Sand Traps and How to Escape Them

How many times have you stood on the tee or in the fairway and thought to yourself "stay out of that sand"? And then you settle in to take the shot, make contact with the ball, and you know immediately, instinctively that your ball is flying like an arrow towards that trap? It seems so unfair that you make all that effort, only to by stymied by a pile of beautifully raked sand! It's as if the ball is being pulled by a great big powerful magnet directly to the place that you did not want it to go.

And this is in fact exactly what did happen. I mean this figuratively, not literally, of course. It was your own thinking, and the associated emotion which drove that ball into the trap. You probably think that this just cannot be so, that you were thinking about the ball staying out of the trap, that you were begging the ball to stay out, willing it to not go into that trap. Your mind however sometimes works in ways which may seem to the uninitiated to be rather perverse.

If you want to play great golf, if you want to stay out of those traps, then you need to know how your mind works. It is readily accepted that 90% of great golf is in your mind, so it pays to know how your mind works and to train your mind in the ways of successful golfers. The first rule to remember is that where there is a conflict between your will power and your imagination, your imagination wins. This is fact.

Let's see if we can demonstrate this quickly. Try as hard as you can, right now, to NOT see a sand trap. What happened? What color was the sand? To expand on this point, when you last stood on the tee thinking "don't go in the trap" what do you think was the image which you saw in your mind's eye? Is it possible that you saw the ball in the trap, or simply an image of the trap? One thing I can guarantee is that this thought process will not elicit a picture of the ball sitting up in the middle of the lush green fairway.

Once you know a couple of the basic ways in which your mind can be so seemingly perverse, you can train your mind to play great golf. This can be expedited with the help of golf hypnosis. With hypnosis you have access to the inner workings of your mind so you can embed a great golf mind set easily and quickly. With golf hypnosis cds or golf hypnosis downloads you can train your brain to see what you want to happen as opposed to what you do not want to occur.

The second mental rule to consider is that the power of your emotions associated with your thought will directly affect the outcome. A thought without an emotion will have no effect. A thought which carries a great amount of emotion will have a great effect. Hence when you were "begging" your golf ball to stay out of the trap, you created a high emotional energy charge, and this was attached to what you were picturing (the trap), which combined to create a significant magnetic effect. Your emotion and visual image magnetized your golf ball right into the trap.

Your mind is amazingly powerful. You just need to know how it works and then you can train your mind to play great golf, with the help of golf hypnosis. You can learn to stay out of the traps and on the fairway with a little help from golf hypnosis.

Roseanna Leaton, golf psychologist, enthusiastic golfer and author of the GolferWithin golf mind training cds and hypnosis downloads.

With a degree in psychology and qualifications in hypnotherapy, NLP and sports psychology, and a great passion for golf, Roseanna Leaton is one of the leading golf psychologists. You can get a free hypnosis download from http://www.RoseannaLeaton.com and view the GolferWithin golf hypnosis cds and downloads.