James Thomas
Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist
Golf more than most games is a game of the mind. The relaxed and focused mind.
Trouble is there are so many distractions. Every one taking your mind set further and further away from all of what your body and mind knows makes you a golfer.
Putting yips. Chipping yips. Your drive goes to pot. Nerves when you know you’re being watched. Life pressures creeping in – work and family.
So how do you get you game ‘back’? Easy. Do nothing. Stay calm and you’ll be fine.
Let me explain.
In life the calmer you are, the easier it is to be focused and block out every distraction around you.
In sport you sometimes hear it called ‘being in the zone’.
Playing golf is no exception.
And a proven way to block everything out, cut down the ‘noise’ in your head is hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapy is a great way to practise mentally to great effect. No club needed.
You learn to relax and be calm. And when you’re in this state it’s impossible to be stressed or anxious. You can’t hold both thoughts at the same time.
So you simply practice replacing worry and stress with a relaxed state of mind.
Practice more, relax more, and get the shot right more often.
Think about it. You’ve spent ages on the driving range and putting green getting it right. Even going too far and hard wiring bad habits to get it wrong, so why not tell your brain the right thing to do?
And what better way to tell yourself something than when you’re relaxed.
Let’s associate learning with relaxing.
It’s part of visualisation.
Remember the times when you played golf and were able to make a shot just as you intended? Without even thinking about it?
What happened?
The golf ball rolled exactly to the spot you wanted.
Where was your mind at the moment your golf club made contact? What did it feel like in your body?
Did you feel stressed or uneasy? Of course not. Your body was loose and it flowed exactly as it should.
You executed the shot almost effortlessly.
You were in the ‘zone’.
That ‘zone’ is your subconscious.
That’s what hypnosis taps into.
Golfing and cognitive behaviour
Working with a hypnotherapist a golfer can analyse their current thoughts, feelings and actions. Then compare them to how they are when they play a round on a good day.
How you’re thinking, feeling and acting now and how you think, feel and act when you’re on top of your game.
Golf and hypnosis.
All hypnosis means is that you focus your attention.
You do it all the time.
When you get ‘lost’ in a book, play or film.
Drive somewhere and can’t remember the journey.
In all these instances you’re in a focused state.
Golf and hypnotherapy.
So if hypnosis focuses your attention. All we do is add a script to get you into the right state of mind.
If you will, a remedy or therapy for your current mind set.
It let’s get you back to driving with distance and accuracy, or putting with calmness and belief.
You already know that golf is a game of fine margins. When you’re tense your game easily goes wrong.
All we’re doing is relaxing you and ‘taking you back’ to the time and place when you were on top of your game.
An example. The dealing with the yips.
Statistically speaking 33 per cent of golfers will get the yips in some form, during their career. Sufferers have included Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and Bernhard Langer.
Research into the yips has shown four key changes in a golfer’s behaviour. In this order there is:
(1). More muscle activity (tension) in the forearms
(2). Greater grip/force on the putter grip
(3). Wrist flexion/extension during putting
(4). Unnecessary rotation of the putter face through the putting stroke.
Basically you’re overcooking things.
We need to get into your subconscious and learn how to relax at these key moments.
Changing your thoughts and feelings to change the way you behave in the long grass, bunker and green.
With visualisation and hypnotherapy we go back to the time when putting and chipping came as naturally to you as walking, or picking up a cup.
When life gets in the way.
We all know life isn’t that simple and other things feed into your game.
If the real problem is at home, family life, relationships, work pressures – the boss – we can look at these issues.
What we’ll be doing is helping you give life events less meaning, so they don’t matter to your game of golf.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
Saying “I tried hypnosis once and it didn’t work”, is like saying, “I went for a run once and when I came back I wasn’t fit.”
You have to work at hypnotherapy just like your physical game.
Remember. THE ONLY PLACE SUCCESS COMES BEFORE WORK IS IN THE DICTIONARY.
So ‘work’ with me at relaxing. It’s only a mind set. The thing is, it’s a better one.
James Thomas is a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist. He runs The Gentle Mind Hypnotherapy Ltd.
He believes we are what we tell ourselves. That when we relax we are a better version of who we really are.
VISIT MY WEBSITE FOR MORE INFORMATION – https://www.thegentlemind.co.uk/
