World-famous golfer Tiger Woods is on the green at the 18th hole. He gets ready to take his shot. Hundreds of people are watching, but that doesn’t bother Woods. He makes the shot and wins the tournament.
What makes Woods a winner? As a young golfer, his mother introduced him to Buddhist philosophy. This helped him focus his mind on the moment. He learned to block out the crowds and the stress. When he was younger, his father often created distractions while Tiger was playing. He coughed or made sudden movements to test his son’s concentration. Now many people say that it is Tiger’s mental strength that helped him become the number one golfer in the world.
Lewis Gordon Pugh also knows a lot about the way the mind can control the body. Pugh is an ice swimmer from England. He swims in ice-cold water (32 F; O C) in just a regular bathing suit. He holds the world record for the longest cold-water swims in both the Arctic and Antarctic.
Pugh spends a great deal of time in mental preparation before each swim. Of course, he prepares his body, but more importantly, he prepares his mind. He often spends four hours a day thinking about challenging situations. He thinks about his reasons for wanting to break records. He thinks about every minute of the swim, imagining how it will feel in detail.
So far, he sounds like a normal athlete. What he does next, however, is extraordinary. He raises his body temperature by almost 3 F (1.4 C) to 101 F (38 C). He does it all by mental control. Then Pugh dives into the water. Most people would die in just a few minutes in the cold water. Their body temperature would drop to a dangerously low level. Pugh doesn’t even shiver. In the water, he can keep his body temperature at 96.8 F (36 C) for as long as 30 minutes. This is the time it takes him to complete a one-kilometer swim (about half a mile).