My Golf Journey

Here’s an interesting story about my spiritual journey and golf. I grew up on a golf course and had really a love-hate relationship with it. Mainly because my parents really tried to push me into it and also because I did not have the valuable information that I know today, which by the way can be easily taught to children. Nevertheless there was something magical that occurred in me when I was taught to put my 6-year old hands on the grip for the first time and take a swing and watch the ball soar high into the air. I loved that part. I was a great athlete though and golf seemed a bit to slow for me, so I enjoyed several other sports, diving and softball and gymnastics. I played off and on, but more off than on until I turned seventeen. I went to Cal State Stanislaus and went out with a boy on the golf team. I got tired of sitting in the car doing my homework and watching him hit balls so I decided to try it again. Wow was it easy to pick it up again. It was so natural and it was because I learned when I was a child. Here is a piece of advice for all you adults that are taking up golf for the first time. You still have a great chance to learn golf and play well. It is a myth that you have to play golf when you are little to be good. Sure it helps, but if you can learn in a childlike state and if your teacher can nurture that you will learn much faster.

Anyway to get on with my story. Within two years I was able to be an alternate player at the number one team in the nation at the time- San Jose State University. San Jose State produced many champions such as Pat Hurst, Julie Inkster and Patty Sheehan. I felt not only that I was lucky but that there was something bigger- a destiny.

During my years at San Jose State I was able to have a meeting with the sport psychologist Tomas Tutko, who is the forefather of sport psychology. In that one meeting I was fourth in a home tournament. Although I didn’t hold on to the lead and learned that the skills he taught me greatly changed my performance. And I was on my way to a very interesting career and spiritual path.

After college I joined the Ladies Professional Golf Association and began teaching juniors and then later adults. I learned from many valuable pros on how to teach the physical aspects of the golf swing as well as the courses that the LPGA provided. I moved to Northern California and worked as a golf teacher at a busy driving range giving hundreds of lessons. I loved it. I have an extreme passion for watching my students get better, but I knew that there was something missing. Something that I couldn’t necessarily provide and needed to know more about.

One morning I woke up to a dream about a man telling me all about his migraine headaches. In the dream he kept telling me about these headaches to the point I was annoyed. I woke up a little irritated because of this dream, especially because it seemed so real. I went to the range that day and was hitting golf balls and looked up at a man staring at me. I acknowledged him wondering all the while why he was so in my face. He then proceeded to tell me all about his headaches, I listened intently because it was the same story in my dream that morning. He then told my how hypnosis helped him get rid of his headaches. I immediately went home and looked up a hypnosis school in my area and told my husband at the time that I was going to spend 3,000$ on hypnosis training because I knew I was suppose to. He thought I was crazy but could tell I felt very strongly about this. I thought if hypnosis could work for that man’s headaches it might certainly work for people’s golf games. I went to hypnosis training for 4 months and it changed my life drastically. My friend Rick McFall and I opened up an office together and I saw the miracles of hypnosis in action with my clients golf games as well as many other areas of their lives.

During this time I also attended John F. Kennedy University to get my Master’s in Sport Psychology, a program in which I did my thesis in hypnosis and golf. The golf lessons I gave to me clients took on an extremely different feel. They started to have deep spiritual insights about themselves, and others whom the played with. They developed more body awareness. They were more aware of their feelings of anger and able to change them to joy. I was also on a different journey as a teacher and a player.
I then worked at the Bridges Golf Club in San Ramon, where I was both a teacher and a hypnotherapist/sport psychologist. We had a wonderful inside teacher facility with state of the art video technology. On the other hand I was lucky enough to be given a trailer for my sport psychology. I have to say that most people after having a lesson with me could understand that there problems I golf weren’t so much related to their physical technique but more to their mental game. They found that after bringing more awareness to their mental game they were more able to learn the physical technique and much quicker.

This was so exciting to me and I wanted to take it a step further, so I went to the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology to get my doctorate in spiritual psychology. I learned much about alternate states of reality through dreams, art, dance and poetry. All the while I was thinking of way I could apply this to golf. I also studied acting and learned much about the correlation to body/mind awareness. I decided that I wanted to take a break from school and take a year to apply this to my own golf game and that’s exactly what I did. I practiced for 8 hours a day all the while using golf as a meditation to get me closer to the source of my inner spirit.

I was able to get the pro tournament experience I needed to further me along my journey by playing in a couple of events in Arizona and I went to tour school for the LPGA. Although I didn’t qualify I was able to reach my intention of taking myself all the way through that in order to truly understand the depths of my own spiritual awareness so I could further help others. I am now in a doctorate program at San Diego University of Integrative Studies. I am taking clinical psychology so I will be able to work with anyone in any area. All the while still expanding my knowledge of my own golf game and helping others reach their true potential. I want to help as many people as I can to experience that inner awareness, joy, and spirituality that I have experienced.
I live in Palm Springs now- a golf mecca. I am excited to be in the heart of a golf community and look forward to my new journey as a golfers guide on a spiritual path. I hope our paths will cross in this wonderful sport and wonderful planet that we are so fortunate to be a part of. Golf is truly a journey into your soul, if you let it be.

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