Sports Psychologist Visit 3/4

I have delayed putting up this posting as I have not really felt happy with the way I wrote it and this is the third draft and I am still not happy with this one, but I feel it’s the best of the bunch.

The difficulty is putting into words something that you have to take on trust it has no real physical form rather a mental form or perception of emotions and feelings.
I’m not really into all this emotional feely touchy stuff and I tend to view tree huggers with amusement however I am determined to view these lessons with an open mind and as an ex tough macho policeman it’s been quite hard to do as I am not one for getting in touch with mine or anyone else’s emotions.

Here goes then, over to Huddersfield still some tiny patches of snow left it’s exactly 3 months since the first snow in December quite impressive it’s lasted 3 months on the hills.
On arrival we went over a few things from last time and I explained I had had some success with the relaxation and anti vampire techniques in particular. Today’s meeting was about EFT and negatives.

EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques and it’s a method of mind and body healing, although I am no expert and have deliberately avoided looking things up on the internet a form of mind over matter in this case the body, this seems to be quite a well known subject.

We started off with Negatives these are those things that perhaps would affect your game or your attitude to a game, for example there is a club I play at where I dislike the table and the balls are very old and poor but they insist on playing,I dislike the table as it's tight, the balls are very old and not the correct weight. This means that my immediate thoughts are not about winning or getting my concentration and energy levels right but negative thoughts such as ‘oh not that club again I hate that table’ or ‘When are they going get some new balls those old ones are rubbish’.

These negative thoughts tend to ruin everything else and intrude into your mind before and during the match, so we can use the EFT methods to address these negative thoughts and actions. These techniques form part of the solution to your mind set, so we have energy levels, relaxation techniques and positive thoughts, the negatives can then be banished by a form of meditation or I think he described it as mental acuptunture, we can tap certain meridian points (I know this sounds mad but let me finish) and say or assure ourselves that these problems will not affect us such as the table or balls or lighting or the audience etc and in theory we should be able to get on with the game.

I am not sure about this it seems a little far fetched however I was assured that it works and should make a difference. He asked me to inform him of any phobia or something that bothers me which he could try and treat using this method. I couldn’t think of anything but after a few minutes I decided on a physical issue which had nothing to do with billiards. This was I have always bitten my nails not to any great extent but it has always bothered me.

He went through the technique which only took about 3-4 minutes. I had a little internal laugh as I am quite convinced that it was a load of crap and that just saying to yourself that I had no need to bite my nails and tapping my face and chest would make no difference.
As you can see at this point most sane people would be rather sceptical and how I have had great difficulty writing a lot of this down. I can understand the principles and thoughts behind this but I am not sure I actually believe in this. He assures me he has had great success in treating people this way.

The session went by very quickly and we managed to get a few shots done on the table and he demonstrated just how important the balls are. He had a ball which did not match the weights and showed me just how a few grams can affect the angle of the losers and cannons.

I usually write up my blog within a few hours but this has had me thinking, it’s now Thursday and I still haven’t posted anything yet. However as I am sat here writing this blog I can say this that I still haven’t bit my nails since that session, maybe there is something to this after all as soon as a feel my hand going towards my mouth a sort of mental note says don’t do that, it’s quite strange almost a little disturbing.