where people basically engage with memories of the past, hopes or fantasies of the future, emotions, judgments. They basically daydream for want of a better term. And so this exercise is assigned to eventually for what I call functionally switching off your private psychological state completely because you’re so focused on what the candle flame is doing. That’s the first one.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (28:45.032)

Yes.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (28:59.008)

Yeah. Yeah, very practical and everybody listening easy access to a candle in a dimly lit room. I mean, this is a wealth of knowledge and I hope you’ve already made time in your calendar to listen to this episode twice because Jim is just sharing such great insight and kind of along the same lines Jim, we’ve talked about focused attention awareness concentration, we’ve talked about the mind body.

Talk to us about the need to cultivate, whether we call it emotional resiliency, I think you call it emotional state control. What is it? Why do we need it? How do we cultivate it throughout a round on the course?

Jim Waldron (29:36.119)

Yeah, that’s a great one. Well, back to what I just said with the candle flame. So think of it like this. One of my overarching principles when I work with someone with, especially with someone with YIPPS, but even just someone who comes to me for mental name instruction is it’s called the principle of the two worlds. And so we have to start there because if I just went off on some of the psychotherapeutic language regarding emotional state control, I think I would lose people. So.

Let’s start with the two worlds and then come back to the emotional state control. So in other words, to be able to manage your psychological state, both the mental aspect and the emotional aspect, it’s important to understand a little bit about the nature of reality. So this almost goes more into epistemology, which is that branch of philosophy that talks about how you can know whether something’s true or false.

It gets into empiricism, what we can objectively recognize as true. So here’s what the two worlds theory says. There’s human beings coexist simultaneously in two different universes, two different worlds. There’s the objective world also called reality, meaning we live in a physical cosmos. Your body is an object that exists in the physical universe, right? And we can use our ability to be aware, our so-called consciousness.

to focus our attention through one of our three primary senses, which are vision, hearing, and feeling, we can pay attention to the physical world around us. But we also have our own private psychological state or private psychological world or subjective reality, as opposed to physical world being objective reality, that we spend a lot of time in sort of hanging out throughout the day. So from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you fall asleep at night,

Most people, particularly if it’s a weekend where they’re not having to focus their mind somewhere externally for work, say, most people will spend a lot of time in internal paying attention to stuff happening in that private psychological world. Right. So, so you can think of it as this, the objects that exist in the private psychological world are memories of the past, hopes and fantasies of the future. Your beliefs about.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (31:41.407)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Waldron (31:57.345)

the world, your beliefs about other people, your beliefs about yourself, what you’re good at, what you’re not good at, anything you can imagine or fantasize about and your emotions. All that stuff, those are the objects that exist in this private psychological state. By the way, nobody else has access to this. That’s why I keep saying the word private, right? Only you have access to it. Now, from a purely objective reductionist scientific point of view, we can’t

that that world even exists at all because you can’t weigh it. You can’t measure it. You can’t photograph it. You can’t X-ray it, right? You can’t X-ray a thought. You can’t weigh a thought, right? And yet we spend lots of time in this private world. from a a priori standpoint, know, certain truths are self-evident. It’s self-evidently true that we have this private psychological world. Nobody listening to this podcast would disagree with that, right? Would you agree?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (32:54.774)

Agreed.

Jim Waldron (32:55.775)

Okay. So here’s the, here’s the cool part, the radical part. The next part is, which is the part that most people have never even considered, you know, unless they’re practicing Buddhist monks, one of the early discoveries of, of the early Buddhists. And I always say the Buddhists were the world’s first psychotherapists and the world’s first cognitive scientists, right? The one of the big discoveries in Buddhism is that everything without exception.

everything that takes place in your psychological private world is functionally equivalent to dreaming. It’s not real. So when you’re hanging out in your private psychological space, you’re dreaming. You’re not fully awake to the present moment of what’s happening, either in that private psychological space itself or in the physical world. Because obviously you’re not paying attention to the physical world at all when you’re paying attention to your private psychological world, right? Think of it like that.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (33:49.164)

Thank you.

Jim Waldron (33:53.013)

Why that’s important is people suffer from various types of neuroses, know, mild to moderate psychological dysfunction, not only because of what I’m going to say, but primarily because of this, because they take those thoughts, those memories, those traumatic memories from when you were a kid or, know, the traumatic memory of the last three rounds of golf where you yip badly. People assign.

credibility to those memories. They assign credibility to those emotions. Whereas if you ever had a dream at night where you were in a nightmare and toward the end of the nightmare, you suddenly started to realize, wait a minute, this doesn’t seem right. This can’t possibly be real. And then you wake up, right? Well, that waking up is the whole point of Buddhist practice, right? To realize that, yeah, I’m neurotic and I’m having all these psychological issues. I’m suffering psychologically.

because I assign credibility to the memories, to the thoughts, to the beliefs I formed about myself. When in fact, they’re just ephemeral thoughts that enter and leave or emotions that enter and leave. But people grab onto those thoughts. They grab onto the emotions. And I always say, it’s like your hands have super glue on them. So when you grab onto a negative thought to try to push it away, it sticks to you. When you grab onto a negative emotion to push it away, it sticks to you.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (35:15.328)

Hmm.

Jim Waldron (35:19.487)

If you grab onto a positive thought or positive emotion, sticks to you. So the goal of mindfulness practice is to stop grabbing in the first place and to set up a situation where your sense of identity is no longer identifying with the emotion, the thought, the memory. Yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (35:27.007)

Hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (35:37.182)

I love that framework and I’ve heard many mindfulness analogies, the leafs or the clouds passing by. I love the grabbing. It’s the lack of grabbing and that’s super glues sticking to those thoughts. That’s fascinating. So for the listener who’s digesting this and thinking with a beginning understanding of what you’re sharing, how do we begin to practically apply this on the golf course?

Jim Waldron (36:02.541)

That’s a great question. So now that’s the theory. So as far as emotional state control in the Buddhist tradition, there’s a saying, is dealing with negative thoughts or just an overactive mentation or thinking too much is not that hard to fix. can do sort of beginner level Buddhist meditation. It’ll pretty quickly start to calm down an overactive mind. they say that’s like wrestling a kitty cat to the ground. Not hard to do.

But dealing with powerful negative emotions is like trying to wrestle a full grown Bengal tiger to the ground. It’s much more difficult. So in the Buddhist tradition, you don’t start with dealing with powerful negative emotions. You start with the mentation side, dealing with an overactive mind first. And once you’re able to calm down your mind, you’ll automatically see a reduction in the triggering of negative emotion. that all indirectly, it does help with the emotional stuff.

But there has to be a point in time where you confront the negative emotions directly, right? Does that make sense? Yeah. So it’s more advanced. It’s more of an advanced skill. Yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (37:05.036)

Absolutely does.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (37:09.484)

And what I’m hearing and always please correct me if I’m wrong, it’s like so much of this work, we benefit from doing it away from the course because you know, I like to use the expression and maybe this will align with you. The golf course has no shortage of physical hazards, we both know that water bunkers and whatnot, but there’s also no shortage of emotional and mental triggers. So doing the necessary work away from the course allows you to quickly diffuse those triggers in the moment to regain that focused presence awareness to focus on what truly needs to

to execute the swing you need.

Jim Waldron (37:41.965)

Correct, yeah, that’s right. Well, just again, just being better at controlling the mental side, your so-called mental center, instead of trying to tackle the emotional center directly. Indirectly over time, your emotions calm down. From having a calmer mind, the emotional side of your personality will also calm down. But in terms of dealing with negative emotions directly, one of the main principles similar to with mentation is…

The reason people struggle with negative emotions is because they get caught up in them and they identify who they are with the negative emotion. So, you when you’re having an emotional meltdown of any kind, people often describe it as being captured by a tornado. you’re, you find yourself inside this whirling mass of dark negative energy, let’s call it, you know, anger, right? And it’s almost like the anger is going to take you away. And so you lose control over yourself, right? And

The Golf Hypnotherapist (38:32.844)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jim Waldron (38:40.235)

That’s why learning how to accept that you’re experiencing anger without any resistance is one of the sort of foundational principles. But I use that language precisely. In other words, when I get angry most of the time, not all the time, as my wife will tell you, my experience is anger is happening, but I’m not angry.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (38:51.884)

Mm-hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (38:58.642)

Hahaha

Okay.

Jim Waldron (39:08.557)

In other words, there’s nothing that says you have to identify with your negative emotion. You can say, or you can say, I’m experiencing angry, anger, but I’m not angry. Right? Because you don’t have to identify with a thought and you don’t have to identify with an emotion. And again, that dissociation in the good sense of the word, that sense of detachment, detaching your sense of identity from anything that’s happening in your private psychological space. That’s the ultimate answer.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (39:10.558)

you

Jim Waldron (39:38.477)

And that sense of detachment happens automatically just from pursuing some form of daily mindfulness practice.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (39:48.778)

That was incredibly well said. really appreciate it. know, anger is an example, because I’m sure you know, from all of your experience, it’s such a common emotional hazard we face on the course, many golfers face and just yeah, you don’t have to identify. I like to use the expression, you you use tornado, I love, we get hooked, we latch onto these emotions. And we’re just stuck in that negative dark energy for so long. It’s a choice. You don’t have to go along with it. I love how you frame that.

Jim Waldron (40:16.823)

Yeah, you don’t have to identify with it. And another way you can do that, so think of what I’m saying or what I’m recently saying to kind of dumb it down and make it real simple. What I’m telling people to do, what I’m recommending people do is, and this is, again, this is not, it’s becoming more accepted just in the last decade in the psychotherapy community, but it used to be considered heresy prior to about 10 years ago, right? If you want to improve your psychological health on or off the golf course, doesn’t matter, spend as much time as you can

Focusing your awareness on the physical world, and that includes having a conversation with friends. It includes doing things like hiking in the mountains or in the desert or on the beach, swimming, engaging in sports, playing music, not just listening to music, playing music, doing something proactive where your focus goes completely away from your private psychological space and toward the actual physical world. That’s the quickest way you can get to a

a more healthy psychological state. And that means on the golf course, don’t go internal, stay external. When you’re walking between shots, which is where most of the self-sabotage in golf happens. When you hit a bad tee shot, for example, let’s say you hit a bad tee shot in the trees and you got this, you know, like a three minute walk to find your ball. And what most golfers will do is they’ll go internal and start beating themselves up over the fact that they screwed up their tee shot, right?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (41:42.238)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Waldron (41:45.783)

Right? And by the time they get, they find the ball, they’re in a bad psychological state, both mentally and emotionally. Their minds in chaos and they’re starting to get frustrated or angry or depressed or whatever. Right? So now you’ve increased the probability that this next shot will also be badly hit. Right? But you don’t have to do that. You can focus your senses, primarily your visual sense on what’s happening in the external world during that three minute walk. You don’t have to go inside and see where, you know, how you,

The Golf Hypnotherapist (42:03.873)

Yeah.

Jim Waldron (42:15.63)

and ruminate about how badly you’re scoring, where I am relative to par. You don’t have to create that ego drama. You have a choice about that. You can stay external in the walk between shots,

The Golf Hypnotherapist (42:22.475)

Mm-hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (42:28.948)

outstanding. Absolutely. Like I like to use I’m curious to get your your strategies and advice here. Like when I coach through it, and I coach myself a lot on this is rapid passionate acceptance. Okay, the shot is it happened. I get curious. Why did it happen? I store that away. And then I try to find three different things in nature on that walk. What can catch my visual attention? I’m curious, what do you recommend to help keep people out of that internal world and focus on the external world?

Jim Waldron (42:53.547)

Well, yeah, it starts with understanding you have three primary senses and that if you think of consciousness as a beam of light coming from a flashlight, right? So consciousness is a thing unto itself and you can use that flashlight beam. You can focus it through either your visual sense, your auditory sense or your kinesthetic or feel sense. So the easiest way for most people is to focus visually because there’s more data than feel or auditory. So just

The Golf Hypnotherapist (42:57.516)

Mm-hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (43:14.464)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Waldron (43:23.213)

And this is a part of what I call walking meditation, which is the second mindfulness practice. You can do our walking meditation protocol, which I want you to do. I want a student to do daily, like walking around their neighborhood for at least 15 minutes, right? You can do that on the golf course, which is where you pick an object to look at for only two to three seconds max and simply notice the size color and the shape. Now, when I say notice, I don’t mean going internal and naming it.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (43:52.332)

Mmm.

Jim Waldron (43:52.513)

I want you to stay external, just visually notice the size, color, and the shape, and then pick another object, notice the size, color, and the shape, and just keep doing that. And doing that will allow you to keep your internal psychological state, what I term functionally turned off or so deep in the background of your awareness. In a sense, it’s not even there because you’re using, in this case, your visual, your external visual channel to pay attention to objects in the real world.

So you’re gonna be in a much better psychological state when you find your ball to begin your pre-shot routine for the next shot.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (44:29.216)

That is a great upgrade that I am going to put into practice. Thank you for that. Yeah. I think there’s a real great opportunity there just to, yes, it’s one thing to go list those attributes of what you see in the external world, but make sure you don’t bring them into your internal world. I really like that subtle upgrade there. So here’s a question for it.

Jim Waldron (44:47.767)

Yeah, that’s, again, I’m always coming back to the two worlds theory because remember that the default is people spend so much time in their internal world. There’s a conflation and they get the two worlds kind of mixed up as if they sort of like co-mingle. They don’t. These are completely separate aspects of human experience. You’re either external or you’re internal. There’s no mixture. You can’t be half in one, half in the other, right? Does that make sense? Yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (44:51.308)

Mm-hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (45:01.738)

Yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (45:08.906)

It’s a powerful framework.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (45:16.008)

It totally does. I love that framework. I’m learning a tremendous amount and I’m curious here. I’m going to, I’m going to pivot our conversation a little bit here. If you could have a gigantic billboard with anything on it positioned on the golf course for every golfer to see, what would it say?

Jim Waldron (45:33.519)

that’s an easy one. And I’ll refer you to, are you familiar with Elders Huxley, the British philosopher and novelist?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (45:40.608)

The name, but not his work.

Jim Waldron (45:41.933)

Okay. Well, have you heard of the book, brave new world? Yeah, that was a famous book that came out in like 1958 or 59, science fiction, dystopian science fiction novel. Well, his last book, was called the Island and it’s, it’s a, a utopian community and an Island off, off basically off the coast of Sri Lanka called Polly P a L I.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (45:45.334)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Waldron (46:08.653)

You mentioned that’s one of the two ancient Buddhist languages, the other one being Sanskrit. But in that utopian community, which was local people, local islanders with some wealthy British and American expats, they founded a utopian community there. So it was Huxley’s vision of what a utopian community would be like. To answer your question, they trained the local mina birds to say the phrase, attention, attention.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (46:11.713)

Yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (46:28.873)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Waldron (46:38.721)

So wherever you went on the island, wherever you were, were like thousands of these minibars that had been trained. You were constantly being reminded to pay attention, to be external, to pay attention to the external world. That’s what it would say. It would say attention. Yeah. Yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (46:54.112)

I love that. That’s so neat. Jim, this has been incredible and I’m gonna have you back on because I have learned a tremendous amount and I wanna pick your brain and learn from ours. But I’m curious, if you could leave our audience, who again, is aspiring to move the needle and play to their potential with one thought or action that’s truly gonna be a catalyst in their overall performance, what would you leave them with?

Jim Waldron (47:01.823)

sure.

Jim Waldron (47:20.673)

Are you talking mental game or are you talking physical skill?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (47:23.882)

Let’s go mental game.

Jim Waldron (47:26.913)

I think it would just be the idea again of paying attention. Just start with that. attention also has a built-in implicit premise, which is that you’re paying attention to something. And again, so wherever you’re shining the light of your attention, so again, attention is the flashlight beam, right? It’s either going to be internal or external. And one of the foundational principles of Buddhist philosophy and practice is

Well, there’s two aspects of the same principle. The first principle is something is happening right now in the present moment. Both external world, something’s happening, and also internal world, something’s happening. So step one is to pay attention to what’s in either the two worlds, whichever one you choose to focus on. Pay attention to what’s happening right now. And the second step is with zero resistance.

meaning an open heart and an open mind. Don’t resist what’s happening, even if when you do the first step and you pay attention, the paying attention is causing you some form of suffering or discomfort. Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be willing to suffer a little bit in the short term because, right? Yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (48:37.75)

Okay.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (48:42.86)

All right, I’m gonna dig into that real quick. So you say observe with zero resistance, how or where do the words lack of judgment or curiosity, non-judgmental curiosity come into the equation here?

Jim Waldron (48:56.161)

Yeah, that’s kind of a byproduct. you’re paying attention to what’s happening with no resistance, the no resistant parts means not judging. Because judging is a form of resistance. Or it’s a form of maybe resistance would be too strong. If you’re judging in the positive, it’s still judging. You know what saying?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (48:58.891)

Mm-hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (49:07.638)

Bingo. Okay, perc.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (49:20.576)

Yeah.

Jim Waldron (49:22.515)

One of the interesting things that the Buddha discovered, one of the essential characteristics of the normal mind is a mind that craves. It’s called craving and Buddha, you translate it from Sanskrit or Pali, the English is called craving. So meaning there’s what we call the attraction repulsion dynamic. When you do a lot of sitting meditation, you’ll quickly realize that your mind is always again, reaching out and trying to grab on to pleasure or security or comfort. And it’s trying to reach out and push away.

insecurity, pain, discomfort, right? And that’s what I’m, so craving is a form of resistance, right? So, acceptance means deeply accepting the reality of the present moment, both mentally and emotionally, even if that acceptance of the present moment creates a initial surge of, let’s call it, this is called,

The Golf Hypnotherapist (50:03.936)

Yeah, wow.

Jim Waldron (50:22.797)

ego based, egoic based suffering. In other words, when you pay attention to a physical pain that you’ve been ignoring and you start to focus on it, it tends to get worse in the short term, right? Does that make sense? The same thing with psychological suffering. When you first start to pay attention to the mechanisms that your mind is doing automatically, know, spontaneously that are causing you suffering, in the short term, the suffering appears to get more intense, right?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (50:35.734)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jim Waldron (50:52.641)

which tends to create people not wanting to do it. So part of this whole process, you have to be stoic enough to realize, all right, I may learn things about myself that are kind of unpleasant. I may discover things about myself in this process that I might find out I have a dark side or a narcissistic side or an angry side. What Jung called the shadow or what…

The Golf Hypnotherapist (50:55.916)

Correct.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (51:04.406)

Mm-hmm.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (51:18.849)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Waldron (51:20.461)

Freud talked about the darkest recesses of the unconscious, right? You may discover things that don’t match your current self image. And you may see those things as sort of a threat. But that’s what I’m saying. So the process of doing this type of practice, whether it’s from a psychotherapeutic standpoint or spiritual practice from any of the major religions or Buddhist mindfulness practice, it all comes down to the same thing. You have to be willing to…

except that there’s going to be some parts of this early on that are not going to be comfortable or fun. Right?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (51:56.822)

I’m so grateful I asked that question because that answer had so much depth and wisdom to it. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. I’m curious, where can our listeners go to learn more about you, to learn from you and to work directly with you?

Jim Waldron (52:12.695)

Yeah, that’s easy. Just my website, which is balancepointgolf.com. Balance with a B, yeah.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (52:17.654)

balance point. Perfect. And I’ll drop that in the show notes. Of course. Well, Jim, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode.

Jim Waldron (52:23.917)

Well, thank you, Paul. was some great questions. I really enjoyed it. It’d be fun to come back.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (52:29.236)

Yeah, absolutely. yeah, we’ll make that happen. And for those of you listening, thank you for tuning into another episode. I have an imagination you learned an incredible amount from Jim and I’m going to ask you to do a favor on behalf of Jim and I share this episode with a fellow golfer and make it a point to go back and re listen an additional time or three because there is so much wisdom that you will benefit from hearing multiple times. So share it, listen to it again. And if you haven’t already done so,

taking 30 seconds to leave a genuine rating or review on Apple podcasts or Spotify goes a long way and is greatly appreciated. Have a fantastic day. Hit them straight this weekend and we’ll catch you in the next episode.