A funny thing happened to me in 1996. I was on a platform at World championships in South Africa, fighting for a gold Medal and about to lift a rather large amount of weight. When I pulled that bar I miraculously blew 3 discs in back which was in fact the beginning of a complete revelation.

Coming form a competitive background and having had a wise old Yoda type coach I had learnt a number of techniques which vastly enhanced my competitive capabilities and had sent me soaring past anything I had ever expected to do. The strange thing is that until I studied NLP, everyone thought I was loony and I was considered “off the wall” in my sports rehabilitation practice.

Little did I realize that over those years I was learning the mind body connection.

In NLP we learn about the connection but I would like to show you to immense cavern of possibilities this actually presents us with.

As you know, we have our trusty neuro transmitters who are the runners and message carriers to the various parts of the body which we wish to use on a conscious and unconscious level. For the conscious, all the decisions we make to perform any tasks and on an unconscious level, all the necessary functions our body needs to continually perform for us to live and that we are very rarely ever aware of.

So, if we could tap into our unconscious that controls the automatic functions like heart rate and blood flow, breathing etc we could in fact optimize our bodies and therefore create better results on an everyday basis. The only real barriers that we have are those enforced on us by our perception of our reality and what we believe to be our limitations. Like a man who would believe he could not long jump over 17 meters or another man who believed that his back pain would never go away.

I remember sitting on the floor of the warm up room at my first European Powerlifting Championships in Italy. Shaking and feeling sick I was terrified. Mr. Yoda Coach came over and told me stand up, close my eyes, breath deeply and see in my mind through my own eyes the complete lift I was about to perform. Except this time, play it from the start, as I breathe in feel the strength streaming into all the tissues of my body and do the lift so strong that I amaze myself and act it out if I have to. This was the first time I tapped into my unconscious controls and the first into visualization techniques, oh, and I won my first European Championships.

I now have the pleasure of teaching others how to use their unconscious to change physical processes like speeding up metabolism, increasing heart rate to produce adrenaline and then step into what is commonly called “the Zone” - that hallowed place of ultimate focus and many other ways to assist us in our normal or competitive lives.

Another technique I didn’t realize I was doing was the pain control. This is where I relate to the back injury I had in 1996 and then developed a rather rudimentary process for my sports rehabilitation clients until I became an NLP practitioner and hypnotherapist and completely understood what I was doing and perfected it.

The pain that occurred with that back injury was so bad I couldn’t sleep for weeks. Eventually one night I used the visualization technique my old coach had taught me but this time I pictured my vertebrae, the popped discs in-between them and the tissue damage plus all the inflammation around it. The picture was crystal clear.

Then I saw the picture of how I wanted it to look, imagined the inflammation draining away through the tissues, the split discs hardening, all the tissues that had been damaged healing and the pain fading. The image was so clear I can still see it to this day. Then I fell asleep for the first time in weeks. In the morning the pain was reduced and I actually more motion.

This technique I started to use with sports therapy clients and I was getting results. Finally when I qualified as an NLP practitioner I used what we call “sub modality shifts” to do this which is a far more effective technique, another technique called a fast phobia model to reduce trauma from the affected area and also from the incident when it occurred and then finally the visualization techniques within a hypnosis session to get the body to physically change what it was doing and to heal faster.

From these results then it was possible to implement new strategies into producing better results for athletes by optimizing the bodies performance and also altering the way the athlete perceived the training and event they were about the compete in.

Each step of the actual event is carefully broken down and the automatic thought processes that occurs at each step is then changed or optimized to produced a better result or a better part of the chain to produce an optimum result.

For instance - a boxer who will always drop his left guard after or during a certain shot or move we can then break down the sequence and perform a strategy technique to change the bodies reaction so he no longer does that. A powerlifter, who at competition, always feels that the bar is very heavy when he takes it out of the racks and is about to perform his lift we can take that process apart up the point when he is about to take the bar and change the though process so that he feels so strong the bar feels light. The runner who perceives he has chronic lactic acid buildup that always hits him at the 10 mile mark we can use hypnosis to alter the mechanisms of the lactic acid so they dissipate through the tissue and don’t build up. The bodybuilder who has been dieting for competition for so long that his metabolism has slowed down and he can’t lose any more body fat. He can use hypnosis and sub modality shifts to get him to unconsciously speed up his metabolism and burn the fat again faster.

The amazing possibilities of our bodies capabilities are endless and the further we progress in our understanding of the connection between mind and body the better results we will get and relieve so many problems we perceive we have.

For further information see www.firstday.webeden.co.uk Contact: myfirstday@postmaster.co.uk

About the author:

world Champion and practitioner in hypnotherapy and NLP runs clinics in Manchester for sports assocaited injury and performance optimisation. Respected long time athlete and Sports Injury Therapist and rehabilitation expert she is one the authorities in sports related injuries and treatment.

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Here is a quit smoking hypnosis exercise you can use to stop smoking. Try it, because it might just help you in utilizing your mind power to stop smoking like it has helped many other tobacco addicted people. Reading the text and doing the quit smoking exercise at the same time is very impractical, so I recommend that you read the text aloud while you tape it. Play the tape each time you’re doing this stop smoking exercise. The exercise combines traditional self hypnosis with NPL or Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Sit or lie down, relax and close your eyes “Now I am in a future moment when I no longer smoke. I can see my environment, I can hear the sounds, smell the smells and feel all my emotions. I have no cravings for cigarettes. This seems real, this is real.

I’m now taking a trip on my future time line to a time when I have completely forgotten about smoking, where not smoking does not bother me a at all. I’m now looking back on the time line and I remember how easy it was for me to stop smoking, how amazed I felt when I realized that I stopped having any craving for tobacco, and after that I never gave smoking another thought.

Now, I can feel the freedom I have without tobacco, how great I feel when I am no longer owned by cigarettes. My thoughts are my own. I am free to choose what I want to do and where I want to go, without the thought of smoking cigarettes coming into my thoughts. I want to stay here in this moment of no smoking for a long time and when I go back I will let my mind take these future moments of no tobacco cravings back with me.”

Now, you create the anchor for these future non-smoking resources: Press your thumb and index finger together on your right hand and hold it for a few seconds.

“Now I am even farther in the future, and now I don’t even think about smoking at all. This is very real.” Anchor your good smoke-free feelings again with your thumb and index finger for a few seconds.

Now, the touch of the thumb and index finger connects the good smoke-free feeling in your brain.

Now, bring yourself back to the present moment while you are still holding your thumb and index finger together. You have now made an anchor for the state of being a non-smoker. Repeat this anti smoking hypnotic exercise until it works instantly.

About the Author: Terje Brooks Ellingsen is a writer and Sociologist who runs http://www.1st-self-improvement.net/. He writes about self improvement issues like using mind power for confidence improvement, see http://www.1st-self-improvement.net/self_esteem_improvement.htm and stop smoking, see http://www.1st-self-improvement.net/stop_smoking.htm

Source: www.isnare.com

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How Hypnosis Helps Phobias

People can be afraid of a wide range of things and what can be totally acceptable to one person can be quite panic provoking to another.

Some of the fears I see most often in my practice are:

Animals
Being alone
Blood
Small or enclosed spaces
Dark places
Death
Heights
Injections/Needles
Open spaces
Snakes
Spiders
Travel
Trains
Water

Some unusual ones:

Yellow (the colour)
Red cars
Men with beards
Apples

What is a phobia?

A phobia is any persistent fear of a specific stimulus object or situation. Phobia is from the Greek to fear or dread. It is more than a simple fear, or a being afraid. It is to be totally terrified of the stimulus. When presented with a phobia problem by a client, I always begin by finding out if it is a fear they have, or a phobia. If their problem is spiders for instance, then can they imagine themselves holding a spider on their hand if they are rewarded with 100? What about 500, and so on. If they could bear the spider for a large amount of money, even just for a few seconds, they do not have a phobia, but rather a fear. The person with a phobia of spiders would not be able to bear to touch one for any amount of money or any other reward. Some people are obsessive with their phobia. This means, they can t even bear to think of the stimulus and it will likely be totally controlling their lives.

Another complication is that a client can present with a fear/phobia of flying as an example. However, the skilled therapist, on exploring this fear/phobia with the client, may find the fear/phobia is actually about being enclosed, or locked in. Perhaps it might be a fear/phobia of dying, not being able to breath on an aircraft, or something else connected with the aircraft or leaving their own area/country etc, but not actually the flying itself.

What has caused the phobia?

A client will often say that nothing has caused the phobia they have, it just started, they ve always been afraid of dogs, etc. If one person is afraid of dogs and another isn t, then clearly there is a difference between the two. One person has either been exposed to some causal event which has been repressed in the subconscious mind, or has learned to be afraid from a parent or other authority figure at some time earlier in life. The causal event may not have been very traumatic at the time, but the young mind will have seen it out of the context that would be understood by a more mature mind in later years. It may have caused an emotional response and/or motor actions to be locked away, repressed, and the emotion and possible motor responses will have been locked away and anchored to the event. The subconscious mind can often set up a kind of false instinct, whereby any sign of the stimulus, or even something resembling it, or associated with it, may cause a phobic reaction, and then the body s flight or fight response will kick in and the individual may begin to panic panic attack.

Hypnotherapy to relieve phobias

The first thing the skilled hypnotherapist will do, is to work with the client to discover the causal event, and once found, to desensitise the client from it. Once this has been achieved, then hypnotic suggestion, metaphor and possibly Neuro-Linguistic Programming will be used to create a new template for the client so they can see the previously feared situation, object or circumstance in a new and non threatening light, through a new lens as it where. If the causal event, or events are not found and the emotion not released, then the phobia may just resurface later with more intensity than before if that is possible. The person with a phobia will need to be helped to find and review the trigger situation, to see it with an adult maturity and understanding, and to then see the cause in a different way and with a different and better understanding. The mind can be reprogrammed to see things in a different way and to accept situations as normal that would previously have been viewed as threatening.

How many sessions of therapy will be required?

How many sessions will be needed to release a person from their phobia will depend upon many things, not least, the clients personality type, maturity, desire to overcome the phobia, and of course, how deep seated the phobia is and how long it has been in place. However, the average for people I see is about 3-4 sessions. This can be much longer in some cases, especially where full blown panic attacks are occurring at seemingly random times and in diverse places.

For more information, please contact you local hypnotherapist. Most hypnotherapists will be happy to provide an initial free consultation for you in order to discuss your problem and to explain to you how therapy would proceed. This session will normally last about 45 minutes. My clients say that this short session often produces therapeutic results for them and helps them to feel confident about setting up a series of therapy sessions to overcome their fear or phobia.

Please always see your doctor first and foremost before you contact or visit any therapist and tell him/her about any symptoms you may have, such as, headache, soreness in limbs, racing heart, dizziness, sweating, blurred vision, a feeling of unrealness, etc. Although these are all common for someone suffering from a fear, phobia, or indeed from a panic attack, organic causes should always be fully checked out by a medical professional in the first instance.

When consulting a hypnotherapist, I advise that you ensure they are a Clinical Hypnotherapist and that they belong to a professional body such as one of the following:

British Institute of Hypnotherapy
General Hypnotherapy Register
Professional Association for Hypnotherapists and Psychotherapists
Hypnotherapy Association
National Council for Hypnotherapy

Check with the organisation(s) that the therapist is indeed registered with them. Also check that your chosen therapist has experience in dealing with the problem you have and that they have adequate professional insurance (they must display their certificate of insurance at their place of work).

Hypnotherapy is not magic, but it sometimes seems magical.

By Alan Crisp DHP GQHP MBIH GHR Reg
Clinical Hypnotherapist.

About the Author

Alan Crisp DHP,GQHP,MASC, is a member of the British Institute of Hypnotherapy and a Professional member of the National Phobics Society. He specialises in Stress and Axiety related conditions, working from his consulting rooms in Bekenham, Kent, UK

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