AS AN AMATEUR RUNNER, I often savor the feeling of being in “the zone” — when the world fades and each step feels effortless. But staying in that flow can be a challenge. The mind is rarely silent, writes Andrew Clair.
Having met earlier this year a professional hypnotherapist who works with athletes, my curiosity was piqued to explore the potential of hypnosis to enhance my own running performance.
While working on a story with professional powerlifter Liam Beville, I heard high praises sung of one hypnotherapist by the name of Enda O’Shea, who helped Liam conquer an anxiety that barred him from lifting success.
So, I decided to test it out myself.
In the days leading up to my meeting with Enda, I recorded my runs diligently. I typically finished two kilometres in just under seven minutes. Breaking that barrier, then, became my goal.
I met Enda at CityGym in Limerick City, where I sometimes train. He cut a bubbly, engaging persona.
Before we got into the meat of my mind-over-matter training, Enda introduced me to the idea that modern life is already full of unconscious routines. Feeling the booms of weights against the gym floor, focusing on our conversation was already an exercise in focus.
“It’s all hypnosis,” he added, underscoring how the modern day, with our constant push notifications and incessant distractions, shapes our thoughts and behaviours.
Sitting an office above the noisy gym, Enda directed me to put my arms out in front of me as I sat a few paces in front of him. He spoke quickly, like an auctioneer trying to overwhelm my mind into suggestibility.
“I want you to use your imagination. Imagine there’s a magnet on the tip of each finger. Imagine they’re going to come together automatically. Now try to separate them.”
I couldn’t.
“Now, look at those fingers. Imagine those two magnets pulled together now closer and closer and closer.”
Enda explained the ‘magnet technique’ is used as a sort of primer to get subjects into the right mindset for hypnosis.
A trick of the mind
“Now, I want you to go out into a fantasy,” he continued.
“See the people who are dearest to you on this planet. Feel what you feel for them. As you feel that bond, imagine those hands getting tired like glue sticking in between them tighter and tighter and tighter,” he said, guiding me deeper into a suggestible state.
As he took me deeper into the hypnosis, a wave of disbelief washed over me as my fingers began to lock together on their own.
The uncanny magnetism between my fingers, Enda tells me, is all a trick of the mind. Or not a trick exactly, but more about belief.
He explained that my fingers were stuck together because I believed they were. And so too if I believed they weren’t – he said with a click of his fingers – they wouldn’t be. And they weren’t.
Enda said that hypnosis, at its core, was a way to harness the mind’s focus and intention. And the magnets in my fingers were a sort of ‘anchor’ to focus that hypnotic energy.
“We condition ourselves daily, often unknowingly, through the narratives we hold in our heads. What if we could rewire those narratives to work for us?” Enda said, planting a seed for me to take the hypnotic experiment back home and into my running.
During the session, Enda made it a point to highlight the importance of visualisation. Vividly imagining desired outcomes, particularly under the state of suggestibility, can reprogram the unconscious mind to allow new attitudes and behaviors to form, given the right conditions.
Theory in practice
Eager to test Enda’s technique, I later began my usual preparations to go out for a run. This time, instead of immediately walking out the door, I sat down on my sofa and lit a stick of incense, releasing a pungent plume of smoke.
Staring into the ember, I imagined my legs carrying me one stride at a time along the Shannonside walkways outside my apartment. I saw shimmering lights in the water flying past as my feet collided with the pavement. I pictured those flashing lights on my phone’s stopwatch.
Then I set out on my loop.
In the first kilometre I felt a noticeable difference compared to my previous runs. I ran faster too, shaving nearly 15 seconds off my average for the first kilometre.
Reaching the half-way point, my heart beating out of my chest, I felt my thumb and index finger connect as I tried to activate my ‘anchor’ and return to the ‘zone’.
This didn’t seem to help at first. My mind raced with various thoughts of the day, preventing me from accessing that hypnotic part of my brain.
After a moment, I felt the wind brush against my back and I pulled myself back into that calm space at the eye of the storm in my mind.
I felt my body burn and chest get heavy as the run dragged on beyond its enthusiastic honeymoon period.
Upon finishing, I walked up the stairs to my apartment and back into the living room. I sat in the meditative position with my arms and legs extended, the incense still lit.
Only then did I realise I had returned to the exact place I started completely unbeknownst to myself, as if rote. Snapping out of it, I began coughing and heaving as I curled into the foetal position, gasping for air. It was nearly 10 minutes later before I managed to fully catch my breath.
It was only after coming out of the state that it hit me how physically draining the experience had been. Then something Enda said during our conversation struck me.
“Willpower is the fellow saying ‘I’m going to stop Monday’, and it never happens.”
I finished the run at 6:20, nearly 30 seconds faster than before meeting Enda.
Even if I couldn’t force myself to break the six-minute mark in the end purely through mental stimulation, I did manage to crack a personal record. And that’s quite a feat for something that’s ‘all in your head’.
