THE GOLFING BRAIN has always fascinated me—my own brain, and the brains of our students. At the beginning of my coaching career, I was still trying to figure out how to teach most effectively. One day I said to Chuck Hogan, “Chuck, I’ve been reading about the brain and how it works.” Chuck interrupted me and started rattling off the theories of developmental psychologists Jean Piaget and Joseph Chilton Pearce, an American writer on human and child development, who investigated connections between the brain and the heart. Chuck talked about how the brain develops, and how we form behaviors. If any other golf pros would have been there, I’m sure they would have nervously backed out of the room and run to the lesson tee.
“Here’s the secret to golf,” Chuck said. “Emotionalize what you want, and dissociate from the rest.” In other words, take in the positives on the golf course, and separate them from the negatives. It was the same idea about association and dissociation that Pia brought to her Swedish teams. I caught my breath and thought, Wow, that kind of makes sense.
I read one of Pearce’s books, The Magical Child. It was pretty heavy, but his ideas were provocative. Interestingly, he described the anatomical heart as a “compassionate mind,” an organ with control functions that rivaled those of the brain.
Flash forward to 1997. I read an article about how scientists had determined that the heart communicates with the brain via the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve. It contains motor and sensory fibers and, because it passes through the neck and thorax to the abdomen, has the widest distribution and effect in the body. The article broadened into the topic of stored memories, particularly those associated with traumatic events and their clinical aftermath, which is post–traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I was impressed with the argument that we could actually affect the “wiring” between the amygdala, where our long-term memories are stored, and the heart. That led to something called “coherent heart-rate variability.”
I faxed the article to Pia, who was in Stockholm. The very next day, she faxed back an article from Svenska Dagbladet, a major Swedish newspaper. It was an article on the very same subject she had read the day before. This is serendipitous, I thought.
Not long afterward, I was giving a lesson. I told my student that the latest science showed that she could choose to store the memory of a particular shot, or choose not to store it. She looked up and said, “Oh, this reminds me of HeartMath!” She explained she was referring to a research center in California called the Institute of HeartMath. I thought, Okay, these are three serendipitous events. Let’s go.
So Pia and I traveled to the Institute of HeartMath for one of its trainings. We found ourselves in a room with psychiatrists, heart surgeons, and other doctors. They looked at us and said, “You guys are golf pros. What are you doing here? HeartMath deals with stress. Is there much stress in playing golf?”
HeartMath’s training program gave us insight into brain and heart science. When you’re in a happy, positive, and confident emotional state, the rhythm between your heartbeats is smooth. This means there is coherence among the brain, the heart, and the nervous system. Decision-making is quicker, and more sound. Emotional stability is easier to sustain, and physical coordination is enhanced.
When you’re in a stressful state and experiencing emotions like frustration, anger, and anxiety, the rhythm and time between beats become uneven, which interferes with the communication between the heart and the brain. Blood vessels constrict and blood pressure rises, which limits the brain’s ability to process information smoothly, including decision-making and problem-solving. It also negatively affects your physical performance.
We learned that negative memories get stored three times stronger than positive memories. Thinking about how this related to golf, we became convinced that the emotions we associate with our memories—whether it be annoyance, irritation, or frustration on the negative side, or calmness, happiness, pleasure, and satisfaction on the positive side—can influence our access to our best performance abilities for the rest of the round and beyond.
One day, Dr. Rollin McCraty, the HeartMath Institute’s executive vice president and director of research, was explaining the concept of neuroplasticity, and how signals from the heart could rewire neural pathways and synapses in the brain and affect stored memories in the amygdala. Surrounded by these medical professionals, I raised my hand. “Is that why Ben Hogan got the yips?” I asked.
I’ll never forget the look on his face. He hesitated and said, “I’m not sure.”
I was sure. It made total sense to me that the yips could result from an amygdala that just keeps firing negative stored memories, causing the heart to beat erratically and the nervous system to seize up.
One message I took away was this: Under emotional pressure, people tend to revert to past negative memories and associations if they don’t affirmatively decide that they want to store their current activities, emotions, and memories more positively.
At our VISION54 schools, we now teach players how to regulate their coherence levels using a HeartMath app called Inner Balance. To use it, you plug a sensor into your iPhone and insert an earpiece. A pacer on the app prompts you to moderate your breathing, which, while generating positive feelings, activates DHEA. When you have more DHEA, your heart rhythm gets more coherent and you are emotionally resilient; the app registers green or blue. If your body releases more cortisol due to negative emotions, your heart rhythm becomes noncoherent, and the app shows red.
We keep a funny doll called Tickle Me Elmo on the range at VISION54 schools. When students see the Elmo doll, they can’t help but laugh. If you have your sensor on, you’ll see your emotions move the sensor into the green or blue zone. Elmo is an external object that creates positive emotions and DHEA. External objects can also create negative emotions and cortisol. If you get angry at a poor shot, you’ll probably see your sensor move into the red. By playing a round with the sensor, you can see how you respond in real situations on the course. You learn how to self-regulate; you can consciously calm yourself and create positive emotions. You can increase your adrenaline and create more DHEA. This makes emotional resilience more than just a concept. Once you begin to understand the feedback, you can remove the device and create the feelings on your own. It makes emotional management and resilience a real human skill.
When we started working with Suzann Pettersen in 2006, she began using the HeartMath app. At first, she couldn’t get it out of the red zone at all. By March 2007, her work with the app had enabled her to start shifting her emotions. She never really told us what feelings she was activating to make it turn green, but she was clearly getting more in touch with her inner awareness. We don’t know whether it was an accident or not that 2007 was the best year of her career. We think not.
In early 2016, when Ariya Jutanugarn came to us for coaching, she had developed a specific terror of hitting her driver off the tee, and a general fear of performing badly in tournaments. Working with the handheld HeartMath app, she was able to see where, when, and why the sensor went to red and, conversely, to green and blue. For the first time, she learned how she could create a different emotional state before stepping into her shot. She now had a skill, something practical she could do to shift from a worried anxiety state to a happier and more joyous state.
To sum up: The most important piece of equipment in golf is your body, with its mind, emotions, and physical coordination. HeartMath is a simple tool that has provided golfers both the insight and the means to help manage our emotional states.