Imagine you are a professional footballer, golfer or athlete. Now
imagine you are that professional sportsman or sportswoman but - using
no more than the power of your own mind - you can make yourself bigger,
faster, more accurate or able to control your opponent's mind. You would
be the world's first superhuman sports star.
In the 1970s the US military believed they could create a 'super
soldier' - one who could use psychic powers to walk through walls,
disarm the enemy through telepathy or kill a goat by staring at it. The
brain behind these techniques was Michael Murphy, one of the founders of
New Age spiritualism in the hippy enclaves of San Francisco. But
Murphy's primary goal was to use these powers in sport to create a
supreme athlete capable of extraordinary feats.
Murphy and his protégés have dedicated their lives to teaching athletes
and coaches to use his methods. Locking runners in huts to make them
believe they were dead saints, spies using mind control to win chess
matches, Russian Olympians shape-shifting, and golfers imagining they
were Darth Vader - coaches and athletes soon began to trust in very
weird things. So weird, in fact, that sport's burgeoning obsession with
money and image meant the hippies went underground and the superhuman
powers became mythical. But the trailblazers - now more hip replacement
than hippy - are making a comeback, influencing some of the world's top
teams.
Award-winning investigative journalist Ed Hawkins meets Murphy and his
protégés as well as a cast of athletes and coaches convinced by their
methods as he immerses himself in a world shrouded in secrecy and
weirdness. In a simultaneously hilarious and unsettling tale, he
experiences firsthand the techniques as he endeavours to reveal the
truth about sports psychology. Is it really possible to enter a
mind-altering state or to shift your body shape? Or is it all just
bunkum? And are the American military still watching?
