Why it’s hard to lose weight only using will power and what you can do about it

Weight Loss

Hypnosis – Emotional Freedom Technique – NLP

It takes a lot of energy and continued vigilance to use the conscious mind to help with weight loss, and the chances for long term success are, as we all know, not good. Dieting is notorious for being able to achieve short term results but not necessarily so good for the long term. Counting calories is difficult and it is hard work to keep the momentum going.

Although making any worthwhile change is likely to need some will power finding the most efficient and successful option is especially important for weight control.

Hypnosis is a favourite way to change old habits and replace them with new healthy ones. However we have to know how to engage the brain chemicals we want and disengage the ones we don’t want.

Sounds complicated but with the right information it can be done. Serotonin, Dopamine, Endorphins and Oxytocin are all “feel good chemicals” being constantly triggered in the body. We just aren’t always consciously aware when they are operating and how to make them work to our advantage.

Dopamine gives us a “feel good” hit. But what we don’t always have is a buffer to first check if this is a healthy dopamine fix or just a short term gain? The question we must ask is am I going to enjoy that hit in a healthy way or am I just fuelling an addiction? Our brains are wired to look for dopamine hits but our brains are not always listening to our cognitive thinking process. We need to be able to weigh up whether something is healthy for us or not and be able to act on that information.

By eating that chocolate or doughnut when we feel sad, disappointed or bored we have been getting our shot of dopamine. But that is a fake hit that literally will continually need feeding. And unfortunately it will be followed by regret and an unpleasant shot of cortisol that tells us we have failed again.

The key is knowing how to recognise these “feel good chemicals” (feelings) and be able to respond appropriately by using them to our advantage. If we can do this then we will start to have some control over our unconscious thinking processes and achieve much better results.

Hypnosis, EFT and NLP are great tools to help us engage in this sort of work. They help our mind and body coordinate and connect so we can make powerful unconscious changes. This does not mean that we just close our eyes and it all happens. An important part of exploring these good feelings is our own engagement in the process.

So knowing how to engage your happy chemicals you will be able to engage your will power. This will really help you achieve the results you have been looking for. Knowing how to use these brain chemicals in the best way for your personal health and satisfaction will help you make more of the healthy choices you deserve.

Addiction – Is there a hypnotic loop that drives us?

Addction

Addiction and Dopamine

Addiction can be one of the hardest things in our lives to turn round. We may be able to rapidly “switch off” a phobia using hypnosis. And we may be surprised how quickly and effectively it is possible to release ourselves from anxiety and stress once we have the right tools to do so.

So why do addictions often take more time to resolve?

One reason is the complex neural and mental programmes working beneath our awareness and continuing to drive us however hard we try to resist.

We all live with addiction of some sort. Food, TV, Facebook, Video games, Alcohol etc. These are not bad habits as long they are under a certain amount of control. But when they are accompanied by negative changes in our daily life then it really is time to address them.

Do you recognise a warm relaxing feeling of pleasure and reward that your addiction gives you?

That feeling is the brain chemical dopamine and it plays a large part in the reason we get addicted. Addiction will follow the easy way to get dopamine hits. A dopamine hit that we have to earn is not as attractive as a dopamine hit we can get instantly. And soon we are locked into a cycle that takes over the brain and literally starts rewiring it!

Think this dopamine model doesn’t apply to you?

To change an addictive behaviour it is important to recognise what is happening on an unconscious level and bring it to a conscious level. For instance I just walked away from my computer to take some washing out of the machine. Nothing abnormal about that but…I then realised that emptying the machine gave me a little more dopamine reward than writing this post. When I have finished this post I will get a feeling of satisfaction and reward. But I will have to wait for that reward until I have finished.

Emptying the washing machine gives me feeling of satisfaction and reward that I can get NOW! And the point is that it is fractionally more than I get from relentlessly typing on the computer keyboard!

Just start to notice these subtle triggers in your daily life

Now is the time to start controlling any destructive habits. Hypnosis, NLP, EFT and EMDR are powerful tools to help you kick the old habits.  As you start to recognise these subtle triggers you may be very surprised at what is happening.

Knowledge is the first key to achieving change. The second is having the tools to make the change. A good professional therapist will have the tools and knowledge to help guide and support you all the way.

Roger Foxwell MBSCH Dhyp DHP

Hypnotherapy, Emotional Freedom Technique, NLP, EMDR

Building Confidence and Self Esteem with Hypnosis

Self Esteem

Hypnosis can really help you regain confidence

There are many books and YouTube videos out there showing different ways and strategies to help build your confidence and self esteem with many useful tips to help deal with issues such as these. A book or video can only take us so far since making changes without releasing past experiences and causes that got us into that position are likely to block us from the next step. We will know all about how we want to feel but very likely find that there is a “road block” keeping us from putting all the changes into action.

We have different therapies and modalities available to us to help us make the changes we are looking for but in my point of view we don’t necessarily need to spend five years on the psychotherapist’s couch trying to resolve past experiences and issues.

Now this is not to say that this type of therapy is not valuable and many people find it useful to talk about their past to help clear the present. However even if we do spend that amount of time working on our past we would have no hope of discovering every little issue, disappointment and trauma that occurred along the way in our lives. We may have clear recollection of certain incidents from our past that could have been significant but some of our issues will have been passed down through our parents DNA, their parents DNA and all the experiences we had when young.

Having said that, there is a part of us that knows all about every one of these experiences and that is our unconscious mind. Often called the creative unconscious the creative unconscious is the part of us that knows how to let go of any unconscious material that may be restricting how to create the confident and comfortable self that we know we could be.

Hypnosis, in the form of hypnotherapy is one of the quickest, safest and most effective ways to make empowering and deep change safely and rapidly. (This is not to be confused with stage hypnosis which uses the hypnotic part of the mind but obviously not the therapy work)

The changes we are looking for are in our imagination as are the blocks that have been keeping us disconnected from them. If I want to go to the shop I need to make a picture in my mind of what the shop looks, I need to roughly imagine the route I will take otherwise I would never get past the front door!

With hypnosis you have the opportunity to open up that route and replace the “road blocks” with more of the feelings and experiences that you know you deserve to bring into your life.

And this is why Hypnotherapy and working with a qualified and expert practitioner is a safe, powerful and rapid therapy that helps many, many people achieve so much more in their lives every day.

And if you would like to sample the experience of relaxation and trance you can try my –

Now Simply Relax – Deep Relaxation Video on YouTube

I hope you enjoy it

Life Coaching and Hypnotherapy

Therapist

Is a Therapist a Life Coach and is a Life Coach a Therapist?

Well yes and no.

A Therapist will need therapy credentials to be able to set up their practice and a Life Coach will presumably have been through certain training before setting up their practice.

The more I have developed my Hypnotherapy practice and brought in various other trance based modalities the more I realise how much EVERYTHING COUNTS. For instance if I am working with a business client who feels nervous giving a presentation then one of the many things I need to offer that client are tools to manage their anxiety otherwise all their valuable work could be overwhelmed by their fear of public speaking. On the other hand if I am a Life Coach helping a business client feel comfortable in these situations they also will require to offer, for example voice projection and presentation tools. And so here we begin to see that success for the client is supported by both the coaching aspect and the therapy aspect of their treatment.

When I continued to bring in more techniques and tools that covered more eventualities the results began to speak for themselves.

So I found myself joining tools for life coaching and tools for therapy together. As they say, “you only get one chance to make a good impression” whether it is interviewing for a job or speaking to a few hundred people in a packed auditorium. To grasp that opportunity how much better to have a powerful selection of tools, coaching and therapy, that cover as many eventualities as possible.

Some people are looking for coaching to help them and some are looking for therapy to help them. Yet Hypnosis, Life Coaching and Therapy can begin to easily and fluidly become one and the same thing. Trance is a state of Hypnosis and Life Coaching is a form of therapy. Hypnosis is a state of trance and therapy is a form of Life Coaching.

Everything overlaps and extending one’s skills in overlapping areas will help give clients more information and power to develop the changes they are looking for.

Some people will be looking for a Life Coach and some for a Hypnotherapist but where does one end and the other begin. The titles may be different but the real differences are more likely to be in the personalities and specialties of each practitioner.

So the best advice is first look for recommendations you can trust. Engage your intuition to help you get the best match for you and your issue whether a Therapist, Hypnotherapist or Life Coach.

Or perhaps you would like all three?

HYPNOSIS and what really happens in a hypnotherapy session

Hypnotherapy Session

So you’ve been watching videos and television clips of hypnotists at work and with a command to “SLEEP” or a tug of the arm the person in front of them flops down on the couch, becomes totally rooted to the spot or they completely forget their name.

Amazing, you think to yourself. If I go see a hypnotherapist I could have my smoking habit, my anxiety and my phobia sorted by lunchtime and I will be a new person!

Does it really happen like this?

Well yes and no.

Yes, I have clients who after we have been working in a session for a while who, for a few moments, can’t remember what their issue was. However this means the issue is now not in the forefront of their mind so we are making good progress. Or some who are already drifting into a trance as we continue talking. I may at that part of the session have to reorient them “back into the room” since that may not be the best moment for that particular state to engage. Or later, after doing a deep body relax they quite probably feel so comfortable that they might not want to open their eyes. I will then suggest they take their time “as they come back into the room.”

What is happening? We will be engaging certain states of mind that will have been appropriately introduced depending on what we are working on. Sometimes a client may only be in “eyes closed” for few moments during a full session. But we will be choosing the trance just as you unconsciously are choosing your own trance as you read this post or when you drive your car.

I remember a client telling me he didn’t think he had been hypnotised so I asked him “and what did I say?” Looking a bit perplexed he said “I don’t know”.

Hypnosis or trance is happening all the time within us. Even the organising of the words in this post are designed to attract the attention in a way that helps draw you and your imagination into the story. To facilitate change we must harness the creative and cognitive parts of our mind to work together. This skill will help us achieve the changes and goals in life we are looking for.

The job of the hypnotherapist is to give clients the tools that they can use to enable them to engage their own inner knowledge and “arrange their own story” in the very best way they can for the future.

And, by the way, enjoy the process at the same time.

So you think you know what Hypnosis is?

 

Or do you?

There are so many different descriptions of the state of hypnosis that even hypnotists and hypnotherapists will have their own definitions of hypnosis. As hypnotherapists we tend to define it more in relation to the particular way we do our work.

I could put someone into a relaxing trance. Or mesmerise them with the positive changes they could make in their lives. Or hypnotise them so they can recall or forget to remember a past memory.

Although the typical picture of someone in hypnosis will be eyes closed and seemingly fast asleep on a reclining chair I tend to favour the word trance since we are all experiencing different states of trance on a daily basis. The American term “Highway Hypnosis” sums up how we can be wide awake but in a trance at the same time, even when safely driving.

In fact reading the heading at the top of this post will put you in a light trance as your mind diverts itself from the first question and just for a fleeting moment responds to the second question with “or do I?”

Did you go into a state of hypnosis, trance, focused awareness or heightened imagination? Or perhaps you were expecting to be told to forget something or repeat an action or remember something from the past.

“And” (a hypnotist’s favourite word because it simply and easily joins each point with a natural flow) as you were reading the previous sentence your mind was probably taking you very rapidly through all sorts of mental pictures, thoughts and conundrums.

So does it matter whether it is hypnosis, hypnotherapy, mesmerism, sleep, autosuggestion, trance or focused awareness? The interesting thing is that in reality we will automatically find ourselves using our natural favoured way of dreaming, or daydreaming. Everyone has their preferred way of going into trance and will be unconsciously using it throughout the day.

That’s the way the brain works.

We just go there and that is a place that knows a lot about you.

It does, doesn’t it?

Hypnosis, Trance, and the Vagus Nerve

The Vagus nerve

Vagus in Latin means “wandering” and most of us will have heard of the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic divisions of the nervous system but perhaps not the Vagus nerve.

This nerve, which has only scientifically been researched in more depth over the last 20 years, is critical to our physical and emotional feelings of well being as beneath our awareness it efficiently and smoothly sends messages to the brain, gut, heart and other organs of the body. So the fact that it is “in touch” with so many of our vital organs tells us how vitally important it is.

The relatively recent research of Stephen Porges has brought to our attention the pivotal role this superhighway has on every area of our body and therefore our life.

So what does it do for us?

When the vagus nerve is operating at it’s best it is connecting the messages from our organs, our thoughts, our conscious and our unconscious into one smooth multi level pathway of health, calm and ease on a daily basis.

And isn’t that what we have been looking for?

A few of the issues toning the Vagus Nerve can help with

Anxiety

Digestion

Blood pressure

Memory

Reducing inflammation

Panic attacks

Stress

Voice issues

Sound too good to be true?

Well my research and work on myself and clients has really helped take what I do up another level. Resolving past issues, helping the body operate physically with more balance and connection, quicker healing, less anxiety and more pleasure and satisfaction in life are major goals that most of us would like to aim for.

What can I do to tone my Vagus Nerve?

  1. Humming, Singing

  2. Heart Rate Variability breathing – High Coherence Breathing. (Heart Math)

  3. Simple crossing the Mid line Exercises eg BrainGym

  4. Gargling – anything that stimulates your vocal cords is good.

  5. Meditation – Loving kindness meditation

  6. Washing your face with icy water–cold water on your face stimulates the vagus nerve–remember this next time you’re feeling really stressed out.

  7. Emotional Freedom Technique and Hypnosis

My work building a raft of trance based techniques including Hypnosis, NLP and Emotional Freedom Technique has been dedicated to helping clients move forward in their lives. The addition of working with and toning the Vagus Nerve has been another major addition to helping clients access even more meaningful and simple yet empowering tools that they can use on a daily basis to help turn their lives around.

If you would like to know more just email or call me and I will be very happy to help.

Eating disorders, Hypnosis. EFT and NLP

Eating Disorder

What is an eating disorder and can Hypnotherapy help?

The words eating disorder tend to automatically direct our attention to anorexia and bulimia. However eating disorder can cover any eating habits that are “disordered and not under control”. Eating too much involves a disorder of our relationship with food as does eating too little or eating unhealthily.

When we are ready to lose weight, or change unhealthy eating habits, it is one thing to “go on a diet” but is this going to be an eating plan that we will be able to stick to for the rest of our lives? Diets can be transitory but having the tools, strength and beliefs to make and keep the changes are all important to support us into the future.

Hypnosis, EFT, and NLP are very powerful ways that can help make important and valuable changes in many areas of our lives. Engaging the creative unconscious means we can communicate with and change our internal language and habits. Just one of the strengths in these tools is that they can be used in our everyday life to continue making healthy change on a daily basis.

Hypnosis will help engage the unconscious creative mind to remove the negative trance that we have been “feeding” ourselves all this time. Telling ourselves to stop an ingrained habit is very hard since that requires us to override our conscious mind which is being “fed” by our unconscious mind. Our conscious cognitive thinking mind usually knows what we would like to do but the creative unconscious is the part of us that holds the keys to actually making the change.When a long standing habit has been hard wired into the brain we need to find the best ways to reprogramme it. To help change one’s “disordered eating” we need not only the tools and Hypnosis, NLP or Emotional Freedom Technique are great ways to start to help change our old patterns, but also to find the resilience and patience to keep working on it.

Finding an experienced and qualified professional hypnotherapist could well help open the doors to letting go of old habits.

Men, controlled by your eating?

Men Eating

Eating disorders

A recent article in the i Newspaper (3rd November 2016) by Eve Simmons highlights a real lack of information regarding men with eating disorders.

Statistics appear skewed probably partly by the male psyche and society’s unconscious restrictions on men “owning up” to having any sort of mental health issues. So understandably a lot of eating disorder information is aimed at women but as Eve Simmons article points out “men get eating disorders too.”

Figures from The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence estimate 11% of eating disorder sufferers are male and 6.4 percent of all adults displayed some form of an eating disorder. So as they point out those figures in fact point to more like a 25% figure for males.

The good news is that it is possible to recover from an eating disorder and with the right help and focus remove this often devastating illness from your life.

Here is a copy of the SCOFF questionnaire developed by John Morgan at Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust that can help sufferers check if they have some or all of these pointers

* Do you ever make yourself sick because you feel uncomfortably full

*Do you worry that you have lost control over how much you eat?

*Have you recently lost more than one stone in a three month period?

*Do you believe yourself to be fat when others say you are thin?

*Would you say that food dominates your life?

According to SCOFF a positive of two or more answers to these questions should raise your awareness of a possible issue.

Mental/health Awareness week will take place May 8 – 14th in 2017.

Mental Health, let’s talk about it!

Mental Health

Talk about mental health with Time to Talk

On Thursday this week (February 4th 2016) it will be “Time To Talk” day.  Time To Talk day has been organised for the last three years by charities Mind, and Rethink Mental Illness under the umbrella Time To Change and the aim is to encourage people to share their feelings and discuss their stories and personal experiences about mental health in person and via Facebook and Twitter.

Although this is primarily a project that has been been organised in England over the last three years, in Scotland, England and Wales one in four people will suffer from some sort of mental health issue and encouraging people to talk about it can only help break down the taboos and difficulties around discussing mental illness.

For various reasons people find it hard to talk openly about mental illness so engaging everyone helps bring into the open a subject that has been in need of more awareness and understanding for a long time now. It is really much more common than we think and this initiative can only help and encourage a greater understanding and support for anyone going through difficult times. Knowing that you are not alone is invaluable in helping support the healing process.

According to a Time to Change survey 60% of those interviewed found the stigma and discrimination around issues such as depression, anorexia and anxiety were as debilitating as the symptoms they were suffering. If we have a physical illness we are much less likely to keep it to ourselves than a mental one because of the stigma surrounding mental illness.

Talking with friends and family is a great therapy but there is a point when one needs to take the next step and that is of course seeing your GP, and or appropriate professional organisation who will be able to help you get the best treatment. 

The three charities below are a good place to start if you or someone you know is having difficulty in getting the support and advice they need.

For more about Time To Talk day follow this link

Time to Talk

See me Scotland  is a Scottish charity also with the aim of ending mental health stigma and discrimination and for Wales follow the link below for  more information 

Time to Change Wales