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ndonesian athletes and coaches have undergone a motivation-building session ahead of their participation in the 2009 Southeast Asian Games.

Participants said the personal empowerment training session aimed to instill the team's members minds with motivation and confidence through audio-visual and kinesthetic activities.

The session on Wednesday had the participants loudly shout out positive affirmations, such as "we are the winners", sing the national anthem and applaud loudly, while visualizing the gold medals in their hands.

Angeline Magdalena Ticoalu, a gold-medal hopeful in eight- and nine-ball billiards, said the session would help her stay focused on her retaining her eight-ball title.

"I was touched thinking about my late father. I will dedicate the victory to him, and of course, to the rest of my family," Angel, as she is commonly referred to, told The Jakarta Post.

The tearful 25-year old said she was touched when the motivator asked the group of athletes to project their medal targets for the people they love most during the session.

Angel will be among six billiards players going to the Games, which take place in Laos from Dec. 9 to 18.

Psychologist Linda Saptadji who led the session said the athletes would have to repeat these self-motivating activities by themselves everyday in order to maintain the positive affirmation.

Taekwondo coach Ina Febriana Sari hailed the session as an effective method in building the athletes' spirits although her pencak silat counterpart, Indro Catur Haryono, doubted it.

"If the session is done every month, I believe it will positively encourage our athletes," Ina said.

"Last week I held a similar session for my athletes," Ina, who specializes in training athletes of pomsae, an artistic form of taekwondo, said.

Called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s, the training has been claimed to be an effective and rapid form of psychological therapy to address a range of problems which psychologists are likely to encounter, such as phobias, depression, habit disorders, psychosomatic illnesses and learning disorders.

Pencak silat coach Indro Catur Haryono doubted the session could really work its magic as it was conducted only days before the Games.

"The athletes need to have constant psychological monitoring from psychologists. But even if there are any recommendations made by the experts, there would be no follow up as most sports associations in this country are short of money," he said.

Tennis player Ayu Fani Damayanti said she was not moved by the five-hour session.