The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 mph

by Shawn Green

For most of us, our awareness becomes trapped within our heads. We are so lost in the fantasies of our minds—egoistic images of who we think we are or should be—that we fail to truly experience the world around us. Instead, we merely think the world. Meditation, practiced in any effective format, trains us to exist and function apart from the mind and ego, allowing us to experience the present moment. In my meditative practice at the tee, my awareness attached itself to my body and its movements. In those twenty-minute sessions, I was no longer thinking through my swings; rather, I merely watched as the swings happened. Whenever self-consciousness crept into my head, I’d shift that awareness back into my striding foot, my shoulder, or my breathing. On many days, I moved beyond even my connection to the body and felt I had actually become the act of hitting, so absorbed in what I was doing that I lost my sense of self.