The mind-body connection
Everyone knows that performance in any sport improves the more physically fit you are. However, at least as important is your psychological health. The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel impacts how well you perform.
When the mind isn’t right, it can have a devastating impact on sporting performance. Professional darts players have been forced to retire when “dartitis” appears seemingly from nowhere and every golfer dreads the onset of the “yips”. When these psychological conditions occur, what was once natural becomes impossible. This is “paralysis by analysis” – the patterns of physical movement which had been practiced until they were second nature have been hijacked by overthinking.
But it’s not just these extreme conditions that can be caused by the way you think about your performance. Everyone, regardless of their ability, can improve their performance if they get their head right. Studies have shown that the more positive your beliefs and thoughts are, the more successful you’ll be. And that’s where hypnotherapy can help.
How hypnotherapy helps
Sports hypnosis is becoming more and more popular amongst both professional sports people and keen amateurs. It can help to:
- Increase motivation
- Handle nervousness
- Increase the ability to relax
- Improve concentration
- Ignore distractions
- Control pain
- Improve bodily awareness
- Establish and reinforce goals.
How does it do all this? Well, hypnotherapy can help you manage the part of your brain which causes the “flight or fight” response. This response is built into the very primitive part of your brain and was originally designed to get you out of harm’s way by flooding your body with stress chemicals such as adrenaline to get you to react fast and move fast, or build up your strength to fight. For most sports, you do need some adrenaline to give you the strength or speed required, but it needs to be delivered in the right amount at the right time. Too much too soon and you feel overly anxious about your performance. This leads to overthinking, a loss of energy and poor performance.
But as well as reducing anxiety, hypnotherapy works to increase confidence and positivity and this benefits your performance considerably. By letting go of negative feelings and forecasts about how you’ve failed before so you’ll fail again, and focussing on positive thoughts, we begin to develop the confidence habit. And like any habit, the more it is practiced the more it becomes second nature.
Visualising success brings success your way. And ONE LIFE are here to help you realise your goals. Contact us and take the first step to achieving your dreams.
Read our blog on hypnotherapy and sports performance here:
https://one-life.org.uk/2018/01/18/get-zone-improve-sports-performance-hypnotherapy/
