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Browsing Posts in Emotional and State Control

In the Zone When Canoeing and Kayaking

‘In the Zone’ When Canoeing and Kayaking

When I’m coaching canoeing and kayaking – whether it’s open canoe, white water kayak or sea kayak, one topic that seems to crop up time and time again is the question “How can I control how I feel, expecially when I’m feeling nervous?”  In other words – how can I get in the zone and deal with anxiety and fear?  How can we control our state?

We all know that our minds and bodies are linked (have you ever woken from a nightmare with a cold sweat and your heart racing?), and we can use this two way link to stay in control.

Here is a clip from my ‘NLP for Sporting Excellence’ training course which tells you more about how you can use these naturally occuring patterns at will to help you perform at your best everytime you want to.  It also gives a demostration of how to set up your own physiological anchor.

For more information on canoe and kayak training courses and coaching, NLP, and applied sports psychology contact Kim.

Email – kim@kimbull.co.uk

All Articles, Coaching Articles, Emotional and State Control, In the Zone When Canoeing and Kayaking canoe zone, canoeing anxiety, canoeing fear, kayaking anxiety, kayaking fear, kayaking zone

Dealing with Fear and Anxiety when Canoeing and Kayaking

Dealing with Fear and Anxiety when Canoeing and Kayaking

When learning to canoe or kayak, between the forward steps we can sometimes find ourselves at a sticking point and for some reason we just can’t progress.  Many people experience this when learning to capsize, and for others it’s when moving onto white water, or wanting to move up to the next river grade, or when thinking about playing in stoppers, tide races or surf.  Come and join me for two days and we will build the confidence you need in a supportive learning environment. Imagine what it will be like having learned how to control your anxiety and natural fear and confidently achieve your aims – essential skills which open up new opportunities leading to your next level of paddling achievement.

This extremely popular and effective workshop delivers the tools and techniques that you can use to stop yourself holding back and move towards the things that you want in your sport. This is a practical, hands on, two day workshop designed to give you the skills to change your ways of thinking and doing – to move away from problematic thought patterns and start and continue to focus on what you really do want.

How many of these statements apply to you?

You’re not able to calm down: You would like to be relaxed and resourceful, to be at your best, but so many things prey on your mind. Other people seem to be able to get on with things but somehow you just can’t.

You imagine the worse: Do you spend time vividly imagining how things can go wrong. Painting dramatic pictures of troubles to come and living out those horrible situations (that probably will never happen) in full emotional detail.

You feel anxious far more than you should: All this worrying makes you feel anxious. Your stomach may knot or churn as you pre-live yet another disaster, maybe your breathing is constricted or your shoulders hurt. All these feelings just make it seem worse.

You just can’t stop worrying: Once you’ve started worrying you are off on the worry-go-round and it’s very difficult to get off. You may have tried some relaxation. For a while the worry ebbs away and you feel better but it doesn’t last for long.

You feel out of control: It’s almost as if your mind has been taken over and is no longer under your control. You just have to sit there and take what it does.

Fortunately there are ways to dismantle the worry machine and to reduce it’s impact.

People who attend these workshops find that they can:

Feel calm: My students sometimes find it surprising how easily they can swap one feeling for another. It seems a bit unlikely that you could swap the feeling of anxiety for a sense of calm, but it is possible (even easy) if you know how.

Stop worry in it’s tracks: If you couldn’t stop the worry before now it’s because you didn’t know how. Once you know how, you can derail the worry and choose more useful thought processes.

Get back control of your mind: People who attend this workshop tell me that they start to feel more in control of what their mind is doing. Rather than just accepting what is going on they are able to make changes to the way they experience their paddling.

Gain greater peace of mind: If you are good at being worried then it is possible for you to be good at peace of mind. Getting back control of your mind, being able to stop worry in it’s tracks and being able to calm down quickly and easily will allow you far greater peace of mind.

So how will we do this?

There are three ways in which our time together makes it possible for you to worry so much less.

  1. It’s practical.  You won’t be given lectures telling you all about anxiety, you already probably know far more than you want to. You’ll be shown how to relieve it.
  2. It’s effective.  You’ll learn strategies and techniques that work. All the skills and techniques I teach you are based on NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). In the thirty years that NLP has been in use a wide variety of very effective strategies for dealing with anxiety have been developed.  You will learn how to use them.
  3. It’s useable. You’ll learn strategies you can use. You’ll learn how to take charge of your mind whenever you want to. All the strategies are simple to learn and to use. My aim is that you go away from the workshop with everything you need to know to deal with anxiety and worry whenever it rears it’s ugly head. You won’t need to phone me, or read a book, or attend another course. You’ll just be able to do it.

How does this workshop work?

You’ll learn these techniques in the following ways.

  1. Demonstrations: You’ll be shown how, using real examples.
  2. Exercises: You’ll practice so you can master the skills.
  3. Handouts: You’ll be given comprehensive notes and guidelines so that you can take them away to refer to if you need to.

Requirements

  1. You don’t need to know anything about NLP to attend this course.
  2. You don’t need to talk over at great length all the things you worry about, these techniques can be learned with very little self-disclosure.
  3. You do need to join in and be willing to do the exercises to take back control of your life.

To give you the right amount of attention and time there will be a maximum of 2 people at each practical workshop.

Workshops Dates and Availability: This workshop is set up for you by arrangement.  Please contact Kim for details.

For more information on coaching and courses please contact me at Kim@kimbull.co.uk

Open canoe, sea kayak and white water courses and coaching, 1:1 and group workshops, BCU Training and Assessments in Northumberland and the North East.

Coaching Articles, Dealing with Fear and Anxiety, Emotional and State Control, Uncategorised anxiety control, canoeing anxiety, canoeing fear, courses, kayaking anxiety, kayaking fear, psychology

Rapid Anxiety Elimination Process – A Video Demonstration for Canoeists and Kayakers

Rapid Anxiety Elimination Process – A Video Demonstration for Canoeists and Kayakers

As part of my canoe and kayak coaching, I use sports psychology, hypnosis and neuro linguistic programming (NLP) to improve sporting performance.  I’ve noticed that as people develop their paddling skills, the thing that seems have the biggest impact on their performance is their ‘psychological fitness’.  Where two people have the same skill level, fitness and tactics, the one with the better ‘mental game’ will be more successful.

Many people say to me that their performance breaks down because of anxiety.  An appropriate amount of anxiety is useful and is necessary for ‘optimum arousal’.  However, when anxiety builds beyond this threshold it can significantly inhibit our performance.

Anxiety itself is not an emotion.  It is a state of over arousal of the autonomous nervous system caused by emotion.  When this arousal reaches a certain threshold the ‘fight or flight’ response is triggered.  Again, this is an unconscious process over which we have little conscious control.

In a brain scan, this shows up as over activity with the left side of the brain.  One way to tackle this ‘in the field’ is to give the brain so much to do that it cannot concentrate on ‘being anxious’.  However, we all know that when we’re anxious it’s hard to concentrate on anything else, so the distraction is best if it is simple, yet changes and increases our brain activity unconsciously.

Because our hands and fingers are so complex, a great deal of brain power is engaged in using them.  So, any activity using both of our hands (to engage both left and right sides of the brain) will change our brain processing and make anxiety incompatible.

In simple terms, this means if we throw a ball from one hand to the other, we can reduce our level of anxiety.  If we also move our eyes in a certain way we can de-activate the part of the brain processing ‘anxiety’.

The following exercise will achieve this, and you can either do it yourself or talk someone else through it.  When learning this yourself it’s often easier to have someone talk you through the steps.  Watch a demonstration on this video and then read through the instructions below.

If you want to practice this and don’t feel anxious, just remember a time when you were really anxious and imagine it now….

  1. Give the anxiety a score out of 10, where ten if most anxious.
  2. Turn the anxiety up – go on, turn it up to at least 9/10.  How can you get it up to 10/10 or 11/10?
  3. Use an object that’s easy to catch (something like a juggling ball, bean bag, climbers chalk ball etc).
  4. Start throwing the object from one hand to the other.  Keep throwing left to right to left to right at a comfortable speed of about the speed of soldiers marching ‘left, right, left, right’ etc.  Keep going.
  5. Notice what happens to your anxiety.  Now for the advanced….
  6. Stop.  Turn the anxiety back up again.  Then start throwing from left to right to left to right and now carry on with your eyes shut.  Keep going and notice what happens to the state?  And for the really advanced….
  7. Stop.  Turn the anxiety back up again.  Then start throwing from left to right again and now look up as high as you can.  Keep going and notice what happens to your state.

The great thing about this method is that it really works anywhere you are.  You might find it useful to practice with different objects associated with your sport.  Have you ever noticed cricketers throwing a ball from one hand to the other before they bowl?

To develop your skills in this area, or if you’d like to permanently tackle the cause of your anxiety contact Kim for further information.

For details of canoe and kayak training, NLP, BCU courses and canoe coaching or kayak coaching contact Kim Bull.  Training courses run throughout the North East, Cumbria and the borders of Scotland.

Email:  kim@kimbull.co.uk

All Articles, Coaching Articles, Emotional and State Control, Rapid Anxiety Elimination Process, Uncategorised anxiety control, canoeing anxiety, kayaking anxiety
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