LIHUE — After spending more than 20 years as a professional skateboarder, Ron Soderstrom was pretty broken up physically. He moved his family to Kaua‘i 10 years ago and set on a course of healing himself. Through that process, he
LIHUE — After spending more than 20 years as a professional skateboarder, Ron Soderstrom was pretty broken up physically.
He moved his family to Kaua‘i 10 years ago and set on a course of healing himself. Through that process, he started looking into hypnosis and neuro linguistic programming, or NLP.
Through sports and performance hypnosis, Soderstrom now works with clients’ subconscious minds to help them excel.
He developed a life coaching and sports psychology practice and developed tools to help people.
He continues advancing his education by learning new modalities.
“The mental part really stood out,” he said of hypnosis work. “Miracles can happen for any of us.”
By using hypnosis, talk therapy and other techniques, Soderstrom was able to rebound from his skateboarding injuries.
He took up dancing, aerial silk performances and improvisation.
He knew that for athletes, 90 percent of their preparation is mental and realized hypnosis would be to help people of all abilities to do things in their lives even better.
“When I was skating, it was a huge impact on me if I was 20 feet off of the ground and thinking about landing,” he said and came to understand that, “if your mind isn’t focused right, you’ll eat it.”
The subconscious mind, Soderstrom said, controls everything from a person’s heart and blood rate.
He said some doctors are even commodifying medical hypnosis by having patients go into a state of self-hypnosis to eliminate pain and medications.
“The brain makes decisions where we make decisions ahead of us,” he said.
When working with clients, Soderstrom may discern what they want up front, or they may benefit from continuing where they are in life currently.
He said the mind often holds people back from looking silly, which can tear a person from a positive goal they have in mind.
“The mind doesn’t know positive from negative,” Soderstrom said. “We don’t want to be embarrassed or hurt, so it’s beneficial to do a positive thing and take time to work with aspects of our thoughts.”
Hypnosis is a state of utter focus which removes outside influences, Soderstrom said.
One recent client, who asked to not be identified, said the process felt akin to taking a nap, although on waking the client said it only felt like a few minutes had passed when nearly 40 minutes had passed.
The client was comfortable the entire time and “felt refreshed” after the session.
“The times clients have the most fun is when they aren’t even thinking about it,” Soderstrom said.
He said hypnosis can help people overcome stress, fears, phobias, bad habits, smoking and even weight loss.
His clients, though, are often looking to improve their peak performance and to lose any distractions.
“People may have past things in their lives that they want to move on from and need help to get in the right direction,” Soderstrom said. “It’s easier for me to work with them and help them develop a strong belief in what they want.”
Soderstrom can be reached at at 639-1603 or at www.Select-Performance.com online.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct Ron Soderstrom’s name and contact information.
