What a lovely job

I have had such a good day today. So good that I feel the need to tell everyone about it.

My first client today has made huge leaps and bounds in an incredibly short time. I just loved seeing her so happy and positive again.

My next client was someone who had booked in late for a single issue in a single session. What a wonderfully lovely man! One of the perks of my job is meeting so many interesting and truly "nice" people. This man however was truly something special. He works at a job at the moment but is looking to find a different path in life that reflects his true personaility. He is NLP and EFT trained and I feel sure that he would make a sensitive, nurturing and successful therapist. The work we carried out, although brief was good and effective and my client phoned me later to tell me all about his successful afternoon.

There's a lesson to us all here - sometimes we have to make a leap of faith. And sometimes we have to be employed to fund what we really enjoy in life whatever it is. And if we remain open to opportunity and instinct then we can also sometimes be fortunate enough to do what we love in return for money.

My last client of the day is proper special. He is autistic and I have blogged about him before. He has also made such enormous strides and I felt so proud of him today for the progress he had made.

And, and, and... one of my clients phoned me this weekend and everything in her life is sounding VERY promising too.

I fitted in more today, but I just had to write these parts of it down. It has been an extra special day in many ways. What's that word? Ah yes - gratitude.

Hypno-Birthing

I have been training this weekend, on a masterclass in hypnosis for childbirth. It has become popularly known as "hypno-birthing" but an American training company have tried to copyright the word in UK. It's a shame as the general public are only using the term in the same way as we might say "hypno-dieting" meaning using hypnosis for dieting. Anyhow, the words hypno-birthing have not been copyrighted so I will use them to describe the process of using hypnosis training to assist in childbirth.

It's a great system. If you are hypnotically trained to use hypnosis to keep calm and relaxed then you do not impede your body's ability to give birth. Very many women in our culture have come to believe that birth is a painful ordeal so they fear it. Because they are fearful they tense up and this tension actually creates pain and really can hinder the baby's smooth passage into the world.

Hypnotocally trained women have no fear, only confidence in their own abilities and so they tend to have shorter, more comfortable and simpler labours and births. They also have shorter recovery times, less incidence of post-natal depression and better breast feeding outcomes. The babies also have higher Apgar scores and tend to be calmer.

It's so simple, I don't know why every woman doesn't use hypnosis for birth!

This was a good masterclass though and although I didn't actually learn anything new, I verified my knowledge and skills and, swot that I am, I was top student too. With any luck, it will make up for England losing to Germany again. At least I didn't have to sit through the match :-)

Is it stress or too much to do?

Sometimes there really is too much to do in life. Which is why I am sitting here blogging about it, because I am bored with working and tidying and decided to write about it whilst putting my laptop back in my study.

Not only do I have a full-on day helping people, I then have to pick up a tired and often grumpy 3 year old from nursery. On arrival at home I have to coax him out of the car (safely) and get him into the house (safely) at which point I then have to deal with a bouncing and starving labrador. Trying to feed both 3 year old and dog without one of them imploding is a task in itself.

(Oh and add in the clearing up of dog sick at least once a week, in fact twice today)

After tea time, getting an even more tired small person bathed, teeth-brushed, toileted and into bed without ructions provides yet more fun and games.

So by 7.30 I am ready to start the rest of the day's work. Cooking a meal, clearing up, washing up, opening the post, checking emails, a bit of book-keeping, filing from the day's work and preparation for the next. Then after all that's done there is washing and house cleaning to do.

Sometimes I do wonder where I'm going wrong...

Changing Memories

Can you change a memory? Well to a point, yes you can.

Sometimes, people who have been through a distressing or traumatic event would like their memory of it wiped. This we cannot do. The making of a memory involves a chemical change in the brain, and this cannot be erased.

But the mind is both incredibly intelligent and at the same time, fluid and plastic, childlike and susceptible to manipulation. Aha, this gives us a way in for therapuetic use.

The mind cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy. So over time, if memories change subtly, the mind literally does not know. It can add or take away detail and emotions. So we can use this to our therapeutic advantage.

Let's give a simple example. Someone who is good at making presentations and public speaking has very many successful speeches stored away in memory. So he or she can feel confident about the next one because all his evidence is that he is good at public speaking - all his memories tell him that. The person who is nervous or panicky about it is the person who does not have this data stored in his mind. He has no evidence of previous success to work on.

So what we can do is create some "memories" for him. We work, in hypnotic trance, to create some fantasies of successful times giving a speech or presentation. Then the mind does have some successful evidence with which to back up confident feelings. We are essentially rehearsing the event mentally. there are many ways to do this and each hypnotheapist will use which ever techniques seem appropriate to the client and the situation.

And what about Bloody Sunday? Well, as we travel further in time from the original event, the memories become less reliable. If even a tiny trace of different evidence takes root in the mind, it can change the original memory, hence the reason why so many people reported that they had been the saviour of the finger. They probably all believe it too. Have you heard the expression, "He had told the lie so often, he had almost come to believe it himself" ? It is a line that I have only ever read in novels but it speaks the truth.

Memory - Fact or Fiction?

The memory is not reliable. It is in no way as sophisticated as we think it is. "Facts" are remembered inconsistently, inaccurately and can be tinged with our beliefs and values.

Just take the memory of a sports match for instance. The supporters of the side who won will most likely think it was a "good game" whereas the losing side's supporters will most often remember the negative aspects of the game play.

Some years ago there were some experiments conducted where a crime was staged in front of an unsuspecting audience. During the interviews immediately afterwards, there was little consensus over how many people were involved, what they were wearing and what actually happened. There was stark disagreement over seemingly obvious details liek whether the man was wearing a dark jacket with light trousers or was it in fact a light jacket and his trousers were dark. Such inconsistencies make us wonder about the evidence given in many court cases.

In the aftermath of the Bloody Sunday shootings, a severed finger was found in the road. It had been carefully placed in a matchbox. By the time of the subsequent inquiry, no less than 14 people claimed that they had been the person who had found and picked up the finger and put it in the box. Clearly this cannot be truth. Only one person had in fact carried out this act.

So the mind and memory can play tricks on us, and it does, frequently. How this relates to hypnotheray will be explained in another post.

And, I haven't forgotten about explaining the "inner child" either!

Patience!

Detox

I haven't blogged about my detox yet although I have bored my friends face to face and on Facebook.

In the past I have detoxed by eating fruit and vegetables for a week and I once did a 3-day juice detox. This time I really went for it in a totally different way. A couple of weeks ago I went on what you might call an "Aloe" Detox programme.

It took a little bravery to try because it was not easy in the slightest. I bought a pack from a company called Forever Living, which some of you may have heard about. It was a 9 day plan, the worst of which was easily Day 2, although the morning of Day 1 was no picnic!

It involves drinking copious quantities of inner leaf Aloe Vera gel. And I cannot lie, it tastes pretty foul. The first 2 or 3 drinks were bearable but by the end of Day 2 I had given in and added fruit juice! Tough girl that I am, there are some things that I don't really want to do. Getting back to the plan, on Day 1 and 2, all you actually "eat" is one meal replacement shake at lunchtime! Yes! The rest of the day is filled with drinking aloe juice and water and taking supplements of bee pollen and a herb called Garcinia with Chromuim.

So, honestly Days 1 and 2 weren't funny. Day 3 however was so much nicer as you start the day with, wait for it.... a meal replacement shake! Hooraaaay! So in addition to the aloe juice and supplements you have a shake for breakfast and lunch and then a real dinner! My God, how much was I looking forward to it! And yet, I couldn't finish. My husband laughed. I felt like crying.

And the next 7 days followed the same pattern. I ate small evening meals and felt perfectly full up and not hungry at all. On the morning of Day 3 I really did wake up feeling more energetic and the increase of energy continued throughout the week. It was completely amazing!

By the end of 9 days I had lost 7.5 lb in weight, 4cm off my waist, 3cm off my hips and 2cm off my thighs. HOW???? It's quite incredible.

So apart from that, I achieved what I wanted, which was to feel more energetic, wake up feeling awake, lose my sluggish mind and digestion and end my sugar and carb cravings. The 9 day plan achieved the whole lot and I remain surprised, but it honestly did it for me. A couple of weeks later, my weight has stayed off and I don't feel like over-eating or snacking. My energy levels stay up throughout the day and I am waking earlier and feeling like getting up immediately rather than struggling out of bed. My meals remain small and I am eating very few carbs and no bread.

I feel so great and am so glad I did it. I recommend it to anyone who feels like I did. In fact I am condidering telling my weight loss clients all about it as a great way of kick-starting their weight loss. I'm still suprised at the fantastic effects it has had.

Ok, I'll stop gushing now, but it's hard not to!

Progress after Perseverence

It sounds like a chapter from "Pilgrims Progress" doesn't it!

Well I have had my patience tested over the last weeks. I started working with a teenage boy who I think it is fair to say is quite a way over on the autistic spectrum (ASD). His father describes his communication difficulties as "severe."

Anyway I started working with him a few months ago and it has been tough, for all of us I think. At the start I gave his parents no illusions of my expectation of a successful treatment. It was clearly going to be experimental and I did not know how much impact, if any, my work would have on their son. And yet over the last 2 weeks, his parents have reported distinct signs of progress. His mum was so much happier and he must surely feel happier to be going through less distress, even if he can't express it to us.

I have worked mainly with Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) using quite a lot of the "Choices" or "Alternate Phrase" technique, after Dr Patricia Carrington. I then started to blend a little eye movement therapy into my tapping sequences, from EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing.) I worked very instinctively as we went and I had little indication of any progress.

And now, after weeks of work with both me and his parents we have some signs of a distinct improvement. I am so thrilled for us all! And I so want this to be a lasting change.

So, in this case perseverence has been key I think. Some of my clients don't quite understand this point!