Sports hypnosis and NLP in Cambridge

Hypnotherapy can enhance your sporting performance

Cambridge hypnotherapist Stephen Barker specialises in hypnosis and NLP to help clients to achieve their sporting goals. Hypnosis has been used for many years to help perfessional athletes tap into and enhance their natural ability with winning results.

Professional sports men and woman use hypnosis

When sports personality Kelly Holmes had just won the first of her gold medals in the last Olympic games, an interviewer asked her what had been going through her mind as she was running. She replied “The only thing you can think about is crossing that line – you just have to focus on winning – if you think about falling, tripping, failing, you’ve lost.” What Kelly was talking about here, was the mind-body connection; the enormous power that the mind has over the body and how, if we want to succeed in anything – be that sport, business or relationships, we need to ensure that we are engaging our mind in a positive way hypnosis helps us to focus on our goals and achieve them.

Sports Hypnosis empowers your positive thoughts

Just imagine there is a plank of wood placed firmly on the floor and you had to walk along it without wobbling or falling off. Most people would find this a very easy thing to do. Imagine the same plank of wood elevated by a metre and some people would find this much more difficult and if elevated by 30 metres, most people would find it impossible. It’s the same plank of wood, so what has changed? Once the plank is elevated, negative thoughts start to come into mind – I might fall, If I fall, I’ll hurt myself really badly, I’m no good at heights etc etc.

Being able to control negative thoughts and emotions is the basis of sports psychology and this is done employing various psychological tools, such as NLP and Hypnosis. Learning these tools is an exciting and empowering way of improving the level of your sport, whether you are simply someone who wants to get better at your chosen sport or you are a professional.

NLP helping you to achieve your sporting goals

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) utilises the Mind-Body connection that exists in everyone by using various techniques such as mental imagery, modelling, inner dialogue, accessing and anchoring to create positive states. It’s well known that successful sports men and women incorporate the use of imagery and mental rehearsal into their practice routines and this can make all the difference to the quality and level of their sport.

If we have a negative thought, we will get a negative emotional response and consequently our body will react by tensing up or feeling weak. In other words, there is a strong interconnection between the thoughts we have, the emotions that this thought generates and the reaction in our body. By learning how to control and over-ride negative thoughts, access positive emotions and visualise yourself performing in the way you want to, your ability in your chosen sport will increase enormously.

Hypnosis is a tool to your sporting success

Hypnosis is the ultimate tool for harnessing the power of the mind-body connection. Contrary to the popular belief that an individual under hypnosis is under someone else’s power, hypnosis enables an individual to relax both mind and body. We can all do this naturally. Ever been driving your car for a distance only to “come to” and realise you haven’t been thinking about your driving or your journey at all because your conscious mind has been absorbed by thoughts totally unconnected with driving? If you have experienced this, then you have put yourself into hypnosis! The good news is that in this state of hypnosis, you will have been driving to a very high level of performance. The reason is that once we have learnt how to do something, this is then stored in the subconscious mind – hence you can still drive perfectly well without consciously thinking about it. Hypnosis occurs whenever the conscious mind is focused on something and then the subconscious mind is open and highly alert.

A hypnotherapist creates the state of hypnosis by speaking in a soothing voice, playing background music and giving suggestions for the mind and body to relax. Once the client is relaxed, positive suggestions of how well the client will perform in their sport, how easily he or she will overcome tension how easy it will be to exclude negative thoughts and distractions will be accepted by the subconscious mind. As with anything else, the more this is practised, the stronger the belief becomes and so the body responds to the positive thoughts and feelings.

Sports hypnosis and psychology helps to

	Building Confidence
	Managing Emotions
	Increasing Motivation
	Improving Concentration & Focus
	Overcoming Mental Blocks
	Performance Enhancement
	Competition Nerves
	Sports Injuries

Five steps to improve your sporting success

Step 1 why do you want to improve your sports performance?

Knowing the level of commitment and input you can put into your chosen sport is the first step to creating a positive approach to your sport. You may be someone who wants to follow your chosen sporting activity as a hobby but get greater satisfaction from it by doing it really well.  If you know there are other commitments in your life that you have to give time to, such as family, friends and work, then you need to set aside a realistic amount of time that you can dedicate to your sporting hobby.

Obviously it will take you longer to achieve the excellence you desire but failure to take other commitments into account leads only to frustration, arguments, negative thoughts and stress which in turn will prevent you from achieving your goal. On the other hand, if you want to be a world-class performer this requires complete and thorough dedication and training and practice must become the centre point of your life. So, the starting point to producing excellence without frustration and stress is to recognise how much commitment you can give to your sport and clearly setting out your goals.

Step 2 Setting your sporting goal

Once you have decided why you want to improve your performance, you need a plan in order to achieve your goal.  One of the most effective ways of setting a goal, used by professionals in sport and business is the SMART method. Your goal should be written down so that it is:



Your sporting goal could be
I want to reduce my golf handicap from 28 to 20 over the next six months by practising for at least (x number of hours) per week by focusing on the weakest part of my game – putting - and by using positive visualisation and mental rehearsal before and during my practice games.

Step 3 visualisation
So a powerful way to improve your game is to spend some time visualising yourself performing perfectly. This is an activity that can be done anywhere and any time. The more frequently you see yourself performing well, the more this belief will be embedded in your subconscious mind. If you find this difficult at first, then visualise an expert in your field, preferably someone you admire, performing as you would like to. This is known as Modelling.  Once you have mastered seeing someone else carrying out the action perfectly, then substitute yourself doing exactly the same thing.

Step 4 mental rehearsal
Mental rehearsal is similar to visualisation but it is creating a bigger picture involving forward planning. For example, it may involve seeing yourself leaving home, feeling calm on the journey, easily coping with any delays or problems, arriving at the sports venue, able to keep out distractions, getting changed, and then going through the whole sequence of your sporting event, performing magnificently.

Step 5 self-hypnosis
Learning how to put yourself into hypnosis at will, rather than just accidentally “drifting off” is another important skill that a hypnotherapist can teach you. Under hypnosis, you can learn to calm your nerves, replace negative thoughts with positive ones, employ visualisation and mental rehearsal all of which will be stronger and more heightened because you are in hypnosis. Once you have mastered this skill, it can be employed in all sorts of situations; in business situations, undergoing tests or interviews, going to the dentist, flying, changing habits – any situation in which you would benefit from being in a calm, relaxed state in control of your thoughts and emotions!