Hypnosis has been used in sport for at least the last 50 years, and has recently seen a renewed  interest from both the research community and sports participants. Numerous well-known sportspeople have used hypnosis in the past, including boxers Frank Bruno, Steve Collins and Nigel Benn, former England cricket captain Mike Brearley, athlete Iwan Thomas, and golfer Ian Woosnam.

Sports Hypnosis combines hypnosis with traditional sports psychology to assist with many common sporting psychological problems. It is particularly effective for building confidence, overcoming poor past performances, and visualising new or complicated techniques.

In addition hypnosis is highly effective when used to augment other psychological interventions for anxiety, motivation, mental blocks and competition preparation. Sports Hypnosis is now widely used in many sports to help both professional and amateur sportsmen and women with their mental training.

Sports Hypnosis is particularly effective for:

• Competition Nerves
• Mental Blocks
• Overcoming Slumps in Performance
• Building Confidence
• Improving Focus & Concentration
• Returning from Injury

Sports Hypnosis is a relatively specialised discipline, which requires a knowledge of hypnosis as well as an understanding of sports psychology. The Centre offers a Certificate level course (Cert.SportsHyp) for hypnotherapists and sports psychologists, which provides practitioners with the knowledge and training needed for effective Sports Hypnosis.

A list of Certificated practitioners can be found in our Directory of Sports Hypnotists.

The Centre for Sports Hypnosis is not a registering body and can therefore not be held responsible for any practitioner. You should always check the practitioner's qualifications, experience and insurance when requesting their services.

If no-one in your area is listed, our recommendation is to find a sports psychologist or hypnotherapist in your area and check their knowledge of sports hypnosis - a hypnotherapist should ideally either have a qualification in sports psychology or extensive experience in this field, and a sports psychologist should ideally have a certificate or diploma in hypnotherapy to ensure they are adequately trained for this purpose.