I can't explain it but...

Many people are sceptical of complementary therapy. And very many are sceptical about hypnotherapy and EFT. Even some of my clients are sceptical about the therapies I practise. Yet they are willing to come along and pay me. This is amusing though it shouldn't be.

I had one such client this morning.

"I can't explain it but I have stopped snacking between meals. I don't know why but I stopped doing that instantly after our first session."

So she came to see me and we worked with some hypnosis and she has been listening diligently to the CD I gave her. Yet she doesn't know why she has stopped her snacking?! It surely couldn't be the hypnotherapy could it? No of course not, it couldn't possibly be anything to do with the 2 hour session that we just had together!

We worked with Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) today and I showed my client a very nifty EFT method to get rid of cravings. After we finished, she really did not want to eat the bag of crisps that I offered her. And yet she remains sceptical about whether EFT really works. OK, I'll almost give you that one because EFT is so new and different, but I promise you it does work. It just got rid of your craving for crisps!

EFT is the background workhorse, quietly chipping away at negative emotions, removing obstacles. Every single objection can be swept away and dealt with. All the excuses can be simply and quickly zapped. All the "I can't because..." that I hear so often from my weight loss clients are deleted and removed so we can get on with the business at hand - losing weight with hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy makes reducing calories easier. EFT gets rid of the obstacles to long-term, effective weight loss. And so it clears the way for hypnotherapeutic work. If you want to lose weight but are finding it difficult, try hypnotherapy.

More at www.northamptonhypnosis.co.uk

Gastric Band Surgery with Hypnosis

Yes really!

Take a look at this news report: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5357013/Woman-lost-4st-after-hypnotist-convinced-her-of-gastric-band-fitting.html#

If you can't be bothered, I will summarise! So an obese woman goes to a hypnotherapist who hypnotises her into believing that she has had gastric band surgery. She knows she has not but still she can only eat small amounts of food. Since her food consumption has dropped, so does her weight.

It's a simple cause and effect but the case is interesting for a hypnotherapist. You are wondering, "Is this real? Can this really be done?" Yes of course it can. I won't bore you with the how and why I believe this case can work but it is totally possible. Hypnosis can help with weight loss and the "hypnotic gastric band" is clearly one method of achieving that. I haven't employed that method yet but perhaps I should!

Want to know more about hypnosis? My website www.northamptonhypnosis.co.uk should answer most of your questions. Or give me a call. Researching the solution is only background information, picking up the phone to make an appointment is really making that solution happen for you.

Derren Brown

Derren Brown, entertainer, showman and illusionist (my description) has angered me beyond belief. On his show on Friday night he performed a rapid hypnotic induction on a highly suggestible young man. He then gave him the command to go to a bank and take out £5K and give it to Derren, which he did. Derren then helpfully erased his memory of the event.

Derren was then able to use the £5K to go gambling at a casino. There was far more to the show than this and I would argue that it was one of Derren's least entertaining shows but never mind.

The point I would like to make is that he was extremely irresponsible in doing this. The entire thing may easily have been staged. I know of no bank that allows you to spontaneously withdraw £5K in cash. And 5 days later the young man said he had no recollection of the meeting. Had he not noticed a £5K hole in his finances?

It matters not one jot whether this was real or staged. What matters is that it looked to the viewer that hypnosis is mind control. I spend a considerable time with new clients to bust this myth and to reassure them that if I directed them to give me large sums of money from the cashpoint then they would not comply. If any of my clients both past and future potential were watching then they will have lost all confidence in what I said!

I cannot tell you how infuriated I am. My clients have to have confidence in me, in the therapeutoic nature of hypnotherapy and in my moral use of the techniques. Everything I do is directed at achieving the clients' goals, to help them achieve what they want to achieve and trust me, none of them want to give me huge sums of cash - not at first anyway!

I would just like to reassure everyone that in a hypnotic trance, a client will comply with the hypnotherapist in accordance with his/her own deeply held beliefs and values. So if you want the therapist to help you with a fear of flying then you will respond to all that is said which relates to fear of flying. therefore you will comply with that part of therapy because it is what you want. My explanation of the young subject on the Derren Brown show (if it was not staged) is that he wanted to give him the money because he liked Derren, he wanted to help him, he wanted to feel that he was a special part of his show and that no one else could help Derren out, that he was receiving special treatment, that he would be rewarded and that there was no risk to his money. Of course, this would not be show on TV because Derren is a showman, he cannot reveal all his secrets.

It is important to remember that Derren Brown is not a hypnotherapist although he does sometimes engage in positive hypnotherapeutic techniques, as in the Trick or Treat series. A hypnotherapist who is a member of a professional body such as the General Hypnotherapy Register, the National Council for Hypnotherapy or the British Society of Clinical Hypnotherapists would never attempt to influence a client in the way that Derren does with the willing participants on his show.

If you want real therapy then don't ask an entertainer!

Find out more at my website: www.northamptonhypnosis.co.uk

Are you a Weight Watcher?

A substantial number of my clients are trying to control their weight. In fact they are trying to lose weight. I can help people to maintain or increase but the ones who are trying to be slimmer are those who find their way to me.

I feel like I am a Weight Watcher, looking over my clients' shoulders at their scales, squinting myopically to get the first read of the dial. If they have lost in the week, then all is well, but if a pound has crept on instead, I am in for a rocky time!

When an individual comes to see me for help they are handing over their life to me, or a certain section of it. they like to place the responsibilty on me, so I become the crutch, to prop them up. Holding them up, I gently lead them, support them and walk with them through whatever issue it is that they are navigating. After a time, they start to forget that they need the crutch and start to walk forward by themselves, often turning back just to check I am still here and watching.

It's the tmes when things don't go so well that my clients really lean on me. When that pound is added instead of shedded, it is often, "I don't understand it, I did everything you told me." Or there are tales of not quite managing to "be good" this week. Either way, it's ok, I just have to prop them up, do some more work with them, find out the potential pitfalls and deal with them. This is a lot of effort on my part, to pick someone up who feels like they have fallen, but we manage it and the individual goes on to success.

Weight loss with hypnosis can be the easiest weight loss programme of all, if you put a little time in, if you follow the therapist's instructions. And the weight stays off too, that's the really good bit. It is slow but it lasts. A client phoned me this week, who has not had a session since June or July. He is hoping to hae lost one more pound when he weighs in this week. That will be 21 pounds since April and he is looking forward to it so much as it will bring his BMI down to below 30. It has taken him 23 weeks to achieve this and he is still doing well. You can do it too.

More on my website www.northamptonhypnosis.co.uk

Can you Stop Smoking in one Hour?

Well can you? Is it possible? Of course it is; you can stop smoking in an instant if you want to, it doesn't take a full hour for a magic transformation to take place!

Stopping smoking or quitting smoking is one of the standard treatments that Hypnotherapists offer. Almost all of them offer a one session treatment to be free of cigarettes. I don't do this. I think I may be alone in offering a 2 session program. But my program works!

What I do is to get to know the person properly first. We explore the reasons why someone smokes and why they think they smoke, what the cigarettes do for them. Then I bust all the myths about smoking - it helps me to relax, it helps me concentrate etc. After that we take a good look at what the person thinks they are going to find difficult and what things or situations might trip them up and cause them to smoke again.

You see, unless you really address all these issues, you have left too much to chance. If someone truly believes that he needs cigarettes to get through difficult work situations, if you take them away, how is he then going to cope with the difficult meetings? You can't remove something and leave a vacuum. "Nature abhors a vacuum" remember. If you are not careful, something else destructive might worm its way in, like overeating.

So, after I have found all the barriers to a person's success, I go about giving them strategies to overcome these barriers. I may use hypnosis or NLP. What I always do, is give them homework for the following week. This is in the form of Emotional Freedom Technique, to remove negatives, to blast barriers and zap obstacles.

My clients go away feeling motivated, uplifted and ready to set about the task of quitting. Occasionally they don't! And for these clients, they just go home and decide to carry on smoking or maybe come back at another time. You can't force these things, everyone has their own timetable and if someone is still unsure after a session with me then the time is not right for them. The chance of success is low so in order not to experience failure, it's better to wait until they are ready. And that's fine.

So my clients go away for a week and when they come back they have destroyed all their smoking paraphernalia. That pot outside the back door is gone, the lighters thrown away, ashtrays cleaned and given to charity. Clean fresh clothes on. One client even washed her curtains before her appointment.

So my client returns, absolutely ready to be a non-smoker, champing at the bit, raring to go. We do a bit more EFT and then I perform the hypnosis session. This is the hour long session that so many hypnotherapists give their clients. And the person walks out of the door as a non-smoker - every time.

The 2 session program works. I have seen it time and again. I have amended it twice for clients who were desperate to do it in one go and I won't do that again, because both of them ran into difficulties which they should not have done. I don't like to see that.

Let me give you some case studies. One lady came to see me, who identified in her first session that cigarettes helped her cope with stress and that if anything was going to stop her from successfully quitting it was her mother. So I was able to see that her problem was stress with her mother, not cigarettes at all. SO I worked first with her for 3 sessions on resolving that stress and how she could manage her relationship better. When she had that under control, she was then ready to become a non-smoker. If we had gone ahead and attempted the one stop smoking hypnosis session, I predict that it would not have worked for her in the long-term.

Another gentleman came to see me for stress, over-drinking and smoking. He revealed that he drank between 70 and 100 units of alcohol per week, he was generally mildly unhappy, had recently retired and couldn't seem to control his drinking. He said he wanted to get that under control first and then deal with the smoking. We worked together for 4 or 5 sessions, while he gained control of his drinking and became more optimistic and motivated. At that point he said he wanted to consolidate and wasn't ready to quit smoking just yet because he was so happy his drinking was now at manageable levels. He had achieved what he wanted to achieve at that point, it really wasn't necessary to push a stop smoking hypnosis session at him too.

So to answer my question I first posed; yes I do believe it is possible to stop smoking with hypnosis in one hour BUT this approach will not be successful with everyone. Hypnosis to stop smoking will be successful for nearly everyone when a longer, slower approach is employed that takes into account the individual's circumstances and beliefs and works to set the stage for success before the "one hour" session is employed.

There's more on my website http://www.northamptonhypnosis.co.uk/quit_smoking.htm

Being Thankful

It's too long since I regularly "blogged" and I have lost many of my friends on the journey. But that's ok, perhaps I will make some new ones. I've not been in full health and there's a reason for that which I don't yet fully understand. Understanding will come though.

Today's post is about thankfulness and mindfulness. It will strike a chord with those of you who follow a religion. To others it will sound overtly "Pollyanna-ish" and perhaps some will want to scream at me. To let you in, I have been through all of those reactions so just accept your reaction fopr what it is. That's mindfulness.

So my subject is to be thankful. There definitely is something to be learned in every situation that life throws at us. When all is going our way, we rarely stop to consider what we are learning. Perhaps that is becuase the soul is not developing, perhaps it is too easy. When life is tough, sometimes a small voice nags us to understand that every part of life is a journey and that we will be picking up experiences and learning from them. Yet when we are in physical or emotional pain or mental anguish engulfs us, then how on earth can we take anything positive from where we are?

That's when the screaming voice can take over and want to cut down any self-righteous, patronising do-gooder who looks on sympathetically and tells us to "be positive."

AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!

But if you look closely, there is an ingredient missing from the recipe and it is TIME. In the thick of it, in the middle of the fight, all you can do is protect yourself from the blows and strike out when you get the opportunity. Only later when you analyse it with your coach and watch the video footage will you be able to gain the perspective you need to really learn from the mistakes you made in the ring.

So try this now. Look backwards in time and pick a time or situation or a person which you would rather miss out if you could play the film of your life again. With the perspective of time, examine the video footage and see if you can identify the positive aspects. What did you do well? But most of all, what are you thankful for?

I would rather forget and miss out the experience of marriage to my first husband but on so many days I have reason to feel thankful for the time we spent together. He taught me to cook! To cook real, fresh food and to experiment, to not be afraid in the kitchen. I still have the cookery book he patronisingly bought me the week before our wedding - it is a firm favourite of mine.

If I take this concept further and extrapolate the effect of learning to cook, I can thank my ex-husband for my health. Ten years of eating unprocessed, fresh food has doubtless had a positive effect on my health. It is a strange feeling to thank him for that but I cannot deny it.

Finding something positive in a bad situation liberates us from the negative emotional effects of that unfortunate experience. For some people there may be much healing required but the exercise of thankfulness can be a start.

Try that today.

Emotional Freedom Technique

Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT will be the "next big thing" in my humble opinion. It is a system of tapping on acupuncture points on the body which brings about emotional and physical relief from all kinds of negative emotions and physical symptoms.

Try this article:

Surgeon Uses New Acupressure Technique to Lower Surgery Risk

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) -- Almost everyone who’s scheduled for surgery experiences at least a few symptoms of anxiety. But while some stress is normal, patients who experience severe anxiety actually increase their need for sedating drugs and subsequent complications such as severe pain, slower wound healing, and increased risk of infection, adverse drug reactions, cognitive impairment, and longer hospital stays.

According to Los Angeles surgeon Eric Robins, MD, there’s a simple way to reduce these risks by reducing the anxiety that causes them. His prescription is EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), a simple do-it-yourself procedure that combines gentle fingertip tapping on key acupuncture points with focused thought.

“Stress is a real problem in health and healing,” says Dr. Robins. “but it doesn’t just complicate surgery, it actually contributes to disease. Most of the problems that send people to surgeons are themselves linked to stress, anxiety, or past traumas. I like EFT because it’s easy to demonstrate, easy to learn, works fast, and addresses an illness’s underlying factors. In some cases, it works so well that we have to cancel the operation.”

One of Dr. Robins’ patients was scheduled for surgery because she wasn’t able to void urine after a knee replacement. During her pre-op exam, Dr. Robins wondered whether emotional factors might be interfering with the function of her bladder.She answered that stress from her husband’s recent illness might be a factor. “Even though we were talking in a busy medical clinic with many distractions,” says Dr. Robins, “I taught her EFT and guided her through 10 minutes of tapping. After we filled the patient’s bladder with water and removed her catheter, she voided just fine. Five days later she was still doing well, making the surgery unnecessary. Her symptoms never returned.

”When surgery is needed, he says, EFT can reduce or eliminate pre-op nerves, reduce the patient’s need for anesthetics, speed recovery, and improve the procedure’s outcome.

Reducing a patient’s need for sedating drugs is important not only to those with drug sensitivities but to America’s aging population. According to the American Society of Anesthesiologists, over half of patients age 60 and older experience confusion and other symptoms of cognitive impairment when discharged after surgery, and three months later, over a third continue to be adversely affected. Patients undergoing heart surgery, joint replacement, or fracture repair are at greatest risk of anesthesia-related mental decline.

Gary Craig, the Stanford-trained engineer who developed EFT, has collected thousands of reports from EFT practitioners around the world. “Several describe how by reducing their anxiety, patients reduced and in some cases eliminated their need for epidurals and other drugs or procedures,” he says. “Others demonstrate how EFT speeds recovery and helps patients regain their full range of motion and resume their normal activities.”

“EFT is one of my favorite healing tools,” says Dr. Robins. “It’s the perfect complement to conventional medicine, and I strongly recommend it for anyone getting ready for surgery.”

This article cites Eric Robins, a well-respected medical doctor and author of many self-help books in the USA.

EFT is an amazing therapy, it can be used on anything and everything. I use it frequently in my practice and teach it to most of my clients, in whom I have seen several miraculous results. Hypnotherapy is excellent for adding in the positive, to encourage new ways of behaving. For deleting old unhelpful ways of living, negative self-defeating thoughts and the negative self-talk that we use, you simply can't beat EFT.