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Get rid of the Yips! Use Hypnotherapy

Are you losing at the mental game? Successful golf is as much about psychology as it is about practice and training. Even experienced sports people choke at the critical moment.

Too often, as soon as you are put on the spot, and everyone is watching you, your game just falls to pieces. In golf it is called the 'yips'. In tennis, as soon as game point is reached, you just cannot hit the ball straight. Your own mind sabotages you.

Sports Hypnosis is used by every major team. Sports coaches use the equivalent of hypnotherapy to get the best performance out of their players. Freezing on the sports field is no different from freezing when you have to give a speech. The causes are the same, and the treatment is the same.

Every time you are blocked at sport, you are actually reliving a moment of anxiety from long ago. You feel you are being judged, you worry about the possibility of failing, you are aware of being the center of attention.

Any one of these can trigger an unconscious memory of failure. Sports performance hypnosis eliminates that childhood fear. With hypnosis help you can play to your best level.

GOLF PERFORMANCE HYPNOSIS

You want to perform at the highest level 100% of the time. But too often you are held back by doubts, and fear, and negative thoughts. You need to work on your mental game, as well as your physical game.

Some coaches say that the mental game is the most important one. Unless you have a clear focus, it is very hard to get into the winner's zone.

Winning is an attitude of mind. Well so is enjoying. Even if you only want to go out and play golf socially, you still need to be comfortable in your own mind.

Hypnosis can help you focus. That way, you are feeling 'in the moment' when it matters. Focus gives you the confidence to get out there and give your absolute best. Hypnosis can dismantle your mental blocks.

Hypnosis for the Yips

I had a client come in this week with the yips. It is what happens when the golfer is about to take an important putt. The pressure is on, and everything falls apart. A simple putt that you can do nine times out of ten on the practice tee, just goes horribly wrong.

It doesn't just happen in golf, but golf is the best known example of it. It's what happens when the player just chokes. Tennis players do it, footballers do it on penalty shoots, and darts players do it when they need a winning throw.

There are lots of folk remedies that are supposed to help. If you are right handed, supposedly, squeezing your left hand will help avoid it. Or you can try visualizing the shot before you take it. They don't help much.

Origin of the yips

I talked to my client about when and how it happens. She said it never happens on the practice course. She can sink all the putts all the time: she is actually a very good golfer. And that is the problem. She has become so bad at putting that her friends are now reluctant to play with her. Her yips are just embarrassing everybody. It only happens when she's about to take a shot and all her friends are looking at her.

And that is the key to the problem. The yips are a manifestation of a simple psychological issue. When my client goes up to address the putt, in her mind she is aware that her friends are watching, and she is aware that she could fail again. And that is where the yips set in.

What is happening, psychologically, is that that a little tremor of uncertainty is triggering a childhood fear. It is triggering a childhood fear that was never resolved. The childhood fear was about being embarrassed, feeling stupid, feeling inadequate and wanting to run away. That memory comes out of the past and takes over. All the player wants to do is to get out of that situation, and the unconscious mind obliges by ruining the play.

Treatment for the yips

When I explored the situation with my client, she confirmed that it all started after she had made a very bad putt, and she did feel stupid and embarrassed. That single incident is what linked back to the childhood fear. And every time she got the same situation, that little bit of uncertainty linked to the childhood fear, and brought it to the fore again. The more times it was triggered the stronger the fear got. My client confirmed that her yips had got more and more intrusive to the point now where she was feeling like giving up the game altogether.

The treatment for the yips, is not to deal with the yips, but to deal with the childhood fear. I put her into trance, and did a simple regression. I used an Affect Bridge from her golfing feeling and got her to find the original embarrassment that it was linked to. This turned out to be a childhood humiliation that I fixed by empowering her to take control and change it.

Getting rid of the childhood issue means that when she next gets onto the green, she will simply be battling physics, and not her own mind.