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I’ve been reading Michael Shingleton’s Peace and Par just over a year. It’s only now that I’m writing a review of it.  This is because it’s often with me on the bus or subway. I have read the book so often it’s now worn. In its 128 pages, the paperback edition speaks volumes. In the book, Shingleton has compiled an abundance of humorous stories that tell a simple tale: that golf, like life, is a series of distractions made up entirely by the mind. For example, the mind begins to chatter when we’ve just teed up on a 400-yard hole with a water hazard on the left and a green straight ahead with the pin beckoning you to try your driver, when your better self says, “3-wood”. Predictably, you over-correct with your driver and slice into the woods on your right. For the rest of the round you get tips and rips from your pals.
 

Other distractions on the course might include a pretty young woman being added by the starter to your group of three at the last minute; or a hustler getting you to bet on each hole and you find yourself losing your grip; or you, a hacker, being invited to spend the round with a group of three very dependable low-handicappers with razor sharp wits and irons.
 

What Shingleton invites you to do is to engage in a moment of bliss. It’s as available to you as taking in a breath and releasing your momentary problem.  It’s that easy, but like golf it requires practice.
 

I’ve had many situations, from doctors’ offices, to crowded traffic, packed subways and buses in slow traffic and bruising meetings with co-workers not to mention a roomful of students high on hormones. And yes, you can find relief, if not bliss on occasion.
 

The breath Shingleton describes in the book is about returning to the Now by doing a simple exercise he learned from Swami Muktananda in India. (I can already hear the sighs and moans from hackers.) Unlike other books in the field of mental golf, Shingleton sticks to a single technique and describes its many applications. What I took away from the book is that playing golf means we will occasionally look stupid on the course. When we’ve connected with breath to our Now moment, we don’t care what we look like.

What the breath does is release the energy we expend on all the probable catastrophes we carry around in life and during a game of golf. When we exhale, we rid ourselves of the things we imagine that will never really happen anyway. When we inhale we can regain energy and the joy we seek in golf.
 

With practice, this breath takes us to the moment where we are free to focus on the 20-foot putt for a birdie or teeing up in front of the tournament gallery. With practice, we become a different energy. We connect to that place where we are fully alert and capable of achieving our dream shot. When the ego mind is quiet, we can imagine a better outcome for ourselves, something we have long thought impossible. Yes, even bliss.
 

Shingleton says that with this breathing technique you are free in “a space that just is”. You will know and trust your swing without the ever-present check list of the mind calling out instructions. Soon, you will learn to trust it more. With the breath you might just be in a better mood after the round. Later, you might be willing to move out of your comfort level and take on more challenging situations on and off the course.
 

Inevitably, Shingleton, a modest player who exudes his enjoyment at 60, wants golfers to enjoy the same game he loves. He does not promise the guru’s breathing techniques will improve your score, he just says that by learning how to enjoy the game you have a much better chance of achieving your goals.
 

The book does not mean taking a meditation course with a guru, it merely asks you to take advantage of the knowledge Shingleton found that enabled him to enjoy the game without the mind tagging along. (To date, the only guru I know who is a golfer is author Deepak Chopra, who has written a fine book about golf, but I don’t know if he does this particular breathing exercise.)
 

I can attest that almost immediately you will find that a few minutes of breathing will restore you. At the very least you will be at Peace, which according to Shingleton, is Par for the course.
 

Peace and Par 
Enjoying Golf in the Now
Michael Shingleton
BookSurge Publishing

available from:
www.BookSurge.com