Don’t Forget Your Greatest Ally: Self-hypnosis

Finally, here are some additional hypnotic suggestions you can use when working on overcoming emotional eating and having healthier responses to stress.

Emotional eating

• I am in control of my emotions.
• I chose to experience love and joy in my life.
• I am at peace with myself, the world and everyone in it.
• I am excited about today.
• I am excited about my life.
• I love my life.
• Food nourishes my body; love nurtures my heart and soul.
• I eat only when I am physically hungry.

Stress control

• I am calm and relaxed in all situations.
• I see things in their true perspective and keep them in proper proportion.
• Whenever I feel the beginning of any tension, anxiety, or fear, I automatically use the Relaxation Response taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. I instantly feel a wave of relaxation cover over me and through me from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes.
• I am more relaxed each and every day.
• I am free of stress.
• I remain calm, cool and collected at all times.
• I am balanced, relaxed and poised always.
• I am relaxed and calm in all situations.
• I feel profound peace.
• I relax frequently throughout each day by breathing deeply.
• I give time to myself.
• I recognize and control my negative emotions.
• Peace and inner calmness pervade my being.
• The past is gone; I am creating my future now.
• I am living in the present moment.
• I stop worrying about the future.
• I am becoming more aware in the present moment.
• I stop several times each day to breathe deeply and to focus on my important goals.
• I do everything with love, joy and laughter.
• I give myself time to relax.
• I enjoy what I am doing.
• I am emotionally calm and settled.
• My mind is becoming clear, calm and composed.
• I confront and handle any problem calmly and easily.

Becoming Slender For Life pages 123 – 124

Many people come to a hypnotherapist thinking there is something about trance that is different than their normal state of consciousness, but this simply is not the case. A light trance feels no different from relaxation. No matter how deep into trance one goes, there is a feeling of familiarity. Do not expect to feel hypnotized. Do expect to feel relaxed. Learn about hypnosis by reading Moore On Hypnosis.

Discover how you can be in control of your thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Read Are You Off Course In Your Life?

Becoming Slender For Life ebook
is now available as an ebook.

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

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Did you know that good habits are as addictive as bad habits? I don’t think that most people realize that. I frequently hear from Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis clients that the behavior they want to change is habit – one that they feel they can’t break. Actually, end bad habits and creating healthy new habits can be really easy with hypnosis. I teach all my clients self hypnosis so that they have the life long skill of hypnotherapy to make healthy changes in their life. Good habits are as addictive as bad habits and whole lot more rewarding!

“Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding.” ~ Harvey Mackay

It takes about 21 days to change bad habits and to replace them with new ones. Even as you focus on the new habit, the new you, you still must face the reality of giving up the old habit. Abstinence alone isn’t enough to hold us when it comes to dropping an old habit. We need to find a new focus that’s more enticing, more compelling than the old habit, to shift interest and energy to a new way of living.

Healthy habits are ultimately about getting up every morning and choosing to do the “right” thing for your body. Every day requires a renewed commitment and a willingness to be present and accountable for your actions. Once you have the tools and motivation, the change is up to you! Self hypnosis can help you with that motivation.

Good habits can become just as addictive as bad habits; the only difference is that the good habits are a lot more rewarding.  A healthy addiction to a healthy habit can really help us stay on track when it comes to our weight loss and fitness goals.

The light switch self-hypnosis technique allows you to quickly and easily create healthy addictions to healthy habits. Here at Hypnosis Health Info you can learn hypnosis to change your habits. Learn hypnosis and change your life.

“A habit is something you can do without thinking – which is why most of us have so many of them.”  ~Frank A. Clark

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I strongly encourage clients to use written suggestions with their self hypnosis. Yes, in a pinch you can give yourself suggestions without writing them out, but there is added value in the writing and reading process. The most important point is that you use self hypnosis at least 5 times a day, everyday. I am frequently asked if I use self hypnosis. My response, ABSOLUTELY! Most days I use it at least a dozen times throughout the day. Hypnosis is all about you being in control of you. Learn how to hypnotize yourself and take back your power!

Hypnotic Suggestions and Imagery

You should now be able to enter into hypnosis entirely by yourself. The next step is to formulate your own hypnotic suggestions. There are several important points you should consider before beginning.

Tips for creating suggestions

1. Keep suggestions short and concise.
2. Use only positive words. Do not use “no,” “not,” “don’t,” etc. (Your subconscious mind does not grasp a negative qualifier and you might get the opposite result.) Focus on what you do want. Never: “I don’t crave chocolate.” Instead, “Fruit is my snack of choice.”
3. Keep vocabulary simple. A 6-year-old child should be able to understand it.
4. Practice using “I” statements, “You” statements and “He/She” statements and see what works best for you. For example: I feel my body becoming healthier every day; You are enjoying eating foods that promote weight release; She keeps her promises to herself about healthy eating.
5. Use only two or three suggestions per session when using the light switch technique.
6. Use only present tense words. Never use “will,” “want to,” “going to” or “like to”.
7. Use action words such as “enjoy,” “love,” or “desire.”

Examples

• I love and enjoy exercise.
• Exercise is my favorite activity of the day.
• As a result of my exercise, I am calm, relaxed and have more energy.
• I love fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
• Fruit is my snack of choice.
• I only eat enough to meet my nutritional needs.
• It is okay for me to leave food on my plate.
• I drink six or more glasses of water each day.
• Water is my drink of choice.
• I am calm and relaxed.
• I sleep soundly and restfully throughout the night and I wake in the morning relaxed, refreshed and excited by the new day.

From Becoming Slender For Life, pages 55 – 56

To learn more about hypnosis, sign up for my free course by scrolling back up the page–the sign-up box is on your right in the sidebar. You can also learn hypnosis with the Light Switch by clicking here.

Click here for more on Written Suggestions

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The Light Switch is the self hypnosis technique that I teach to all of my Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis clients. There are many excellent self-hypnosis techniques, I teach the Light Switch because it is easy to use and it works. I recommend practicing the Light Switch technique 5 times a day, daily for 0ne week before using suggestions. It really is OK to do nothing more than breathe.

Light Switch Self Hypnosis

From Becoming Slender For Life

1. Place yourself in a SAFE and COMFORTABLE position.
2. GIVE YOURSELF A TIME LIMIT (one minute).
3. Raise and lower your index finger. When your finger touches whatever it is resting on, close
your eyes and drop into a deep state of hypnosis. TURN YOUR LIGHT SWITCH OFF.
4. While you are in hypnosis DO NOT THINK ABOUT THE TIME. Your subconscious mind does that for you.
5. Emerge when you have the feeling that your time is up.

Light switch technique

Let’s begin by practicing just getting into trance. First, you are going to look at your watch, a clock, your computer or your cell phone and note the time both in minutes and in seconds. Learn to use hypnosis in one minute. You can take several one-minute periods throughout your day. Most of us would struggle to find time for one fifteen-minute session, let alone several fifteen-minute sessions. If you’ve ever had the experience of waking up just before your alarm clock goes off, it’s the same thing. Ask your subconscious mind to let you know when a minute is up.

Then imagine that your finger is a light switch that magically controls all the muscles in your body. You and you alone control your light switch. No one else can turn you on or off. Only you can do that. When it is off, do not move. If you want to scratch an itch or answer the phone, simply turn your light switch back on.

When you are comfortably seated, raise your index finger and when you are ready, close your eyes, lower your finger and shut off your light switch. (I suggest using your index finger to represent your light switch. You may choose to use a different finger, your whole arm, or tap your foot—just use some physical signal.)

Upon shutting off your light switch, imagine an endless staircase of relaxation. Imagine that as you descend these stairs, each step down takes you deeper, deeper, 100 times more deeply relaxed.

Go to your favorite, relaxing place. For me it is Paipu Beach on Maui. I can feel the straw mat under my back and the heat of the sand coming up through that mat and the heat of the sun on my body. I hear the cardinals in the bushes behind me, the coconut leaves rustling in the breeze and the waves crashing. I smell the sweet scent of plumeria mixed with the salt air, and I am quickly very deeply relaxed. Do this for one minute. For our purpose a minute is roughly 55 to 65 seconds. (Don’t get hung up on exact timing.)

You do not need to climb back up the stairs, but you do need to turn your switch back on as you open your eyes. Don’t worry about your thoughts or where your mind goes at this stage. This is not meditation, where you are trying to eliminate mind chatter. Later, when you add suggestions, your mind will have something to focus on. But for now, just experience being in your favorite place.

When your subconscious mind lets you know a minute is up, turn on your light switch and see how close to a minute you came. Like all skills, the more you practice, the better you become.

Practice self-hypnosis five times a day every day

You need reminders and you need to anchor or hook this to other activities that you are already doing. Great anchors are brushing your teeth, putting your watch on in the morning and taking it off at night, a morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack and bedtime teeth brushing. Connect your self-hypnosis to activities you do every day. If you hook it to going to work, you will do it Monday through Friday, but then miss the weekend.

If you’re the sort of person whose best intentions vanish into your daily tasks, then you might want to make one self- hypnosis minute mandatory as your very first action each day. That way you know you’ve gotten you day off to a great start. If you are working on eating suggestions, doing your light switch technique right before each meal can be effective in keeping your eating plan front and center in your thoughts.

Create reminders.

Sticky notes work great. I kept sticky notes in my Franklin Planner for two years before I realized I was doing it on my own. Don’t expect to retain this as a new behavior in just a few days or even weeks. One of the best reminder ideas I’ve heard from my clients is to put a sticky note for each hypnosis minute on the left side of your bathroom mirror and/or your computer monitor. Throughout the day as you do your self-hypnosis, move one note to the right side of your mirror or computer monitor. Some women use hoop bracelets. They will have five on one wrist at the beginning of the day and by the end of the day they are on the other wrist. Other possibilities are five buttons in a pocket or five pebbles on one side of your desk that you move to the other side. The bottom line is, find a reminder system that will work for you.

Be sure to practice your light switch technique in loud noisy places such as riding the bus, sitting in Starbucks or by turning on the TV and radio at the same time at home. (It’s okay to close your eyes in public. No one will notice, and if they do, they won’t care!) If you can only do this in a quiet place with soft music in a comfortable chair, then it’s not a functional tool. You want to be able to use self-hypnosis at work or in an airport. Sometimes the only place you can find to use your light switch is while sitting on the toilet—and I hear from moms with young children they may not even get to do that alone!

I recommend to my clients that they practice their light switch technique for seven days before adding in suggestions.
Becoming Slender For Life  pages 52 – 54

In the September 27, 2006 issue of Newsweek magazine, Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote: “One of the interesting ironies about hypnosis is that old fantasy that it takes away control. It’s actually a way of enhancing people’s control, of teaching them how to control aspects of their body’s function and sensation that they thought they couldn’t.”

There are unlimited applications for hypnosis in self-improvement for both personal and business use. Ellen DeGeneres spoke on her talk show in 2006 about overcoming a long-standing cigarette addiction with hypnosis and in the December 31, 2006 Parade magazine, she said that hypnosis worked and she will continue using it. Professional, Olympic and collegiate athletes use hypnosis to enhance concentration and performance. More and more sports teams employ their own hypnotists and even provide training to their players in self-hypnosis techniques. Jan, a tri-athlete, successfully used hypnosis for style correction, speed and strength. She reported back to me that she exceeded her time goals.

The use of hypnosis in sports has been around for hundreds of years. In the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the Russian Olympic team took no less than 11 hypnotists to develop mental clarity and help the athletes with visualization. In hypnosis it is possible to communicate with the unconscious mind in order to promote healing or even speed up a slow metabolism. You can use hypnosis to create new conditioned responses as well as to change your perceptions of things like food and exercise. Repeated reinforcement makes it last.

Hypnosis has proven applications in medicine, dentistry, psychology, obstetrics, counseling, law enforcement, habit management, pain control and in virtually every area of education. Major hospitals are now including hypnotherapists on their staffs.

Read Self-hypnosis

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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.

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Call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

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Mind Over Matter: Patients’ Perceptions of Illness Make a Difference

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) — Whenever we fall ill, there are many different factors that come together to influence the course of our illness. Additional medical conditions, stress levels, and social support all have an impact on our health and well-being, especially when we are ill. But a new report suggests that what you think about your illness matters just as much, if not more, in determining your health outcomes.

In general, our illness perceptions emerge out of our beliefs about illness and what illness means in the context of our lives. So, we might have beliefs about how an illness is caused, how long it will last, how it will impact us or our family members, and how we can control or cure it. The bottom line, says Petrie, is that “patients’ perceptions of their illness guide their decisions about health.” If, for example, we feel like a prescribed treatment isn’t making us feel better we might stop that treatment.

Research on illness perceptions suggest that effective health care treatment plans are about much more than having a competent physician. According to Petrie, “a doctor can make accurate diagnoses and have excellent treatments but if the therapy doesn’t fit with the patient’s view of their illness, they are unlikely to keep taking it.” A treatment that does not consider the patient’s view is likely to fail, he argues.

The authors conclude that understanding illness perceptions and incorporating them into health care is critical to effective treatment. Asking patients about how they view their illness gives physicians the opportunity to identify and correct any inaccurate beliefs patients may have. Once a patient’s illness perceptions are clearly laid out, a physician can try to nudge those beliefs in a direction that is more compatible with treatment or better health outcomes. Such conversations can help practitioners identify patients that are at particular risk of coping poorly with the demands of their illness.

Research confirms that brief, straightforward psychoeducational interventions can modify negative illness beliefs and lead to improvements over a range of different health outcomes. But this research is still new and scientists don’t know much about how our illness perceptions develop in the first place. With mounting pressure to lower the costs of healthcare, continued research on illness perceptions will help practitioners design effective interventions that are able to reach a large number of patients.

Read Mind Over Matter: Patients’ Perceptions
of Illness Make a Difference

If you are living with an illness and are ready to shift your mindset, call or email me and find out how medical hypnosis can modify negative illness beliefs and lead to improvements over a range of different health outcomes. In other words, put hypnosis mind control to work for you. Learn self-hypnosis and discover how you can change your mind set.

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

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