Showing results by author "Dr. Joseph Parent" in All Categories

A Walk in the Wood is both inspiring and instructive. Simple stories with clearly stated goals and easy-to-follow exercises provide all the tools you'll need to take the first step, or continue on your journey, toward a quieter and calmer way of living.

Zen Golf Deck is a collection of brief lessons and exercises drawn from Zen Golf: Mastering the Mental Game. Applied in actual on-course sessions with golfers, including many PGA TOUR and LPGA players, they will introduce you to a unique perspective that brings together techniques of modern psychology and ancient wisdom traditions. Each lesson in the Zen Golf Deck will give you ways to make your mind an ally instead of an enemy, helping to reduce frustration, increase consistency, and lower your scores.

Simple yet powerful keys for keeping your composure and the mental edge over your opponents, which will help you play with more consistency, experience less frustration, and shoot lower scores.

Confidence, as every golfer knows, is the key to peak performance on the greens. Zen Putting: Mastering the Mental Game builds your confidence through a thinking-outside-the-box approach that helps golfers of all levels get out of their own way and roll the ball better than ever.

From the best-selling author of Zen Golf: Mastering the Mental Game and the tennis champion and world record holder of the Golden Set comes the most innovative and powerful book since The Inner Game of Tennis. Combining deep Eastern wisdom and practical tennis expertise, Zen Tennis will help you get out of your own way and into the zone.

In chapters such as "During Your Swing Is Not the Time to Give Yourself a Lesson" and "How to Enjoy a Bad Round of Golf," the author guides golfers with simple yet powerful techniques to prepare for, execute, and, equally important, respond to the results of any golf shot. The author, Dr. Joseph Parent, is a PGA Tour Instructor who draws on his teaching experience to offer special methods that have led to amazing improvements in the games of professionals and amateurs alike.

A simple and concise guide to confidence and skill in putting by a renowned golf instructor and the best-selling author of Zen Golf and Zen Putting.

Dr. Joe Parent has drawn on a career coaching the masters to write a hundred easy to understand yet powerful tips for improving any golfer’s score, from the essentials of the mental game to helpful hints to keep your composure. As with his other books, you will find yourself returning time and again to hear what Masters and PGA Champion Vijay Singh call “lessons that make the mental game seem so simple".

Poor decisions are what make you gain weight and good choices are what enable you to lose weight. Your brain will respond to the changes you make, and your body will, too. Instead of recipes and requirements, you'll receive time-tested techniques for being more present and mindful while cultivating good eating and exercise habits. The Best Diet Book Ever provides great information and practical strategies that will help you become the lighter, slimmer you that you long to be.

While playing well in a tournament, we might think to ourselves, “Well, you’ve gotten away with it so far, but you’ll screw up before too long.” Believing in this thought gives it power. It creates feelings of doubt and anxiety, which interfere with our swing and produce errant shots. Eventually, the fear of failure becomes so powerful that our game is badly disrupted. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Playing the game of golf can inspire us to embody gentleness, inquisitiveness, and fearlessness. Gentleness means being kind to ourselves and considerate of others. We can take delight in conducting ourselves as gentle men and gentle women in golf and in life. Fearlessness means being more curious than afraid, trusting in our basic goodness and manifesting unconditional confidence in every situation we encounter.

Everyone has comfort levels. They are the levels of performance or spheres of activity that are familiar to us. We’re comfortable playing in the B-flight, we’re comfortable chasing the leader from behind, or we’re comfortable just making the cut. We’re comfortable playing our usual game. Sabotage is the undermining (through underhanded interference) of a project or mission. Self­-sabotage doesn’t make sense—why would we undermine our own work to reach an important goal (like breaking 80)?

Simple yet powerful keys for keeping your composure and the mental edge over your opponents, and will help you play with more consistency, experience less frustration, and shoot lower scores.

Here’s a pre-round putting warm-up routine I have given tour players and amateurs alike. Step 1: Putt to nowhere. In an open area of the practice green, stroke a few putts with no target at all. Vary the distances you roll the putts. Do this until you feel your stroke is smooth and consistent.

Chris, a good junior golfer, came for a lesson. He complained that his swing gave him trouble when he “got quick at the top.” That usually refers to an especially quick start to the downswing. It sometimes reflects a premature transition, starting the downswing before the backswing is complete. He showed me his swing routine, how he approached and set up to the ball, then how he swung.

All too often we try to get something extra out of our drives, and the results are usually the opposite of what we desire. Even if we’re lucky enough to find the ball, it has traveled less than our usual distance. The golf swing is a series of muscle movements, all in sequence. Any interference with that sequence, such as extra muscle tension, interrupts the flow of the swing, causing errors in body action, swing path, and contact point.

When body and mind are synchronized for a golf swing, they are unified in purpose, presence, and focus. They are functioning in the same place at the same time. Can you send your body into the past or the future? Of course not. Our body is in the present and only in the present. Can you send your mind into the past or the future? Of course you can.

To deal with last­-minute thoughts, those internal conversations about the shot right before you swing, I suggest an approach taken from body surfing. If you want to swim out where the wave starts so you can ride it in, you have to get past the breakers. Fighting through these breakers takes a lot of strength and energy, and more often than not the waves knock you back.

Once there were two monks walking along a path through the woods. When they came to a stream, they encountered a young woman dressed in fine silks, unable to get across without ruining her clothes. One of the monks offered to carry her on his back. She climbed on, they all crossed the stream, and on the other side he set her down. She thanked him, and the two monks continued on their way. The monastery to which these monks belonged had a rule prohibiting them from touching women.

Sense perceptions are necessary for creative imaging of the shots we intend to play. Our senses collect information that we use to direct our mind and body in executing a golf shot and everything else we do. Therefore, it is very helpful to practice awareness of our sense perceptions and how they are experienced.