Welcome to the new look Secret Sauce!

And, this week, welcome to all you new Secret Sauce readers. Thank you for joining us! We have been revamping my site and the Secret Sauce newsletter over the next few weeks so that it will be more robust and much easier for me to send out these tips and ideas on a weekly basis. So, thank you for bearing with me…

Happiness… starting from now!

Those of you who read my blog will know that my phone has been ringing off the hook these last few weeks, partly due to Channel 4’s Supersize v. Superskinny feature on hypnotherapy and partly because lots of people started off the New Year with the very best of intentions but have now found themselves feeling a little ‘stuck’.

It seems that there are many people out there who want to learn how to use the amazing power of their minds to let go of unwanted eating habits and patterns through hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis. Despite what I think about the term ‘weight loss,’ I enjoy every minute of working with my clients on these issues because I know that I am helping them to discover how they can get free from the awful tyranny of the diet industry and constant thinking about food and weight and body-shape.

One of the things that is very apparent to me in most people who have been struggling with their weight or their body image is the amount of times that they say ‘I can’t do such-and-such until I have lost twenty pounds’ or ‘I know that I won’t be truly happy until I am nine stone.’

In the meantime, their lives are just passing them by.

Over and over again, I have seen that the minute we stop putting-off being happy for that elusive point in the future when we have more money/ a better relationship/ a more successful career/ that book or record deal we're chasing (delete as applicable) and the minute that we really allow ourselves to feel happy right now, right here, in this moment, all those things that we were struggling after have a habit of just happening as if all by themselves.

As Abraham Maslow says, ‘If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail.’

What tools are you using?

So, let’s take a look in your toolbox. Besides that great big claw hammer – yes, that one, the one that you’ve been using to hit yourself over the head with or maybe to bash your way through a few brick walls – what other tools do you have that you can start to use?

Well, I think you know what I’m going to say, don’t you? You have, of course, the amazing power of your subconscious mind.

What do you see, hear and feel when you turn your attention inwards and begin to think about your subconscious. I bet you don’t see anyting remotely hammer-shaped, do you?

Get to know your subconscious and all the tools that it can provide for you to use

1. Just spend some time, right now, allowing your breathing to become calmer and easier. Take a few moments to go into a nice relaxed awareness, where you can become more aware of your subconscious, of how you experience it, how you feel it…

Perhaps you experience it as a specific kind of object…or perhaps a calm, still centre… or maybe it feels like a certain kind of movement… or a whole collection of inner resources… or an aspect of yourself, perhaps one that is always listening…

Just spend some time really getting to know how this part of you feels and, very gently, you could even allow an image to coalesce in your mind… a colour, a texture, a shape…

What I’m seeing and feeling as I write this is a soft, dark velvety pocket, which when I open it just a little way, is full of glittering stones…

2. Now, ask yourself how you could use this image or feeling?
My image of the velvet pocket feels full of sudden gifts… It feels as if I don’t have to do anything other than hold the pocket in my mind, allowing the glittering stones – the gifts – to simply shine there… Yes, I think that I just need to hold them there…

Yes, it is certainly the opposite of that hammer..

I wonder if I’ll get the same image if I try this again tomorrow?

3. Over the next few days, just practise getting to know how you subconscious feels… how it moves… whether it changes from day to day giving you different images and metaphors of the tools that you have to work with.

In time, you will gather together a whole toolbox of images and textures.

Get to know all the different facets of your subconscious and all the different metaphorical tools that it can provide for you to achieve anything you want to achieve.

Now I’m off to begin the process of recording my first professional self-hypnosis CDs. I’m very excited. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Have a fabulous week!

Very best wishes,