In my Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis offices I teach all my clients stress tips to calm the mind and to heal the body. And, here at Hypnosis Health Info, you can learn many of these stress reduction techniques for free. Stress can negatively affect most of your body and left unchecked can become detrimental to your health. If you are recovering for injury or disease, stress can slow that recovery. Stress can kill you. Conversely, being calm and relaxed can boost your immune system and help speed up your healing and recovery. You can relax with hypnosis and live! Orange Blossom is one of the free stress control tools available for you here at Hypnosis Health Info.

Stress Tips: Calm Your Mind,
Heal Your Body

May 19, 2010, by Dr Mark Hyman: WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR HEALTH, there is one factor that is more important than almost any other… If it is missing from your life, it causes or worsens 95 percent of all illness. It has been associated with dramatic reductions in disease and increased longevity.

And it is more important than cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, or any other risk factor in determining whether you will live a long and healthy life. But it doesn’t come in a pill, and it can’t be found in a hospital or in your doctor’s office. What is this critical factor that determines so much about how healthy or how sick you are? Your attitude, your social networks, your community, and your spiritual beliefs.

Put another way, the health of your mind and spirit and your sense of connection to your community has an immense impact on the health of your body. In fact, aside from eating breakfast, the biggest predictor of longevity is psychological resiliency — being able to roll with the punches that life throws at us.

But how do we really deal with the root of this problem? You use the MOST powerful pharmacy in the world — which is right between your ears!

That’s something most of us don’t have any consciousness of, or control over. Imagine if you could turn on fat burning and lose weight with your mind! That is how powerful our mind and our beliefs can be.

Stress is killing us: 95 percent of all illness is caused or worsened by stress. Low socioeconomic status is associated with poorer health outcomes and higher risk of death from all causes. This is not because of poor health habits, but because of feelings of powerlessness and loss of control. Internalized racism and stress are associated with high amounts of belly fat.

Stress hormones damage the hippocampus — the memory center in the brain — causing memory loss and dementia.
In a study of people who volunteered to have cold viruses injected into their noses, only people with a high level of perceived stress got colds. Women with metastatic breast cancer survived twice as long if they were part of a support group. Belonging to a group — a religious group, a bowling club, a quilting group — reduces risk of death from all causes and increases longevity, despite health habits. The good news is that you can change your beliefs and attitudes and their effects on your mind and your body. You may need to learn a few new skills, like stress reduction techniques, but it can be done.

Here are a few of the tips recommended
by Dr Mark Hyman:

• Relax — Learn how to ACTIVELY relax. To engage the powerful forces of the mind on the body, you must DO something — you can’t just sit there watching television or drinking beer.
• Learn New Skills — Try learning new skills such as meditation, deep breathing, yoga, biofeedback, and progressive muscle relaxation or take a hot bath, make love, get a massage, watch a sunset, or walk in the woods or on the beach.
• Move Your Body — Exercise is a powerful, well-studied way to burn off stress chemicals and heal the mind, so just do it! It has been proven to be better than or equal to Prozac for treating depression.
• Optimize Your Nutrition — Clean up your diet from mind-robbing molecules like caffeine, alcohol, and refined sugars and eat regularly to avoid the short-term stress of starvation on your body.
• Change Your Beliefs — Examine your beliefs, attitudes, and responses to common situations and consider reframing your point of view to reduce stress.

The solution is a fundamental change in our worldview about health — a view that helps us get to the core of illness, learn self-care, take control, and empower ourselves to transform our own health and turn our “sick care” system into a health care system.

Each of us can contribute and make small changes that will have a big effect as we move toward vibrant health and vitality as individuals, and as a society.

Mark Hyman, MD

Read Stress Tips: Calm Your Mind, Heal Your Body

You can use hypnosis for stress reduction to relax and live and give your immune system a big boost for you health and wellness. If you haven’t already discovered it, you can learn self hypnosis here at Hypnosis Health Info

Get your free hypnosis MP3 download,
Orange Blossom now and relax……….

Check out Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis.
Call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

Waking Trance

From Becoming Slender For Life
“I also teach a Waking Trance or Learning Trance, a simple form of eye fixation described by James Braid in the 1850s. Using this technique alters your physiology, taking you out of stress, anger, fear and/or depression and may synchronize the left and right hemispheres of your brain. This waking trance also works wonders at ending the Siren’s song of the chocolate, cookie or whatever food is calling out to you.

Instructions: Pick a spot on the wall above eye level that you can gaze at, so that your eyes have to go up. As you do this now, just let your mind relax. Notice that in a matter of moments, as you focus on that single spot, you can allow your awareness to expand outward into the periphery. Notice you can begin to see things in the periphery. In fact, you are sharply aware of the things on the left side of your peripheral vision … and now, the things on the right side of your peripheral vision … as you stay focused on that spot. You can now move your eyes around while staying in peripheral vision with a slightly upward look. (Refer to CD 2, Track 6 of the Becoming Slender For Life audio CD set to listen to this exercise.)”

Becoming Slender For Life, second edition, page 118

This waking trance is a right brain activity. It works perfectly for creative activities like painting, writing and music. It does not work well for left brain activities such as proof reading or balancing your check book. If you are a runner, this is the perfect tool for you. Anytime you realize you are suffering while running (or any other time in your life) go into peripheral vision. Your run will be over before you know it.

If you are suffering, feeling stressed, overwhelmed, anxious depressed or any other negative emotion, use this waking trance. You will soon have breath and feel calm and relaxed.

Learn how to hypnotize yourself with the tools here at
Hypnosis Health Info.

Check out Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis.
Call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experiences moment by moment.” Mindfulness, being present and conscious in your body is essential for weight loss and for maintaining your healthy ideal weight. Having to have a second bowl of ice cream because you don’t remember the first bowl is a classic example of being out of your body – of being anything but mindful. One of the many benefits that I have received as a result of self-hypnosis is learning to be more mindful. I am much more aware of my feet on the floor, my butt in the chair and of breath in my body.

Mindfulness is being used to treat many physical and psychological problems, including stress, anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, chronic pain, addiction, and eating disorders. Mindfulness is used as a methodology for treating a variety of emotional problems, among which are borderline personality disorder, anxiety and depressions, eating disorders, and substance abuse. The way most people think about anxiety is as a chronic focus on worries about the future, without acknowledging the reality of the present. An anxious person worries about what might happen in the future, rather than focusing on what is happening in the present. Even a non-anxious person, during the process of worrying, is engaged in future-oriented thinking, talking to self, and focus on anticipated events. Mindfulness provides an alternative focus as attention is drawn to the present moment, thus breaking the maladaptive cycle of worrying.

Afflictive emotions— our jealousy, anger, hatred, fear—can be put to an end when you realize that these emotions are only temporary, that they always pass on like clouds in the sky. My mental state, I think, is quite peaceful, quite calm. If there’s some sad news, some heart-breaking news that comes, for a short moment, I am very disturbed, very sad, but then it goes. So like an ocean, the waves come and go, come and go. – Dalai Lama, 1999

Jon Kabat-Zinn tells us that the “real mindfulness meditation never comes to an end – it is your life. Breath will go go, taste will go on. The real meditation practice is your life.” Showing up in your life is not trivial. It is one of the hardest things in the world is to be in your body. At Slender For Life™ I teach clients to use a stress reduction technique to become present in their body so that they can notice the food before them and then eat slowly….consciously……mindfully.

Stop eating a short distance from your body. Turn the TV off and stop texting when you eat. Allow your mouth to full appreciate the tastes and textures of the food you eat. Learn self-hypnosis and be mindful – show up in your life!

Read Eating Mindfully

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

Manage Your Stress for Good Health

WebMD, September 30, 2012: We live in a stressed-out nation, according to the American Psychological Association (APA) survey, “Stress in America.” Most Americans feel moderate to high stress, with 44% reporting increased stress levels over the last 5 years. Many Americans have experienced stress from financial problems related to the economy. And many have found it difficult to balance work and home responsibilities and find the time to focus on healthy behaviors.

When you’re under stress day in and day out, it can take a toll on your physical and mental health. And if you have children, your stress may also be affecting them — more than you realize. According to the survey, 69% of parents said that their stress levels didn’t have a big effect on their children, yet 91% of kids knew when their parents were stressed. So it’s smart to learn how to manage stress to ensure good health for you and your family.

Not all stress is bad for us. Good stress is when you are presented with a challenge, you rise to that challenge, generally have a good outcome, and you feel exhilarated. Good stress can help us learn and grow.

Tolerable stress occurs when something bad happens, such as a job loss, but you have the inner resources as well as people you can turn to who help you get through it.

Toxic stress is when bad things happen. And they may be really bad, or you don’t have the financial or internal resources to handle them. This type of stress causes emotional and physical problems.

When something very stressful occurs, your body leaps into action. The brain triggers the release of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones travel to different parts of the body, putting it on high alert. Your breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure increase. Blood vessels constrict, directing more blood to your brain and muscles. These stress responses get your body ready to either fight or flee.

Under normal conditions, the brain turns on these responses in a balanced way, and turns them off again when the danger has passed. However, when we experience toxic stress, these systems are pushed beyond their limits, Our brains secrete stress hormones, which may disrupt our metabolic and inflammatory systems. This can sometimes lower our resistance to illness. Stress affects the brain too, causing changes in its structure and connectivity. These changes are reversible in the short-term, but may be permanent over the long-term, he says.

Stress can also trigger certain unhealthy ways of coping. Many of us respond to stress by eating high-fat, high-calorie comfort foods, smoking, drinking too much, not sleeping, and not exercising. It’s the combination of changes in the body from the stress response, combined with our behavioral and emotional responses to stress that may lead to chronic health problems.

Read Manage Your Stress for Good Health

Isn’t it time that you learn hypnosis so that you can release and let go of the stress in your life? The Holidays can be filled with fun and excitement or they can be harried and stressful. Either way, there still will be lots going on and there will be traffic jams and all the parking spaces will be gone – so why not relax and have fun with it? Self-hypnosis can help you do that.

Check out Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis.
Call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

I am preparing to teach a class on autoimmune disease with my colleague Melissa Roth and so I have been reading a lot about stress and how it affects your health. Stress suppresses your immune system priming the pump for disease. Hypnotherapy is one of the most effective and most powerful ways of reducing stress. Self hypnosis is easy to learn and it is so easy to use throughout the day. Wouldn’t you like to move through the stressors of the day calm and relaxed? You can with hypnosis.

Feeling stressed makes your body become tense or strained, which significantly reduces your working stamina, patience, concentration and mental capacity.  During stress, cortisol is released.  Cortisol is an important hormone in the body that is secreted by the adrenal glands.  In proper amounts, it helps the body recharge, by offering a quick burst of energy for survival reasons.  It enhances disease resistance with increased immunity, fights inflammation and improves memory. Unfortunately, in our current high-stress culture, the body’s stress response is activated so often that it doesn’t have a chance to return to normal, producing what is termed “chronic stress”.  This is harmful, since too much cortisol promotes the accumulation of abdominal fat, which is associated with a greater amount of health problems than fat deposited in other areas of the body. Some of the health problems associated with increased stomach fat are heart attacks, strokes, higher levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL).

In addition, excess cortisol suppresses immunity, shrinks brain cells and impairs memory.  It also inhibits your body’s inflammatory response, thus explaining why stress makes you more vulnerable to getting sick. In a state of stress, the adrenaline causes an increase in blood pressure and constricts vessels to skin and the digestive system, making you feel physically tense, uptight or tired.

Although stress isn’t the only reason that cortisol is secreted into the bloodstream, it has been termed “the stress hormone” because it’s also secreted in higher levels during the body’s “flight or fight” response to stress, and is responsible for several stress-related changes in the body.

This fight-or-flight response is what enabled our ancestors to deal with a more hostile, physically demanding world of hunting, fighting, and surviving.  It’s the body’s innate response to a perceived threat. The stress response is optimally designed to protect us from direct, identifiable and short-term danger, such as running from a tiger in the wilderness.  In modern life, however, most of the time the source of our stress is not as direct but rather indirect, as in the daily hassles of a commute; and not short-term but instead continuing for days, weeks or even months.When stress hormones are continually released and your body is continually in fight-or-flight mode, and yet you have no physical release for these surges of energy and hormones, then damage can occur.

Although the emergency measure of this stress response is undoubtedly both vital and valuable, it can also be disruptive and damaging. Most humans rarely encounter emergencies that require physical effort, yet our biology still provides for them. Thus, we may find our stress response activated in situations where physical action is unnecessary. This activation takes a toll on both our bodies and our minds. Diarrhea, constipation, and difficulty maintaining sexual arousal are typical examples.  And when this response continues unchecked during times of chronic stress the harmful effects inhibit digestion, reproduction, growth, tissue repair, and the responses of your immune and inflammatory systems.  In other words, some very important functions that keep your body healthy begin to shut down.

When this occurs for a prolonged period of time, our body breaks down at its weakest link in the form of symptoms such as a headache or a stress-related disorder.  In this manner, stress can literally become a killer.

We all know that stress can have wide ranging effects on emotions, mood and behavior. Equally important but often less discussed are effects on various systems, organs and tissues all over the body.

There are numerous emotional and physical disorders that have been linked to stress including depression, anxiety, heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, immune system disturbances that increase susceptibility to infections.

We know that almost every system in your body can be damaged by stress. In fact, it’s hard to think of any disease in which stress cannot play an aggravating role or any part of the body that is not adversely affected by stress.

So, if you are stuck in traffic and are going to be late, wouldn’t you rather show up late and relaxed rather than late and stressed? You can learn to do that with hypnosis. When you relax, you help boost your immune system – just one of the many benefits of self hypnosis.

By the way, you can still sign up for the Seattle Counseling & Hypnotherapy Conference Fall 2011 which starts tomorrow. This is a great opportunity to learn from Richard Nongard on Ending the Cycle of Addiction and from Melissa Roth and Roger Moore on Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Autoimmune Disease. Click here to learn more.

Download your free copy of my hypnosis relaxation MP3 Orange Blossom now.

Check out Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis.
Call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

The High Divide Loop is 18.2 miles with 3050 feet of elevation gain. We planned for two nights at Heart Lake and one night at Lunch Lake in the Seven Lakes Basin. With our day hikes we estimate that we actually walked more than 30 miles, but we bagged the last night at Lunch Lake. From the very beginning we kept hearing how bad the mosquitoes were at Lunch Lake. We thought that they were bad at Heart Lake and they were really bad at Bogachiel Peak so we decided to return home a day early.

Our first day (Labor Day) was a strenuous hike to Heart Lake where we pitched our tents and had numerous goats as visitors (or maybe we were the visitors). The elk across the valley sang all night long and the moon made it all the more beautiful.

Our two highlights were our lunches on day 2 and day 3. Day 2 we hiked to Swimming Bear Lake and had a very cold swim and ate lunch. I went to a high point and was filming a video when there was a splash in the lake and sure enough there was a bear. We spotted another bear on the trail ahead of us as we hiked back to camp. It was an amazing afternoon of warm sun and father-son time.

We left our camp early on day 3 (Wednesday) on the High Divide Trail and found stunning views of Mt. Olympus. We spent about an hour on the summit of Bogachiel Peak eating our lunch and marveling at the 360 degree panoramic view. We looked down into Seven Lakes Basin and decided we just didn’t want to fight the mosquitoes. We met a hiker later who came from Lunch Lake who told us that she had to wear her rain coat in the hot sun to protect herself from the mosquitoes so we were please with our decision.

It was a long and hot hike back to my truck and home was a welcome sight at 10:30 PM. And, oh – my bed felt so soft and so good!

Thursday was marked by a Home Depot delivery of 51 sixteen foot cedar deck boards and Josh and I started ripping up deck boards. We got a lot done, there is still more to do. We did take some breaks so he could go disk golfing and I got in a couple of bike rides. Saturday night we had a family feast with the other kids and grand-kids who could make it.

Today I am remembering the horror of September 11, 2001, and feeling the sadness of having my son leave to return home to his wife in Minnesota. I am overwhelmed with pride for him. He has become a remarkable young man and I look forward to his bright future.

While I am physically tired from hiking 30 miles with a 45 pound backpack and from working on the deck, I am relaxed and feeling great. I am reminded of a story that I often tell clients about a woman who went on vacation and returned home …. and stayed on that vacation as well. My plan is to return to work and remain relaxed, comfortably relaxed as well.

I look forward to seeing many of you this week!

Check out Roger Moore’s Counseling & Hypnotherapy LLC .
Call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!