Sports Hypnotherapy
"WHAT YOUR MIND CAN CONCEIVE, YOUR CAN ACHIEVE"
Sports Hypnosis is for the professional or amatuer sportsman or woman, regardless of their given sport, their desire for constant improvement is a characteristic that inspires us to be our best.
There are three main factors that can influence our sporting ability, fitness skills, technical skills, and mental skills. Although many sports performers will spend a great deal of time on their fitness and technical skills, they tend to neglect the importance of the mental side.
Whether you simple want to feel more motivated to go to the gym, or whether you need a competative edge to win. With hypnotherapy many of these obstacles can be overcome and removed from your mind helping you towards your goals.
Currently hypnotherapy in sport is mainly used to help control the athlete's emotional experiences, that is, to control anxiety levels,to stimulate aggressive behaviour when appropriate, to regulate concerntration demands, to enhance motivation, to insill self-confidence and pride, and to inhibit any psychological factors that can often serve to limit physical performances.
All professional sports persons will know the importance of having a well balanced mind in order to excel in their chosen sport and to excell in their performance. Many sports persons find themselves performing badly because they are not using their minds in a positive way. It is now becomming reconised that Psycotherapy (hypnotherapy) in sport can be a great asset.
Sports Hypnotherapy uses Psychotherapy and Hypnosis to help you enhance your mental strength, to overcome your sports injuries, and to improve your performance, it can help you to focus and with concerntration in training and in competitions. It can be particulary effective for building self confidence, over comming poor past perfomances, and visualising new complicated techniques.
By changing how you use your minds when you approach a game by enhancing self belief, dealing with how you respond to comming errors, setting your goals and maintaining a positive attitude. It is possible to make a significant impact on your performance.
The Power Of Visualisation is Described In The Following Points
- Visualisation allows you to prepare and practice your responses to physical and psychological problems that do not accur normally. This can mean, if they do occur you respond confidently.
- Visualisation allows you to practice and prepare for events and eventualities you can never train for in reality, with practice it can allow you to enter a situation you have never phycically experienced.
- Visualisation allows you to pre-experience the achievements of your chosen goals. This in turn helps to give you confidence that you can achieve your goals, and allow you to increase your performances.
- Practicing the relaxed state of hypnosis helps you to break down the more complex skills into consitituant parts so that you can isolate where the problems are.
The Main Areas Where Hypnotherapy Can Help Are Listed Below
- Performance Enhancement.
- Competative Nerves.
- Mental Blocks.
- Motivation.
- Overcomming Slumps In Performance.
- Improving Concerntration And Focus.
- Recovering From Injuries.
- Confidence.
- Unconsious Conditioned Responses.
- Anxiety In The Competition Arena.
- Managing Emotions.
- Unhelpful Belief Patterns.
- Performance Nerves.
- Performance Rehearsals.
- Positive Visualisation.
Below Are Just A Few Examples Of How Hypnotherapy Is Currently Being Used In Sports.
Golf - Perfect swing, putting, hitting over hazards, teeing off, these are just a few of the area's hypnotherapy can help in golf.
These can be adapted to many other sports such as, Football, taking penalties, or taking penalties. serving in Tennis, Atheletics quick of the blocks. Hypnotheapy can help in all sports.
Team Performances
Football, Rugby, or Hockey players can be hypnotised in group or individual settings and then asked to mentally visualise themselves executing precise skills. They are then prosented with a posthypnotic suggestion that they can then translate the visualisations into action during the game or practice at the same at the same levels of expertise that they had visualised. Most crucial here, is that during the the visualisation sessions, the atheles are istructed that while visualising the various skills, there will be a concomitant physical experience in their bodies, this leads to strenghtening of neural patterns through hypnotic mental imagery, which reinforces neuromuscular co-ordination.
Individual Performance 1
When competing agains tone particular opponent, a young golfer, or this could be a ( tennis player, darts player, bowls player, or any other athelete, ) feels stressful and consequently perorms badly. This happens over and over again against the same person, but not against any other opponents. His belief of not being able to perform is reinforced every time he meets this particular opponent. This is obviously an emotional problem and not a matter of poor techniques. In this situation hypnotherapy is used to influence the emotions and attitudes of the golfer to focus attention on particular relevant cues to improve their golf game. A suggestion such as block out the environment on each shot and concentrate on the rhythm of the swing, could be used here.
Individual Performance 2
A gymnast is experiencing fear when attempting a particular routine. they are told to visualise a "happiness room" in their mind. this is to be a completely pleasant room, decorated to their taste, anything that makes them feel happy is placed in the room. They are to have television in the room and to watch themself perform the routine to perfection on the television. Then they are given posthypnotic suggestions to relax and how easy it is, as they initiate the routine. Now in practice and in competitions they are told to visit their happiness room just prior to performing this routine, where they can visualise themself performing the routine perfectly.
Many atheletes have trouble getting to sleep, especially the night before an important competition. suggestions can be used to faciltate relaxation or sleep.
These are examples of how hypnotherapy can help and have help people in the past in their chosen sports. As mentioned previously, it is the mental attitude where hypnotherapy is most effective. It can be applied to specific situations in sport to reduce the feelings of pressure, anxiety and stress.