Alison Wytchwood, Yorkshire Evening Press, July 21, 2007
Heather Wilkinson, show jumper, Lancashire.
Geraldine Williams, York
Trevor Holmes, Wakefield
David Nevison, York
David Lawrie, music producer, York
Paul Marshall, water skier, York.
I am reading a wonderfully nurturing book right now by Abby Seixas called ‘Finding the Deep River Within: Gentle Wisdom for Women in a Hurried World.’
Men, out there, stay with me. This is most definitely not a women-only situation.
‘He who breathes more air lives more life.’
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(With a big thank you to Steve Chandler.)
It’s all over the papers and the internet right now. Yes, the preposterous ‘claim’ by Gisele Bundchen that the birth of her son, Benjamin, at her home in Boston, ‘didn’t hurt in the slightest.’
I was talking to a dear friend of mine the other day who is making some changes in his life. In fact, he is on ‘a bit of a roll,’ as they say. As he makes one change and understands how he can let go of unhelpful thoughts and behaviors in one area of his life, he then begins to discover that he can also do that in another area.
Today I am going on a creative retreat. I am loading my car with favourite writing materials, books, nourishing foods, my favourite herbal teas and, of course, this being a Yorkshire retreat, my raingear and wellies, and I am off.
Here are some slightly amended slides from the talk and workshop I gave at the UK Guild Of Hypnotist Examiners Annual Conference in Scarborough today.
What a lovely bunch of people you all are at the UKGHE.
Please do get in touch if you have any questions. You’ll also find a link to the ebook, Hypnotic Journaling here.
You may have noticed a slight change in the tone and content of these posts so far this year.
In fact, OK, what I’m probably saying here is that I really hope that you have noticed.
Because, you see, I am doing a thing here. My thing. The thing I think I always wanted to do but never quite felt brave enough or free enough or perhaps never slowed down enough to notice that I wanted to do it.
It seems to be thawing now, here in North Yorkshire. At least, I think so. I can hear strange creaking noises on the roof as chunks of frozen snow begin to slide. Perhaps because of this, my dreams last night were full of things moving - slipping and slithering and melting away.
Since when did it become someone’s responsibility to predict the weather accurately, within a few degrees?
I couldn’t help wondering that as I watched the evening news here in the UK this evening.
OK, it’s that time of year again. Although actually, it seems that any time of year is a time of year to screen programmes about how to diet.
My Big Fat Diet Show is Channel 4’s latest offering and I have to say that, rather than annoy my partner by shouting at the TV, I did just switch it off after about ten minutes. But ten minutes was more than enough.
The show is described by the programme-makers as an “interactive diet along” hosted by Supersize versus Superskinny presenter and “serial dieter” Anna Richardson.
Well, that’s a good start then, isn’t it. Someone who describes themselves as ‘a serial dieter’ surely isn’t the best person to show people how to be the weight and shape they want to be permanently? Or am I missing something?
There’s more. Richardson is accompanied by six “diet divas”, a group of women who will be dieting along with her.
So, hey, now you can be a diva of the diet, girls. Whoo-hoo. What fun. Let’s all go on one together. It’lll be such fun. (Sorry. I will do my best to keep my sarcasm at bay.)
Over the next two weeks, these women will ‘try to drop a dress size’ (don’t even get me started on ‘trying’ to do something versus just doing it) and, by eating a 1200-calories-a-day diet, they will lose weight. At the end of the two weeks, they will introduce more calories. It’s safe, easy and it’s a great TV show. Ta-da.
Over at Channel 4’s promotional web site for the programme Anna Richardson tells us more about why she describes herself as a ’serial dieter:’
She says:
‘I’ve just done three series of Supersize vs Superskinny, and in series one, my job was to investigate and immerse myself in the world of extreme diets. So I started off that series back in 2007 at 11 and a half stone. Every week for eight weeks, I had to try a different approach. So week one, I had to try the apple diet, week two I tried diet pills, week three I tried surgery. I tried everything going. Over the course of about a year and a half, I successfully lost two stone. I have, over the years, tried every single diet going, and for the first time in 20 years, I have found my own way of eating, that has made me really quite a successful dieter.’
Now, pardon me, but if I am not mistaken, in the course of her investigations for Supersize, Richardson discovered that hypnotherapy was actually the single most helpful method that she used to change her eating habits. Oh, yes, here is my article on that very programme, right here.
Because in that programme, which aired in February 2008, Richardson worked with London-based hypnotherapist, Marisa Peer, to get some marvellous results. In fact, so highly did she recommend hypnotherapy as a means of letting go of unhelpful habits and emotions around food and eating that I had a deluge of phone calls after the programme aired.
So why, now, is Channel 4 churning out the same old boring nonsense about diets – when, in fact, we know from its very own programming that diets are not an effective way of losing wieght and that making changes to the way you think about food and practising, every day, a mindset of healthful eating is the very best way to help people to feel and look good? It seems cynical in the extreme.
Here are Anna’s final words on the subject, again from the programme web site:
‘But 1200 calories doesn’t sound like much. It’s okay to do that for two weeks?’
‘Yes, it’s absolutely safe to do that for two weeks. It’s meant to be a kick-start. You can safely lose a few pounds in that time. After that, yes, of course you increase your calories, but you do it in a healthy way.’
Ahem. Excuse me?
The thing that most people I work with know how to do is to go on a diet for a couple of weeks/months/years and then come off the diet and struggle with maintaining a healthy weight. Of course, you will lose weight if you follow a very rigid restricted eating plan and do some exercise, but few people can hope to maintain that plan for very long. And it’s certainly not a very healthy or enjoyable thing to be doing with your precious life.
Why not give people some information they don’t yet know? Why not give them something new? Why not give people the benefits of your own investigations into healthy ways to lose weight by working with a hypnotherapist to help people to understand how to get a powerfully healthy, happy, focused mindset, Channel 4?
Grrrr…
My advice: forget ‘diet-along.’ Instead, follow the celebs, who seem to have discovered what really works. Follow the example of Lily Allen and Sophie Dahl and work with an experienced hypnotherapist to make some permanent changes, healthy changes that you can maintain and enjoy.
If you want to drop a dress size, start with dropping the diet mentality and get yourself a new way of thinking.
If you are anything like me, you may be feeling a bit bombarded with advice and ideas about how to make the changes you want to make at the beginning of a new year and a new decade.
Personally, I think that any time is a good time to start making changes and I don’t think we need a New Year to help us to do that. In fact, it can often be counter-productive to think in terms of ‘resolutions’: I will do this or I should do that… It tends to put off into the future what we can begin right this minute.
However, every year, at this time of year, my phone starts to ring constantly with people who want to work with me to make some changes. It is a very popular time of year to think about stopping smoking or finally giving yourself the opportunity to have the weight and shape and health and energy that you want to have, for example.
And, of course, I am delighted to help people to make these sorts of changes in their lives.
But I also have to say – and to some people this may even sound surprising or counter-intuitive coming from someone who actually makes their living in the field of personal development – that I am always even more delighted when I can help people to fully realise how wonderful they already are.
You know, this New Year, the only thing I really want to say to anyone out there who is perhaps feeling a little of the ‘back to work’ blues, a little of those ‘It’s New Year and my life still sucks’ or ‘I am just so sick of being me’ kind of feelings, is this.
You are already the most perfect, wonderful, amazing, beautiful, powerful you.
Yes, perhaps you just haven’t quite realised it yet… but, really, you are.
Being happier in 2010 isn’t about losing a few pounds, eating healthier, getting a better job or finding the right relationship. All those things can be important, that’s true, but they are not really what happiness is about.
In fact, happiness isn’t really about anything.
Think about those times when you said to yourself, ‘I will be so much happier when I do this, get that, find this, achieve that…’ and then you did just that, got just that, achieved just that… and the happiness lasted for precisely five minutes or, possibly, a couple of weeks, before you were already thinking about the next thing you needed to do.
Happiness isn’t something that happens because of this or that. Happiness just is.
Happiness can be a way of looking, of being, of noticing, of appreciating. Some people even maintain that happiness is a skill, a discipline that can be learned, a choice that can be made, moment by moment. But happiness doesn’t happen because of anything particular out there in the world.
Once you’ve met your basic needs for food and clothing and shelter – and I think it is important to remember that most of the people in this world haven’t been able to do that yet – happiness doesn’t happen because you have better clothing, a bigger house, more food. Watch any chat show or flick through the pages of any glossy celeb magazine to have that confirmed for you.
It’s also interesting to me that, years ago, when I started doing the work I do, I worked in London, with people who had arrived in the UK with nothing at all in the way of any of those things we might consider essential for happiness, and I met many people who, despite this, were very happy people. They didn’t have their health, their families, money or a home but some of them would tell me – time and again – that they already had happiness. And at the time, I found this hard to get my head around. I thought they were just putting a brave face on things.
But, you know, now I can understand what they were telling me. It was something very powerful.
Because if we can be happy without certain things we thought were essential for happiness (and that doesn’t mean, either, that I think we should give up any of those things in order to be happy); if we can be happy even when we don’t get what we thought we wanted, or when bad stuff happens; if we can accept that we are not happy because of anything, really, what then?
Well, what about this? My own personal development, experiment in living, or whatever you might call it over the last few years has brought me to this conclusion:
We are happiness.
I am leaving a little white space around those words because I think they need to breathe a little. Believe me, I know – I really know – that it can take some time, some space, some breath, some love for yourself, some willingness to let go of all kinds of other stuff to fully embrace the idea that you are happiness.
So what if you were to live 2010 from that starting point, from the idea that you are happiness in this world?
I would like to say, once again, a huge thank you to all the wonderful people in 2009 who showed me what happiness really is and can be; who taught me about the happiness I already am and how to appreciate it and live it. I know that I have so much more to learn in 2010 – and how exciting that is.
And I’d like to send out my warmest wishes and much love to you all for everything that you already are this New Year. At risk of sounding mushy or sentimental – oh, what the heck, I am going to be all mushy and sentimental – you are all already a part of my happiness. Thank you.
I would like to say a huge thank you to all the wonderful people I have worked with in 2009, the people who read and comment on my blog, the members of my Secret Sauce Cafe and the participants, past and present, of my Online Programme. It’s a true privilege to work with such inspiring people every day. Thank you so much.
I’m looking forward to exploring lots of exciting new things with you in 2010.
Wishing you all restful and happy holidays!
Whilst doing my ironing last night (because that is the glamorous life I lead), I was watching a documentary/interview with Russell Brand (Skinned: Channel 4).
Before I continue, I’d like to issue a warning here that I am going to be talking about a certain bodily process today. Yes, the title of my post is a bit of a clue. I am talking today about all the crap, poo, shit, whatever you call it, that we carry around… and how to let go of it.
I find Russell Brand absolutely fascinating (the ‘character’ he talks about creating for himself in order to do stand-up, his use of language) and I nearly dropped the iron when he talked about the pre-gig ritual that he goes through to prepare himself for a stand-up audience, in order to ‘empty his mind and feel more open, more focused.’
Basically, what Russell Brand does is to take himself off to a toilet cubicle and do some self-hypnosis. He gets himself into a relaxed and focused awareness, if you like, a way of being that I would call a kind of ‘trance’ or doing ’self-hypnosis.’ Oh, and pardon my crudity here but he also, so he told us last night, usually does a big poo at this point too. And that’s where Frank Skinner, his interviewer pointed out that most stand-ups do. Apparently, it’s called ‘the comedy shit.’
Now, one of the reasons I laughed out loud at this idea of Brand sitting doing self-hypnosis whilst also evacuating his bowels is that, just a couple of hours previously, I’d been having a conference call with some of the students on my Word Sauce Online Writing Programme. We had been talking about the phase in the writing process that they have been exploring over past weeks, a phase that I call ‘Letting Go.’
This Letting Go – of physical tension, or pre-conceived ideas, of learned narratives or, not to put too fine a point on it, of all your shit – is an important part of a process of reconnecting with what it feels like to be you, what feels right for you as opposed to what you think you should be doing, for example.
And several of my students over the years have mde the connection between letting go of stuckness and other unhelpful crap and the daily bodily process of… ahem.. evacuation.
Some students have used words like ‘emotional constipation.’ One student told me that his daily morning practice of free-writing – of letting go of whatever happens to be on your mind onto the page – was closely associated for him with his morning bowel movement. He took his journal into the loo with him. Each was just as necessary.
So here, as I ironed my pillowcases, was Russell Brand, talking about the very same thing: his pre-gig Letting Go ritual in which he frees himself of shit on a physical, mental and even spiritual level. Hmmmm… Very interesting.
You know, I am always reluctatnt to over-psychololgise physical health issues (sometimes things just happen) but I do suspect that there is some correlation between the way that our bodies process food and the way that we process emotions. Perhaps that is why there is a growing evidence base for hypnotherapy in the treatment of IBS and ulcerative colitis, for example. After all, emotions produce complex chemical reactions in our bodies – oestrogen, cortisol, adrenaline – that need to be processed in the same way as the chemical reactions in our food. Or is it simply that we understand the two processes in similar metaphors?
And did you know that there is far more serotonin in your gut than in your brain? Or that your colon is a muscle and can, therefore, be subject to muscular tension?
So letting go – through daily self-hypnosis, deep physical relaxation and writing or through your personal toilette; through the morning ‘dump’ on the loo or onto the page – could be more significant than you may even realise.
If you’re feeling a little stuck, it might be worth asking yourself what you’re holding on to. 
I have a long-held interest in Amerindian culture, particularly traditions of making: masks, tools, jewellery, stories.
For people who live in harmony with the earth’s cycles, winter is a time for turning inward, for intense creativity, for gathering around the fire, sewing and shaping and dreaming and telling stories.
Since I moved back to North Yorkshire, I find myself in greater synchrony with the seasons. Winter has become an increasingly fertile time for me. I find myself thinking about painting walls, making poems and, yes, even knitting more ‘wild tea cosies.’
I know that many people do not like this time of year, the idea of the evenings drawing in, the days shortening. But when you think about all the possibilities of those longer winter evenings, it can be very exciting. I found this poem by Emily Dickinson yesterday:
‘Winter under cultivation
Is as arable as spring.’
In perfect Dickinson fashion, those two little lines speak everything that I’ve been trying to say so far, rather more clumsily, in this blog post.
Oh, dear, oh dear.
According to this article in The Telegraph, women will ’start Christmas diets today.’
Apparently ‘around 58 per cent of women plan to shed some pounds before their office party to make sure they are looking their best.’
The research was carried about by British Lion eggs who are keen to ‘debunk the”myth” ‘ that eggs raise cholesterol levels. A spokesman said:
‘The Christmas party has become one of the biggest events of the year, and for many, it’s an ideal time to impress a male colleague to be the envy of your female workmates,” he said.
So while January is well-known to be the time Britons detox to try to undo the Christmas indulgence, this study shows that women are also dieting in the run-up to festive season as well.’
I am not too keen on what seems to me a rather chauvinistic interpretation of the data from this research, portraying womankind desperately scrambling to impress the alpha-males in our workplace. After all, we know, don’t we, that the best way to make an impression at the office party is to drink lots of cheap punch, do knee-skids across the dance floor, show off our best John Travolta moves and play air guitar. That’s all that really matters… Ha, ha, ha.
However, there is a nugget of common sense to be redeemed from this article.
The anonymous spokesmen also says: ‘But simply cutting food out won’t work. The best way to lose weight is to eat sensibly and have three balanced meals a day, particularly breakfast.’ (He then goes on to advocate eggs for breakfast.)
Later in the article it turns out that the ‘research’ on dieting conducted by British Lion eggs is, in fact, a poll of 3,000 women. The poll apparently found that:
‘While 71 per cent will eat a healthy balanced diet to shed the pounds, almost one in ten plan to skip the odd meal completely.
Another four per cent will cut out breakfast from their daily routine.
The poll of 3,000 women revealed 14 per cent even buy their party outfit in a size they know is too small in the hope they will fit into it by the time the big event arrives.
But more than half of those have had to buy an emergency outfit after failing to lose the weight in time.’
Hmmmm…
And here are more stats from the poll:
‘21 per cent of those who usually diet in the run-up to Christmas say they normally always put the weight straight back on during the festive period.
Another 17 per cent have usually gone back to their pre-diet size once the New Year is under way.’
Oh, dear. Why, oh why, are we doing this to ourselves? You know, if you have ever put the wrong fuel in your car, I bet you modified your behavior pretty quickly to make sure you never repeated that costly damage to the engine. I bet you learned pretty quickly that your car did not run very well at all on the wrong fuel. So why do so many of us keep on doing the same old stuff that doesn’t work when it comes to our infinitely less replaceable and mendable bodies?
If you’ve been thinking of going on a diet, it can be very helpful to have something to aim for and visualising yourself feeling fabulous and sexy at a Christmas party can be a powerful motivator.
However, eating a healthy balanced diet and exercising regularly – adopting the mindset of someone who eats healthily and knows how to enjoy maintaining that health - is going to be much, much more effective than faddy dieting, skipping meals, special diet foods and other ‘quick fix’ craziness.
I know that if I say to myself ‘I am forbidden to eat that delicious chocolate I love, no more chocolate for me…’ then all I can think about and see and taste and smell is that chocolate. That kind of thinking just doesn’t work.
Neither does putting myself on a miserable self-imposed diet. I often find that some of the people I work with are just not eating enough to fuel their metabolism. They are experts on all the different ‘points’ and ’sins’ and calorie counting they have tried over the years; or have literally been surviving on a couple of lettuce leafs and a Ryvita for lunch and then wondering why they are constantly thinking about food and ‘binging’ in the evenings.
Personally, I am getting back into shape after a period of time this summer where I couldn’t exercise and – what a surprise! – a few pounds crept on. I am focusing on how good I feel when I exercise, what it does for my energy and health, my general well-being. When I talk to myself like that, it’s a pleasure to get myself to the gym. I love that feeling.
Your self-esteem does not have to be tied to the office party. You can make changes to your eating and exercise habits because you want to do that; and you can feel wonderful any time you choose. If you need some support to (re)learn how to do that, why not get some professional help from someone who understands that it is your mind and not magic diet foods that will help you to feel good and stay healthy.
Much as I hate to start my Monday morning with a grrrrrrr, I am going to be doing some grrrrr-ing. But I think it is good grrrring. It is not a moaning and complaining kind of grrrr that is on my mind but more a general myth-debunking, righting wrongs kind of grrring that I hope will be helpful in some way.
It started on Thursday evening. I had just come back from a pleasant evening out and caught the tail-end of a new drama series on BBC1 called, ‘New Tricks.’
It is apparently about a group of eccentric ex-police officers who meet up to solve crimes and, guess what? In the bit of the storyline that I caught, the evil killer was finally apprehended… or so the main characters thought. What caught my attention were his words: ‘No, when I met her [the victim] I hadn’t got into NLP… I didn’t know about mind control…’
Ha! If it wasn’t so sad, I would have laughed out loud.
Here we are, yet again, with another suspected evil killer, under suspicion because he knows how to control people not with blackmail, extortion or a stolen Kalashnikov but with the deadliest weapons known to man: hypnosis and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).
Oh dear, oh dear…
Every day, I talk to people in my consulting room about what hypnotherapy can help them to achieve in their lives, the changes they can make by learning to master their own thoughts with some simple ideas from NLP, and how they can let go of fear and unhelpful emotion using hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis. I explain how in the very natural relaxed and focused state of awareness that we call hypnosis, they have access to their own amazing resources for change – and can even strengthen those resourceful states or begin to create new ones. I explain that I, as a hypnotherapist, have no power over them. Contrary to some beliefs, I cannot make them thin, rich or happy. I can help them to discover these things for themselves.
In the same way, after working with me they will not find themselves dancing like a chicken, emptying their bank accounts and handing the contents over to me or committing murder – unless, of course, they already wanted to do that in the first place.
Because I have no ‘control’ over the people I work with – and it would be very improper if that were the case. Although it can be tempting to hope that someone can actually get inside your mind, flick a switch and make you stop overeating or smoking, wouldn’t that be rather unnerving, to say the least?
Would you really be wanting that to happen? Isn’t it even more amazing when you realise that, with the help of a well-trained and experienced hypnotherapist, you can do these things for yourself in a lasting and permanent way?
I explain all of this to my clients, debunk the myth that hypnotherapists are expert manipulators and then along come the writers of ‘New Tricks’ on BBC1 and, in one fell swoop, they reinstate the idea of the evil hypnotist who uses NLP and hypnosis to make someone kill their own mother.. Evil cackle, evil cackle.
By a very clumsy plot twist, it turned out that this is not what had happened… but still, the misrepresentation of hypnotherapy – a profession that helps people and that is now a recommended treatment by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for a range of problems including IBS and ulcerative colitis – is unfortunate to say the least.
It makes me a bit annoyed, it makes me go grrr because I know what a huge leap it is for many people to say, ‘I need some help with this,’ and then to pick up the phone and call a professional hypnotherapist. Programming like this may actually be detrimental to the well-being of a person who could really benefit from hypnotherapy.
So grrrrrrrr to you BBC. We need more responsibe talk about hypnosis and hypnotherapy,even in low-budget TV dramas. Otherwise, you are misleading people who may need help.
Grrr…. grrr… grrrr…
Meanwhile, I will keep doing my bit to spread the word about the benefits of solution-focused hypnotherapy.
So, how are you getting along with my challenge to you this week of staying Fat Talk Free?
Have you caught yourself engaging in any Fat Talk?
You know the kind of thing: ‘Euugh, I hate myself.’ ‘God, I look awful in this…’ etc, etc.
One of the comments that people often make when I talk about ending this kind of unhelpful, negative, and downright nasty to yourself ‘fat talk’ is this one:
‘If I stop beating myself up, I’ll just get really overweight.’
In fact, a friend of mine refuses to watch Gok Wan’s ‘How To Look Good Naked’ because she thinks that the programme’s values ‘make it OK for people to be overweight.’
So I’d like to clarify why I think it is important to End Fat Talking. In my work, I am an advocate of a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Every week, I work with people who want to make positive changes to their weight and shape, their eating and exercise patterns. I help them to make those changes.
I hate diets. They don’t work and promote unhealthy, difficult to maintain, ineffective and unhelpful ways of thinking and eating. I work with people who have tried ‘every diet under the sun,’ the meal replacement shakes, the supplements, etc, etc. They come to me because that stuff just hasn’t worked for them. Surprisingly, it is really hard to keep eating two lettuce leafs and a milkshake for the rest of your life. You might feel a little hungry.
If you eat healthily and do some regular exercise, you will find the weight and shape that is the healthy one for you. Full stop. It really can be that simple.
I think that the range of ideas about what a healthy, beautiful body looks like is shrinking with every year that passes. Noone seemed to think it relevant that Marilyn Monroe was a Size 12. People simply noticed her beauty, glamour and star quality. Not that I would necessarily hold up Marilyn Monroe as a healthy role model. She seemed to be an early victim of what we might now call ‘media pressure,’ the kind that more recently went after Susan Boyle (for not being beautiful enough).
By saying let’s End Fat Talk, I am not saying that I think we should all stop caring about our bodies and our health. I am simply urging you to shift your focus to what is healthy for you – and not what you think you ought to look like according to the latest advertising or the snide remarks in Heat magazine.
When you feel good about yourself, you are so much more likely to treat yourself well, eat well, exercise and engage in activities that you enjoy. If you need some help to do that, seek the support of a trained professional: a coach, a personal trainer, even a hypnotherapist. A restrictive diet is not going to magically change your mindset.
Apparently, around 1 in 4 women in the US have avoided engaging in a physical activity or sport because they feel badly about the way they look. (Dove, Beyond Stereotypes: Rebuilding the Foundation of Beauty Beliefs)
Time to take some action, don’t you think?
Having worked with many, many people on these issues over the last few years, I am convinced that we all need to help one another to form more helpful and healthy mindsets around body-confidence and body-image.
We’re all in this together. And you hear it everywhere: on the bus, in the waiting room, at parties, in changing rooms…
So, what will you say next time you hear someone talking about their weight, their size, their unhappiness?
Will you get drawn into the conversation, join in with their ‘fat talk,’ or will you help them to see what is really important? I do hope that you will join me this week in making this difference to the people around you.
Fat Talk Free Week
This week, I am going to be blogging about ‘fat talk’ and how you can decide to take one action right now to make some major changes in the quality of your life and the lives of the people around you.
Following on from my blog posts about the hypnotic effects of photoshopping practically every image of a naked woman that we are exposed to these days – on advertising hoardings, in magazines and throughout the print media – I came across a very inspiring group of people in the States who are urging women to end ‘fat talk’ now.
Now, as I have discussed so many times on this blog, the way that we talk to ourselves inside our own minds in incredibly ‘hypnotic.’ What do I mean by this?
Well, if we hear something often enough, we tend to believe it. That’s why heping people to change their unhelpful ’self-talk’ is a big part of what i do in my work as a hypnotherapist.
The people around us are also incredibly hypnotic. These are our loved ones, people we live with or spend lots of time with, people we’d like to emulate, and so on. If we hear them say something often enough we can end up internalising that belief or way of explaining the world as a part of our own self-talk. Their voices can so easily become our own voices. So, for example, our parents can have a very hypnotic influence over us, particularly in our formative years.
So you can see that there are many good things about ending ‘fat talk.’ Fat Talk Free Week sounds like an excellent idea to me.
And you can join in. Tri Delta is a sorority organisation in the US, working with women across university campuses to end fat talk and promote healthy, progressive ideas about body-image. They have given me permission to get involved and help them spread their message – because it is such a fabulous one.
All week, I’ll be blogging here about how you can help end fat talk and start talking positively and progressively to yourself and others about weight and self- image.
Why is it so important?
Here’s a statistic forwarded to me by the people at Fat Talk Free Week:
81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat. 51% of 9 and 10 year old girls feel better about themselves if they are on a diet. (Mellin LM, Irwin CE & Scully S, 1992)
Now, I am not sure if that is a sample of girls in the US or the UK, but I think you will agree that 81% is a lot of young people.
Just take a moment to think about it. Have you talked about your weight or your body-image in a negative or unhelpful way today? If so, what effect might this have had on the people around you? What effect did it have on you?
The campaign’s message is ‘Friends’ don’t let friends fat talk.’
Please do join me in my challenge this week to End Fat Talk forever!
And please do take a moment to watch the video below and find out more here.
This is something you can do to really make a difference.
If Jim could still Fix It For Me, I would ask to be a contestant on Strictly Ballroom.
Preferably, the fabulously talented Brendan Cole would be my partner and I’d get to learn all those dances and wear the sparkly sequinned costumes. Oh, yes.
Or perhaps I could be the resident hypnotherapist on the show. I’ve been giving this some serious consideration and I think that there can’t be that many hypnotherapists trained in ballet and contemporary dance, so maybe I have a niche here?
Because it seems that Brendan’s current dance partner, Jo Wood, has been using the services of a hypnotherapist to help her to let go of her nerves.
This article in The Telegraph states:
“Jo Wood, former wife of rocker Ronnie, is reported to have had a hypnotherapy session on Friday in an attempt to build her confidence ahead of her next dance with partner Brendan Cole.
The programme source said: “Jo and Brendan are doing the paso doble and he wants more aggression in the dance. But Jo is finding it hard to be feisty and even if the hypnosis session cures her nerves, it won’t change her style. Only large amounts of practice will help that.”
Well, that is certainly true. Hypnotherapy can help people to feel confident and give their very best performance. However, as I’ve discussed before on this blog, hypnotherapy cannot magically give people a wonderful singing voice or physical fitness.
To give of your best, you also have to take action: practise your skills, train and keep training.
It seems that Jo Wood did just that because I was watching on Saturday and I think she had really upped her performance. Hypnotherapy and practise are a powerful combination.
So, good for you, Jo. Jo Woods is 54, has four children, six granchildren and is a highly
successful ethical-business woman, campaigning for fair trade and organic clothing. She is also currently going through a very public divorce with husband Ronnie. How brilliant that she’s decided to get out there on the dancefloor and challenge herself in this way.
This article in the Mail Online quotes her as saying:
‘I took it on as a challenge, really. That, and the fact I love dancing. For me to be able to learn how to dance is like a dream come true. I want my kids to be proud of me. I’m saying, “Yeah, this is me.”
I love that.
Linda Bellingham is another favourite of mine. She may not have the most natural talent but, my goodness, doesn’t she give it her all?
I know from personal experience that it can be enormously challenging to go out there and dance in front of a huge audience. Anyone who is prepared to do that after only a couple of weeks of training gets my vote for their sheer courage and attitude. Inspiring.
OK, so it’s way past my bedtime but I just had to write a quick post about this evening’s edition of the fabulous How To Look Good Naked here in the UK with Gok Wan.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m a huge fan of Gok’s programmes. All that the lovely people on Naked need now, I’m thinking, is some hypnotherapy to help them to enjoy more and more body confidence. Gok, call me!
It was also fabulous to see the stunning Shona Collins, Miss Naked Beauty 2008, on the programme tonight talking about the crucial issue of body confidence among young people. Her survey uncovered some shocking truths about the state of body confidence among school girls.
But the great news is that Gok and Shona are doing something to change things… and you can help!
Go here to sign their petition and help them to get a one hour Body Confidence session onto the UK school curriculum.
I am very happy to support their work as I care passionately about this subject. I work with too many clients – young and old, women and men – who have been suffering for years due to lack of confidence in their bodies.
The great news is that, with the right support, we can all learn to let go of any unhelpful emotions, associations and memories around our body image and begin to really enjoy our bodies and ourselves.
