New Website Coming Soon?

That's right I am creating a new site for all my clients and anyone else who is interested in learning more about self healing and the spiritual aspect of therapy work. I often get asked many questions such as how do I meditate or relax?, how does reiki energy work?, how can I get the best out of our therapy sessions? These and many other questions will be answered! The site will include useful exercises such as effective meditations and how to use self hypnosis and much more...

Have a fantastic New Year!

Best wishes

Pam

A must read for over the festive period

Are you at home, bored, eaten too many mince pies, watched too much telly....need a bit of mental stimulation? Then here are some highly recommended books to add to your knowledge and personal growth:

"Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss" - a true story about a psychiatrist and his patient's fascinating account of how their journey into past and between lives regression was to change both of their lives for ever!

Cosmic Ordering ordering service" by Barbel Mohr" - the original best selling book on how to cosmic order just about anything in life from getting a parking space to finding your ideal relationship and how the process really works!

Enjoy!

Best wishes
Pam

Whitelight Hypnotherapy Centre

Part 4 Value Elicitation - Finding the perfect job

We all have times when we want to change a significant part of our lives for the better or simply overcome a destructive habit, lose weight or negative mindset.  We may want to change careers, attract a fulfilling relationship into our lives or overcome a destructive habit such as smoking.  The first thing we need to do is find out what we truly value in our lives.  Values are our core beliefs, values are what we hold to be true is in our world and anything that conflicts with these strong beliefs will create tension and stop us moving forward or make us unhappy or unfulfilled.  Say for example you want to change career start with the following:

1. Make a list of 10 enjoyable job situations where you note down what you were doing (behaviour), what did that job give you (ie purpose, social interaction, etc) and why that job was important to you.


2. The next thing you to want find out is if all these values were present in a job what would be the thing that causes you to leave that job - you may come up with 1 or 2 values - these are the boundary conditions and these are also values that are important to you to include in your list.

3. Next number the list in terms of importance with number 1 being the most important to you. 

4.  You will end up with a hierarchy of values these are things that are important to you so if you went for a job where you worked alone and you had  'social interaction'  in your top 5 list of values, this job would be going against your values and you would probably find yourself on the look out for something else!


5. To make sure you get the job you want, bring these list of values with you to your job interview and check against them when completing your application form.

6. Now the last step once you have these list of values and you know what really is important, you have in effect a shopping list of things you want your job to be.  I want you now to imagine yourself in this job with at least the top 3 values present, step into that experience, seeing, hearing and feeling all the wonderful sensations when you think of these top three values.  You turn up these feelings, make the colours brighter and make sounds lounder.  Completely emerse yourself in this experience and you know how important these values are to you and this will make your feelings of motivation stronger and therefore you will put yourself in a positive, relaxed frame of mind and make it so much easier for the job of your dreams to become your reality!

7. You may want to repeat the experience before you go to sleep at night and you will find your unconscious mind will act on that experience in helping you to attract the job you really want!

For more information on how NLP can help you visit The Whitelight Hypnotherapy Centre

NLP Tips Part 3 - Become an excellent learner

Many people have problems with learning certain things and believe they have to struggle or take a lot of time to learn something new.  One of the most powerful ideas about NLP is that if you really can change your belief and develop new beliefs about learning, imagine if you could naturally be a good learner, how different would your life be right now?  Well, thats the key change your belief and change how you learn and be good at NLP,  hypnosis  whatever you really want to do.  You will still need to practice at whatever it is you want to learn but once you feel its well within your abilities you will find it easier to learn and therefore enjoy the experience of learning so much more!

Follow the steps below to becoming an excellent learner!

1. Find the belief that stands in your way of learning new things easily.  See, hear and feel yourself trying, but not accomplishing your objective.  You will probably be able to find many examples from when you were a child at school.  Notice all the things you see, hear, feel  about these times when you underperformed, writing them down.

2. Find a strong and useful belief about something in which you already excel.  It doesnt need to fall into the same category as NLP but something you know you can do really well and like the above step record your feelings, what you see and hear about this experience.

3. Compare the two experienes, noting the difference between the 2 images, is one bigger than the other, where are positioned in your mental space, do they have any movement?

4. Push the limited belief far off into the distance, until it is the size of a pinprick, shift it across to line up with your positive belief and then snap it back towards you to into its new position, shifting all the original submodalities to match these of supreme confidence and proficiency.  Feel yourself go into a deeply relaxed state in which you absorb information easily and are committed to explore and practice your skills with deep committment.
6. You can deepen this state by making the image brighter, bigger, turning up the sound of your beliefs and pay particular attention to these feelings of being an excellent learner.  When you have identified a particulary good feeling, anchor it by pressing a spot on your body such as an earlobe or knuckle, so you acess this state at a later date by pressing or firing your anchor and remember as fully as possible the experience you created in step 4.
7. Slowly come back to the room that you left behind, bringing all these learnings with you, knowing that you can repeat this experience as many times as you like, knowing that you can double the experience each time.

Circle of excellence

The circle of excellence technique is the classic NLP anchoring technique to boost your confidence in difficult situations or to give your best performance in public. You can use your circle of excellence when you are giving a talk, going into a tough meeting or preparing for a race or sporting event.  This technique allows you to use a trigger -that of stepping forward into an imaginary circle, usually accompanied by a hand gesture - to boost a positive state of mind when under pressure.

Follow the steps below to easily create your own circle of excellence!

Make it more fun by doing this exercise with a friend so they can talk you through the technique.

1. Staying outside the circle, identify the state of mind you want to anchor and tell your friend what this is in your words.
ie you may want to be in a state of 'confidence'.   If you were to describe that more fully in your own words it may be 'clear-headed' or in 'control of the situation'.

2. Step into the circle and remember a time when you were in that particular state. Relive that experience vividly as if you were there.  Notice the sights, sounds, smells and your feelings.

This recalled experience is likely to be in a completely different context to the one that is problematic for you now and that's fine. 

3. When you have the experience in your mind at its strongest, hold that thought, then anchor it with a distinctive hand movement that you don't normally use during the course of a day.

For example, you could pinch your thumb and index finger together in a circle or grip your little fingers together. 

4. Step out of the circle and repeat Step 2 and Step 3 recalling a second experience when you were in the same best state.  Step out of the circle.

5. Think of a time in the future when this state will be useful to you.

6. Step into the circle imagining the success of the future event and firing off the distinctive hand anchor that you created at the same time.

Notice how much easier this event can be for you and the intensity of the future experience (NLP calls this future pacing).

Repeat this process if you want the anchor to become stronger.

NLP Tips Part 2: Changing Feelings by dissociation

1. Recall an experience that still causes you sadness or distress.  As you remember it, make sure you are reexperiencing it as if it were happening right now.  See everything through your own eyes, feel all the feelings - including the associated emotions - through your own body.  Pay particular attention to any sound; ths migh include anything that was said by you or any other significant participants in the original scenario.  It may also include your own self-talk.  Make a mental note of the degree to which the memory still causes you pain.

2.  Now pretend or imagine you can step back out of the experience so you can see yourself there, as if on a screen.  Push the entire scene away from you, further and further, noticing, as it moves into the distance, how the colors begin to leach away and the detail diminishes. Push it as far away as you need to push it to notice a distinct difference in the way you feel about the events.

Note:  Unless you particular wish to have the discomfort back you can leave the experience where it is, or even imagine it spinning away from you like wheel or disc, where you can spin it away into space and have it explode in the sun!

Classic NLP tips: 1. How to identify your sensory preference the easy way!

The aim of this exercise is to find your preferred modality so you can use this knowledge to increase the power of the NLP exercises that I am going to teach you in the coming weeks. This is my first blog on the use of classic NLP techniques as taught by Richard Bandler that you can use to elicit powerful and long lasting change in your life! Maybe you want to achieve a goal, feel more comfortable about distressing past events, feel more motivated or simply feel good! The classic modalities we use are either auditory (we can imagine sounds), visual (we see images) or kinaesthetic (imagine feeling or touching something), olfactory (the use of smell), gustatory (taste) when thinking about a past or  future event. Most people will have a preference for using one of the 3 senses of visual, auditory or kinaesthetic to describe an experience. So are you prodominantly visual, auditory or kinaesthetic? Let’s find out!



You can do this exercise with a partner or by yourself. If you are alone, it helps greatly to speak out loud, possibly into a voice recorder so you can review your experiences later.

1. Imagine as clearly as you can a walk along a beach. It can be a beach you know or an entirely imaginary one. Your goal is to describe in as much detail as you can the experience, running through each of your 5 senses. First describe everything you see, the colour of the sky, the ocean, the seagulls in the air, the white foam flying into the air as the waves crash into the black rocks, maybe you think about colours of the clothes people are wearing on the beach, the sand and so on. The move to another sense such as hearing, describe everything you can hear, the sound of the seagulls, children playing...the sound of the ocean... and so on, next move on to feelings and touch, taste and smell until you have completed your description.
2. Now review your description and notice whether it was easier to make pictures, hear sounds, or feel sensations such as the temperature, the texture of the sand under your feet, was it the salty taste of the air. One of those senses will dominate. This is your sensory preference.

Having a preference for one sensory modality doesn’t mean you do not use the other senses or that you use your preferred modality in all situations. We tend to use all our senses when processing information but you will find that one modality will dominate over the all the others. So if you are a visual person you will classically think in images, moving pictures perhaps and may also use a lot of visual language which we refer to as predicates so you may use phrases such as 'I see what you mean' or 'that looks good to me'!

Overcome your driving test nerves and pass your test the easy way!

Find out how one intrepid reporter who had previously failed her driving test 4 times succeeded with the power of hypnosis! Read this interesting article from the Telegraph.


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Receive the best in accredited hypnotherapy, NLP and stress management training

The Academy of Advancement in Hynotherapy and Life Solutions offer fully accredited training in clinical hypnotherapy, NLP and stress management as well as offering the prestigious Hypnotherapy Practitioner Diploma award which recently received a credit rating from the Open University. Course dates are now available for 2010. You will also receive full support from the AAH group in practice group sessions and CPD training. Visit http://www.aahgroup.co.uk for further details

Hypnosis Brings Benefits during Pregnancy and Childbirth

Article from Natural News by Monday, November 16, 2009 by: Steve G. Jones, M.Ed., citizen journalist

Hypnosis has been used during childbirth for approximately 100 years. Many research studies have been conducted to study the effects of hypnosis on pregnancy and labor. Hypnosis has been used on women during labor to help reduce pain. Hypnosis can be used as a natural analgesic to not only reduce pain but reduce use of pain medication. In addition to pain management, self-hypnosis has been used to control breathing during labor. Other studies show that hypnosis has a psychological benefit to mothers and to newborns.

A meta-analysis of studies conducted involving hypnosis with pregnant women was compared to non-hypnosis intervention, no treatment, and placebo. Primary measurements in the meta-analysis included analgesia used during labor and also pain scores during labor. The meta-analysis included 8395 women who had used hypnosis during pregnancy or labor. The analysis concluded that fewer women needed to use a form of analgesia during labor. Women who received hypnosis reported less severe pain than those in the control groups.

In another study, 60 pregnant women participated. The participants were divided into two groups based on their suggestibility; all received childbirth education and tips on pain control. These two groups were then subdivided with half receiving a hypnotic induction and the other half learning breathing and relaxation exercises. Women in the hypnosis group and in the high suggestibility group reported less pain. Those who used hypnosis reported using less medication and had a shorter stage 1 labor.

Another meta-analysis looking at various studies performed using hypnosis with pregnant women showed that hypnosis reduced the level of medical intervention during labor and reduced risk to women and newborn babies. One study showed that women who were trained to use hypnosis during childbirth very rarely experienced postpartum depression. Hypnosis can help manage both depression and anxiety related to pregnancy, labor, and becoming a new mom. This shows that hypnosis can have many benefits on both women and their newborn babies.

One study found that women in their second and third trimester of pregnancy were more suggestible. The study showed that as women became further along in their pregnancy, their suggestibility increased according to the Harvard Hypnotizability Scale. Pregnant women also scored higher on the Creative Imagination Scale. This study researched women at two time periods, when they were pregnant and not pregnant. The research shows that if women are more suggestible during pregnancy, there is more of a reason to use hypnosis for pregnancy and childbirth.

Sources

Alexander, B., Turnbull, D., & Cyna, A. (2009). The effect of pregnancy on hypnotizability. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis.

Cyna, A.M., McAuliffe, G.L., & Andrew, M.I. (2004). Hypnosis for pain relief in labour and childbirth: A systematic review. British Journal of Anaesthesia, 93(4), 505-511.

Harmon, T.M., Hynan, M.T., & Tyre, T.E. (1990) Improved obstetric outcomes using hypnotic analgesia and skill mastery combined with childbirth education. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 58(5), 525-530.

Michael Newton's Interview on Past Lives and Life Between Lives

Michael Newton is a world renown past life regressionist and particularly famous for his life between lives techniques which allows people to regress between their past lives into the spirit world. View this interview to find out how Michael developed his interest in this fascinating technique.

Treating depression with hypnosis

What happens when you have a client that is so severely depressed they are unable to effectively motivate themselves to produce the homework you set them or focus their attention on cognitive questioning? Unfortunately, with some clients this is the reality of depression which quite often can be present with or be the byproduct of anxiety. Whilst cognitive behavior therapy is the psychotherapy choice of treatment for this condition, little is researched into the effectiveness of using hypnosis with depressed patients. American psychotherapist Dr Michael Yapko has written several books and training courses on how we can successfully use hypnotic interventions with depressive illness. Although CBT is a highly effective treatment for depressive disorders, hypnosis can certainly support the client particularly to bypass the severe anxiety and negative thinking styles that lead to paralyzed thinking and inactivity. Hypnosis works by reprogramming negative ways of thinking that can lead to anxiety and depressed thoughts. The outcomes of hypnotherapy treatment can include feeling more motivated, feeling more relaxed and being able to concentrate and orientate to towards the future instead of the past. The magical quality of hypnosis is in its ability to communicate with the unconscious mind where we store all of the negative thoughts that influence our feelings and behaviors. I have seen many clients who after just a few sessions of hypnosis are wondering why they no longer feel bad and can start to look forward to the future instead of living in the past. Although hypnosis is not a magic wand over time if used skillfully by an experienced therapist, it can yield positive results.

For more information on how hypnosis can be used with depression see Dr Michael Yapko's article below on treating hypnosis in treating symptoms and risk.


Hypnosis in Treating Symptoms and Risk - by Dr Micheal Yapko

Learn the Swish!

The Swish is a classic NLP technique that can be used for a wide variety of issues such as any fears, negative thoughts, traumatic events or phobias.  Its main function is to densensitise how you feel about a particular event or thought and re-direct your thinking enabling you to change the unwanted response such as anxiety or panic to a positive feeling such as peacefulness!

In the Swish we replace the unwanted thought or response with a more useful and appropriate one because the Swish re-directionalises thinking. It is an instruction to the brain No, not that - THIS!

Use it for yourself - and others

By using the Swish in your own life you develop your ability to maintain resourceful states, manage your responses to stressful situations, and engage in the behaviours you want.

How to use the Swish



1. Select a replacement image



First select your Replacement Feeling - ask yourself How do I want to be instead.


Having selected the Replacement Feeling see and hear a detached and associated version of yourself experiencing this feeling. It is quite important that this image is dissociated. Enhance the detail and the quality (submodalities) of this until the image is quite compelling.


2. Find the trigger for the unwanted mood


What is it that you respond to? How you know when to have the unwanted response or reaction?


Ask yourself What occurs just before this negative or un-wanted state begins? This time, you want an associated image of what is going on immediately before you engage in the unwanted activity.



3. Put the replacement in the corner of unwanted image



Imagine a small postage-stamp sized version of your replacement picture in the bottom corner of the unwanted picture.


4. Swish the two images


Now you want t make both images change simultaneously and with increasing speed. (Experienced NLPers will select two critical submodalities to use here. However simply making the images change size and distance from you will work most of the time.)


Have the 'negative' image become smaller and shoot off into the distance. At the same time have the 'positive' replacement image become larger and closer until it replaces the negative image completely. Imagine a "swish" sound as you do this - hence the name. That's one Swish sound.

(Do this fairly slowly at first taking, say, 5-10 seconds to do it. Then continue, doing it a little faster each time, until you are swishing almost instantaneously - in less than a second!)


5 Clear your mind


After each Swish round blank your mind, fully! Think of something else or visualise your favourite colour. Breathing easily as you do this since some people tend to hold their breath while concentrating on doing the Swish. It is crucial to the success of the Swish to clear your mind or turn your attention outside before you do each next round.


6 Practice 5-7 times


Repeat steps 3 to 5 up to about seven times until you have difficulty in maintaining the unwanted image.


‘I don’t visualise’


This is a common belief. You can do an Auditory or a Kinaesthetic Siswish, too. So if you (or the other person if you are assisting someone else) believe that you have difficulty in visualising you could accept this belief and use a kinaesthetic or auditory swish.


Alternately, and often more effectively, you can act 'as if' you are visualising - i.e. you pretend that you visualising and simply follow the steps listed above. Curiously, this will often work just as effectively!


Skill with the Swish



Like all NLP techniques the Swish is best learned "live" in a workshop where you are able to interact with the facilitator and with other participants -- and where you learn the background steps before you get to actually do the Swish. However you can still get good results if you carefully follow the above tips.


Incidentally, the six steps listed above represents the "standard" Swish traditionally used in NLP. It works very well for many people, especially if it is used alongside lots of other NLP skills such as the use of language patterns, anchoring, and a keen of awareness of non-verbal responses.

Reiki - from emotional healing to selling your house!

As a seasoned reiki practitioner, this gentle form of healing never fails to amaze me in how it can deal with a multitude of problems from emotional problems to common physical ailments. Reiki since its arrival from Japan has become a popular therapy in the Western world, with more NHS trusts starting to include reiki as an alternative form of therapy alongside acupuncture and reflexology.

Reiki as a form of healing energy has always existed since the beginning of time but was discovered by a Japanese monk named Mikao Usui in the 1800s who went on a 21 day retreat to Mount Karuna, Japan. During Usui's visit to the mountains, the magical symbols were revealed to him that we now know as the reiki master symbol, power symbol, distance symbol and mental/emotional symbol. Usui is said to have cut his knee whilst climbing one of the mountains and used the healing energy on the wound which miraculously healed. As to whether the cut really did heal, does it really matter? No, not really but its a good story, not that different to a biblical tale!

When I heard this story I was somewhat skeptical until I was attuned to the energy myself. I wanted proof this therapy really did work! Attunements to reiki energy involve being attuned by a reiki master who will imprint the symbols on to your nervous system allowing the energy to flow through you. Once attuned I immediately felt different,all of a sudden, I had this tingling sensation flowing through my fingertips as if everything I touched had a surge of energy running through it. It was a strange sensation and I really felt like I had received a mental and emotional spring clean! That was several years ago and since then, I have used reiki on many different occasions from healing my pet dog, helping members of my family, friends and clients with their arthiritis and emotional problems to perhaps the most bizzarre of all,  moving house! I used my distance symbol to help the sale of my then property in Birmingham and the purchase of my new home in Yorkshire. At the time my property just was not shifting I had received several viewings but no buyers until I eventually I did get a buyer, they were originally putting in very silly offers that were no were near the asking price. I also had troublesome neighbours and the whole area had deteriorated with the arrival of problem families, drug dealing and a rise in crime. Not a great area to have to sell a property in! I used my reiki symbols night after night and fortold my property would sell and we would move into our new house on 8 July. My prophecy ended up being out by a day as we moved into our new home on 7 July and got the asking price we wanted which was incidently bought by the same family who had earlier gone in way below the asking price! Move over Phil and Kirsty!

For more information on reiki, visit www.whitelighthypno.co.uk

Depression - How to follow the road to recovery

Depression remains a very serious health issue in the UK with statistics showing that 1 in 4 Britons will suffer from a mental health problem within a given year. Most sufferers will commonly experience a combination of anxiety and depression. Between 8 and 12 percent of the population will struggle with depression and the effects on home, career, relationships and personal esteem are enormous.

Many people who present and are diagnosed with depressive symptoms by the time they reach the stage of contacting a therapist may have exhausted many avenues of treatment, such as their GP, taking SSRIs, self help books with varying degrees of success. Quite often sufferers may feel reluctant to try alternative therapies fearing they may not work or may do more harm than good and a whole host of other reasons.

The road to recovery for depression can, however, be experienced in a positive light if people are willing to view the illness as something that is there to inform them that something needs to change. As a former sufferer of the illness, I can confirm that the turning point to recovery for me was in understanding what it was that made me depressed, as a problem well stated is one that is half solved. I learned that how I thought about myself and the things that had happened to me in my past were affecting my feelings and my actions towards others and myself. The way we think about ourselves, our experiences and how we view the world forms a map which we construct from our own interpretations of what is said to us and what happens to us. Often as children we soak up all of these messages and make a number of errors in our thinking along the way. For example a child may have had a father who he constantly sought approval from but due to the father's own limitations was unable to give him the approval he so craved. The child may grow up to constantly seek approval from others in jobs, relationships and friendships. Once we learn that the map we constructed all those years ago can be reconstructed, we can travel on unchartered territory and enjoy that feeling of liberation as we shake off old limiting beliefs that have held us back from progressing forward.

If you are affected by depression you may want to start by looking at the negative thought patterns that are going through your mind right now, how are they are affecting you in your life? How are they limiting you? Where do you think they came from and how can you challenge them? Sometimes we can be totally unaware of these thoughts until we start to make an effort to focus on them, if it helps write them down.

Future orientation is also another part of the journey, what is it that you really want to achieve in your life and what will it feel like when you have arrived there? Can you think of a time when you felt really good, what it looked like, sounded like, felt like?

Motivation can often be a major obstacle to moving forward when depressed as we can often feel lethargic, tired and everything can feel like an enormous effort. The best way to improve general motivation is to learn how to relax this might the route of self hypnosis or meditation. Meditation is an excellent way of becoming at one with yourself and making peace with the mind. Simply learning how to watch the breath as we inhale and exhale the very breath that gives us life, or lighting a candle and becoming emersed in the flame can quiten the mind. When practiced daily, meditation can become a source of relaxation, enjoyment and a chance for us to experience feeling good again.

If you would like to know more about how to overcome depression and anxiety contact me at 01484 328 622 or visit www.whitelighthypno.co.uk

Cognitive Behavior Therapy Helps Older Adults With Anxiety Reduce Worry, Improve Mental Health

Older adults with generalized anxiety disorder who received cognitive behavior therapy had greater improvement on measures of worry, depression and mental health than patients who received usual care, according to a study in the April 8 issue of JAMA.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is common in late life, with prevalence up to 7.3 percent in the community and 11.2 percent in primary care. Late-life anxiety predicts increased physical disability, memory difficulties and decreased quality of life, according to background information in the article. Late-life anxiety is usually treated with medication, but associated risks (e.g., falls, hip fractures, memory problems) with some drugs and patient fears of adverse effects limit their usefulness. Two previous studies suggested benefits of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in primary care for late-life GAD, but the studies were small and the conclusions were limited. Older adults most often seek treatment for GAD in primary care.

Melinda A. Stanley, Ph.D., of the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, and colleagues conducted the first randomized clinical trial of CBT for late-life GAD in primary care to examine whether CBT would improve outcomes relative to enhanced usual care (EUC). The trial included 134 older adults (average age, 67 years) in two primary care settings, with treatment provided for 3 months. Assessments were conducted at the beginning of the trial, posttreatment (3 months), and over 12 months of follow-up, with assessments at 6, 9, 12 and 15 months. Patients were randomized to either CBT (n = 70), which included education and awareness, relaxation training, cognitive therapy, problem-solving skills training and behavioral sleep management; or EUC (n = 64), in which patients were telephoned biweekly during the first 3 months of the study by the same therapists to provide support and ensure patient safety. Therapists reminded patients to call project staff if symptoms worsened.

Levels of anxiety, worry, depression and physical/mental health quality of life were measured via various tests or surveys. The researchers found that CBT, compared with EUC, significantly improved worry severity, depressive symptoms and general mental health. In intention-to-treat analyses, response rates defined according to worry severity were higher following CBT compared with EUC at 3 months (40.0 percent vs. 21.9 percent).

"This study is the first to suggest that CBT can be useful for managing worry and associated symptoms among older patients in primary care," the authors write. "This study paves the way for future research to test sustainable models of care in more demographically heterogeneous groups."


What is Anxiety?

For more information on what anxiety is and what to do about it, please visit the Whitelight Hypnotherapy Centre website for more information and a free consultation or call 01484 328 622.

The Law of attraction and quantum physics

Following on from yesterday's post I came across this article by Kate Corbin. http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Law-of-Attraction-and-Quantum-Physics&id=223148

If you want to gain control over your life and achieve your goals in life contact the Whitelight Hypnotherapy Centre for a free consultation on 01484 328 622 or visit www.whitelighthypno.co.uk.

Everything equals energy

I was talking to a good friend of mine recently who is studying psychology and we were discussing the revelation we both found a while ago when we discovered that everything we connect with and observe in our lives is all energy. What is even more profound is that when we change how we think about situations in our lives, the things we look at change. When Albert Einstein was studying quantum physics he established that the smallest particles of energy will change depending on how the particles are being observed by the observer. I came across an interesting blog article by Wayne Dyer http://www.drwaynedyer.com/blog/success- which explains this idea in more detail. We all have the capacity to think about our current situations in more constructive ways, but as human beings we can often fall into the trap of getting stuck where we are or feeling life is sometimes conspiring against us when we face challenges. When you realise that everything is energy and you can choose right now to think differently about the situations in your life, it can be very liberating. You can choose how you want to feel, to appreciate what you already have and you can also choose to channel your mind towards what you really want out of life...whether it might be a better job, to be slimmer or to have a loving relationship or anything else where you feel a change is important. Its important to note that every action of mankind started with a thought! Our thoughts are the currency of energy so spend them wisely!

Tips for effective metaphors

When I first started out as a therapist, one of the most amazing discoveries that I made was the use of metaphor and its effect on the unconscious mind. Milton Erickson, the father of hypnosis used the most amazing techniques with his clients to elicit trance and reprogramme old ways of thinking, allowing the unconscious mind to make new choices and discoveries. Utilising everything the client brings with them into the therapy room both good and bad, Erickson was able to weave the most elaborate and multi-layered metaphors to make lasting and dramatic changes.

I quite often use metaphors along with hypnotic language patterns to help the client in making major life changes whether it might be to lose weight, blow boundary conditions, control stress and many other issues. One of my recent metaphors was helping a client to gain control over her ability to control stress and lead a healthier lifestyle. The lady in question had a very stressful job, quite often skipped lunch and snacked on unhealthy foods in the evening.

The metaphor suggested how good it would be to enjoy nature and take stock of all the natural beauty of the world around us, how we can become so absorbed and fascinated by other people and how when we pause to enjoy the moment whether its staring at a flower about to bloom, listening to a bird song, we regain that connection to the universe. I also incorporated how easy it would be to spend time to enjoy breaks such a this throughout the day, along with suggestions for ego strengthening and stress reduction. I recorded the metaphor on to a CD and also did the session on the lady's next visit and asked her to listen to that CD every night for about a week.

A week later she came back and reported that she had now made these changes, taking her little dog for longer walks, taking regular lunch breaks and no longer felt tempted to buy unhealthy foods from her local shop and how good she now felt and how it easy it has been to make these changes. She appeared brighter, happier, confident and much more relaxed.

I have used metaphor many times with clients and consistently received great results. If you would like to use metaphor in your practice, I would recommend the following:

Utilise what the client brings (ie , interests, favourite characters, holiday destinations, colours, nature, favourite things)

Clear construction - you are telling a story, you must have an induction to set the scene, a middle and an end where you can support the client in making their own discoveries and choices

Use VAKOG to fully awaken all the senses but try and be artfully vague (ie you can see the vivid colour of the sky above and feel at peace just looking at the rich textures and vivid colours of the trees and flowers)


The magic 3 - always repeat a suggestion using a language pattern but you can phrase it slightly differently each time but still relaying the same message (ie you find it so much easier to enter trance, entering trance will be so easy to do, its so easy to enter trance for you...

Post hypnotic - always include a post hypnotic such as suggesting to the client for example that they absorb all the positive suggestions you have given them for their health and well being will be carried out automatically once in the waking state

And finally be creative...dont be afraid to use your imagination - the unconscious mind likes a good story!

Some people ask me why I record my metaphors, the reason is simply the aid of repitition and ambiguity of language patterns means that each time a client listens to the recording they gain new and deeper understandings, which can not always be gained in just one session of hypnosis.

Combining therapies in one session

As a therapist you will often get a look of bewilderment or curiosity when you mention some of the treatments you may be considering using on a particular problem. I admit to loving the creative approach where you combine being flexible with effective but quick solutions that can often be combined in one session such as emotional freedom technique with nlp tools. I recently saw a gentlemen who had a fear of motorways, in particular the speed and the length of time spent on one. I asked him to think about this particular scene and we did measure out of 10 for fear so we can measure progress on a subjective level which came out at 8 out of 10.

Using NLP - shifting submodalities

I then asked him to picture the scene again but remove himself from the scene by imagining being in a cinema sitting on the back row watching himself on the motorway driving along and by shifting submodalities of that experience such as making the movie black and white, putting himself back into the scene and introducing a comical back seat driver and driving through a cartoon landscape, we can shift a distressing moment to one that is much more fun! We then rewound the scene, made it go forward, turned it into a framed picture, made it smaller and asked the client to replay the scene in their mind about 3 or 4 times until we notice certain changes. The main changes are body languagee, tone of voice and general demeanor of being much more relaxed and at peace.

EFT

To make absolutely sure we had rectified the problem we then did some eft, using just the basic tapping points. For anyone who wants to know more about eft please visit Gary Craig's website at www.emofree.com EFT is a wonderful technique and it is something you can teach a client in about 15 minutes. We then took another subjective measure of fear of motorways which we reduced to 4 out of 10. We then repeated eft oncee more and reduced the fear until we had a scale of 2 out 10. We did both of these techniques in less than 40mins. My client is now able to travel on motorways and has experienced no further problems with anxiety or fear since treatment.

for more information on NLP visit http://www.whitelighthypno.co.uk/neurolinguistic_programming.html

The Magic of Hypnosis

Much has been written about the power of the mind and how we all have the power to heal ourselves. I get many clients coming to me who may feel lost, stuck or unable find a solution to a problem they may have carried around for many years. Fortunately, I have yet to be asked 'will you make me cluck like a chicken or eat a raw onion?' Due to the positive media attention hypnotherapy has received in recent years people are beginning to understand how effective hypnosis can be for a wide variety of issues. However, the one question I do get asked is 'how will I know when I am in trance or I am not sure I can go into trance? We all enter a state of light to medium trance state everyday, without realising it, whether its reading a book, driving our usual route to work, watching television,shopping, working, listening to music, cleaning, cooking even making love. We have a particular style of trance for each one (ie a shopping trance, driving trance, etc). We also experience time distortion, how many times have you driven a familiar route but cant explain how you got from A to B in such a short space of time. The unconscious part of your mind is taking care of all of your automatic responses to driving so your conscious mind can concentrate on all the other stuff like watching out for the kid on the bike who steps into the road or unexpected roadworks! The mind works like a sophisticated computer. Your unconscious works like a hard drive storing all of your memories, experiences, emotions and thoughts that you ever had, whilst the conscious deals with all of the rational logical thoughts that you need to think about to get through your day, the two parts of the work together and overlap in many ways. The unconscious part of the mind is also where we store all our bad habits, negative thinking, phobias and fears. The magic of hypnosis is that it allow us to tap into the unconscious and effectively reprogramme ways of thinking and feeling about certain issues in our lives that are causing distress or no longer useful to us. The old saying 'we are more than our minds' is very true and once we realise this fact we can take control of thoughts and how we really want to feel. We all have the resources we need within ourselves to live our lives with true purpose and happiness.

For more information visit: http/www.whitelighthypno.co.uk