Customer Reviews

In The Yikes! Zone: What Skiing Can Teach Us About Surrender and Trust

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"In the Yikes Zone" provided me with the tools to manage my performance anxiety for a recent Professional Ski Instructor Association (PSIA) exam. Mermer's book is filled with real-life anecdotes that the reader can relate to and transfer to their own experiences. "In the Yikes! Zone" lets you know when to push it and when to back-off, and how to manage your fears and emotions through-out. A definite read for athletes and non-athletes, this book is filled with important strategies to handle the many fears we face in all aspects of life.

Mermer's book gave me much more than I bargained for! As a Professional Ski Instructor for Women's Clinics, I found her perspective on fear invaluable. Fear is real - it's not always rational, but it's real and we learn to deal with it. Males and females will both recognize themselves in this book. It was a big help to me not only as a teaching tool, but also in my personal skiing and most recently in a PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors of America) ski exam. Thanks to Mermer, I was relaxed and comfortable. Whether preparing to audition for a Broadway Play or to ski a steep, icy mogul field - this book helps.

Mermer Blakeslee's book is a refreshing, thoroughly enjoyable, and masterful perspective on working with the fears that prevent us from achieving our goals. She clearly has equal expertise in writing, skiing and fear. Blakeslee teaches how to live with fear without being controlled by it. It is a delightful, well-written book, a great and unusual combination of being helpful without being "self-helpy."

Ms. Blakeslee has written an excellent book for both those dealing with people in fear inducing situations (in her instance as a ski instructor) and those wishing understand their own fears. While it is a fun book to read, it is a book that deserves to be read and reread to fully appreciate all she has to say. She has disected fear and it's origins and offers useful suggestions for over coming it. There is something to think about and ponder on practically every page.

Some readers may find using skiing as a metaphor for life a bit of a stretch, but the author more than makes up for it by including many anecdotes to help the reader bridge the gap.

Have to close now, time to go back and read the book again.

More than a skiers book on fear. Mermer demonstrates how to tackle fear head on. If you need a book to get you over the edge....this is the one.

Ms. Blakeslee's writing captures the reader with thrills and laughter; she takes the experiences of skiing way beyond the realm of skiing. This book helps the reader to use ANY fearful experience as a learning tool to move forward.

As this book is out of print, I paid much more than I normally would for a ski book. As it turns out, I feel this is one of the best books I have ever read. It struck a very strong chord with me. I found the suggestions extremely helpful. But more than that, I found sharing the experiences that Mermer had gone through with the people she has coached to be cathartic. I have felt the feelings that were being described (frozen in place, unable to move or to breathe) and I have also experienced the transition to surrendering to gravity and the joy of being able to flow down a trail that had at one point terrified me. To be able to help people (especially women) to understand what this is like and to share in Mermer's descriptions of these experiences and skiing in general (the emotions involved, the fact that skiing is a metaphor for life and the things one can learn about oneself, the love of the sport, the feeling of being in harmony with the world and of being a completely free spirit) is transcendant.