Covid-19 stress and anxiety

These are troubling times for all of us and there will be very few people in the world not experiencing some form of stress or anxiety over the Coronavirus situation. One of the hardest parts is the “not knowing”. Not knowing how long it will go on for, what the future will bring even after it is over and of course how best to keep ourselves and loved ones safe and healthy.

Unfortunately there really are no quick and easy answers to these questions but in the meantime the priority is to look after ourselves and those around us as best we can.

Below I am offering a relaxation sequence that will only take 3 minutes or so to do but in my experience will help you reach a level of relaxation that hypnosis and meditation would normally take 15 to 20 minutes to reach.

I put it together this January (2020) from material I had been using very successfully with clients and was pleasantly surprised at it’s effectiveness plus we don’t always have 20 minutes or so to do the longer hypnosis sequences.

I hope you enjoy it. I will be putting out a YouTube video in the near future but here are the instructions.

 

3 Step 3 Minute Deep Relax

(Use when in a safe relaxing place and do not use when driving)

1.

Sit or lie comfortably. Place your right hand over your heart

Close your eyes and take 10 slow, easy abdomen breaths (lips closed in and out if you can) noticing the breath starting from the abdomen and the gentle rise and fall of your chest

2.

Continue slow breathing for another 10 breaths, this time breathing in through the nose (if possible) and out through gently pursed lips with a “Pheeew” sound on each out breath. (Lips as if you were slightly about to whistle on each “Phew”)

3.

Continue with another 10 slow abdomen breaths, eyes closed, and gently whisper and repeat to yourself or out loud, numbers starting with I on the out breath then two on the second out breath and so on up to the 10th breath.

With each number sounding like a ball bouncing less and less until it comes to rest it will go like this –

Breath in – then on out breath say– 111111111….. 

– Second out breath say 2222222222…….

– Third breath say      3333333333….

4………

5……… Etc. .

……and on up to 10

You can of course extend the number of breaths or reduce them depending on how long you have.

I recommend using this 3 times a day for the first week or so, and then when you begin to experience more relaxation throughout the day use it once a day 3– 5 days a week. (or of course any time you like)

Also use it to get to sleep or if you wake up and want to get back to sleep or just sitting or lying down.

 

Until the CV issue is past there are no face to face sessions at my office though online and telephone sessions are always available as usual

www.rogerfoxwell.co.uk                   roger@rogerfoxwell.co.uk

Copyright 15 01 2020

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.

Hypnosis, Mind Coaching, Performance Enhancement and Life

Hypnosis

 

Hypnosis EFT and NLP can help enhance your sport, your life and your career

Tennis star Johanna Konta has come back from a slump in her performance and is looking in very good form for the 2019 Wimbledon tournament.

So what is it that has been influencing this resurgence in her form? An important part of the answer seems to be that working with her new Mind Coach, Lorenzo Beltrame, is helping get her game back on track.

Sadly her previous mind coach Juan Coto died at the end of 2016, aged just 47, and from that time Konta’s results began to gradually decline until  Beltrame took up the mantle which has coincided with her latest upsurge in form.

The vast majority of sports people these days take very seriously the fact that working on the mental side of the game can make a tremendous difference to results. I work regularly with sports and performing arts clients, professional and amateur but also, a large number of my clients see me to help deal with their daily life issues of anxiety, stress, depression and confidence etc.

Interestingly I have found more and more that there really is not as much difference as one might think between the techniques and strategies we need to perform in a sporting context as the techniques and strategies we need to perform to our best in actual life situations. There are just three words that the brain is evaluating at all times that govern how comfortable we feel not, only on the big stage but in our everyday life.

Those three words are “am I safe”.

If you can turn “am I safe” into “I am safe”, whether you are on the tennis court at Wimbledon or in your everyday life the payback can be immense. 

There are many empowering and fascinating ways to do this and if you would like more information about how you could make the changes in your life you deserve please feel free to contact me. 

 

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?

Help Relieve past trauma with Hypnosis, EFT and EMDR

Help Relieve past trauma

 Hypnosis, EFT and EMDR can help relieve PTSD 

The problem for clients wishing to relieve (without reliving!) and let go of past trauma in therapy is that it can feel very uncomfortable to speak about something that has left a deep and uncomfortable impression on one’s life. Also the thought of unburdening deep and painful experiences to a stranger can mean that one to one therapy may be impossible to even contemplate.

However using a mix of Hypnosis, Emotional Freedom Technique and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing I have put together a way of letting the unconscious mind do the work of putting space between oneself and the past without even having to consciously think or talk about it.

This may seem a little strange. However, how long would it take us to cover every aspect and every one of our past traumas in talking therapy? And how would we know if we have covered them all? And what about the ones we don’t remember plus the ones passed on genetically from our parents and their parents?

As a hypnotherapist if people wish to talk about past experiences that is fine but not everybody does. In fact I regularly work with clients who would prefer not to talk through the past and it is amazing the changes that can occur as their unconscious quietly goes about the task of reprocessing this information and releasing it with virtually no emotional involvement. In fact it is not unusual for me to know very little, if anything about the personal depth of the issues we are working on.

Therapy is always moving forward and just as the days of the hypnotist’s swinging watch and chain are gone so there are new and extremely effective ways of dealing with many, many issues.

For more information about this or any other issues just call or email and I will be happy to help.

Always seek appropriate medical advice.

Panic Attacks and Hypnosis

Panic Attacks

Panic Attacks can be one of the most frightening experiences one can have and can appear, as it were, out of nowhere. To suddenly become aware of your heart beating faster, a loss of control and feeling disconnected from your surroundings is a very uncomfortable experience. Plus, once we have had one panic attack our body and brain remembers it and this can set up a loop whereby the brain stem continues to be alert and on the lookout for anything that might trigger a panic attack again. Unfortunately that only compounds the problem and we can become more liable to having them on a regular basis.

This experience is a message from our primal brain saying it does not, for whatever reason feel safe. Once the primal brain is activated like this it is very hard to switch off because it is in effect four times stronger than our frontal “thinking” cortex at getting it’s message across to the body.

Basically the frontal cortex, which can think logically for us, resides in the front of the skull and the primal primitive brain at the back of the skull. So once a panic attack begins generally no amount of logical thinking will turn it off and we just have to go through the experience until the body runs out of adrenaline and we can begin to calm down.

However there is a lot we can do ourselves to bring those feelings into check and manage them until they become fewer and fewer in our lives. Using hypnosis is a perfect tool to help calm the nervous system and regain control of the uncomfortable physical and emotional feelings. Also there are breathing strategies available that will help us to breath in a way that relaxes rather then excites the nervous system. Also subtle trance based ways of thinking can help us turn this around.

The beauty of using trance based techniques such as hypnotherapy is that not only does it make it easier to slip into a comfortable state of relaxation but also the trance state helps us bypass the conscious mind and generate change on a deeper unconscious level.

Stay calm

If you would like to know more about hypnosis, Emotional Freedom Technique, NLP and other ways of engaging your creative mind for relaxation and change do feel free to contact me and I will be very happy to help.

Always seek medical advice when appropriate.

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.

Three things to bring with you to a hypnotherapy session

Therapy Session

And get the best results when working with your hypnotherapist

If you haven’t experienced hypnotherapy before it can be a little daunting wondering what will happen and how you will feel when in hypnosis. Most of us have seen stage shows and hypnotists on television so understandably one may feel a little wary. However hypnosis could be one of the most relaxing experiences you have had but unfortunately the thoughts of “will I cluck like a chicken or tell all my darkest secrets” can make us somewhat guarded at that first appointment.

Now, a professional hypnotherapist would not make any of their clients cluck like a chicken and you certainly will not be telling anybody anything that you would rather keep to yourself.

However these worries can set up an unconscious resistance before we even cross the threshold so it is best to be aware of these thoughts to help allow yourself to participate as comfortably as you like in the session.

First, remember that the therapist is there to help you and has your best interests at heart. One of the strengths that Milton Erickson, the founder of modern hypnosis had, along with his remarkable skills was his ability to unconsciously convey to his clients how much he cared that they achieve the very best results.

Consciously knowing this means that there will be no need to “do battle” with the hypnotherapist. Just think how much more relaxed will you feel and how much easier it will be when both of you are working together. Those who arrive with arms folded and a “well fix me then” look on their face will take up valuable time in their session when they could be making valuable changes instead.

One reason for this resistance is that our logical thinking mind may not want us to do this work since our logical mind may not want to hand over control to the creative mind. (Yes you can relax, it will still be your mind not the hypnotherapists‘!) What the logical mind can find hard to grasp at times is that accessing the power of our creative mind will help free our logical mind thereby encouraging the whole brain to work more harmoniously. The vast majority of clients are very easy to work with and if there is any discomfort then as professionals it is our job to help put the client at ease so they will leave the session happier and more relaxed than when they came so helping them achieve their best results.

So all you have to do is bring along the belief that you will be exploring wonderful and powerful ways to help let go of the issues you will be working on plus three experiences that will help you get the best possible results –

Focus, relaxation and imagination.