The problem I’ve found back then was that, however well conceived and constructed these training aids are, I only used most of them a couple of times before they start gathering dust!

If you still want to use golf training aids, then here’s a way to use Golf Hypnosis to get the most out of them.

Most of these devices are designed to help you to physically repeat some part of the golf swing the way the designer feels you should. The good news is that they help you to make flawless repetitions of that swing element. The problem is that I get bored or want to get out on the course, long before I complete the thousands of repetitions needed to ingrain the new action.

So how can golf hypnosis help? Well, one way is to use self hypnosis to take you into a receptive hypnotic state and then use the training aid while remaining in an eyes-open trance. I used that technique with a hoop style swing trainer I had some years ago called an Explanar – www.explanar.com. It’s a very effective training aid invented by Luther Blacklock, a top UK teaching professional and head pro at Woburn Golf and Country Club.

Another way golf hypnosis can help is in speeding up the learning process using a concept called “Hypnotic Time”. It is not uncommon for people to fall asleep for a few minutes and wake up from a dream that they seemed to “live” for hours or even days. In a similar way, people in hypnotic trance can often experience time distortion allowing them to speed up their unconscious experience.

All you need to do is to practice a drill for a short while using the training device of your choice, then use hypnosis to rehearse the drill over and over in Hypnotic Time. You can achieve this either using self-hypnosis or by listening to the hypnosis tracks in my “Better Golf with Less Practice” hypnosis audio programme. That way, you can to unconsciously complete hours of practice or rehearse rounds of golf in just a few minutes.

So today, I’m pleased to announce a new, improved and, very important this, free 12-minute MP3 audio version of a simple technique for taking yourself into a safe, light and relaxing trance. Using it will help you in getting the most out of the golf psychology ideas included in my other articles, newsletters and posts. You can also use this technique to calm and relax yourself at times of stress and anxiety, like taking an exam, meeting the boss, first-tee nerves or standing over an important shot on the golf course.

You can learn how to use the Finger Breathing self-hypnosis and relaxation technique by regularly following the “Seven Steps to Learning Finger Breathing” outlined on my ezine website. That page also includes download instructions for new and improved Finger Breathing MP3 recording.

As you’ll soon realise, this “Finger Breathing” technique does require a bit of imagination, but you must already be pretty imaginative if you’re looking to use golf psychology to improve your golf!

Now I’m not suggesting that Darren started doing that after he or one of his support team read about it in my ezine. However, it is obviously helping to overcome some of the “demons” that seemed to be afflicting his putting confidence in recent years. The six steps and his action of gripping left hand low and then re-gripping right hand low are clearly keeping his conscious mind occupied while he’s just trusting his unconscious mind to hit the putts. It certainly seems to be working for him.

Why not give it a try? You can still read that ezine edition here and subscribe to regularly receive my free Golf Hypnotist Ezine using the box on the right hand side of this page. The new edition of the ezine comes out later today and includes the opportunity to download a free audio recording of the Finger Breathing relaxation technique I’m always talking about.

Coming back to those New Year’s resolutions, have you made your ones yet? No, don’t tell me what they are, that’s supposed to be unlucky. It’s enough that you’re clear about what you would like to change in your life and your golf in 2010? You know what you’d like to accomplish and where you want your life to go. That’s enough, isn’t it?

Well, I’ve got some bad news and some good news for you. Which would you like first? Okay, let’s start with the bad news. The bad news is that New Year’s resolutions generally don’t work. Recent articles suggest that that over 80% of the resolutions we make fall by the wayside within a few weeks or months? That’s not the good news, is it?

New Year’s Resolutions traditionally don’t work because they are based primarily on willpower and that’s a function of our conscious mind. If willpower worked 24 hours a day 365 days a year, then we’d all be the shape we want and we’d be fit, rich and happy. We’d all be great golfers as well. How often have you gone out to play golf determined to concentrate hard on every shot only to suddenly experience a lapse of concentration and hit a disastrous shot? I know I have. How often have those dieters amongst you remembered you’re on a diet, but not until after you’ve eaten something fattening?

The problem is that your conscious mind can only focus on a few things at a time and those are the ones we are thinking about right now. Research tells us that typically a human being can consciously hold between five and nine bits of information – often referred to as seven plus or minus two – in our mind at any one time. That’s why long phone numbers can be difficult to remember, even for the short time from looking at them in the phonebook to dialling them. So the chances are that your resolutions will have dropped out of your seven plus or minus two most of the time.

The good news is that your unconscious mind is switched on to everything you know all the time. You don’t have to remember to breathe, to regulate your heart-beat, to blink if something flies at you, to drive a car or to ride a bike. That’s assuming that you’ve already learned how to drive a car or ride a bike! And mentally there’s no limit to how many things you can do unconsciously at the same time. It’s not recommended, but people can drive a car, hold a conversation, smoke a cigarette and ponder their place in the universe all at the same time and if a car pulls out from a side road they’ll still avoid it and probably check the rear view mirror as they do it.

So how do you hand my New Year’s resolutions over to your unconscious mind? Well that’s easy. You use hypnosis programmes, self-hypnosis and NLP to install them in your unconscious mind. That’s exactly what happens with golf hypnosis programmes like Your Own Virtual Caddy.

You may remember my recent article about mental foursomes practice with golf hypnosis the other week. Now shortly after writing that I was watching a rerun on television of a recent US PGA Tour event and enjoying the overhead pictures from the blimp, when I had a sudden flash of inspiration. Why not visualise my shots in 3D and incorporate an overhead shot of how I visualised the shot I was about to play. It sounded difficult until I realised that if I can see it on TV, then surely I can visualise it. After all, I already had the overhead view on the course planner, so why couldn’t I incorporate it in my pre-shot routine visualisation and mental golf practice.

So, later that evening I took myself into a light trance using self-hypnosis and played an imaginary round of golf at Beaconsfield, my home course. I visualised playing every hole and every shot in 3D, even the putts. It worked great and I couldn’t wait to take the idea to the course. That Friday, I got the chance to use it in my pre-shot visualisation on the real course and it worked amazingly well. Initially I found that I got the best results from visualising the shot normally, as a picture in 2D, and then "seeing" it again as if from a blimp, just as I stepped into the shot. By the time I’d played a few holes, visualising the shot in 3D just became a natural part of my routine.

What surprised me most was that it gives me so much more confidence, especially when hitting over a hazard or trees to my target. Instead of seeing the trees or hazards and estimating how far to hit past them, I’m finding myself seeing the whole shot from above. I’m getting a much clearer idea of the shot I’m playing and that’s taking away a lot of the normal doubt I normally have when playing these shots.

Vivid visualisation, using all the senses, is an essential part of the pre-shot routine you should be using when physically playing golf. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you about what Jack Nicklaus says about how he never played a shot without having first watched himself execute the swing perfectly and seen the ball flying or rolling to his target before finishing up, "sitting there and shining white on the bright green grass."

So try this out when you’re next out playing on the course and on the practice ground, especially when you’re practicing your golf in your minds eye. Maybe you’ll see a new low score up on the leader board – in 3D.

One of the key techniques in the application of golf hypnosis is the use of metaphor to communicate a concept that may be rejected or over analysed by the conscious mind. As an example, if I wanted someone to swing their golf club naturally and unconsciously, I might talk to them about the way they throw a ball of paper into a wastepaper basket or skim a stone across a pond – without any conscious thought.

So I’m always on the lookout for a good metaphor and right now I need one to use in my golf hypnosis to help people with their post-shot routines. In particular, to help them to learn whatever they can from a bad shot and then forget about it and move on "in the zone" or "in the now" to their next one. Perhaps that’s too difficult a concept for many of us and it’s always difficult to remember to forget something when you’re blowing a fuse after hitting a bad shot.

So, imagine my delight when I was listening to Nick Faldo on the television commentating on the Tour Championship. Tiger Woods had just pushed his tee shot way out to the right and was just in the middle slamming his driver into the ground with a dramatic lunge. Then suddenly he just seemed to switch off, his eyes glazed over like he was in a light hypnotic trance and he calmly bent down, picked up his tee and walked off in the direction of his ball. As he did so, Nick commented about Tiger hitting the "reset button" and getting back "in the now". A very large, if metaphoric, light bulb lit up in my head and I just knew that I have to include that idea in my work.

So, the next time you’re feeling bad or angry after a bad or unlucky shot, just mentally hit your "reset button" and learn from the shot, consign it to the past where it can’t hurt you and step back into the now.

But how do I do that, Andrew? Well, you could try in vain to consciously remember a time when you hit a bad shot and followed it with a good one, but it would probably be in vain as you’d be consciously pre-occupied with your anger and forget.

The best way, if you’re familiar with self hypnosis, is to incorporate it into your hypnotic post-shot routine and it’ll just happen unconsciously. Alternatively, you could create your own "reset button" with an NLP anchor that fires off automatically whenever you’re in that situation.

So how do you feel if you hit a really good drive down the middle of the fairway only to see it bounce off unexpectedly into a bunker or end up in a divot? Does it make you angry and affect your next shot or even the rest of the round? Did you see Lee Westwood’s tee shot on the 72nd hole when he was in contention to win the Open Championship at Turnberry? He hit it perfectly only to see it roll on and on before veering off into a bunker and leaving him with a seemingly impossible shot to the green. Would your shoulder’s "drop"? Would you feel the world was against you? Or would you just treat it as just one of those things and, like Lee Westwood, just accept the new challenge and hit the best possible shot from where the ball lay under the face of the bunker? Wasn’t that an amazingly well thought out and executed recovery shot he hit onto the green from there?

I know I’m labouring this point, but how would it affect you, if you had not just one, but a whole series of unlucky breaks in the middle of a round of golf? Would you notice any good breaks along the way? I suspect not. Maybe you’d start to feel like the course was against you or it was just not your day. Either way, you’d probably not be in the right frame of mind to play well and you’d start thinking more about your bad luck than the shot you’re about to hit. If you just knuckle down and focus all your attention on playing the next shot, then you’re either brain dead or, like Lee Westwood, you’re using good golf psychology.

Good luck can have an equally strong positive impact on the golf mind as bad luck can have a negative one. Looking back on my early years of playing golf, long before I knew anything about golf psychology, I now realise my perception of whether I was being lucky or unlucky early in the round had a major effect on my final score for the round. There was a long walk around a lake to the par 3 sixth hole at Brookmans Park, my home club back then, and there was often a long wait on the tee. As a result, there was plenty of time to ponder on how the round was going. If I was around 2 over par after those first five holes and hitting the ball poorly, I felt lucky despite already using up all my shots as a 2 handicap golfer. My ball striking would gradually improve through the round and I’d usually have a really good score. If, on the other hand, I was over par after those same five holes and striking the ball really well, then I’d feel resentful about that bad luck, my swing would deteriorate and I’d have a really terrible score.

If I’d looked at my bad luck objectively back then, accepted it and simply played each shot as it came, it would have cost me at most 2 or 3 shots in the round not the 10 or 15 shots it often cost me through bad golf psychology. In all probability, it wouldn’t have cost me even that as I’d probably have some good luck elsewhere in the round to compensate.

So how do I just accept my bad luck, I hear you say. Well just about everything I’ve learned about golf psychology helps and most importantly, it’s the ability to have a good post-shot routine supported by golf hypnosis. After you hit any shot or putt, regardless of whether it’s a good or bad and lucky, unlucky or just a normal one, you should learn from it, release it and consign it to the past. It can’t hurt you there. If it’s a really good shot, then savour the moment and file it away in your mind as a resource for a future time when you need inspiration and confidence.

If a bad or unlucky shot’s difficult to get over, then fire off a strong Resource Anchor to change your state. If you’re familiar with self-hypnosis, you can use that to achieve the same result or use the Finger Breathing technique I described recently. Another approach is to use the Positive Reframing approach to consider how much more unlucky and worse off you could be.

So today, I’m going to describe a simple technique for taking yourself into a safe, light and relaxing trance. Using it will help you in getting the most out of the golf psychology ideas included in my other articles, newsletters and posts. You can also use this technique to calm and relax yourself at times of stress and anxiety, like taking an exam, meeting the boss, first-tee nerves or standing over an important shot on the golf course.

As you’ll soon realise, this "Finger Breathing" technique does need a bit of imagination, but you must already be pretty imaginative if you’re looking to use golf psychology to improve your golf!

Finger Breathing

Step 1: Start by finding a peaceful location, it can be in the middle of a crowd or on the golf course, just as long as you can quietly ignore what’s going on around you. It doesn’t matter if you’re standing up or sitting down and you can have you’re eyes open or closed. What’s important is to be as comfortable as you can be wherever you are.

Step 2: Quietly take a few slow deep breaths while noticing how the air you’re breathing in is cooling your body and calming your mind and the air you’re breathing out is releasing all the tension from your body.

Step 3: Now, this is the bit where you need to use that imagination of yours. As you’re inhaling, start imagining that you’re breathing the air in through your fingers and noticing how the air seems to cool your fingers.

Step 4: With each subsequent breath in, imagine that cooling feeling slowly spreading up through your hands to your wrists, forearms, upper arms, shoulders, neck and on up to the top of your head; relaxing all the muscles as it goes. And once it gets to the top of your head, let it continue down over your face and into your upper body as you continue breathing in.

Step 5: Once the cooling sensation and relaxation spreads through to your upper body, start noticing how the flow continues on each out-breath down through your lower body and on through your thighs, knees, lower legs and ankles into your feet with each subsequent breath. Learn how each out-breath cools and relaxes the muscles until it finally seems to flow out of your toes leaving a slight tingling sensation there.

Step 6: Now imagine that the cooling and relaxing air flowing out of your toes as you breathe out seems to flow back in through your fingers as you breathe in again. Notice how your breathing just seems to be a steady rotating cycle with the air simply flowing in through your fingers, continuing through your body, exiting through your toes and then back in through your fingers again.

Step 7: Just continue with this cycle of breathing until you’re feeling calm and relaxed and ready to tackle whatever golf psychology technique or challenging situation you’re undertaking now.

Wow, I’m feeling so relaxed just writing about that. I expect you are too, whether you’re reading it or simply running through it in your mind. It’s much simpler to remember than it is to read or write down.

One of the fundamentals of modern psychology is the idea that whatever we consciously think about our unconscious mind does its best to deliver. This manifests itself in many ways and if we’re consciously looking at something, then pretty soon we find ourselves physically heading towards it.

Have you ever noticed, when you’re driving along in your car on a wide road, maybe a motorway or freeway, and you notice something interesting off in the distance to the right or left, that you suddenly find yourself unconsciously steering towards it? That happens on the golf course if you focus on something that you want to avoid, like a bunker or a water hazard? Have you noticed how you tend to unconsciously hit the ball directly at the thing you’re trying consciously to avoid?

Well, something similar happens if you’re not in the right state of mind when you do something that matters to you. If you’re in a good mood or state of mind when you’re playing golf, then you unconsciously tend to play positively, enjoy the game and probably score well. If, like Sergio on Sunday, you’re in a negative state of mind, then you unconsciously play negatively, get frustrated with your game and score badly. If you have natural talent, like Sergio, and if you really focus on a positive result, like he did with his amazing shot from the bunker on the last hole, you can still hit some good shots in the middle of a bad round.

So what can I do if I’m feeling in a negative state of mind, I hear you ask? Now that depends on why you’re in a negative state and addressing that question would be a good start. But what if I’m in a really bad state and I just can’t get out of it – I’m so depressed you know, Andrew?

Well, if you’re familiar with a quick technique for taking yourself into self-hypnosis, then use it now. If not, it really doesn’t matter, just quietly take a few slow deep breaths while noticing how the air you’re breathing in is cooling your body and calming your mind and the air you’re breathing out is releasing all the tension from your body.

Now just remember a time in the past when you’re playing golf really well, enjoying yourself and scoring as well as you know you can now. If you can’t remember a time, just imagine a time when you might have played and felt that good.

Now see what you saw when you’re playing well, imagine the scene like you’re seeing it through your own eyes. Make the picture bright, bold and active. See all the colour and movement in the picture and amplify it.

Hear the sounds that you’re hearing there, perhaps the sound of the wind or the other golfers on the course or the sounds of birds. Notice any particular aromas, perhaps the scent of the freshly cut grass or the smell of your favourite food wafting across the course from the clubhouse.

Remember or imagine the physical feelings of warmth or coolness in your body, the weight of your shoes on the ground and, most importantly those good feelings associated with this experience.

Feels good, doesn’t it? You’re playing golf really well when you feel this good, aren’t you.

Now you know from what I’ve written before that I’m very much against slow play in golf, if for no other reason than that it’s bad golf psychology. You only have to read my earlier article entitled "The fast track to better golf in your unconscious – slow play kills your golf mind" to see why.

Coming back to Sunday, you have to admire Padraig Harrington’s whole approach to the final round and especially the unfairness and ridiculous timing of John Paramor’s intervention. Isn’t it obvious that anytime Tiger’s playing, the size, enthusiasm and rowdiness of his supporters means that his pairing is going to be slower than normal?

You also have to admire Tiger’s very fair comments about the incident as well. And decry the latest news stories that suggest that he’s going to be fined for criticising John Paramor. Now I’m even more incensed! This is going to test my powers of Self Hypnosis for Anger Management!

I know that rules are rules, but commonsense tells us that Tiger and his playing partners are inevitably going to take longer to play every hole. It takes more time for a large gallery to get into position and to quiet down. Given Tiger’s wider appeal, many in his galleries are new to golf and to the etiquette of watching golf quietly and respectfully. That also causes delays.

So although Padraig can be a little slow and deliberate at times, you rarely hear of him being warned for slow play unless he is paired with the likes of a Tiger Woods. Is it fair that he should speed up his play to compensate for Tiger’s gallery and perhaps the inadequacy of the crowd control? Could it be the officials who are at fault rather than the players? I know that criticising sports officials can be seen as sacrilegious, but let’s be fair to a golfer of Padraig’s outstanding ability.

Come on John Paramour, conduct yourself in the manner of a fair and reasonable golfer rather than an over zealous "jobs worth" official. You’ve just ruined what may have been an exciting and memorable finish for the viewing public. Golf should be about enjoyment not petty bureaucracy.