Dawn had been struggling with her weight for 20 years. She felt controlled by the impulses and food obsessions that go back to childhood. Like so many others she had tried all the diets and fads with temporary relief at best. She decided to try hypnosis and was pleasantly surprised.
2008 Beijing Olympics: The only 2 shooters who won Gold Medals for the U.S.worked with a hypnotist and a hypnotist cured
1984: Time magazine reported that Mary Lou Retton used hypnosis to prepare for the L.A. Olympics and to block pain in her injured foot to win the Gold Medal.
1983: The Chicago White Sox hired a full-time hypnotist and made the playoffs.
1976: Rod Carew had a nagging injury that threatened his career. Through hypnosis, he turned the lingering pain into a .400 batting average.
1967: A dentist, Dr. Raymond Abrezol, guided the Swiss ski team to 3 out of 4 members earning medals using hypnotic techniques.
1959: Ingmar Johansson used Sports Hypnosis training before wresting the heavyweight boxing title from Floyd Patterson.
1956: Wleven hypnotists accompanied the Soviet athletic team to the Olympics inMelbourne.
In baseball: Nolan Ryan, George Brett, Maury Wills, Don Sutton, Mark McGwire reported using sports hypnosis to be able to relax for his baseball games.
Ken Norton used hypnosis to defeat Muhammad Ali (and broke his jaw) in the 1973 fight where Ken was a 7-1 underdog. Ali began using hypnosis soon after.
Jimmy Connors used Sports Hypnosis for his U.S. Open Tennis wins.
Australian Gold Medalist, Steve Hooker, of his fear in pole vaulting.
Tiger Woods began seeing Jay Brunza at the age of 13 for hypnosis and mental training. Phil Mickelson was trained by mental coach and hypnotist Dean Reinmuth
Greg Louganis, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Stone, Boomer Esiason, Freeman McNeil, Talmadge Griffiths and numerous NFL, MLB, NHL, Boxing, Olympic and Pro Athletes all use hypnosis today for that edge.
Serious athletes are often determined to find anything that will give them an edge over their competition, as well as help them perform optimally. Hypnosis and imagery have been utilized by many such athletes to improve their game.
While some regard hypnosis as some mystical or magical form of mind control, it is actually a legitimate form of treatment which has proven to be effective in bringing about positive change,developing new habits and behaviors, and releasing unhealthy or unproductive emotions, habits and behaviors. Many well-known athletes have worked with highly trained hypnotherapists to achieve significant gains in their personal performance, regardless of their sport.
Since the unconscious mind is really the driving force between most of our beliefs and behaviors, it makes sense that a technique which elicits change at the unconscious level can be highly effective. Hypnosis is such a technique.
Hypnosis can help an athlete overcome issues of self-doubt which may be keeping him from moving to the next level. It can help an athlete hone his skills, fine-tune a technique, and have a level of self-belief and confidence which will enable him to excel beyond what he may have previously thought possible.
Hypnosis can also help an athlete acquire the intense focus required to be at the top in his sport. Hypnosis can help an athlete overcome performance anxiety or pre-game jitters which can make the difference between winning a gold medal and coming in 6th place.
Tiger Woods is an excellent example of an incredible athlete who has used hypnosis to achieve a phenomenal level of success in golf. He has reportedly been utilizing powerful self-hypnosis techniques since his early teens. Not only has he used it to visualize every swing and stroke in his mind before carefully executing it on the course, he also uses it to “get in the zone”.
Self-hypnosis methods have helped him, like many successful athletes, quiet his mind, release any anxiety, and become 100% focused as he plays the game. Such laser focus can be especially important in a game like golf where onlookers and other things can be very distracting. Tiger Woods has clearly shown how powerful hypnosis can be to conquer his mind and achieve extremely high levels of success.
As Tiger Woods can attest, imagery (or visualization) is an effective self-hypnosis technique which can help athletes perform better. A gymnast may visualize herself going through every movement of her routine over and over in her mind. A basketball player may visualize himself making a perfect free throw shot hundreds of times. By using imagery or visualization, these athletes are conditioning their minds and their bodies to carry out the movements in reality just as they have performed them hundreds of times in their minds. Mary Lou Retton reported used visualization to help win the gold medal in gymnastics at the 1984 Olympics.
Athletes will often use imagery and visualization just before their event to achieve their desired goal. By closing their eyes and focusing on achieving their goal, they can improve their performance. Once they have pictured it in their mind they then proceed to do it. Utilizing this technique is especially beneficial when the sport requires a brief burst of energy.
Another way that hypnosis can help competitive athletes is in dealing with pain and injuries. Learning to dissociate from the pain can help them better cope with it and perform in spite of it. Relaxation methods can also be particularly helpful when it comes to managing pain which is a part of most sports. Hypnosis can also help athletes recover more quickly from a sports injury. By accelerating the recovery time the athlete can return to practice and competition more quickly, which can be very important for athletes competing at the highest levels.
Even if you are not training for the Olympics or competing as a professional athlete, hypnosis can help you attain higher levels of performance in whatever sport you play. You can work with a hypnotherapist, listen to hypnosis CDs or learn various self-hypnosis techniques such as those mentioned earlier. You may find your performance improving much more than you thought possible.
Abouthypnosis.com
Chuck was a high school sophomore who played on the junior varsity basketball team. His father contacted me about his son’s tentative approach on the court and wondered if hypnosis could help. I described the hypnosis process and sent a brochure, but never heard back until a year later, when Chuck was on the varsity team. Chuck wanted to be a starting forward, and knew he had the skills; however he always came up short on the aggressive front, especially when the game was on the line.
Chuck made the team and continued to get his chances based on his practice performances. In the gym, he was a rebounding machine, and always dove across the floor for loose balls. At practice his nickname was “madman.” What propelled Chuck to pursue hypnosis occurred during one of his team’s games; he overheard a teammate refer to him as the “madam” instead of “madman.”
Chuck described going into “the zone” during practice where all that mattered was getting the ball and winning. At game time he was tentative, playing not to lose rather than playing to win. I told Chuck it was great that he didn’t need to learn how to be a winner in game situations that he already had all the skill and ability he needed. He just needed to unleash it when it counts the most.
In our first hypnosis session, I asked Chuck to recreate a particular practice in his thoughts. I wanted him to recall his most dominant practice. Chuck and his Dad both smiled, they knew exactly when it was. As a junior varsity sophomore he was asked to fill in with the varsity team practice.
He was catching a lot of flack by the varsity team because some of them thought he didn’t belong on their court. When Chuck caught an elbow to the head while going for a rebound, he knew he was being tested. Chuck passed the test. For the next two hours he put on a rebounding clinic. He carried his newfound confidence into every practice, but it never made it into game time.
My approach in our first hypnosis session was to amp up how good Chuck felt at practice. In hypnosis, I asked him to recall a recent practice and then had him imagine a magnifying glass over the image so it felt even bigger and better to him. I asked him to inhale all of the confidence, mobility, and skill he had that day, inhale it so it saturates down to a cellular level and begins to replicate within him.
As the session continued, I asked him to walk through the door of the practice gym. I explained that this door would open up into an opposing team’s gym and he would walk right out into the middle of a conference finals playoff game. As soon as he stepped through he would hear his name over the public address system announcing his insertion into a very important part of the game.
The twist with this scenario was that he got to carry all the confidence, mobility and skill he just created with him. In this game he was still the practice madman. So I told him to have fun, get into flow and do his thing; rebounding, boxing out and scrambling for the ball. All cylinders were firing and he was playing the game of his life. I gave him a moment of silence so he could fill in the blanks on his own.
At the conclusion of the session Chuck was quite enthused. He said it felt like he was really there. He felt like a major barrier had fallen and he could confidently move forward. The remaining two sessions involved some techniques which enabled Chuck to encapsulate all the past doubts so he would be completely free from now on as well as self-hypnosis training so he could recreate these empowering thoughts and images anytime he chose.
Chuck made the all-star team that year. His father sent me some newspaper clippings of Chuck leaping for a rebound. Many individuals get hung up on self-doubt and limit our expectations and accomplishments. I believe that the only limits we experience are self-imposed and hypnosis is the fastest most effective way to break through barriers and claim our true potential.
By: Paul Gustafson RN CH
A Boston area Hypnotherapist, with 10 years of medical experience as an RN, Paul has been helping clients since 2001 to overcome everyday challenges. Read more
Healthy Hypnosis: The Simple Truth and Practical Use Paul explains the A-B-C’s of clinical hypnosis and offers case studies and examples of actual client sessions. This is a must read for anyone interested in this fascinating technique.
