United States Sports Academy
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The Sport Digest - ISSN: 1558-6448

Mental Training for Sports Can Include Hypnosis

Suggestive hypnosis can be used to lose weight without cravings and stop smoking without gaining weight, as well as for pain management and sports and athletic performance.

Hypnosis is nothing more than a very deep state of relaxation, in which your senses are more alert and your concentration is more highly focused. What happens when you are in hypnosis depends on the purpose of the session. Hypnosis is the locomotive. Suggestion is the track that takes you where you want to go. Many people call our clinic and ask us whether or not they can be hypnotized. At first, most of them don’t think they can be hypnotized, but once they try, they find it to be very easy. In fact, anyone able to understand what is being asked of them, and who is willing to be hypnotized with the desired results can be hypnotized.

Dr. Teal on Sports and athletic performance and hypnotism.

As athletes participate in sports, they usually work very hard to train their bodies. But some sport psychologists say that 80-90% of their performance is in their mind. This involves the use of their imagination, thought processes, and attitudes, to provide incentive, support, reinforcement, and refinement of special skills. In the Wall Street Journal, performance psychologist Dr. Charles Garfield explained why it is that some people are able to become superior performers, while others are not. Over the years, variations of the technique have been called by different names. But, whatever you wish to call it, it is nothing more than a step-by-step mental preview by the patient of the athletic goal he wishes to accomplish. It is believed that as he imagines the activity occurring, his neurons fire in exactly the same patterns they would follow if he were actually performing the activity. And as he sees the pictures in his mind, his subconscious mind is convinced that the desired feat is possible.

Dr. Joseph Teal has taught his “Hypnotic Sports Enhancement” techniques for the Ecuadorian National Swim Team, the International Sports Training Institute, and the University of North Alabama Baseball Team.