Managing Fear

 I train a client who is extremely afraid of getting punched. This fear, according to her, does not stem from a past trauma, it’s just something that is there. She is determined to overcome her fear of being in the ring. Most new boxers are intimidated about getting into the ring with another person, especially if they know they will get hit. Over time, the athlete slowly adapts and learns to take a punch so to say. Her fear can be paralyzing, freezing her action and reactions.

Thinking about coaching others to not anticipate what is coming so that they do not telegraph their moves, I was thinking about this particular client and fear. Fear is a reflection of the body’s anticipation of the future. Her fear is her mind remaining in the future of what might happen. In our last training session, I told her to work on being in present. What action is happening at that very moment, what am I doing, what is she doing. Our sparring session went significantly smoother. It was obvious when her mind wandered into the future and stepped into the fear again. I reminded her to bring her self back to the present, and her performance improved. Just like meditation, constantly letting random thoughts pass you by, I had to constantly que her to come back to the moment. 

Other than telling her to be present and cueing that state of mind, I have been racking my brain of a drill to work on this very skill for my client. While reading a book about the placebo effect and our suggestibility, the author talks about hypnotism, and the amazing stories of performing painless surgeries and curing diseases unresponsive to medicine under hypnotism. The author delved into different brain waves affecting perception of pain, anxiety and stress, as faster waves intensify these emotions while slower waves can lesson pain and anxiety, and for my purposes, fear. Hypnosis and mediation can slower brain waves to help with pain and stress, and the key is how to capture this brain power for our purposes. So my thought is using sound, different colored noise to be exact, to activate different brain wave frequencies, to see if it would lower the fear of my client and increase performance. The lesson plan has yet to be written, my next training experiment. 

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