The Use of Hypnosis in Sport

1
The Use of Hypnosis in Sport

• Heather Lamb
• Erasmus Canada
• 2008

2
Hypnosis

• The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis's web
  site defines hypnosis as a state of inner
  absorption, concentration and focused attention.
• Can be used for many different purposes including
  therapy, addiction control, education,
  rehabilitation, entertainment and, todays topic,
  sport.

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Sport Psychology

• Elite athletes make a career out of participating
  in sport and as such their results are very
  important

• Sport psychology has long been used as a method
  of coping with stress and anxiety prior to
  competition as well as to identify the
  appropriate state of mind for optimal performance

4
Flow

• Flow is a concept first identified in 1975 by
  Csiszentmihalyi and is defined as the mental
  state of operation in which the person is fully
  immersed in what he or she is doing,
  characterized by a feeling of energized focus,
  full involvement, and success in the process of
  the activity
• In some ways flow is similar to hypnosis in that
  it both change the way the athlete thinks,
  processes information and dissociates from the
  task (acts with out thinking)

5
Hanin and Unestahls Theories

• Hanin proposed a sport psychology theory based on
  the idea that each athlete has a zone of optimal
  function which is correlated with their state
  anxiety level.
• He uses non-hypnotic retrospective recall
  accounts to identify precompetitive anxiety
  levels
• Unestahl had a similar idea but called it ideal
  performing state. Unestahl believes that when an
  athlete experiences ideal performance, they often
  have memory lapses which hinders their ability to
  analyze their competition afterwards. Thus he
  uses hypnosis to help them recall.

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Using Hypnosis to Identify an Optimal Zone of
Performance

• By using hypnotic regression, sport
  psychologists, including Unestahl, believe that
  they can bring an athlete back to a peak
  performance and have them describe their feelings
  at the time.
• Once the feelings, moods and emotions from that
  peak performance are identified, an athlete has a
  better understanding about when and why they
  perform well
• These zones of optimal functioning (ZOFs) as
  Hanin describes them are very specific to the
  athlete and thus must be determined individually

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Three Other Ways Hypnosis can be Utilized in Sport

1. To use trigger controls in order to try and
   relive an ideal performance during a competition
2. To help relieve pain
3. To perform skill analysis

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Using Hypnosis to Condition Trigger Controls

• Taking hypnosis one step further, Unestahl has
  also identified certain triggers to be used.
• Natural triggers such as the
• grip of a racquet, or the feel
• of a ball
• Artificial triggers including specific words
• Through hypnosis Unestahl conditions positive
  emotions tied to a previous ideal performance to
  certain triggers in order to allow access to an
  optimal performance in the future

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Using Hypnosis to Treat Pain

• Well documented cases where hypnosis has been
  effective in the reduction of an athletes pain
• Study by Ryde in 1964 - he used hypnosis to treat
  injuries including tennis elbow, shin splints,
  achilles tendon sprains and others all
  successfully
• Important to note though that there was no
  comparison to a control group treated with a
  placebo
• Other studies have shown that pain can be
  effectively treated by morphine or a placebo in
  anxious patients

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Using Hypnosis to Perform Skill Analysis

• Professional and elite athletes inevitably
  encounter slumps or periods of sub-par
  performance
• There are documented cases of athletes undergoing
  hypnosis to help them self-analyze their problems
• A study was published in 1961
• regarding a baseball player using
• hypnosis. The hypnotist counted
• to 10 and upon reaching 10 the
• athlete was supposed to realize
• what was causing his poor
• performance

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Conclusion

• There does seem to be supporting evidence that
  shows hypnosis can be a useful tool in sports
  psychology
• In certain aspects it is more useful than others
  - no evidence that hypnosis can increase muscle
  endurance for example
• Careful not to use just as a relaxation mechanism
  because people have individual zones of optimal
  achievement - function well with a certain level
  of anxiety.
• Instead use hypnosis to help identify
• that zone
• Lots of room for further research and development
  in the future