Archive for the ‘Obesity’ Category
Healthy Changes Ahead
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012More people start a diet in January than in any other month but being healthy has nothing to do with deprivation and everything to do with happiness. Changing the way you approach your health and lifestyle means you can make a big difference with just a few small changes.
Here are a few more ideas as part of our New Year changes communication to get you started:
Get Out More – A brisk 20 minute walk in your lunch hour or a half hour evening stroll will make a real difference to the way you feel. If you can fit in a daytime walk, so much the better. It’s surprising how many people only see daylight in the fraction of a minute between the front door and the car on their way to and from work.
Eat, drink and be merry – There used to be a saying that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, well it does if your thorw it at them! But seriosuly it is definitely true that the more raw fruit and veg we can squeeze into our diets the more likely we are to feel energised. Combine this philosophy with a determination to drink more water during the day and you’ll soon feel the difference.
Think Positively – A positive attitude has an impact on your health as well as your mind. Take time to think about the things that are going well or the people in your life that you value and you will start to feel more positive about all sorts of things. Another good tip is to try something new. If you’ve always wanted to learn how to paint or play a sport make enquiries about courses or clubs nearby and remember you could also start your own. Plan a weekend trip to a place you’ve always fancied visiting and set a date for the excursion.
Laugh it off – If the winter months are becoming a bit of a drag then laugh off the blues with friends or by visiting a comedy club or watching a favourite TV show that makes you chuckle. Laughing stimulates the levels of health-enhancing hormones including endorphins so it really is healthy to have a good time.
These are just some ideas to help you make this year a happy and healthy one. My online personal change programme will help you discover more ways to make changes that will have an impact on your wellbeing and happiness.
Find out more about the Walk on the Grass Personal Change Programme here
What Is Hypnosis?
Thursday, February 24th, 2011What is Hypnosis and the Hypnotic State?
Hypnosis employs a naturally occurring state of mind and it may surprise you to learn that we experience trance states often during our lives, in fact several times a day. Just drifting into ordinary sleep involves a kind of trance state, typically one where the mind is becoming free of verbal thinking (left brain) and entering a more visual state (right brain), similar to that of dream sleep.
The experience of hypnosis is in many ways is similar to the sleepy hypnogogic state, being neither asleep nor awake and prone to imagery and association with a pleasant feeling of calmness and relaxation underpinning it all.
The hypnotic state occurs normally in everyone when certain physiological and psychological conditions are met and it is possible to use this state to make deep and long lasting changes to thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
If your problem has an emotional, habitual or perhaps psychological origin, then hypnotherapy is an excellent way to communicate with these parts of the mind.
Hypnosis is a different state of consciousness to the normal alert state and you can easily enter it so that, for therapeutic purposes, beneficial instructions may be given directly to your receptive unconscious mind. In hypnosis, the tendency is for these suggestions to be accepted far more than in the normal state and we may ‘seed’ constructive ideas which then change behaviour and attitudes at their source.
Thus, hypnosis is an effective way of making contact with our inner (unconscious) self, which is both a reservoir of unrecognised potential and knowledge as well as being the unwitting source of many of our habits and limitations.
Myths Uncovered about Hypnosis
No-one can be hypnotised against their will and even when hypnotised, a person can still reject any suggestions offered to them or return to normal alert consciousness at will. Hypnotherapy is actually a state of purposeful co-operation between the therapist and the client, to obtain a specific result, agreed upon beforehand.
Similarly a common fear is that under hypnosis a person could be made to reveal personal details that they would rather keep secret but again this is not possible. If it were, the police would be the keenest students of hypnosis! I suspect the image of trance created by the media is at fault here as people expect that ‘under’ hypnosis they will become quite unconscious and robotic, not aware or realising what they are doing or saying. The truth is that you may remain quite conscious and aware, perhaps even more so than usual. However, we will keep you at the balancing point where your critical faculty is suspended and beneficial directions can be given to your unconscious mind.
Many people have had the experience of driving along a familiar road and suddenly realising that several miles have gone by of which they have been completely unaware. This is very similar to the hypnotic state, you are awake and aware – but somehow not quite there.
Clinical Hypnotherapy
Clinical Hypnotherapy means using hypnosis to treat a variety of medical and psychological problems. It does not usually deal with problems that have an organic origin but those that are due to emotional and psychological sources. It is estimated that 85% of people will readily respond to clinical hypnotherapy and it may even succeed where other, more conventional methods of treatment have been slow to produce the desired result.
The benefits are usually long lasting and often permanent. It is completely natural and safe, with no harmful side effects.
When To Use Hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy is used successfully to benefit the following:
• sporting performance • weight control • performance anxiety
• self-confidence • phobias • exam nerves
• anxiety and panic • improve learning • memory and concentration
• stress reduction • eating disorders • compulsive behaviour
• pain control • blood pressure • self-image problems
• stopping smoking • skin problems • Irritable Bowel Syndrome
The main criterion is that the cause of the presenting problem lies within the unconscious mind, often due to a ‘seeding’ event or to unintentional behavioural conditioning in formative years.
It’s interesting to note that the unconscious mind always acts in such a way that it attempts to protect and preserve the individual and many fears and phobias have at their root a form of exaggerated self-preservation. Unfortunately these can become over-exaggerated over time, even to the point where they begin to restrict a normal life.
In one example, the client was a business man who had turned down, successive promotions because they would have required him to travel by plane. Eventually he decided to try hypnosis after seeing it work successfully for a phobia sufferer on a BBC television programme. Quite interestingly the casual event turned out to be an accident in his childhood, when he was playing on a garden shed roof with his older brother. They had begun some horseplay and together rolled off the roof and onto the ground, neither was seriously hurt, though both would have been shocked, however the first words out of his brothers mouth were “you’ll go to prison for that now!”
Though the event was quickly forgiven and forgotten, years later the gentleman in question was in a real sense ‘in prison’, held back under lock and key by an irrational fear of flying (or more accurately, fear of falling). A skilled hypnotherapist can be likened to a locksmith in situations like these and the man was soon released.
Originally all habits are intended to be useful. Many of the routine activities of our daily lives would become a nuisance if we had to consciously think them through each time we wanted to do them. Alas this habit making force can turn against us, particularly when it comes to things like smoking or overeating but with hypnosis we can intervene and reprogram our unconscious minds with healthier requirements. The power of hypnosis is quite literally the power of habit and we all know how strong that can be!
To book an appointment please email info@angelawhitlock.com
Angela Whitlock
PGD.Hyp, D.Hyp, BSCH(Mem) Cert Ed.
Tel 0845 6436117
The British Society Clinical Hypnosis exists to ensure that all recommended therapist have proper training and abide by a strict ethical code of practice.
www. bsch.org.uk
Food or Fuel – Reducing Obesity
Monday, May 10th, 2010As the Summer starts to creep in, albeit it very slowly more and more people ask me about weight management as they want to look and feel good on holiday so I’m going to help you with a few tips for summer that you won’t read in the glossies.
I know you would all agree that as human beings we need food as it fuels the vehicle we use to get around in the world, our bodies. Nothing more nothing less, sometimes we use a better quality fuel and eat well and the vehicle feels even better, too little or too much and it breaks down.
So for an instant let’s stay with that analogy and imagine for a moment, when you get in your car on a morning to get to work, do you focus on the petrol that’s in it? If it’s your own vehicle rather than public transport then initially you probably do and then consider whether you need some more or whether you can you get though with what’s in it already. But does it ever cross your mind that you should -
- Drive further or randomly just to get rid of some fuel or
- Put too much in just because you can?
If your thinking is irrational then you might, but that is where your thoughts can be betraying you and letting you down because with healthy thinking you will focus on the journey ahead and where you are going that day not on the food intake.
Now imagine that your body is no more than a vehicle to carry around the amazing intelligence of your mind and you are the driver. If you spend your days focusing on the food that your body uses or feeding it to excess and not the journey you want to make, then you won’t get to where you are going because your mind has other distractions, namely food. This is what happens when people focus on diets, immediately their thoughts are escalated to the top 10% that day so all you see is food or diet related information.
- So let me ask you, when was the last time you got in a taxi?
Did you get in and immediately ask the driver how much petrol or diesel he had in the tank or did you tell him where you wanted to go?
- In a car if you don’t put sufficient fuel in it for the journey ahead then it will rake up the dregs of petrol that is in the tank and with it the sludge that settles at the bottom of the tank, and that is what you are using for fuel. If you do this enough then the vehicle will break down and stop working. This is what can happen with eating disorders like anorexia.
- On the other end of the spectrum, if you overfill your car with fuel and once the tank was full, it dispersed into the floor well, how slow and sluggish would that vehicle be? This is what happens when you eat to excess and do little exercise and become overweight.
The only way to get rid of excess fuel in a car would be to drive and use a bit more up, but where to? You need to know where you are going.
If you are at either end of the range then your thinking is unhealthy and your vehicle is doing exactly what you are telling it to and by association your body will be either underweight of overweight.
TIP ONE
Start thinking from now on about the journey rather than the fuel, what are your goals in life, what do you want to achieve perhaps in a week, a month and a year from now?
Now consider if you are on the right road? Is your vehicle taking you on that journey? If you fill up your vehicle with a healthy amount of fuel then it will take you on all the journeys you want to make in life. It will take you any where your mind tells it to go.
So looking to the present, right now in life, if your body was a car,
- What kind of car would it be? A rusty old heap or a slick new edition
- Really consider what your mind considers your body to be, it is often surprising.
What would you prefer it to be? A Mercedes, a Ferrari? Get a picture that represents the car you want your body to represent and put it where you are influenced the most, on the fridge is a good place.
Remember we can upgrade our vehicle anytime we want to. Your mind has complete control over it. If you don’t like the body you’re mind is driving then what healthy thinking would it take to upgrade it? Remember a healthy vehicle is a healthy body, if you put the right amount of fuel in it and take it on the journeys in life that you want to make it will serve you well and stay healthy for you, this means eating well and taking the right amount of exercise that your body needs to use up the fuel but stay healthy.
TIP TWO
The other point many people tell me is how they want to look like they used to. Now I didn’t think anyone had invented a real time machine yet so you aren’t going back anywhere.
- So start focusing forward, forget what you used to look like.
- What do you want to look like now?
- Start getting a real picture of what you want to look like now and you’ll find it a lot easier to move forward than backwards, just try walking backwards it’s not an easy feat so thinking backwards is even harder.
I often listen to people who tell me, they don’t want to be how they are but once again how many of you have got in a taxi and given the driver a list of where you don’t want to go?
The Taxi Driver would think you were crazy but that is exactly what many people tell their bodies.
- So today, let your mind make a pact with your body and decide what journeys or goals you want to achieve in life and then focus forwards,
- Let your mind decide what fuel you need for the journeys you want to make and your body will get you there.
- Put your focus on the goals you want to achieve in life and start telling yourself what you really want to be, or achieve. Focusing on being healthy is a lot more powerful than focusing on a particular size.
We run workshops in Harrogate every month that can give you an additional kick start on the goals you want to achieve and you can contact us for more details.
Final thought
You don’t need to be a mechanic to drive your car you just need to know where the controls are. The main one is the ignition key and that one is in your own mind, you have the power to change anything you want to, you just need to get your focus straight.
From the Blog
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Friday, February 10th, 2012 - How To Improve Your Relationships Using ABC
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012