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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Demonstrations: You’ll be shown how, using real examples.
- Exercises: You’ll practice so you can master the skills.
- Handouts: You’ll be given comprehensive notes and guidelines so that you can take them away to refer to if you need to.
Requirements
- You don’t need to know anything about NLP to attend this course.
- 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.
- 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.
