Areas Covered: Stress & Health

Stress management is not just a question of relaxation, although that can help. New techniques for coping with stress, different thinking styles and approaches, can all contribute towards a more complete stress management “toolkit”. In addition to deep relaxation, these stress-reducing hypnosis sessions will help you manage stress more elegantly and effectively.

Area covered	Brief Description
Stress management training	Why is it that sometimes you can glide through the roughest day with ease, while at other times the smallest bump in the road can throw you into a spin? Your thinking styles change, your emotions become less balanced and you do things you wouldn’t normally do. So how can you manage stress more effectively? The stress management training CD will help you gain perspective when you need it most. It will retrain your brain to spot when you are becoming stressed and give you tools to deal with it. You can listen to it to improve your overall stress management skills, or just when things are getting out of hand, and you need to bring your stress levels down immediately. Enjoy a smoother ride.
Relieve stress and tension	Do you ever get the feeling that you just can’t think another thought? That your brain has somehow ground to a halt? That your ability to concentrate has just evaporated? That the tension in your back is just killing you? Hypnosis can relieve tension and trigger your natural relaxation response, causing wonderful waves of good hormones and feelings of tranquility to wash through your mind and body. Eradicate stress in the mind and tension in the body with deeply relaxing hypnosis. Enjoy a pure, refreshing, rejuvenating hypnotic experience that will leave you feeling recharged and back on form. Give yourself the break you deserve ...
Keep a cool head	Do you find yourself getting all worked up when crises and pressures fall upon you? Do your heart race and your hands shake as you try to deal with demanding situations? Is it hard to think straight and see your way through what you have to do? It’s reassuring to know that these responses to pressure are completely normal. The human body’s primary response is what we call the fight/flight response. Everything in you has evolved to get you out of trouble – fast. That you are here today is testimony to the highly successful functioning of this system. Every day, people must face situations where neither running nor fighting are viable or advisable options. The ambulance crew attending a road traffic accident cannot afford to get caught up in the emotional impact of what is happening. The business director cannot run from the boardroom during a company crisis. His fellow directors won’t appreciate it if he tries to fight them, either. Even at the personal level, the ability to stay calm and collected is generally more useful than the power to run or fight. Anybody can get very worked up about family problems, for example, but you really need a cool head to untangle them and find solutions. Hypnotherapy makes full use of the power of the human brain to generate and integrate new patterns of behaviour. It will show you how to develop the inner detachment you need to put your emotions aside at appropriate times. You will learn to see more of the “bigger picture” around any situation.
Reduce time pressure	Time pressure builds up without you noticing. Before you know it, you’re measuring everything against the clock. It can be quite a skill to get a lot done without rushing and so suffering the effects of time pressure. Our bodies are not made to be constantly rushing. The “rushed factor” adds to the risk of increased blood pressure and heart disease. Struggling with time constraints also has psychological consequences and can cause chronic anger, depression, resentment and even hopelessness. Constantly feeling impatient and always being concerned about what’s coming next ruins your enjoyment of life and damages relationships, because you never have the spare capacity to truly give all your attention to others around you. To really change gear you need to relax and have less input for a while. That is where hypnotherapy comes in! We’re not suggesting you radically change your lifestyle, but you do need to know how to “change gear” to avoid burnout!
Beat burnout (bounce back)	Burnout – you have run out of physical and mental fuel. There is so much to do but you can’t face the tiniest of tasks. With burnout everything feels overwhelming, as if it’s crowding in on you – you lose your perspective and even your sense of humour. Millions experience burnout every year as modern life becomes more and more demanding. Burnout is a powerful signal that you have been going about things in a way that doesn’t work in the long term. Getting your basic human needs met helps avoid burnout and makes you more productive into the bargain. Hypnosis will provide deep rest and recuperation and at the same time help you feel better about yourself and where you are going. Suffering from burnout is often a turning point for people, even sometimes a “blessing in disguise”, as unlikely as that may sound! Try hypnotherapy right now and start feeling better instantly.
Stop feeling overwhelmed	You feel that there is just too much to do and things have got out of control. You may also have a sense of rising panic, which can quickly lead to exhaustion and guilt. It happens when there are just so many demands on your energy and time that you just can’t say “no” to. It’s hard to switch off and get the rest you so desperately need. Modern life is increasingly overwhelming. Emails, calls, partners, parents, kids, and work – you can feel you’re going crazy. To negotiate life we need a work/life balance; we need to plan, cope and prioritise. You also need the psychological skill of “compartmentalising”, which will diminish that overwhelmed feeling immediately. You can compartmentalise your time, which means not thinking about what else you “should” be doing when you are supposed to be resting or having fun. Hypnotherapy will get you feeling relaxed, back in control of your life and much more able to manage your daily load.
Stop feeling trapped	We become trapped by all sorts of things – career, a relationship that goes wrong, a financial situation. Whatever your situation, feeling powerless runs counter to our human need for a sense of control. You need security, a sense of connection, and a way to make your life meaningful. When the going gets really tough, and the walls of the trap feel like they’re closing in, it helps to be really clear how much of the problem lies outside you and how much lies inside you. First of all, hypnosis can help you achieve a level of inner calm which will allow you to look more objectively at what is going on. In the next step, hypnosis will help you tap into deep inner resources of optimism and determination. It will help you build up and strengthen these qualities, so that you can call on them at will. You will find yourself enjoying a new source of creativity and patience in dealing with your situation.
Stop being a workaholic	Of course it’s great to work hard, but are you working at the expense of your life? Focusing on goals, being driven and success-orientated gets you places. But it can also drive you to an early grave. Workaholics often find that when they get to where they were aiming for, there is nothing there. They neglect family, friends, other interests, sleep, exercise and time. If you recognise yourself in this, read on. Having high standards is all well and good, but if you constantly require perfection from yourself or others then you tend to become a tyrannical bully – even if you end up just bullying yourself. Workaholism has diminishing returns. We all have the same basic needs in life: security; connection to people around us; a sense of status; and to be fed, rested and watered. When they are met, these needs make us feel healthy and “normal.” If we subconsciously use work to try to meet these needs, then we may meet some at the expense of others. Meeting some of your needs away from work enables you to have the spare capacity to be more affective when you are actually at work. You are not a machine – but even if you were, every machine needs downtime at some point. Hypnosis will keep you focused on your long-term goals even more effectively, because it will encourage you to take care of all parts of your life for balance and harmony and remember what life is really about. Stop being a workaholic and get your life back.
Help for workplace bullying	Workplace bullying can undermine your self-confidence and self-esteem, and even produce symptoms of depression. This hypnosis session is designed to get you feeling strong in yourself. Please don’t suffer alone. Every employer should have an anti-bullying policy. Remember, if you are being bullied, any “weakness” is in the bully, not in you. Most people who are bullied at work are targeted by a line manager. Bullying is any intentional and repetitious aggressive behaviour designed to undermine, embarrass, or otherwise distress the target of such behaviour. The worst thing is that some bullying may seem petty or “nothing much to complain about”, but any undermining behaviour used repetitively can become unbearable. Some bullies will single out certain people. They will often test potential victims to see if they can manipulate them. They will push a little here and there to see what gives. Coping with workplace bullying will help build your confidence so that you can take action against the bully. Victims of workplace bullies often fail to act because of self-doubt. Hypnosis will help you get some perspective and decide what help you need. Whatever you decide to do, get help now. Bullying is not acceptable in any form, and you deserve to be able to relax and get on with your work the way you see fit.
Relax after work	It seems that the work demons follow you home and torment you all evening, making it impossible to enjoy time with your family, or even watch your favourite sport. The “sticky” nature of work-related concerns comes from how our minds respond to our work environments. Most of us work to survive. We have to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. But when we pay a lot of attention to X, our brains learn that X is important. This means that our brains become “set” to focus on matters related to X, and even to seek out connections with X in seemingly unrelated areas. While this is going on in the background, our conscious attention may be on deadlines, projects, staff issues or rivalries, management problems or our own performance. These are added to that “X” factor. If you come home in such a state, it can be really hard to unwind properly. So what’s the best way to flip yourself from full-on work mode to laid-back “me time” mode if your brain is constantly ruminating about “X”? What’s required is a kind of mental “decompression unit”. The quickest and easiest way to effectively decompress your head is to use hypnosis. Powerful hypnotic suggestions that you can simply sit back and absorb will switch your mind from its work state to your preferred “ready to enjoy myself” state. And the more you use your self-help hypnosis CD, the faster you’ll find yourself relaxing after work. Discover how much more time you have to enjoy yourself.
Work–life balance	Do you feel that the only life you have is work? That you are a slave to your work and therefore have very little time and energy left for family, friends and outside interests? If so, then something needs to change. Because a life without proper work–life balance can seem like no life at all. We now live in a 24/7 society. Work can intrude into our personal life through texts, emails and our constant companion, the cellphone! There’s always something that needs doing! Are you working to live or living to work? If your wellbeing is suffering, then you need to seriously address your own work–life balance. Achieving this balance is about compartmentalising your time, which is as much a psychological skill as a practical measure. Hypnotherapy will teach you to put boundaries around your own time, protecting and nurturing it. Your family, your mind and your body will thank you and you can start living the kind of life you want!
Failing school tests/ university exams	Discovering you have failed a test or exam can be devastating. Maybe you thought you’d done well, or you are sure you couldn’t have worked any harder. It’s natural to feel bad after failing tests, especially if your friends did well; but it’s vital to keep in mind that you can come back from this. It’s important to stay determined and see test failure as just a detour, not a roadblock. The fact is that eventual success is going to feel better after initial failure. When you do pass, it’s going to be real success. And it’s the people who can keep positive (and keep going) after they’ve had setbacks who become the real achievers, because they know how to keep on keeping on. Whether you decide to re-take your tests or think about other options, this time is a great opportunity for you to become stronger than before. Hypnosis will get you feeling confident and strong, easing away any shock, getting you focused again and feeling better. You will have faith in yourself that you can really move on and do well in the future.
Test-result anxiety	Waiting for results, whether academic results or medical test results, can cause huge anxiety. We humans dislike uncertainly. We like things to be clear, certain and complete. Not knowing the outcome of tests that are important to your future can be hard to handle. Knowing how to deeply relax with the uncertainties of life is a hugely life-enhancing skill that you can learn. When we don’t know something, our imagination tries to fill in the gap. The trouble is that what we imagine may be wide of the mark and actually scare us. When we feel emotional because of what we imagine, we tend to blindly believe our emotions. So we might imagine the sound in the street is a gun going off, yet later discover it was a car backfiring. But we felt the fear of hearing a real gunshot. Hypnosis will help you get better at relaxing with uncertainly and stop you prematurely filling the “information gap” with imagination and anxieties. When you stop scaring yourself about test results, then life becomes so much more comfortable again.

HEALTH & WELLBEING

We all know what we should do to stay healthy, but often the motivation is just not there. Hypnosis can help you find “your own way” to better, more healthy behaviour.

Area Covered	Brief Description
Healing power of hypnosis	We all know that the body needs the right vitamins and minerals to maintain health. However, there is one other vital part of the picture that is often ignored. Your immune system and healing mechanism need rest and positive expectation to work at their best. If you feel sick, tired or run-down, hypnosis should not be used as a replacement for appropriate medical intervention, but instead as part of a full recovery programme.
Prepare for surgery	When you are relaxed, confident and calm pre-op, then you may even bleed less during the surgery itself. From the very second that your body is operated on, healing starts to occur. You can prepare your body to heal even more rapidly and effectively. You can hypnotically tell your body to expect the surgery, so it will feel no shock. The surgery will help you and your body will know that. Hypnosis will prime your subconscious mind with suggestions to help you feel calm before you go into surgery, relax during the operation and heal rapidly after surgery.
Fast natural healing (after surgery)	Hypnosis has long been used to accelerate healing and influence other mind/body processes. Of course we now know that what your mind does have immediate physical effects on your body. If you imagine your favourite food when you are hungry, you salivate. If you think about something that embarrasses you, extra blood can flow into the skin of your face making you blush. These changes occur because of what your mind does. Anxiety, depression, negativity and pessimism can all slow down the rate at which your body heals. And after surgery, your body usually has a lot of healing to do! Hypnosis is the best way to influence the mind/body connection and therefore speed up the rate at which you heal. You’ll surprise everyone (and yourself) how rapidly you recover after surgery. Harness your own powerful natural force to help your healing.
MRI scan anxiety	The prospect of an upcoming MRI scan makes many people nervous. MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is a way of generating pictures of body parts that are not amenable to X-rays. During an MRI scan you are lying down inside a large tube. MRI scans are very sensitive to movement, so you have to keep still for anything from around twenty to sixty minutes. During your MRI scan you will be able to talk to the radiographer through an intercom system. MRI scanners display clear and useful images of tissues, muscles, nerves, discs and ligaments – even the brain. The information these provide is very helpful to health practitioners. However, knowing these facts about MRI scans doesn’t always help, because once the emotions kick in, rational thought goes out of the window. The best way to keep still during your scan is to relax deeply – there are no side-effects to MRI scans, so it’s actually a perfect opportunity to hypnotically relax. That is what this session is all about. During hypnosis you can be anywhere you choose – in your mind. In your mind you can always have enough space around you, just as when you dream and “travel” beyond the confines of your bed.
Overcome hypochondria (fear/phobia of illness)	Being worried about your health all the time can be incredibly tiring. And when the fear and anxiety about possible symptoms and diseases gets out of hand, hypochondria is the diagnosis. Sufferers usually assume the worst, with the resulting feelings of anxiety and even panic. Hypnosis is the breakthrough that enables you to “step out” of the thoughts that create the anxiety. In turn, the focus on symptoms subsides, usually very quickly. Overcome fear of illness, regain control over your own thoughts, and give yourself freedom from repetitive worries about your health.
Cure insomnia	If you find that you can’t fall asleep, or you wake up in the early hours of the morning and can’t get back to sleep, you probably have some form of insomnia. Hypnosis is the obvious way to lift insomnia and stop the “racing mind” syndrome, because it deals directly with the cause of the problem – lack of relaxation. To sleep you need to relax. Your subconscious mind has memories of deep, restful sleep. Hypnosis helps you to re-educate your mind to relax, and re-introduces your brain to healthy sleeping patterns. Hypnosis and sleepwalking are actually connected. Suggestions given in the controlled REM state, otherwise known as “hypnosis”, can help the uncontrolled sleepwalking REM state. Hypnosis is a way of accessing the REM state when you are still awake. You are more suggestible during this REM state, which is why hypnosis is used so successfully to cure all kinds of conditions.
Chronic fatigue syndrome	When you suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, everything in life can feel so much harder. It can make work, social life and physical exertion feel like obstacles rather than natural, enjoyable parts of life. One of its central symptoms is profound muscle fatigue, especially after periods of physical effort. Other physical symptoms can include muscle pain or spasms, joint pain, long-lasting flu-like symptoms, headaches or migraines, balance problems, poor sleep, sore throats, swollen glands, intolerance of extreme temperatures, alcohol intolerance, low blood pressure and extreme sensitivity to bright light and noise. Psychological symptoms, which are consequences of the physical symptoms, include depression and anxiety. It’s annoying that some people still think it’s “all in the mind” and that sufferers should “pull themselves together”. However, any physical illness or condition (including chronic fatigue syndrome) is affected by what the mind does. Your subconscious mind and its attitudes have a direct effect on your blood pressure, immune function and pain response. It can be directly influenced by the most powerful way of communicating with subconscious processes – hypnosis. Hypnotherapy is a wonderful way of achieving deep rest, increasing your energy and motivation and building bridges between mind and body. It will help you feel better and re-balance your energy and vitality. *I recommend you consult a doctor if you have any physical symptoms, as other conditions may also result in chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms.*
Ease away tension headaches	Tension headaches can make it difficult to concentrate, often sabotaging you when you need to focus most clearly. All the advice about relaxing your shoulders and neck is all very well, but it can be extremely difficult to remember when you have a busy life. There are three main reasons hypnosis is so effective at curing tension headaches: The deep relaxation lowers your blood pressure, easing any tension in and around your brain. The levels of stress hormones in your system drop, returning you to your “base level”. Your concentration and memory improve, so you don’t have to push yourself so hard afterwards.
Pregnancy after miscarriage	Pregnancy following a miscarriage can be a testing time in many ways for a mother – and for a father too. There are so many complicated feelings involved! On the one hand, there is the loss to grieve over. On the other, there is the joy of expectation. On top of that, there may be many anxieties about the new pregnancy. Even though you may be delighted that a new pregnancy has started, the pain of your earlier loss does not diminish straight away. It can be hard to deal with the congratulations of friends and family. Yes, you are happy, but you are still sad too. And it hardly helps when people say crass things like “the new baby will make up for the one you lost.” The foremost question in your mind is: "Will this baby be all right?" You will do everything you can to see everything goes well. You eat right, exercise properly, take all the ante-natal advice you can get and follow it scrupulously. This is where hypnosis can really come to your aid. Whatever caused you to miscarry the last time, it is natural to be concerned about the wellbeing of your unborn child. And you can really frighten yourself with the scenarios you can dream up. To break through this vicious circle, you need something more than just willpower and conscious intention. Hypnotic suggestions will take you into a deeply relaxed, integrated state. You will actually be circulating “feel-good” chemicals in your body as it relaxes – and these will also circulate in the womb and be transmitted directly to your baby. Hypnotherapy will guide you through a gentle yet transformative process of visualisation that will enable you to focus on the positive outcome of your pregnancy and the health of you and your baby.
Anorexia	Anorexia is like being trapped in a hall of distorting mirrors and believing that the surreal reflections you see looking back at you are “really you”. It’s the cruellest of conditions. The good news is that, by reading this page, you are already taking a step towards freedom. Some part of that web of lies that anorexia spins around you has come apart, and you have glimpsed – even if just fleetingly – the truth. A doubt has crept into your heart. Maybe anorexia isn’t what it appears to be? Maybe there is another way to find identity or security or fulfilment than by starving yourself? But how can you know? It can feel very scary to start entertaining such ideas – like a sort of betrayal. You may find it hard to imagine life without anorexia; to picture yourself living freely in the world, looking after yourself in a healthy, satisfying way; actually enjoying your life; feeling comfortable and at ease with yourself; pursuing goals and objectives that are meaningful and satisfying to you. Can this really come true for you? Where do you start? The key to freedom from anorexia lies in feelings and thoughts. Because of the grip anorexia has had on you, you need something more than just willpower to face it down. You need to harness the instinctive abilities and capacities of your subconscious mind to generate new and powerful positive feelings and thoughts. Together with medical treatment, hypnosis can help you escape from anorexia and begin to build up your defences against this cruel illness. While your doctor helps you address the physical ways in which you can recover from anorexia, I will help you reconnect deeply with your essential self and re-affirm your right to live a whole and healthy life. Make your bid for freedom.
Bulimia	Bulimia is a cycle which starts with a feeling of stress or a build-up of tension. At the onset of a bulimic episode there is a trance-like feeling, where everything (thoughts, feelings, ideas) seems to fade into the background as you forget time passing and just pile into the particular food you are bingeing on. Eventually, the bingeing will finish as you feel fit to burst and just can’t hold any more. Next comes the purging, either by making yourself vomit or taking laxatives. This is “having your fill but keeping slim”. The cycle ends when there is nothing left for your body to get rid of. Afterwards you can feel relief or sleepiness, or you endure self-disgust or a sense of shame that the bulimia has got the upper hand once again. There are many different causes of bulimia. You could have learnt the bulimic pattern from people around you; or you have issues with body image and perfectionism; or your self-esteem is low. There will be risk times, when bulimia is more likely to rear its ugly head and promise you things like feelings of security or relief from boredom – things it cannot truly deliver. Hypnotherapy can help unhook some of those trigger points and get you feeling more relaxed and confident and in charge for a change. Actually overcoming bulimia with hypnosis can help normalise the tyranny of perfectionism, modify your obsessive distortions of your body image and of course raise your self-esteem, because you’ve taken back control.
Stuttering	Stuttering therapy has grown in popularity over the last few years, and it certainly seems to be helpful in many cases. However, not everyone can afford to spend the time and money needed for a stuttering cure, which is often very expensive. Hypnosis gets round the stuttering “Catch-22”. My clients often tell me the harder they try to stop stuttering, the worse it gets. And certainly it seems to be true that stress makes stuttering worse. Hypnotherapy can help you “relax out of” the vicious cycle that causes so many problems. It shows you how to trigger your relaxation response when you begin to feel tense. This relaxation response actually changes the way your brain functions, to make it more “normal”. This allows smooth speech to take place more easily.
Body disfigurement	Dealing with disfigurement can feel like a very big challenge. Whether you were born with your disfigurement, or have only recently acquired it, you have undoubtedly noticed that it makes you question your own and others’ attitudes. People’s reactions to you may seem (quite unintentionally) cruel. Your confidence in yourself may take a battering. We live in a world where physical perfection is always presented as the ideal we must all strive for. Learning to keep “appearance” in its proper place in the context of a total life will free you from the imaginary restrictions of not looking like other people. You are not defined by your disfigurement. And nor is your life. However, your attitudes have been subconsciously created over the years. You probably did not make a conscious choice to adopt a particular attitude; you have been subject to the influence of family, friends, school, and society as a whole. Discarding old unwanted patterns and creating new desirable ones is most effectively done using hypnosis. It will teach you how to use the abilities that you have within you to create and embed “templates for living”. You will learn how to review certain significant experiences around disfigurement and apply a new “template” to them. You will quickly begin to feel very differently about how you look – and very differently about other people’s responses.