Motivation Day

Posted on March 25, 2011 by pat

On Monday, 28 March, Royston Leisure Centre are holding a Motivation Day in aid of the Macmillan, Cancer Support. During the day, visitors can sample a wide selection of free exercise classes including:

√ Body Attack

√ Body Combat

√ Studio resistance

√ Core Stability

√ 50+ Aerobics

√ Step and

√ Circuits

You can also join in the London to Paris Cycle Challenge or bring a friend to the gym for free.

Between 15:15 and 17:45 I am offering free 15 minute motivation sessions. Using simple NLP techniques I will work with you to increase your motivation to:

·    exercise regularly

·    eat healthy or

·    get up in the morning!

All you have to do is turn up wearing something green to support Macmillan. You can also donate at www.justgiving.com/roystonleisurecentre

See you there.

Performance Matters

Posted on March 22, 2011 by pat

I’m an enthusiastic supporter of the England Cricket Team, and as any supporter of any England sports team knows, it’s a real emotional roller coaster ride. One day you’re celebrating the Ashes win and thinking that they’ve finally got a winning team. The next day you’re watching in disbelief as they get beaten by Ireland. You know that all of them are talented sportsmen and you’ve seen them turn out fantastic performances. You know that as a Team they can work brilliantly together as a unit and look unbeatable. So what goes wrong?

The Cognitive Hypnotherapist, Trevor Sylvester, says that there is a misconception about the nature of ‘genius’ in sport. Rather than saying some sports people are geniuses, it would be more correct to say that some, like Kevin Pietersen, have a genius and sometimes you see it in action and sometimes you don’t. So what can you do to make that more consistent? And if you enjoy your own sport, how can you improve your own performance?

Sportsmen and women work hard on their physical fitness and many work now on their mental fitness. That’s not just about having a positive approach to competing and winning. Bearing in mind that over 90% of our actions are governed by our unconscious minds, there are many other aspects of performance you can work on using NLP techniques to:

· set goals for success

· increase focus,

· improve your skills and ability,

· Recover from injury

· visualise success and

· maximise confidence

So come on Graham Gooch, give me a ring and let’s win the Cricket World Cup!

Spring Clean Your Life!

Posted on March 14, 2011 by pat

At this time of year, as the sun rises higher in the sky and the days get longer, you start to notice the dust on all the flat surfaces in your home and the film that’s built up on the windows and mirrors. Suddenly it feels like a good idea to get out the dusters and the polish to give the house back its sparkle.

It’s also a good time to get the sparkle back into your life. Lots of magazines have articles about cleaning-out and refreshing your body after the winter months but how about your emotions? Are you storing up feelings and emotions that aren’t serving you well?

One of the things that can clog up our emotions is holding on to anger and

resentment. In time it can make us physically ill. A heart researcher, Doc Childre, says:

“For your own health and wellbeing, forgiveness is simply the most energy-efficient option. It frees you from the incredibly toxic, debilitating drain of holding a grudge. Don’t let these people live rent-free in your head. If they hurt you before, why let them keep doing it year after year in your mind?’

So, how do you let go of those hurts and resentments and start to sparkle again? Try this exercise form “Feel Happy Now!” by Mark Neill

1 Make a list of resentments or grudges you are carrying around against other people or life in general. Notice whether you would be willing to let go of (forgive) each of these in turn.

For any to which the answer is ‘no’, ask yourself if you are hanging on a) because it would mean something bad about you if you didn’t; b) to make sure that ‘it’ doesn’t happen again; or c) both the above.

Remember, you are under no obligation to forgive – it’s simply a choice that only you can make and only for your own wellbeing.

2 Some time before you go to sleep this evening, make a mental or physical list of anything you are beating yourself up about.

Take each one through the three steps of forgiveness:

a. Let go of trying to figure it out.

b. Let go of disapproving of yourself for it

c. Give yourself approval – no conditions, no judgements and no expectations

When you start doing this exercise the list may be daunting but if you do it regularly it can bring real peace into your life and release your energy so that you can spring forward.

Sleep Well – Top Tips for Women

Posted on March 8, 2011 by pat

Women going through the menopause can find their sleep pattern interupted by hot flushes and/or night sweats. So here are some special tips for you if you are experiencing these symptoms:
1.    Before going to bed:
a.    Don’t eat spicy or sugary food in the evening. Limit alcohol, chocolate and caffeine
b.    Have a warm, non-caffeine drink. If you like a milky drink, use soya milk
c.    Enjoy a warm bath or shower

2. In the bedroom:

a. Keep the bedroom cool and well-ventilated

b. Use bed linen made from natural fibres

c. Wear bed clothes made from natural fibres

3. During the night:

a. Before you go to sleep do the following relaxation:

i. Close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Make each out-breath longer than the in breath by counting to 7 on the in-breath and 11 on the out-breath. As you feel your body relaxing visualise a place where you feel completely comfortable and cool. Experience it is fully as you can, seeing what you see, hearing what you hear and feeling what you feel. Really enjoy that cool, comfortable place before you drift off to sleep

b. Keep a damp cloth, lavender wipes or a lavender stick next to the bed. Apply to pulse points if you start to feel hot

c. Have a glass of water on your bedside table in case you get thirsty

d. If you feel a hot flash coming on, open your mouth and breathe cooler air over your tongue until you start to feel cooler.

Most of all relax and enjoy a well-earned rest.

Pat

Sleep Well – Top Tips

Posted on March 3, 2011 by pat

So, we know that sleep is good for our physical and mental health but how do you get a good night’s sleep? Here’s 10 top tips:

1. Establish a regular sleep pattern. We need, on average, 7 – 9 hours of sleep per night. Going to bed and getting up at the same time every day will help you to feel more refreshed and energised. If you know that you tend to doze off after dinner or in front of the TV, change your routine to do an activity that keeps you awake until bedtime.

2. Make your bedroom a sleep haven. For the best sleep, make sure your bedroom is cool and well ventilated. If you are sensitive to light, invest in a black-out blind for your bedroom window. Keep office equipment out of the bedroom. Don’t be tempted to keep your work Blackberry on the bedside table. Keep the bedroom for sleep and sex.

3. Plan a relaxing bedtime routine. We know the benefits of a good bedtime routine for babies and children. The same principles apply to adults. A good routine tells your brain that it’s time for sleep. Choose what works for you:

Take a warm bath or shower
Watch an amusing tv programme
Listen to soft music
Listen to an audio book or Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime
Have a warm non-caffeine drink
Read an entertaining book or magazine
Listen to a relaxing, self-hypnosis recording

Avoid anything that winds you up eg newspapers, news programmes, arguments with family members etc

4 Eat mindfully. Avoid big, rich or spicey meals within two hours of bed time.

5. Drink sensibly. Cut down on caffeine. Limit alcohol – it reduces the quality of your sleep.

6. Quit smoking – Nicotine is a stimulant and it can disrupt sleep.

7. Manage your stress level. Practice relaxation techniques to unwind and prepare for sleep. 7/11 breathing is easy to learn and very effective (see Blog 1 February)

8. Getting back to sleep. If you wake up during the night:

Keep thinking about how comfortable you are in bed. Remember that your body is resting and that’s all that matters.
Try the 7/11 breathing technique or your other favourite relaxation technique
Do something boring. Waking up in the night should not be rewarded. If you want a drink just have cold water. If you want to read, stand up and do it.
Use your notepad and pen. Sometimes when you wake up during the night you remember something important. Keep a note book and pen next to the bed so that you can write a reminder and go back to sleep

9. Exercise regularly. Regular exercise is good for your general health and for your sleep. 20 or 30 minutes of exercise a day can make all the difference to your wellbeing. If you don’t have time for planned or organised exercise try getting out for a walk, or bike ride or do some gardening. Keep to relaxing exercises in the evening such a yoga or pilates.

10. Consult your doctor if you:

have persistent day time sleepiness
have trouble breathing during the night and wake up frequently
experience frequent morning headaches
feel crawling sensations in your arms and legs at night
physically act out dreams during sleep

Sleep tight!

Sleep Well!

Posted on February 28, 2011 by pat

On 28th Feb, I was on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire along with my colleague, Jacqui Kemp. We talked to Antonia Brickell about the physical and mental benefits of good sleep and some tips for achieving better sleep. We were on the programme between 21:00 and 22:00 and it is available to listen to until 6 March at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f2wfy . It is a three hour programme so you need to wind forward 120 minutes.

The benefits of sleep are more than just resting and gaining energy for the next day. Our normal sleep requirement is 7-9 hours per 24 hours.

Sleep:

keeps you heart healthy. Lack of sleep has been associated with worsening of blood pressure and cholesterol, risk factors for heart disease and stroke;
may help to prevent cancer. Have been found to have a higher risk of breast and colon cancer;
reduces stress. When your body is sleep deficient, it goes into a state of stress and the functions are put on high alert, increasing blood pressure and the production of stress hormones
reduces inflammation. The increase in stress hormones raises the level of inflammation in your body
aids memory. While your body is resting, your brain is active, processing your day, making connections between events, sensory input, feelings and memories.
helps to control your weight. It is thought that lack of sleep impacts the balance of hormones in the body that affect appetite.

In my next post I’ll be giving you some top tips for a good night’s sleep.

Pat

Emotions and Weight Loss

Posted on February 16, 2011 by pat

Gastric bands, both real and virtual, have been back in the media this week. On Saturday (12^th February) the Times had a feature article about The Shirran programme through which the client is hypnotised to believe that they have had a gastric band installed. The experience is so realistic that in the case reported the subject had an adverse reaction to the experience of the ‘operation’.

There are a number of hypnotherapists offering virtual gastric band procedures now. The virtual approach has the advantage of being cheaper than the real thing and avoiding the risks associated with operations and anaesthetic. What is important if you are thinking about this option is that the package includes some preparation beforehand to change your approach to food and eating. If the treatment is to be effective in the long term, then you need to change the pattern of behaviour that led to the weight gain and consider the emotions that have been attached to eating and food. Without this preparation subjects are likely to carry on eating in unhealthy ways – just less of it.

On Wednesday (16^th February) Woman’s Hour ran an item on what happens after weight loss. “For some people there can be some unexpected outcomes such as divorce. Comfort eating can make way to brand-new addictions to shopping, drinking, even sex. A new study on worldwide obesity published in the Lancet this month has found that Britain now has the fattest women in mainland Europe. No surprise then that weight loss surgery is on the increase – between 2006 to 2010 the number of people having bariatric surgery almost tripled. But how much does its long-term success rely on psychology? Could the underlying emotional problems be harder to shed than the pounds?” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/)

The discussion underlined the need to plan for the consequences of weight loss, in particular the emotional issues. Emotional or comfort eating is characterised by coming on quickly and not being satisfied by food. In fact, if you eat when you have an emotional need you often end up feeling sick and guilty about what you have eaten. Hypnotherapy and NLP have a number of techniques for dealing effectively with this type of unmet emotional need and that means that you only need to eat when you are physically hungry and you can stop eating when your body is satisfied.

So whatever approach you take to weight loss, make sure that it includes some action to deal with the underlying causes of the weight gain so that the weight you lose is gone forever.

Pat

Good News for Hypnotherapists

Posted on February 10, 2011 by pat

I have recently been registered by the Complementary & Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC), the UK regulator for complementary healthcare.

The recognition places me at the forefront of a national drive to provide a benchmark for standards and safety for the public. Practitioners registered with the CNHC meet national occupational standards and abide by a rigorous code of conduct, performance and ethics.

Achieving registration is not only great news for me and my clients, but a vital step for hypnotherapy. This is the time of year when many people are struggling to keep up their new year resolutions. The most popular uses for hypnotherapy are around stress and anxiety conditions, weight control and addictive behaviours such as smoking and alcohol abuse.

Hypnotherapy is one of 11 disciplines now recognised by the CNHC. Members of the public can search the CNHC register to find practitioners in their local area. More than 40,000 searches were carried out last year.

By providing a verification of standards, the CNHC allows GPs, hospitals, private healthcare providers and insurance companies to refer patients to hypnotherapy practitioners or to make hypnotherapy more readily available in health centres, clinics, doctors’ surgeries and hospitals.

If you would like more information, please contact pat@roystonhypnotherapy.co.uk

Holiday Heaven…or Hell?

Posted on February 1, 2011 by pat

Have you started thinking about your summer holiday yet? Since Christmas, magazines and TV adverts have been full of images of places in the sun showing happy couples and families splashing about on beaches and enjoying exciting activities together.

For most people, their summer holiday is the highlight of the year and generates lots of happy memories to keep you going through the dark winter months. But for some people it brings to the fore fears and phobias that they don’t have to face at other times. There’s the obvious phobias like fear of flying and the less obvious like fear of heights, fear of water, fear of insects, fear of spiders and fear of snakes. Any of these can limit your holiday options or put you off going anywhere at all!

So what can you do about it? There are some simple techniques you can do to relieve the physical symptoms of phobias. You can try breathing techniques eg 7/11 breathing where you make each out breath longer than each in breath to stimulate relaxation in your body. Or you can try visualisation where you imagine yourself in the most relaxing safe place until the feelings of fear pass.

Hypnotherapy may also assist you. Often just one or two sessions can relieve the uncomfortable physical symptoms. Many hypnotherapists offer a free initial consultation so that you can discuss whether this type of therapy is suitable for you.

If you think hypnotherapy might be for you make sure that the therapist you choose is qualified and accredited to a recognised organisation (eg NCH or CNHC), is happy to explain the procedures to you and answer your questions and gives you a clear indication of cost.

Bon voyage!

Pat

https://www.roystonhypnotherapy.co.uk/

Healthy Weight Loss in Obesity Awareness Week

Posted on January 17, 2011 by pat

This is Obesity Awareness Week. The United Kingdom has the fastest growing obesity problem in the whole of the European Union. In the UK a quarter of adults are clinically obese and in England obesity has grown by almost 400% in the past 25 year.

The more obese you become, the more you are likely to suffer from a range of physical problems:

· High blood pressure

· Strokes

· Heart disease

· Diabetes

· Gallstones

· Joint pain

· Reduced mobility

· Some forms of cancer

In addition obese people are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem, lack of confidence and low mood.

The obvious remedies for obesity are eating less and exercising more but if you’ve dieted before you know that it can be simple to lose weight but keeping it off is another matter. Often the weight goes back on and a bit more is added which puts you off trying again.

If you want to lose weight in the long term it’s about changing your relationship to food. The first step is to become more aware of what you are eating because it’s easy to eat without even noticing what you are eating. When you eat slowly you give yourself a better chance of hearing the signals from your body that let you know you have had enough.

The next step is to recognise whether you are eating because you are physically hungry or emotionally hungry. Physical hunger comes on slowly but emotional hunger comes on quickly and is not satisfied by food. In fact, if you eat when you are emotionally hungry, you often end up feeling sick.

Hypnotherapy and NLP can help you to change your relationship to food and control your weight in the long term. It can also help you to keep motivate to exercise. So, take the opportunity of Obesity Awareness Week to try a healthy approach to weight loss.