In the wake of an epic NBA Finals series and with the WNBA season in full swing, now is an auspicious time to drop my musing on the Tao of free throw shooting.

Free throw shooting is usually thought of as a technical skill, honed through repetition to achieve mechanical consistency under pressure. But beyond the mechanics lies a deeper potential for free throw shooting to become a meditative practice.

For me, basketball is life. I could spend hours and hours watching, playing, and talking about basketball. It’s where I’ve always felt powerful and in my element. The court was my sanctuary during my playing days, a place where I was able to experience pure joy. I don’t play anymore but I still enjoy shooting around on a regular basis, including shooting free throws to get grounded and let off steam.

This article explores the free throw not only as a performance element, but as a vehicle for mindfulness, embodied awareness, and inner cultivation. Drawing on Taoist philosophy*, contemplative traditions, and my practical coaching experience with neurodiverse basketballers, not to mention hundreds of hours spent at the free throw line, I offer a method for engaging with free throw shooting as a form of meditation.

This meditative free throw shooting activity was born from my own enjoyment of shooting around for stress release. It’s just something I found I enjoyed doing, especially as I’ve gotten older and my body has become less inured to the rigours of in-game play. Through decades of free throw shooting I stumbled, largely by accident at first, into the deeply calming and focused states that this practice can evoke. Over time, I came to recognise and consciously refine this process as a form of embodied meditation.

I developed this as a structured activity in 2023 during my time coaching the Brumbies, a neurodiverse basketball squad within the Darebin Basketball Association in Melbourne. The Brumbies program brought together players of diverse body types, skill levels, genders, and cultural backgrounds.

The process I outline below is exactly how I approach free throw shooting. Sabrina Ionescu or Steph Curry at the foul line I am not, but that’s not the point. The process is the practice. Also, sitting down to think through my shot motion and write it out was in itself a fascinating reflective process!

Enter into presence through attention to form as you pre-position for the shot.

This speaks directly to the need for grounding before the shot motion. Before you rise into the shot, you must root yourself physically and mentally, establishing the still centre from which effortless action can arise.

Position yourself at the foul line and get your body organised to shoot at the basket as accurately as possible, with the appropriate amount of power and arc in the shot. Concentrate on each part of your body in the shot motion, starting with your feet. Internalise this process into your body memory.

Pre-positioning is not something to rush. As with crafting a great vessel, the process of centring yourself for the free throw shot requires patience and presence. Each component of your stance contributes to the overall harmony of the shooting motion.

Feet: Get your feet set, the leg below your shooting hand slightly ahead of the other leg, spaced shoulder-width apart.

Knees: Bend your knees slightly, getting ready to provide upward momentum to your upper body in the shooting motion.

Abs/Core: Lightly activate your core muscles to provide stability for your shooting motion.

Shoulders: Square your shoulders at 90 degrees to the basket. Find symmetry without force.

Shooting arm: Hold the ball with your shooting arm in a vertical plane directly above your corresponding leg. Your upper arm should point horizontally toward the basket and forearm pointing vertically.

Shooting hand: Cradle the ball with your wrist cocked backwards and palm facing upwards, with fore- and middle fingers splayed either side of the middle of the ball. Cradle the ball as you would cradle the moment: gently and deliberately.

Off hand: Cushion the ball gently on its side to keep it balanced in your shooting hand.

Head: Keep your head upright and straight, looking at the basket.

From the perspective of the Tao, in assuming this posture for your shot, you are not forcing your will onto the shot. You are aligning your body to let the shot arise.

The purpose of the pre-shot ritual is to centre the mind to concentrate on the shooting process and slip into full embodied awareness. As a meditation, the pre-shot ritual is the invocation to enter the meditative space.

Every pro basketball player has a consistent pre-shot ritual that they perform when they step up to take a free throw, once they have pre-positioned their body at the foul line. These range from one-bounce-and-heave approach of Dennis Rodman to Harold Miner’s routine of passing the ball around his back, rubbing it, cradling it like a baby and then tapping it against his nose. Most great free throw shooters keep their routine simple, consistent, and take their time.

First step to approaching your pre-shot ritual: Take a deep breath, there’s no rush!

My pre-shot ritual consists of bouncing the ball three times then spinning it my hands prior to my shooting motion. I’ve been doing it like that since I was 12 years old.

Your ritual can be whatever centres you. Experiment with actions that ground you in the moment and help you return to your body. This repetition is about entering a state of embodied awareness, so go with whatever helps you enter this state.

Your pre-shot ritual should be the same before every free throw, becoming a familiar gateway into meditative focus.

As the Tao reminds us, each ritual is a quiet return to presence, a re-alignment with the flow. You are not preparing to shoot the ball so much as allowing the right action to arise through attuning with mind and body.

After pre-positioning our bodies and ritually dropping into the right mind space and body awareness, it’s then time to actually shoot the ball.

The shooting motion is like a rapid wave beginning from the earth, upward through your body to culminate in the sky.

The shooting motion, when truly mastered, feels less like something you are doing and more like something you are allowing to happen. There is no strain, just the seamless unfolding of practiced intent.

Push from the feet and lower legs, ending slightly elevated on your toes and balls of your feet. This is the genesis of the upward power of your shot.

Your knees should extend and straighten from their bent starting position, transferring the wave of upward motion from the feet.

Release your ab muscles as the upward wave of the shooting motion moves through your core into the upper body.

Keeping your shoulders square (parallel to the backboard) and eyes on the basket, shoot the ball by straightening the shooting arm with all the power and energy that has been transferred from your lower body, snapping your wrist and flicking your fingers forward as you release the ball. This should impart a little backspin on the ball in flight. Your off hand should fall away from the ball as you release it.

Follow through with your shooting arm and hand toward the basket at a roughly 45-50 degree angle above the horizontal after releasing the ball, extending your elbow as straight as possible. Exhale as you do so.

This passage affirms the need for fluidity and softness in the shooting motion. A rigid or overly muscular shot loses harmony and control. To embody the Tao is to remain supple, flowing with the body’s natural energy rather than resisting it. This encourages us to let the motion rise and fall like breath when we’re at the free throw line, with power that comes from yielding to the process of the shot rather than forcing the shot mechanically.

Internalise the sequence pre-positioning, pre-shot ritual and shot motion as if reciting a mantra through your body. In so doing your shootaround becomes a meditative rite, embodying the wú wéi in the effortless action arising from embodied practice.

Concentrate on what you physically feel in each part of your body as you go through the shooting motion. Does the motion feel smooth or clunky? If it feels clunky, what part of your body feels out of alignment or not quite right? The goal is for your shot motion to feel completely smooth.

If you feel a blockage, discomfort, or clunkiness in any part of your body through the shooting motion, zoom your concentration in on that part of your body. Do any emotions come to mind as you do so? Sit with it. Don’t judge it, just let it be there in your mindful attention. Taoist insight teaches that blockages reveal opportunities to return to flow.

Repeat the full sequence with patience. Keep shooting free throws repetitively, following the same body pre-positioning, pre-shot ritual, and shooting motion. Gradually quicken the pace of your shot motion until you reach a normal game-time shooting motion, building your tempo as fluidity builds.

Don’t’ worry if you miss your shot, just re-centre yourself through the process.

Don’t worry about keeping score when free throw shooting as a meditation, just concentrate on replicating the process.

Most importantly, keep shooting and mindfully repeating the process. Each shot is an iteration of the Tao.

Sooner or later, you’ll enter a state of flow, where you’ve mastered your shot. Your mindful attention on your shooting motion is so strong that each shot feels effortless, splashing through the net with precise accuracy. Stillness within motion. A sense of effortless unfolding.

Eventually you’ll miss and the flow state will subside. Perhaps you’ll get tired. Perhaps you’re distracted by an intrusive thought, or by something happening around you. Acknowledge the interruption and return to your process. You are not here to perfect the outcome, but to perfect the process. Re-focus and keep shooting! Focus and repeat. Focus and repeat.

When you’ve finished your shoot-around, think back on what your body was trying to tell you:

• Which parts of the shooting motion felt most smooth and natural?
• Which felt awkward or overly mechanical?
• Were there any recurring thoughts intruding on your shooting process? If so, what were they?
• What feelings and emotions were you experiencing while you were shooting?

Don’t force insight. Let it come as it will, or not at all. Sit with your thoughts and feel the sensations arising in your body without judgement. When you’re ready, come back again and keep shooting! Just as the Tao flows eternally, so too does this practice.

Underlying all of this is a lifelong love of basketball, which has been my constant companion throughout my life. All true hoops heads understand this relationship. As David Hollander, an academic basketball nerd after my own heart, says in his book How Basketball Can Save the World:

“Basketball stays with me. It’s what I return to. It’s where I feel my whole self integrated, where I find balance. Where the world makes sense, where my relationship with other people gets right. It is my sanctuary. My truth. It is a lifetime pass to a universally shared space and consciousness, bonding me with all who know, have known, and will know what I know. And I know I’m not alone.”

This is why basketball is the foundation on which I can build from my other areas of expertise. This meditative free throw shooting practice emerges at the intersection of several overlapping areas of experience and inquiry that have shaped my personal and professional life.

Primary to this is my way of being in this world, my lived experience of neurodivergence, which has informed not only how I engage with my own body and mind, but also how I support others through their own journeys.

Equally significant is my cultivation of an (intermittently) committed practice in meditation, mindfulness, and yoga, complimenting my love of sports and physical activity.

As an educator with over 20 years’ experience in university, English as a second language, and adult learning settings, I bring a pedagogical approach to skill development that emphasises metacognition, accessible instruction, and the cultivation of self-awareness through the process of knowledge and skill acquisition. These are attributes that inevitably bled into my basketball coaching philosophy.

In my educational roles I have undertaken professional development in neurodiversity, inclusive practice, and trauma-informed coaching, which have deepened my understanding of how structured physical activity can serve as both a stabilising and expressive modality for neurodivergent individuals.

My interest in Eastern traditional knowledge systems, including Taoist and Buddhist approaches to contemplative practice, has been enriched by time spent living and travelling in East Asia. While teaching English in China back in 2004 I got into reading about Chinese philosophy. This learning shaped my understanding of how physical movement, breath, and awareness interrelate in systems of self-cultivation. The tattered copy of the Tao Te Ching that I bought at a quaint little second-hand bookstore in regional Victoria is one of my most prized books.

This body of knowledge, both lived and learned, informs the approach I offer here: an invitation to experience the free throw not merely as a technical drill, but as a meditative portal to self-awareness, self-connection and healing.