I have been teaching this for years and I want to put it in writing.

Your spine and brain are not just structural. They are a communication system. What you think — what you consciously create in your mind and what you receive from something larger than yourself — travels through that system. When the spine is free, mobile, and clear, that communication is open. When it is blocked — through physical restriction, chronic tension, old injury, or unprocessed stress — the signal weakens.

I teach that your thoughts tap directly into the Universal Mind. What you see in your mind’s eye before the shot becomes what your body produces. That is not a metaphor. That is how it works when nothing is in the way.

Here is why I believe this — and here is the science that points toward it.

The Spine in Yoga Philosophy

Yoga has understood the spine as an energy channel for thousands of years. The concept of sushumna nadi — the central energy channel running along the spine — describes a pathway through which prana, life force energy, travels between the earth and the crown of the head. When this channel is clear, consciousness expands. When it is blocked, the body and mind both suffer.

Geshe Michael Roach’s book How Yoga Works describes this plainly: physical pain and restriction in the spine are not just structural problems. They are expressions of stuck energy — mental and emotional as much as physical. The yoga postures are not just stretching. They are clearing. They open the channel so that something larger can move through.

I have practiced and taught Bikram hot yoga for 14 years. I have watched students walk in with chronic back pain, a hunched posture, and a closed-off expression — and walk out after 90 minutes standing taller, breathing deeper, and looking like a different person. The spine freed. The channel opened. Something moved through that wasn’t there before.

The Neuroscience: Your Body as a Field

Dr. Candace Pert, neuroscientist and author of Molecules of Emotion, discovered that the body’s nervous system is not a one-way communication line from brain to body. It is a network. Neuropeptides — chemical messengers — travel throughout the entire body, not just the brain. Your gut, your heart, your spine: all of them are processing information, sending signals, participating in what we call thought and feeling. The brain does not think alone. The body thinks with it.

The HeartMath Institute has published peer-reviewed research showing that the human heart generates an electromagnetic field measurable several feet outside the body. This field changes based on emotional state. It interacts with the fields of other people nearby. Their Global Coherence Initiative proposes that human biological rhythms synchronize with the earth’s electromagnetic field — that we are not separate from the larger field we live inside. We are participants in it.

Dr. Joe Dispenza’s research goes further. In peer-reviewed studies, he has documented measurable changes in gene expression, immune function, and brain activity produced purely by sustained mental rehearsal and intention. His work on heart-brain coherence describes a state in which the electromagnetic signals of the heart and the brain synchronize — and in that state, what a person intends begins to manifest in their biology and their external reality with unusual consistency.

“Your personality creates your personal reality.” — Dr. Joe Dispenza

These are not fringe ideas. They are peer-reviewed, published, and reproducible. The science is pointing toward what yoga has practiced for millennia: the body is a receiver and transmitter. Thought is not contained inside the skull. It extends outward, interacts with a larger field, and returns shaped by what it finds there.

Gregg Braden and the Divine Matrix

Gregg Braden’s work in The Divine Matrix describes a field of energy that connects everything — every particle, every person, every thought. He draws on quantum physics, ancient wisdom traditions, and modern biology to make the case that consciousness is not produced by the brain. It is received by it. The brain is a tuner, not a generator. The spine is the antenna that makes reception possible.

This maps precisely onto what I teach and what I have experienced: when the spine is restricted, the reception is poor. When it is free, the signal is clear. And when the signal is clear, what you intend — what you see before you act — moves into the world with a coherence that feels almost effortless.

The Golf Application

Bob Rotella wrote that confident golfers think about what they want to happen. Golfers who lack confidence think about what they don’t want to happen. That is all confidence is.

I would take it further. The golfer whose spine is restricted — whose thoracic spine is locked, whose hip flexors are tight, whose nervous system is running in chronic fight-or-flight — cannot access the same quality of intention as the golfer whose body is free. The physical restriction and the mental restriction are the same restriction. They live in the same system.

When I do a TPI Movement Assessment, I am not just looking for swing faults. I am looking for where the channel is blocked. A restricted thoracic spine is not just a backswing problem. It is a communication problem. The body cannot fully receive and transmit the intention the mind is trying to send.

Free the spine. Open the channel. See the shot. Trust the body. That is the sequence. That has always been the sequence.

In 2006 I built a conscious living guide called See It Simply around five elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Energy. It had nothing to do with golf. Twenty years later I became TPI certified and found the same five elements sitting inside the golf swing. I do not think that was an accident. I think the Great Spirit guided me exactly there. It always does.

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” — Henry David Thoreau

What This Means for You

If you feel stuck — in your swing, in your game, in your life — the first question is not what technique you are missing. The first question is: where is the channel blocked?

That is what the TPI Movement Assessment answers. Not just which muscles are tight or which joints are restricted — but where in your body the communication between intention and action has broken down. And then we build a path to clear it.

Your spine and brain are the conduit. Your thoughts create and receive. The Universal Mind is available to every golfer who gets out of the way long enough to tap in.

Find your flow. Turn and burn.

References: Geshe Michael Roach, How Yoga Works. Candace Pert, Molecules of Emotion. Joe Dispenza, Becoming Supernatural and You Are the Placebo. Gregg Braden, The Divine Matrix. HeartMath Institute, heartmath.org. Bob Rotella, Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect.