Enter the ‘Winning Zone’: Integrating hypnosis in clinical sports psychology
Just as in general clinical work, where symptoms limit a person’s ability to experience a full and satisfying life, symptoms limit athlete’s ability to perform and win.
Sports hypnosis is a powerful, proven and widely practised tool for helping sports people overcome psychological blocks, optimise their performance and gain the competitive edge. Indeed, it’s hard to find a leading sports person or athlete who hasn’t benefited from having a hypnotist, NLP practitioner or sports psychologist assist in their mental development.
How sports hypnosis can help you:
- Build your confidence
- Develop a ‘Winning Mindset’
- Eliminate competition nerves
- Improve concentration and focus
- Control your weight
- Get over mental blocks
- Overcome falling performance
- Increase motivation
- Return from injury
- Lose weight.
Unlike sports coaching, sports hypnosis is not about teaching you ‘how’ to play your sport. It works by removing deep-seated psychological obstacles to performance and empowering you to ‘get into the winning zone’. Drawing on elements of sports psychology, NLP, visualisation. cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and affirmation, sports hypnosis connects directly with the subconscious part of the mind, enabling you to make changes at a deep and profound level, banish self-doubt, dramatically increase endurance and perform with greater confidence and focus. Results are fast, dependable and permanent.
Performance anxiety
- How often do you worry about a disappointing experience from your past?
- Do you re-live it over and over, thinking what you should have done differently?
All the time you’re thinking about this, you’re telling your mind that this is important information. What can you change? The answer is nothing. It’s the past. But you can change how this may be, or is, affecting your future performance. Together we can re-train that mindset and focus on what matters now – your future performance.
Sports injury & humiliation
Similarly, if you had an experience which left you physically injured or maybe feeling humiliated when faced with a similar situation the sub-conscious will do its best to protect you. It will try and make you stay away from ‘triggering’ events because the mind reprograms itself after any significant emotional event.
If you touched something and it burnt you, how much thought would you need before making a decision not to touch it again? That’s how phobias are created. Performance anxiety through past experience may not only have a physical impact; indeed, there may be no obvious signs of any physical symptoms, but it can also affect your ability to make choices and decisions. Boxers and runners are particularly susceptible.
Imaginary fear
Fear of failure, fear of humiliation and fear of injury can have exactly the same impact as an actual past experience. When faced with a team or component that is performing particularly well, how often have you pictured what failure would look like or feel like? Do you create the scene, your feelings, your reaction, even what you would say afterwards? That unhelpful ‘video’ in your mind is like watching a bad film – the more times you watch, the more you remember. This can be particularly damaging because the mind cannot distinguish between ‘imaginary’ and ‘actual’ events; therefore, it will equip you with the same defense mechanisms and do its best to protect you from similar triggering events. Snooker players, darts players, and golfers seem to be proficient in this.
Hostile crowd
Okay, so you’re there in the limelight – family, friends, fans are behind you, supporting you. You may be feeling good, positive even… but there in that crowd, somebody is doubting you! You are probably already in a state of heightened awareness where an insulting or abusive comment can have the same impact as school bullying. Anger, frustration, pressure ensues and suddenly… you have lost focus. Focus, of course, being key. Being in control of your emotions obviously helps, but focus is vital. We help you get to, and stay in the ‘Winning Zone’.
Some well-known sports people and athletes who have benefitted from hypnosis:
- Frank Bruno
- Ian Woosman
- Iwan Thomas
- Mike Brearley
- Nigel Benn
- Russell Winter
- Steve Collins
- Steve Hooker
- Vince Hancock.
How to book:
To book your free face-to-face, skype or phone consultation with Annette, fill in the below form, or call us on 07595959796 today. Email: hello@annettelarnerclinics.com
