Linda Van Haver hypnotized one of her golfing clients into relaxing and focusing on his game the second his butt hit the seat of his golf cart.

Another client, a professional on the PGA Tour, was experiencing problems concentrating during tournament play after a spectator made a loud sound as the pro went into his swing. After a session with Van Haver, the golfer was able to tune out all spectators and tune back into his game.

"Hypnosis can enhance any ability you have," says Van Haver, a Deerfield Beach hypnotherapist. "You're not going to learn how to play golf in a hypnotist's office, but we can enhance the learning process. We can make it so that when you're out there on the course, you're channeling positives rather than the negatives."

A 95-mile-an-hour fastball looks like a watermelon in the eyes of a hot hitter. A basketball shooter can't miss. Every golf shot might just land in the hole.

But the zone is hardly limited to the world of sports. You can enter the zone working at your job. You can be driving home. You can be watching TV. Whenever you devote your total concentration to one activity, you've entered the zone.

"Hypnosis gets you in the zone," Van Haver says. "We can program what is called a post-hypnotic suggestion." And she adds, "All hypnosis is self-hypnosis. We just tell them, 'do this and that' and they're able to get themselves into that state."

Van Haver, 46, was born in Miami, raised in New Haven, Conn., studied psychology and sociology at Southern Connecticut State College then returned to South Florida where she studied at the Deland-based Omni Hypnosis Training Center before settling into a full-time career as a hypnotherapist in 1993.

Her first experience with hypnosis came at the age of 15 long before she had even heard of the term. After falling from a bicycle and rupturing her spleen, she was put into the hospital. "I wanted to be anywhere but there, so I went somewhere else in my imagination. I put myself in Hawaii, and in my mind I was on a beach and surfing, somewhere else other than that hospital room."

Still unaware of the word 'hypnosis', Van Haver began hypnotizing herself during the day-to-day activities, something she says everybody does subconsciously during daily routines.

"When you're driving and you pull into the driveway and you don't remember the entire trip, that's hypnosis," she says. "Daydreaming is hypnosis. Love is hypnosis. Watching TV is hypnosis."

Van Haver adds that hypnosis can translate to any sport and any athlete of any age, from a gymnast afraid to get back on the balance beam after hitting her head to the high school baseball player looking to relax and focus more clearly in the batter's box.

"I didn't know you could work with golfers and athletes until I went to school, " Van Haver admits. As it turned out, golfers are more than willing to try hypnosis in an effort to get control of their game.

Boca Raton golf pro Robert Crissy credits Van Haver with helping him separate the technical aspects of the golf he teaches, from the game he plays during competition.

"I was thinking too much about my own swing and the technical things I was teaching to my students when I got into tournament play," he says.

That is until Van Haver helped to separate Crissy's left brain from his right brain.

"Teaching is very left brain, very analytical" Crissy says. "The left part of your brain is your ability to analyze."

"Golf is very right brain," he adds. "It's like the creative part. The right brain is feeling. Once you get into an area like golf, especially in tournaments, you have to let go of the left brain and switch into the right brain. I had some negative thoughts and she gave me a mental picture that washed the negative thoughts away."

Crissy says that now when he's in a tournament, he is able to relax and "let it out" more easily.

She admits, "it could be good money if I promoted myself more and took advantage of the entertainment aspect."

But Van Haver is content to belong to the National Guild of Hypnotists and continue her studies. Currently, she is taking a course that explores spirituality entitled "Coyote Wisdom" at Palm Beach Community College and she is interested in following up her hypnotherapy education with further studies on dreams and how people can tap into their own subconscious world.

"What hypnosis is," she says, "is the bypass of the critical faculty of the conscious mind and establishing selective thinking in the subconscious mind."

"There's no difference between working with somebody 18 years old or somebody 65 years old," she adds. " I could work with 10 different golfers and never duplicate the session. Everybody comes in for a different reason, and there are many ways to open that door to get them into the subconscious mind. It all depends on the individual."