Holistic Bowling Academy

(Last Update 11/21/24)

Suppose you are researching the history and evolution of coaching, which we often do at Optima Bowling. At the highest level, you will search for an academy, an institution, or a fundamental resource for developing self-initiated self-authorization; it requires an evolved academy focused on something other than the superficial, fragmented education of today's standard practice. A proper academy's purpose and role are not based on telling, molding, guiding, or building individuals to be somebody. To be Just another external authority, hero, or learned cultured erudite exhibiting excellent knowledge yet little understanding of reality. In our kingdom, the Human Kingdom, at our current level of development, more than worldly knowledge is required to unite or lead.

Our duty as coaches (teachers) is to become aware of the collective need for self-authorized individuals and then drive development toward understanding and embodying this overarching need.

So, the question becomes, how do coaches embody self-initiated self-authorization and work with such individuals? From my research for self-development, I have concluded that a hybrid coach-play perspective is a must-have prerequisite for a proper academy.

Think about the following constructs:

With knowledge, individually speaking, coaching evolution begins with each of us, our evolution of self-consciousness through self-research for self-development. Also, with understanding, humanly speaking, coaching evolution is shared, as in cooperatively developed through five stages: Barbarism (primitive), civilization, culture (developed), humanity, and ideality (enlightened).
2023 is the year the Optima Bowling Coach resolved an ancient question. We now know what the hell is wrong with this mad, emotional, idiotic world of ours. The work ahead applies to everyone, so focus on the transition: Stop ignoring worlds and begin working upon worlds.
It is humanity's shared purpose to be practical, that is, to practice lifespan performance and perceptual control to monitor one's livelihood developmental transition from ignoring worlds to working upon worlds.
There are four worlds in the human kingdom. To simplify things, we can call them levels of personality or identity: Physical (organism), emotional (feeling), mental (intelligence), and causal (wisdom).

The facts of the matter: Knowledge and comprehension (i.e., research) are the prerequisites to understanding (i.e., development) and our purpose and responsibility for practicing lifespan performance and perceptual control to monitor the livelihood developmental transition from ignoring worlds to working upon worlds. This way, we realize the self-initiated self-authorization hybrid coach-play perspective of the coaching evolution movement.

Do you get it? Let me continue.

As I stated above, there are four worlds in the human kingdom. To simplify things, we can call them levels of personality or identity: physical (organism), emotional (feeling), mental (intelligence), and causal (wisdom). To focus on the relationship between personality development and a bowling academy, we begin with the solution to an urgent and specific problem facing the coaching industry: the misunderstood coach-play (teacher-student) relation.

The approach to the coach-play relation problem is to study and counter the teaching-learning dichotomy rampant in the contemporary coaching and teaching culture by applying an advanced understanding of human evolution and rationality. From this, we discover the best approach and environment for an academy. Therein, we find the dynamic flow between formal and informal education, as self-research for self-development, monitored by performance to activation, happens unpretentiously. This practical and innate approach makes it easy to implement and maintain.

See More: The Six Natural Kingdoms of The Solar System

At a high level, Optima Bowling Coaching Evolution reveals a three-pronged approach:

Self-research for self-development.
Self-initiated self-authorization.
Hybrid coach-play perspective of coaching.

Holistic Coaching Tools

From my research for my development, a proper academy focuses on the solution to the question: How do coaches work with self-initiated, self-authorized individuals? We find a real-time approach that portrays a hybrid coach-play holistic coaching edifice.

Holistic: That word is thrown around a lot these days. I just retired (7/30/21) from a "holistic financial planning team."

The system concept of holistic education can apply to both those informal forms that are driven and rooted in conversation and more formal approaches involving a curriculum. The choice is not between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, or even true and false, but rather what is appropriate for the person’s situation. There are times to use transmission and direct teaching as methods and moments for exploration, experience, and action. It is all about getting the mix right and framing it within the guiding intellectual character of a culture or a social group and the student’s physical, emotional, and mental qualities and abilities.

What has emerged is the need to look at performance differently to steer us in the correct direction. I have created a couple of visual aids to help you work through the knowledge, comprehension, and understanding of the hybrid coach-play perspective and where it fits into the coaching for performance practice.

The Psychology of Lifespan Performance and Perceptual Control
Four Phases of Performance Authenticity

Livelihood Development and the LPPC Model

Humanity's shared purpose, to be practical, is the practice of lifespan performance and perceptual control to monitor one's livelihood developmental transition from ignoring worlds to working upon worlds. (BC Vann 2023)

Psychology of lifespan performance and perceptual control

See More: Purposeful PIE

Four Phases of Performance Authenticity

As envisioned, the bowling academy teaching and learning environment features four levels of coaching for performance:

Rationality, Academy, Holistic Education

Let’s begin this discussion from the perspective of this mad, emotional, idiotic world of ours where emotion is the prime motivating force of human evolution, mainly the irrational (repulsive) lower type of emotion.

Rationality and This Crazy World of Ours

Humanity in this world seeks a variety of pain as the motivating force for development, such as fear, anger, hatred, and grief. However, a few people operate from rationality and a higher level of emotion (attraction), so their motivation for development is variations of joy, such as excitement, enthusiasm, love, and empathy. This world is comprehensible, and it's a human potential all can ascend to through self-development. It is called the mental-causal world (rational world), the world of intelligence and ideas, the world we rely on to motivate the development of the causal self, the highest level of human consciousness. Of course, most humans ignore or dismiss this knowledge, so they also ignore the essential point of this discussion, developing intuition: the combination of perspective thinking and systems thinking one needs to control emotional and physical thinking. With this knowledge, people will be able to discover the intolerability of fiction that appeals to their wishful thinking.

To answer the question that launched my life quest in 1968: "What the hell is wrong with this crazy world of ours?" We must stop ignoring the worlds above the physical and emotional and start working persistently to develop our highest level of consciousness, the human kingdom's mental-causal world, as our purpose, goal, and meaning in life.

I am convinced that the crazy worldwide pain and suffering, driven by irrational, repulsive emotions of fear, anger, hatred, and grief, are the cause of erroneous lifespan performances and retard one's livelihood development. So, let's practice higher-level intelligence-oriented education and joyfully imbue rationality into all conversations and movements.

See More: This World of Ours

Academy Structure

Contemporary academia is usually divided into disciplines or fields of study. An evolved academy strives to be configured as a “transdisciplinary” structure.

Discipline is the process of creating or generating an ever-higher order. Learning is the disciplinary process of cognitively transforming complexity to simplicity through creating a conceptual scheme of a higher cognitive order. A discipline is a field of learning.
Interdisciplinarity concerns the transfer of methods from one discipline to another.
Multidisciplinarity concerns the study of a research topic not in just one discipline but in several at the same time.
Metadiscipline is a metatheoretical discipline that combines and synthesizes several different disciplines through a unified methodology and under a unified set of principles. It is a higher order discipline that serves as a supra-structure of many different disciplines. As a metatheory, it can describe and analyze the foundations, structures, and results of the disciplines it subsumes, but its chief function is the synthesis of all sub-disciplines.
Transdisciplinarity is the transparadigmatic exploration into comprehensive and comprehensively evolving in vivo (living) knowledge between disciplines, across disciplines, and beyond all disciplines (including metadisciplines).Transdisciplinarity concerns the dynamics engendered by the movements of multiple levels of reality and by the actions of multiple levels of perception. Transdisciplinarity is concerned with the knowledge of the subjective interior and the objective exterior worlds and of the correspondence between the two.

Transdisciplinarity concerns the dynamics engendered by the movements of multiple levels of reality and by the actions of multiple levels of perception. Transdisciplinarity is concerned with the knowledge of the subjective interior and the objective exterior worlds and of the correspondence between the two.

– Yasuhiko Genku Kimura

To re-emphasize: a transdisciplinary assembly of technology (the good), art (the beautiful), and science (the true) will represent the curriculum, psychology, and philosophical foundation of a transdisciplinary and proper academy.

Holistic Education Philosophy

Here, we have an excellent example of a working holistic education philosophy practiced for several decades: an advanced, dynamic framework merging formal and informal education.

The intent of the Oak Grove School [Ojai, CA], founded in 1975, is to provide a well-rounded and challenging college preparatory experience balanced with a rich extra-curricular program that includes fine, performing, and practical arts, outdoor education, and travel. The school encourages the arts of inquiry, self-understanding, sensitivity to nature and the environment, and awareness of others within a non-competitive environment. Consistent with the views of its founder, J. Krishnamurti, the school does not subscribe to any creed or ideology but assists students in the open-minded investigation of enduring human issues.

The program encourages students to use their minds, bodies, and hearts well through the overarching themes expressed within The Arts of Learning and Living, which are embedded in the school's culture, curriculum, classroom practice, and expectations of students throughout the six-year program.

These include:

The Art of Inquiry (observation, questioning, fact-finding, research, self-reflection)
The Art of Communication (speaking, writing, listening)
The Art of Academia (knowledge and application of academic standards, conventions, and disciplines in core subject areas)
The Art of Engagement (self-direction, self-motivation, self-regulation, meta-cognition or learning how you learn, examining one's own thinking)
The Art of Aesthetics (sensitivity and appreciation of beauty in all forms of the arts, finding the artist within, artistic expression)
The Art of Caring in relationship to:

Self (self-understanding & awareness, making healthy choices)
Others (self-reflection and awareness in relationship, non-violent communication, service to the common good)
Local & Global Communities (service and citizenship)
The Environment (mindful stewardship)

Practice of Self-Research for Self-Development

Of course, any bowling academy also needs to address the physical, emotional, and mental-causal worlds, personalities, or identifications related to performance according to the law or principle of self-research for self-development.

Bowling Research References

“Bowling Beyond the Basics, What’s Really Happening on The Lanes, And What You Can Do About It” By James Freeman and Ron Hatfield (2018)

From my first reading, as reviewed in the book's conclusion, this, the latest in a long line of bowling improvement books, becomes an excellent resource for bowlers and coaches alike.

Bowling Beyond The Basics

Chapter 18 Conclusion (pgs. 307-308)

Bowlers are a trusting lot, and we tend to blindly accept any pronouncement made by anyone we find credible. One of our goals of this book is to break that trust.
We want bowlers to “question authority” “doubt all”.
Our second goal… is to push you to build your knowledge base, build your own skill set, and improve your decision making.
We want you to “bowl smart.”
We want you to trust yourself and make your own decisions and stop looking to others for easy answers.
This book… is about giving you tools that can improve your game, and about helping you learn how to assess the situation on the lanes and to make better decisions. Whoever finds the pocket first, and figures out how to stay in the pocket the longest, wins the game.
Our last goal is to inspire further research into what really happens on the lane, and how our tools and equipment really work.

Bowling Evolution and Publications I Have Studied

"Inside Bowling" by Don Johnson 1973
"Par Bowling" by Thomas C. Kouros 1976
"Winning Bowling, A Complete Illustrated Guide to Winning Bowling Techniques" by Earl Anthony with Dawson Taylor 1977
"Perceptive Bowling, a text for the serious bowler" by Robert Strickland 1980
"Right Down Your Alley: The Complete Book of Bowling" by Vasma Grinfields and Bonnie Hultstrand 1980
"Sports illustrated Bowling" by Herm Weiskopf and Chuck Pezzano 1981
"Earl Anthony's Championship Bowling" by Earl Anthony with Dawson Taylor 1983
"The Mental Game, The Inner Game of Bowling" by George Allen 1983
"Marshall Holman's Bowling Tips & Techniques" by Marshall Holman and Roy G. Nelson 1985
"Neuromuscular Training, Bowling with Marshall Holman and Johnny Petraglia" 1985
"Weber on Bowling" by Dick Weber & Roland Alexander 1987
"Bowling: Knowledge is Key" by Fred Borden (3rd edition 1988)
"Steps to Success Activity Series: Bowling Steps to Success" by Robert H. Strickland 1989
"Final Phase, written for bowlers with aspirations of competing on a higher level" by Len Nicholson 1992
"Bowling's Top Stars reveal their Secrets, in Final Phase II" by Len Nicholson 1994
"Bill Coleman's Fundamental Guide to Bowling" by Bill Coleman (no published date; cir. 1995)
"Final Phase III, The Mental Game" by Len Nicholson 1995
"Final Phase IV, The 'Coaches' Book of Instruction" by Len Nicholson 1995
"Body Mind Mastery, Creating Success in Sport and Life" by Dan Millman 1999
"Bowling, How to master the Game" by Parker Bohn 2000
"Bowling Execution, Master Technique, Maximize Your Score!" by John Jowdy 2002
"Focused for Bowling" by Dean Hinitz, Foreword by Brian Voss 2003
"Sports Psychology Basics" by Andrew Caruso 2004
"USBC Level I Manual" 2005
"Sport Psychology Library; Bowling, The Handbook of Bowling Psychology" by Dr, Eric S. Lasser, Fred Borden, and Jeri Edwards 2006
"True Bowler Adjustments" by Gary L. Oatis, MSgt, USAF, (Ret.) 2008
"The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Bowling" by Robert G. Price CPFT (Second Edition) 2008
"USBC Bronze Manual" 2009
"USBC Silver Manual" 2009
"The Game Changer, A Simple System for Improving Your Bowling Scores" by Mark Baker 2012
"Bare Bones Bowling" by Brian Voss 2013
"USBC Gold Disciplines and Standards" 2014
"Bowling Psychology, A guide to mental mastery of the lanes" by Dean Hinitz, Foreward by Jason Belmonte 2016
"National Bowling Academy" 2018
"Bowling Beyond The Basics, What's Really Happening On The Lanes, And What You Can Do About It" by James Freeman and Ron Hatfield 2018

Research References: USBC Coaching Manuals: Level I, Bronze, and Silver.
Online References: Bowling This Month; Drop Your Damn Shoulder; BowlU; National Bowling Academy; Bowl.com; ETBF Educational Program; and BowlTV.com.