Visualization and Sports
Posted April 2, 2007
on:There’s been quite a bit of media coverage recently regarding the use of visualization as it relates to sports. And much of it is misleading. Based on my experience conducting self-esteem building workshops and positive visualization seminars, I’ve found that in order for visualization to be effective athletes must first rid themselves of psychological baggage and distracting issues in their personal lives. But for athletes who have high self-esteem, who have dealt with or are in the process of dealing with issues in their lives, who are highly spiritual and whose lives are in harmony, then visualizaiton can be a powerful tool for the enhancement of their performance. The sports psychologists who are being trained by our universities and colleges today should really be receiving degrees in both sports psychology and clinical psychology, or perhaps there needs to be a new niche such as a sports-clinical psychology degree. Sports psychologists, once they are out of school, are not allowed to enter the domain of the clinical psychologist since the field of psychology is highly territorial. And it’s really too bad because I’ve found that when athletes have unresolved issues and baggage in their personal lives, their issues and baggage have a powerful negative effect on their performance.
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