Last night, I was listening to music whilst cooking Tom one of his favourite suppers. (For any foodies out there, it involves chestnuts and Savoy cabbage and it is really a lot more delicious than that actually sounds…)

As I blanched, chopped and stir-fried, I stuck my iPod in our speaker-gadget thingie (technical term) and whacked up the volume. It wasn’t long before I was dancing around the kitchen to tunes I hadn’t heard in a very long time: Morcheeba, Moloko, Goldfrapp and one of my all-time favourites, ‘Instant Pleasure,’ by Rufus Wainwright.

I had my music on the shuffle setting and tracks popped up that I hadn’t listened to in a couple of years. It was very interesting to me that, as each song came on, images from the past would pop into my mind.

Some of the songs were powerfully associated for me with the last long hot summer I spent living in London; others revivified for me the experience of driving around in Tom’s car through the Yorkshire countryside in the first months after we met.

It reminded me of just how powerful music is for me in inducing these trance phenomena. To be more specific about it, you might say that music has the ability to trigger a series of age regressions in which I revisit specific scenes and feel in my body some of what I felt back then combined, in a particularly potent way, with my emotions about remembering those scenes from my past.

Fragrances and scents do that for me too:  the smell of old books with a certain kind of paper can regress me right back to particular moments from my childhood; the smell of a cocoa butter body lotion I like to use still carries with it a memory of my first holiday in France. I am leaning out of the window of an old house on the coast, looking at the sun making long shadows between the olive trees, stretching my arms above my head.

Of course, I have cultivated that particular association, perhaps deepened it over the years, because I enjoy experiencing it so much. I can still connect with the sense of excitement, of my life opening for me, that I felt as a thirteen-year-old in France and I want to reconnect with that feeling, from time to time.

The iPod-induced trance phenomena I experienced last night was a powerful reminder of the ability of our minds to create these associations. Sometimes it is extremely pleasurable to revivify and reconstruct the happy, life-enhancing memories and experiences that nurture deep parts of our selves.

You know, I think that sometimes, as hypnotherapists, we can easily forget that spontaneous regression as a phenomenon doesn’t have to be difficult or unhelpful. We might spend a lot of time working with people who need help in stopping the unhelpful regression to and endless reconstruction of incidents and events in their past that are troubling them in some way.

And yet there are all kinds of powerful positive memories and associations that we can draw upon as resources to help us to strengthen aspects of our selves.

I don’t think that’s what Rufus Wainwright actually means when he sings about, (ahem!) ‘Instant Pleasure,’ but it works for me.

Tags: age regression, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, instant pleasure, music, regression, Rufus Wainwright, trance phenomena
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Every Monday, I address a common myth around hypnosis and hypnotherapy…

I feel I need to warn you. This myth is a Big Myth. In fact, this myth is so pervasive in the world of therapy, hypnotherapy and hypnosis that perhaps it should carry a health warning.

I mean that seriously.

The problem, as I have come to understand it, is that there are many therapists out there – working in many different disciplines – who will tell you that it is necessary to understand why you feel the way you do in order to feel better. Let’s call this myth the Big Myth of Why.

But first, let me ask you something. Are there things going on for you right now that you understand perfectly well – and perhaps you may even have had a couple of years of soul-searching and/or therapy to understand where those feelings come from and you have a very good intellectual understanding of these problems – and yet you still seem to be experiencing them, all the same?

I meet people every day who have an incredibly finely honed and articulate understanding of the history of their problems. They have spent years thinking about it and analysing it. They can understand why that something is happening and yet the why doesn’t necessarily help them to change the behaviours, habits, emotions and responses that they want to let go of. The why doesn’t necessarily change anything.

My feeling is that ‘why ‘doesn’t serve us particularly well when we want to make changes in our lives.

And, indeed, I have met people who are on a search for why. They are on a big mission of why. They are making why their life’s work. Their internal script goes, ‘If I can just understand why this is happening, I will feel better…’ and they have been trying to understand why for the last two or twelve or twenty years. And this trying to understand why has become a painful and tortuous journey in which they find themselves feeling worse than when they started. Maybe they are now obsessed with the idea of wanting to know why or caught up in endless rumination and questioning that is creating a lot of anxiety and feelings of somehow not being good enough.

And this search for why brings them to the consulting room of a hypnotherapist. Because the Big Myth of Why says that a hypnotherapist can go inside your mind and discover why. A hypnotherapist can regress you to the exact time and place in your life where the problem started – and then you will know and then you will feel better. Right?

Well, erm, actually, not necessarily. In fact, probably not.

It’s a seductive notion, this concept of ‘deep underlying causes’ for our problems and issues. If we could neatly pin it down to one formative event – for example, the day our primary teacher told us off in front of the class for getting a word wrong and then we suddenly became unable to read aloud in front of others -  that might certainly be very convenient. But is this a little over-reductive?

Problem One: Now, I am not saying that some issues that people experience do not carry with them the resonances and echoes of prevous experiences. Of course, they can do. Over the years, we can form beliefs about ourselves as the result of our experiences, the things we hear around us,  our interactions with significant others, for example.

However, fears, problems, phobias and habits tend to fade away over time unless we are actively keeping them fuelled with our own thoughts and worries and beliefs and the way that we talk to ourselves inside our minds.

So our primary school teacher may have introduced us to the notion of fear – but that is only part of the story.We have somehow kept the fear going. In order to let go of the fear, we need to understand how we are still doing it to ourselves twenty-five years later, so that we can start to change things.

Problem Two: Even if a hypnotherapist can help us to indentify the so-called ‘root cause’ of a particular issue, this doesn’t mean that it actually happened  or happened in the way that we experience it now in hypnosis.

We still do not sufficiently understand the way that memory works, for example, but it is thought that, in order to experience a memory, our brains need to go back and reimagine or recreate that memory in order for us to experience it again. And we may not recreate it in exactly the way that it actually happened.

Have you ever experienced a situation that really didn’t bother you until you began to go over and over it in your head and it gradually assumed all the proportions and details and colours of a horror story? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.

In a similar way, dreams and fantasies can be re-imaginings and re-workings of what we have experienced in the day. And although our dreams can feel very ‘real’ to us when they are happening, we wouldn’t dream of supposing that they are representations of truth.

We can’t be sure that how people experience things in hypnosis is how things actually happened either. There may be a feeling-tone, a sensory theme of the hypnotic experience that carries emotions and  memories and associations from way back. But things can get a little blurry and what actully happened and how we re-experience it can get a little mixed-up.

But what really concerns me about the Big Myth that goes, ‘there must be an underlying cause somewhere in a person’s past for the problems and challenges that s/he might be facing in the present,’ is that this assumption can result in long (and often expensive) periods of fruitless searching, over-thinking, rumination and anxiety.

If you’re asking yourself why something is happening for you, a well-trained hypnotherapist can help you to understand how you are doing that thing in the present and what you can do differently to change it as well as any possible emotions, associations and habits you’ve been carrying from the past.

So, I think this is good news. Because if it’s possible that there is no why,  no single pin-downable ’cause’ for what you are feeling, then you may simply have been looking in the wrong direction. The search for why may have been holding you back from becoming more consciously aware of how you can do the problem differently.

Tags: hypnosis, hypnotherapy, regression, underying cause
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Every Monday, I’m going to be addressing a common myth around hypnosis and hypnotherapy…

This week, let’s look at the one that goes: ‘Hypnosis is weird/ scary/ mystical/ mind-control/ utter hippy nonsense/ what that bloke off the telly does/ brain-washing/ something you do to me to fix my head  *

* or a combination of the above.

Firstly, I want to let you into a secret. Noone knows exactly what hypnosis is. Nope. Hypnotherapists don’t know what hypnosis actually is, and neither do researchers looking at people’s brains whilst in this apparent state of hypnosis with MRI scans and other neuroimaging techniques.

In MRI scans, we can see parts of the brain either ‘light up’ or get ‘turned off’ when people are apparently in hypnosis. Here is an example of the kind of research into hypnosis that neuroimaging is making possible, carried out by Amir Raz, who wanted to look at how hypnotic suggestions might affect the regulation of pain in the brain. This particular research gives us fascinating data about how hypnotic suggestions ‘turn off’ the area of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which would normally get activated when performing certain tasks. It has many interesting possibilities for further research and application.

But it still doesn’t really tell us what hypnosis actually is.

The question of whether hypnosis is an actual state of attention (state theory) or a set of beliefs, attitudes and expectations (non-state theory) is hotly contested in the field of hypnotherapy and hypnosis. In fact, you will find people arguing about it all over the internet.

The state theory maintains that hypnosis is an actual change in the quality of our attention and awareness, a kind of experiential shift or hypnotic ‘trance’ state that is often described by people in terms of changes in temporal and spatial awareness (‘My body feels so heavy,’ ‘My hands feel so huge’ or ‘Has that really been half an hour? It felt like ten minutes’).

The non-state theory of hypnosis claims that there is no such thing as this altered state of awareness or hypnotic ‘trance’ and that the effects of hypnosis can be explained by the motivation, cognitive set and expectation of the person being hypnotised and the way that he or she is prepared to work towards a therapeutic goal.

You will notice that, so far, there has been no mention in either of these theories of a sleep-like or unconscious state, nor of vaudevillian stunts. Contrary to popular misconception – and I do still meet people who think of hypnosis in this way – hypnosis is not like being asleep or unconscious. It is not something that a hypnotist or therapist does to you.

In hypnotherapy, the therapist does not go inside your mind and flick levers and switches or make things disappear or convince you that something you previously thought true is now suddenly untrue. (I don’t know about you but I would personally find that rather unnerving. I wouldn’t go anywhere near a hypnotherapist if I believed that s/he could do that to me!)

We know that hypnosis is something that you actively need to co-create with the therapist you choose to work with. The therapist guides you through the process of going into hypnosis (state theory) or you yourself create the mindset and beliefs within which the changes can happen (non-state theory) because you want to make the changes you want to make. Or a combination of these two.

To illustrate this more clearly, we know that if a person sits in the chair with their arms crossed and says, ‘Humph. Well you’re not going to put me under. You’re not going to hypnotise me, matey,’ well, then they are right. They will not be experiencing anything very soon except their own desire not to go into hypnosis. And maybe their own fear, which may be what is preventing them from making the changes in the first place.

So if we assume that most people seeking the help of a hypnotherapist actually want to make some changes in their lives, is hypnosis a state that therapists guide them into or a description of their set of beliefs and expectations that will make it possible for the therapist to work with them?

Personally, I think it is a combination of these two.

Many people who come to work with me are worried that they won’t be able to ‘do it right’ or relax sufficiently (see last Monday’ Myth-Busting) or go into hypnosis but, despite these fears and apprehensions, they learn exactly how to use the power of their minds and the power of self-hypnosis in helpful ways.

Whether you think that hypnosis is a weird (or mystical or in some way spiritual) state or non-state really depends upon your own set of beliefs around turning your attention inside yourself in a focused way. Some people think this is a very ordinary thing to do. For others, it is actually something quite special.

What I do know and continue to notice all the time in my own practice – both as a hypnotherapist and as someone who regularly uses self-hypnosis – is that it’s so easy to be carried away by the busy-ness of our everyday lives so that making time to direct our attention inwards in a focused way and really notice what we are feeling and thinking and how, in a sense, we are doing or creating or imagining our lives can feel strange, weird, pleasant, a relief or even slightly scary at first. It may be something we haven’t done for a long time.

When we begin to learn and understand how to do our lives and thoughts and internal experience in more helpful and progressive ways, I do personally think that is a very powerful experience. Learning to relax deeply or notice our thoughts or the way that our body feels in the midst of our busy-ness can be a kind of special or transformative experience.

There are some who would say that all our experiences are kinds of ‘trance state,’ either positive, neutral or negative, until we become consciously aware that we are doing them. So we find ourselves going into the trance of a particular relationship (he says that, she says that, you say that) or the trance of work (everything is so hard and it will never get any better) or the one about money (I need more and never seem to have enough and if only I had more my life would be so much better), for example.

Hypnosis, then, in this regard, is a kind of waking up from the trance of our everyday lives.

Tags: hypnosis, hypnotherapy, hypnotic suggestibility, non-state theory, state theory, suggestion, trance
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One of the many reasons that I think I was so powerfully drawn to the kind of work that I do as a hypnotherapist is my interest in – or should I say passion for – metaphor.

Over the years, I have researched conceptual metaphor theory extensively and used it consciously and subconsciously in my own writing. I am fascinated by the way that we all use metaphor, every single day of our lives, to describe our experiences.

We have spatial metaphors: I feel so down today.

We have metaphors that suggest that we experience our body as a sort of container for our emotions: I was seething with anger. I thought I might explode.

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Tags: bed, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, therapeutic metaphor
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Every Monday, I’m going to be addressing a common myth around hypnosis and hypnotherapy…

Sometimes, when I’m working with new clients to gather information for the work we’re going to begin together, they will say something like: ‘I am worried that you won’t be able to hypnotise me because I just can’t relax.’

In other words, hypnosis and relaxation are often thought of as more or less the same thing. Well, whilst it’s true that many people experience hypnosis and self-hypnosis as a deeply calming, centring or grounding experience in which their mind and body begin to feel more relaxed, we do not need to actually feel relaxed in order to go into hypnosis.

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Tags: hypnosis, hypnotherapy, relxation
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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.

Tags: comedy shit, Frank Skinner, hypnosis, Russell Brand, Skinned
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It’s a litte quiet on the news front in the world of hypnotherapy and hypnosis, right now. So rather than bringing you the usual highlights from the latest hypnosis research and stories, I thought I would write about something that is very close to my heart: how to have the weight and shape you want.

One of the most common reasons for people to choose to work with me is because they are fed up with diets that don’t work. I am very used to hearing the words, ‘Sophie, you are my last resort.’

And I completely understand that. Most people I have worked with have tried every celebrity diet, consulted nutritionists, read countless books, even bought very expensive supplements and generally imposed dull, boring ways of eating upon themselves in an attempt to shift the pounds. It is only after years of yo-yo dieting that they begin to realise, ‘Hang on a minute. I need to do something different here.’

And that’s where hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis comes in.

It’s the way that we think about food, eating and our bodies that changes everything. My You Can Have the Weight and Shape You Want programme is not a diet but simply a system of learning to use the power of your subconscious mind to enjoy the variety and flavour of healthy foods and regular exercise, but here is the interesting thing…

When I’m working with people, I often find that in the first week or so, they are so used to following diets and eating plans that they want me to tell them what to eat every day. Or they put themselves on a self-imposed diet of eating quick convenience diet foods, those specially packaged products on the supermarket shelves, unsatisfying stuff with ingredients that are closer to cardboard and polystyrene than actual food. And then they find themselves feeling hungry and longing for a chocolate bar.

Are you on a self-imposed diet?
I think we are all so used to reading about and hearing about the latest diet – and the food that is ‘naughty’ and that we must not allow ourselves to eat – that we think that diets and self-deprivation are the way to lose weight successfully and permanently. It makes me so cross to flick through a magazine in a waiting room or walk past a news stand and see all the hypnotic images of this ‘hot diet’ or that ‘bikini body plan.’ Grrrr…

And, of course, much of this is sandwiched between airbrushed images of models who actually don’t look like that in real life. More grrrrr… Was it Cindy Crawford, one of the ’80s supermodels, who once said, ‘It takes five people and a photographer to make me look like this. I don’t get out of bed looking this way.’ She felt it was important that women knew that.

You may have guessed that I feel passionately about this subject. In my teenage years and early 20s, I struggled terribly with my body-image. I remember a particular ‘light-bulb’ moment when I realised that I was never going to look like Cindy Crawford in the pages of Marie Claire. Why? Well, for a start, because she is over 6′ tall and I am just about 5′ 3″. Almost. If I stand up straight.  8-)  And that was a liberating realisation for me.

Love your body… yes, really…

From that point on, I have been gradually learning how to love my body for all its little foibles and fluctuations. You know, holding an imaginary gun to my head and screaming at myself, ‘Do not eat that chocolate’ wasn’t really very motivating. And it certainly wasn’t much fun.

This is celebrity bikini-shot season. Please, please, women everywhere, I urge you to be kind to yourself. And men. These days, there seems to be a little more pressure on men too. Although, if you are a man, you can always choose to aspire to models of successful men such as Michael McIntryre rather than Brad Pitt, of course. There seems to be a somewhat wider range…

Your brain

How we think about our own bodies and other people’s bodies and how we think about ourselves is so bound up in our ability to choose and really enjoy healthy, nourishing food and exercise. Our brains are the most important element of healthy eating.

Here is a celebrity story that I came across on the ‘Now!’ magazine web site. It’s the story of ex-EastEnders star, Natalie  Cassidy, who has dropped from a size 16 to a very healthy and toned size 8.

You have to look carefully for the key message of the story. It is hidden amongst the adverts for slimming supplements and pics of ‘celebrity bodies.’ But the message is simple and clear.

How did Natalie lose the weight? She says:

‘I changed everything. It was more about exercise than diet. I cut out rubbish. I cut down on alcohol, too – even though I love white wine – and laid off savoury stuff. Cheese, crisps and dips were my downfall… Over the years I’d dabbled with exercise, but I’d never stuck to anything. I hate being all red-faced and sweaty in the gym, so I always preferred to do DVDs at home.’

Ah. But here’s the thing. I can’t help wondering how many people have bought Natalie’s best-selling fitness DVD and are now feeling like failures because it is still lying in a drawer?

Natalie’s key message seems to be: Eat healthily and do regular exercise consistently… in your way, a way that you feel comfortable with. Which may not be a DVD. It might be walking, running, the gym, horse riding, rebounding. But the important thing is to do something.

Stories like Natalie’s are inspiring and might compel you to begin to do something differently in your own life. But I think it is so important to do it in your way. The way that is right for you. And you may need some support to make that happen.

The only ‘rule’ that matters
It’s time to roll out my all-time favourite concept from NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming): ‘There is no failure. Only feedback.’

Stop beating yourself up for what you haven’t done, or didn’t do ‘right,’ for falling ‘off the wagon’ or ‘letting yourself down.’ Think about what you have learned from your experiences and from what didn’t work for you so that you can use that feedback to do things differently in the future.

There is only one way to achieve the weight and shape you want. Your way. And that’s the way that works best for you. If you don’t know what that is, maybe it’s time to chuck out the celebrity diet books and the diet ‘rules’ and begin to find out?

Tags: celebrity diets, hypnosis, weight loss
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One of the single most influential hypno-stories to have gripped the pubic imagination in recent months, is Lily Allen’s transformation, dropping two dress sizes from a very pretty size 12 to a toned size 8, which she attributes to hypnotherapy sessions.

It’s interesting to see media all over the world picking up on this story. Here’s a link to the Ahlan! Live in the United Arab Emirates version of the story. They also mention other recent celeb stories:

Mel B, last week revealed she sought hypnotherapy in a bid to boost her body-confidence, Fergie to quit biting her nails, and nicotine addicts Charlize Theron and Drew Barrymore to kick the habit by being “put under.”

And there’s the annoying thing. It seems that hypno-lingo is pretty universal too. Phrases such as being “put under” – even with the inverted commas – or the headline of this article ‘Look into our eyes..’ seem to be getting far too ubiquitous for my liking.

Maybe I should announce a campaign, right here and now on this blog, for better and more accurate reporting of hypnosis and hypnotherapy stories.

I mean, harrumph! Using words like ‘going under’ or ‘look into my eyes’ is not only tired and unimaginative but also very misleading. Hypnosis is not like being ‘under’ as in anaesthetised; and we hypnoptherapists do not ask people to look into our eyes or at our swinging pendulums and watches.

I had a client a while ago who opened his eyes and said ‘But I was aware of everything you said to me…’ He felt cheated and a little disappointed about his first experience of hypnosis, even though we did some great work together, got a great result and I had explained to him at length beforehand that hypnosis would not feel like being asleep. 

Now, I happen to think that the natural trance state is pretty magical and powerful in and of itself. Being able to access your subconscious and allow it to find solutions to your problems is rather awe-inspiring when you think about it. I don’t know about you but, when I’m entering hypnosis, I like to know that I am fully focused and in control while this amazing process is happening. I don’t want anyone putting me ‘under.’

One popular application of hypnosis that I have, however, been enjoying recently is the TV show, ‘The Mentalist’. If you haven’t yet seen it, the show stars Simon Baker as Patrick Jane, an independent consultant with the
California Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Jane (and I must admit that it is a little disconcerting when his colleagues call him that) has a remarkable track
record for solving serious crimes by using his razor sharp skills of
observation. Within the Bureau, Jane is notorious for his dapper dressing and his blatant lack
of boundaries and protocol. His semi-celebrity past as a psychic medium also adds a whiff of scandal because he now admots that he feigned his
paranormal abilities. I just love spotting his use of hypnotic language patterns and they way that he ‘enables’ suspects, crime victims or witnesses to recall or reveal things about themselves.

I think that, most of all, I like his wearing of waistcoats on California beaches. I think you can catch it in the UK at 9pm on Thursdays.

So less tired old miselading hypnosis lingo and more hypno substnce, please. Or at the very least, can we have more amusing hypno crime-solving programmes? If anyone is asking, I wouldn’t mind playing a crime-solving hypno-cop… and I wouldn’t even need a waistcoat.

Tags: hypno, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, Mentalist
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So I was at my parents’ house on Easter Sunday, keeping my mum company, and my mum pointed out a double-page article on hypnotherapy in her Sunday paper, The Sunday Times.

The article, very imaginatively entitled ‘Look into my eyes,’ (ha, ha, ha….we haven’t heard that one before, have we?) highlights that, despite the many jokes and quips about hypnosis, there is also:

‘a body of scientific evidence to back up the effectiveness of hypnosis for weight loss  and a range of other issues, from anxiety and sleep disorders to infertility and compulsive shopping.’

You can read the online version of the article here.

The article goes on to say:

‘Let’s face it, hypnosis does not exactly have the best reputation, what with the ritual humiliations employed by stage hypnotists. “The stage scenario has given the process a bad name,” concedes Georgia Foster, a hypnotherapist who has treated a string of high-profile clients. “People think it’s all about mind control, but nobody can really control someone else’s mind. It will only absorb what it knows is appropriate. Hypnotherapy is like Google. It puts helpful information into the subconscious mind so the brain can find it next time it’s doing a search.” ‘

That’s an interesting metaphor. You know, I tend to dislike metaphors that compare the brain to a computer and our thoughts to software that can be ‘re-programmed.’ I think that way of thinking is a little reductionist. It doesn’t really work for me. Metaphors are, after all, highly personal.

However, I can see what Georgia Foster is saying here. It is a neat way of conveying that you, the browser of your brain, are in control. I could extend the metaphor by saying that your thoughts and emotions are only a result of the particular search terms that you enter. Hmmmm… I need to think that through a little…

The article is a useful round-up of some popular applications of hypnotherapy: to change your weight and shape, to let go of anything that may be holding you back from optimum fertility, to enjoy a better sex life and now, of course, the subject that everyone is talking about, hypnotherapy for ‘credit crunch anxiety.’

I went into a gift shop the other day and got talking to the owners about hypnotherapy and we got onto the subject of hypnosis ‘for a better sex life.’  I am constantly amazed at the conversations that my job opens up for me.

Tags: Google, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, sex
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More celebrity endorsement of hypnosis today. Former Spice Girl Mel B is using hypnosis to prepare for her new burlesque-style Vegas stage show, according to this article in Western Daily Press.co.uk.

The former Spice Girl apparently told Closer magazine: “I’m getting hypnosis. I’m
seeing a guy called Anthony Cool, who performs a show at Vegas too. I’m
doing this just in case I get any last-minute nerves – you know, in
case I can’t remember the lyrics or the moves. He’s going to hypnotise
me as soon as I get there.”

Hmm.. I work with many people on developing compelling and congruent business presentations. In fact, one of my clients’ described me recently as his ’secret weapon.’

I also work with people on sports performance. But I am still waiting for the moment when someone approaches me about a raunchy stage show performance. Hmmm….

Tags: celebrity hypnosis, hypnosis, Mel B
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No blog post as such today. Just a very quick note as I grab my bag, fasten my suitcase and head off to catch my flight to sunny San Diego where I’ll be attending the Erickson Foundation Brief Therapy Conference.

Yes, I am very impressed with the Sheraton Skyline’s superstrength double-glazing here at Heathrow this morning. I wasn’t even the slightest bit aware of any planes roaring overhead last night. (Or perhaps that was the self-hypnosis I did whilst lying in bed?)

Anyway, I’ll be posting about the conference over the next week or so, as I get to hang out with some of my hypnosis heroes.

Have a great one!

Tags: Erickson Foundation, hypnosis
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Cold, crisp wintry weekend here in Yorkshire. And just for a little pre-Christmas fun, I wanted to share with you this lovely thing made by Zefrank.

Create your own snowflake, set it spinning in 2D or 3D and then allow it to hypnotise you. This image really does not do it justice.

Gorgeous!

Tags: creativity, hypnosis
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Since last week’s blog post about the C-section delivery in Iran using hypnosis instead of anaesthesia, the blogosphere seems to be buzzing with more stories of people using hypnotherapy for pain-free briths.

Many of my fellow hypnotherapists have been talking about this on their blogs over the past few days.

Thank you to Cal Banyan for bringing this video of an NBC news report to my attention.

The NBC report follows the story of Kristie Press from Grovetown. It says:

‘After one painful childbirth, Press was terrified of what was to come when she heard she was expecting again.

“When I first got pregnant in the first couple of months even the thought of going to the hospital just really made me want to cry,” Press said.

Then she found a video of a woman using hypnosis during childbirth on the Internet.

“I was like wow that’s completely amazing. She didn’t appear to be in pain she wasn’t screaming she was actually smiling,” Press said.

The video was made by Christen Phillips who used hypnosis for the birth of her second daughter after a particularly traumatic experience delivering her first child. She now instructs other women in using hypnosis for childbirth. The article quotes her as saying:

‘Things that have a negative association, we replace those like instead of labor, it’s your birth, instead of contractions, it’s pressure waves,” Phillips said.

The technique uses music, thoughts and phrases to reach extreme relaxation.

“It kind of feels like being in a tub of warm water.”

Believe it or not, Phillips says the techniques may actually have you asking for more.

“I really wished it would have lasted a little longer because I was enjoying it so much,” she said.

I love that! What a great story. I love reading about people who are using hypnosis to make real changes in their lives and sharing that knowledge with others. Fantastic!

Tags: childbirth, hypnosis
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In my consulting room, I have a certificate on my wall that confirms that I am certified to train people in using hypnosis for childbirth.

Now, many of my clients, whilst they begin to relax in my comfortable hypnosis chair, notice this certificate and start to laugh. Womne in particular often roll their eyes in disbelief. They say things like ‘What? Do you have any idea how painful giving birth is? Are you seriously saying that it is possible to use hypnosis to experience a pain-free birth. You have got to be joking!’

You see, so powerful is our cultural belief that giving birth – labour, as we often refer to it – is going to be very, very hard and painful and scary. As women, we are often hypnotised into that belief from a very early age.

I have worked with many couples using hypnosis for a shorter, easier birth experience and it is wonderful to watch people as they understand that they can use the power of their minds to enjoy more control, a much greater level of comfort, less need for intervention… it is truly a privilege to be involved with that process.

So, here’s a thing for you. Not only is hypnosis a fabulous way to achieve all these things but here is a video of it being used in Iran for a C-section delivery! How’s about that? And I am really excited because with my brand new all-singing, all-dancing blog, I can share the video with you right here. (I hope.) Let’s see…

Tags: childbirth, hypnosis
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Minster FM here in York asked me to pop into the studio the other day to talk about using hypnosis and other techniques to manage stress.

Apparently, York is the second most angry city in the UK when it comes to ’shopping based arguments’, according to a new piece of research. Tracey, the Minster FM News Editor, told me that we spend a total of around 25 minutes waiting in queues whilst shopping and that this has been causing stress, anxiety and, ultimately, arguments to break out all over our beautiful city.

I’ve been thinking about this and, you know, 25 minutes may seem like a lot in total but I guess that is, say, five minutes of queuing in five shops… Perhaps if it was 25 minutes of queueing in one shop, I’d be feeling slightly annoyed.

However, it seems to me that this ‘queue rage’ is a little like road rage. When we attempt to control the stuff that we can’t control – a queue, a traffic jam, a train delay – we begin to experience stress, worry and anxiety. There is so much that you can do to help yourself to let go of stress.

So, lovely people – and shoppers and shop assistants – of York, if you want to find out more, please do give me a call!

Tags: hypnosis, Minster FM, stress management
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After yesterday’s post about self-hypnosis and creativity, I’ve just been reading another article that provides more evidence that hypnosis helps our brains to access our own innate creative abilities.

The article in Science Daily , reports new research on hypnosis and synaesthesia: 

‘Hypnosis can induce synaesthetic experiences – where one sense triggers the involuntary use of another – according to a new study by UCL (University College London) researchers. The findings suggests that people with synaesthesia, contrary to popular belief, do not necessarily have extra connections in their brain; rather, their brains may simply do more ‘cross talking’ and this can be induced by changing inhibitory processes in the average brain.’

We tend to think of synaesthesia – for example, feeling colours, tasting shapes – as being a rather unusual ‘condition’ and yet past research has shown that highly creative people often have a certain degree of synaesthesia. Cross-sensory experience is surprisingly common to some degree in poets and musicians. Rather than being an on-off kind of neurological state, it is probably more like a continuum. 

Interestingly, this latest research by scientists at UCL ‘used posthypnotic suggestion to show that people who are not synaesthetes can be induced to have synaesthetic experiences.’

Here’s how they did it: 

‘After inducing digit-colour synaesthesia, the volunteers reported similar experiences to those undergone by real synaesthetes in their everyday life. For example, one participant described seeing the numbers on car number plates in specific colours, while walking around under posthypnotic suggestion. Moreover, hypnotized participants failed trick tests which were also failed by real synaesthetes: in one test, when subjects were hypnotized to experience seven as red, they could not detect the number when a black seven was presented on a red background.

Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, says: “Our study shows that posthypnotic suggestion can induce synaesthetic experiences in people, suggesting that extra brain connections are not needed to experience cross-sensory interactions and that it is more cross talk within the brain that causes these experiences. This takes us one step closer to understanding the causes of synaesthesia and abnormal cross-brain interactions.”

Very interesting to see hypnosis being used in this way. We still understand so little about the brain and particularly about the subconscious mind. However, I know from my own work and research that, when we are in the particular state of awareness that is self-hypnosis, our ‘inhibitory processes’ calm down and relax. This may be why we are more open to suggestion – such as seeing the number seven as red.

However, even without hypnotic suggestion, the state of self-hypnosis itself enables our brains to make all kinds of connections and learnings – the kind of ‘cross-talk within the brain’ that is proposed by this study. Perhaps it is this ‘cross-talk’ that helps us to access more and more of our natural ability to create change, find solutions, make things happen. 

As Albert Einstein famously said: ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.’ Cognitive scientists studying ‘intuition’ have found that people tend to describe it as a more bodily, felt kind of state, a state of expansion, relaxation or opening outwards… 

Perhaps this new study of synaesthesia is showing us this kind of shift at a neurological level.

Tags: creativity, hypnosis, synaethesia
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A fascinating study – and yes! more good research -  into the applications of self-hypnosis and hypnotherapy today.

An article in Medical News Today reports on the findings of Bryan Bennett at the University of Bangor has been looking at ways to help those with arthritis to use ‘mental imagery and hypnotherapy’ to alleviate pain.

The report reads:

‘This study examined the effect of visualisation techniques and hypnotherapy to help reduce the pain and fatigue, which prevents many sufferers from living a full and active life.

Forty two patients were asked to visualise their pain in different ways and try to manage it. For example participants were asked to visualise their pain in the form of a person and then thank that person for letting them know something was not right. They would then ask the person to leave, visualising their image going further away, until the image was hardly visible and eventually disappearing, leaving them free of pain.

The results showed that these imagery techniques, and hypnotherapy, were effective at reducing the pain and fatigue caused by RA.

Bryan Bennett commented: ‘All the participants were asked to identify what areas of their life were important to them but were negatively affected due to the RA. By doing so they were taking an active part in their own therapy. By employing the techniques they were taught, they were able to self-treat when necessary – allowing them to control their pain and enabling them to get on with enjoying life.’

Of course, ‘mental imagery’ or ‘visualisation’ is just one way of working with people in self-hypnosis. The visualisation technique described here also has a lot in common with a writing technique that I use in order to get people visualising and communicating with different body parts that may be experiencing pain, discomfort, cravings or other unwanted feelings.

Powerful stuff!

Tags: arthritis, hypnosis, Sophie Nicholls
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