The Skeptical Hypnotist

Hypnosis Helps Victims Of Citigroup Layoffs

The news today that rocked the financial markets was about the massive layoffs scheduled by Citigroup that stated that 50,000 jobs would be eliminated. This is going to be a great hardship for many families. And one of the things they can consider to help them with this difficult situation was reported in the Wall Street Journal last week. The WSJ reported that hypnotists are helping clients affected by the current economy, market swings, and unemployment by using hypnosis to change attitudes. The attitude that we take firmly will enable us to take the necessary steps to focus on the tasks at hand without the worry that might freeze and prevent the very behaviors that are required in this special time.

Here’s how it works.

While in a trance state, we humans become more open to suggestion. We can eliminate uncomfortable responses to situations. We can view things in a new and more rewarding perspective. When we are able to either eliminate or manage stress we can take back control.

What the stress response does.

Stress is the response that is programed into us for our own protection. It is known as the fight or flight response. This is our instinctive response to danger. You know, the response that all living creatures have. Take for exampe the possum. When in danger, what does the possum do? It plays dead. That’s why the phrase playin’ possum came about. We humans are a little more advanced than the possum, but it appears not much. We have the ability to do a bunch of different things. Responses to danger that we take depends on the situation at hand. But our flight or fight response kicks in with either running or fighting. Or we can play dead. Freeze in our tracks, just like our friend the possum. So afraid to take action that we take no action at all, (or so we think). But that inaction is a choice and actually an action in response to danger none the less.

Why the fight or flight response ends up freezing us?

The fight or flight response has a physical component. Our bodies respond in a predictable way. Our muscles tense up in preparation for running or fighting. Our digestion slows down or stops, again in response to running or fighting, and our breathing becomes very shallow, again in order to help us better run or fight. Now if that muscle tightening that we experience becomes too intense, we actually don’t do anything, like that possum. Surely those of us that would’ve responded that way during prehistoric times would have been weeded out of the gene pool. But these days that stress response is not a response to such a dire attack. We experience stress from financial difficulties, relationship problems, everyday situations that are uncomfortable for us. It’s not life or death, but our bodies respond as if it is.

How Hypnosis Helps With The Citigroup Layoffs

Working with a hypnotist, the affected Citigroup workers are able to release the tension, stress and anxiety of being suddenly thrust out into the current job market. When we are free of unnecessary stress, we can take action that will satisfy the needs wants and desires that are responsible for that stress in the first place. Seeing things in their true perspective. Being able to distance yourself forom the unhealty thoughts that are causing distress and preventing the actions necessary to procure a new job, career, postion, business opportunity. It opens the client up to the new possibilities that are out there.

Group Hypnosis Seminar For These Trying Times

I’ll be giving a group seminar on how to use hypnosis to effectively take back control in this seemingly trying business and economic climate in December. If you would like to be notified of this rewarding program, fill in the form on the right. I take your privacy seriously and would never sell or rent the information to anyone or any group. You can also learn how to do Self Hypnosis to focus your mind by enrolling in my free self hypnosis mini course.

How in the world can hypnosis play a role in the rumor of the untimely death of Miley Cyrus?  Good question.

This post might seem a little off topic, but bear with me and I’ll tie it into our human behavior and how we can use the information provided by this phenomenon to help us create and remove habits.

This whole display of frenzy over the supposed news reports and the gigantic swell of public interest just points to the very instinctual behavior that we humans unconsciously take part in every day.  This is a great example of herd mentality.  We humans love to do what everyone else is doing.  We love to buy what everyone else is buying.  And we are determined to be accepted by those around us we find appealing and desirable.

This is the exact reason that we start doing damaging unhealthy behavior to ourselves in the first place.  The main reason most of us begin to smoke cigarettes is to be a part of the group.  Being part of the group is a herd mentality.  Our subconscious mind requires us, no it downright demands that we become part of the group.  This is because being part of the group is programmed into us as an instinctual behavior.  It is viewed upon as having life or death importance.

Why is this?  because we humans are meant to survive by depending on others.  think about it.  If during prehistoric times, we were thrown out of the cave we would die.  It becomes a very desirable to be part of the group because it is instinctually viewed as life or death.

So now when you see something taking off like this Miley Cyrus death rumor, you can understand how that can sweep through all news reports so quickly.

What Are The New Behaviors For Weight Loss?

In an earlier article I discussed how hypnosis can be used to make lifestyle changes that will become habits. These new habits will lead to an overweight person becoming a lean, physically and emotionally healthier person. Now I received a bunch of questions about what are the habits that I work on to help an overweight person create change? And since there were so many questions about what these habits are I decided to write a series of articles explaining the basic habit changes necessary or most desirable that will lead to the quickest change in your weight status.

What’s The Number 1 Habit Of A Healthy And Fit Person?

Eat Regularly- Especially Breakfast!

You probably heard that one before. In fact it’s probably even now bouncing around inside your head and it’s probably still anchored to the voice of your mother telling you to eat breakfast, or asking you as you were running out the door for school, whether you had your breakfast. You probably heard them say that students who ate a good morning meal were more attentive in class and better learners. Well, take a moment to thank mom, for trying to set you straight. It seems to hold true that if you eat a “good” breakfast you will be healthier, more alert and function better during the day. Here’s some of the theory behind having a good breakfast. You see that word breakfast? It literally means breaking your fast. That’s the fast you did all night while you were sleeping. It’s like a mini hibernation.

“Take Out The Papers And The Trash…”

While you were sleeping, your body was busy using all the fuel (food, nutrients, etc.) you consumed during the day to rebuild and resupply the parts of your body that were in need. Anything left over was either put into the trash system and shipped out of your body, or stored for some other time. The amount set aside for storage depends upon what your body figures will be available or unavailable in the near future. So your body has some kind of mechanism that monitors the availability of fuel and changes your storage needs based upon that information. Where does that information come from? Your very own behavior.

So It’s All About Survival!

If you don’t eat regularly, your own body interprets that as a sign of food shortage. And if there is a food shortage, there is a real threat you could starve. That is how your body operates. Your body doesn’t really care much as to whether you can fit into that designer dress or suit you just bought and had custom fitted. Your body’s more interested in whether you’ll be around tomorrow to procreate and keep the species going. That’s the big picture. Everything else (designer clothes, self-esteem, respect from others, etc.) is secondary. So what do you think happens if you starve yourself to lose weight? Your body goes into a food storage orgy. You start to get really stingy about using up your food stores. You hold onto and build up your fat reserves. That’s one of the reasons why restrictive diets don’t work. So you must eat in order to lose weight. You must eat in order to let your survival monitor know that you are not starving and everything is A-OK. In fact you must make sure that you maintain at least a minimum amount of calories coming in everyday so that you don’t trigger that starvation/hoard program that’s built in for your survival.

Getting Back To Breakfast.

Breakfast is literally breaking the fast that we just experienced all night long. We haven’t eaten now for the longest stretch of time during our 24 hour day. When we awaken in the morning the quickest way to let your survival monitor know that everything is OK, and we are not starving, is to eat something. Start supplying food to your body as early as you can after you get up and your body’s metabolism will kick in and start burning up the fat resources it’s been hoarding as well as the new food you’re taking in. It returns your metabolism to it’s normal waking rate after it’s been slowed down for your sleep period. This will make sure that you will be burning off the foods you take in as well as the old foods you stored as fat.

In Summary,

EAT BREAKFAST! DO NOT SKIP MEALS! You can get some help with this by using self hypnosis and visualization techniques to get you quickly into the habit of following these behaviors. You can learn to do self hypnosis free by signing up for my 5 day mini course in self hypnosis right on this page in the upper right hand side of the page.

Now that you know the secret to jump starting your metabolism each day, my next article will show you how to get the most out of the physical act of eating. Grab my RSS FEED so you don’t miss out on the next technique I’ll be sharing with you. Knowing just this one simple, easy to follow and implement technique will help you to consistently drop pounds, and inches until you are down to your ideal weight.

I found this article really interesting. I came across it in the Waco Tribune. It details a recent study with cancer patients, and how the use of remedial hypnosis was able to lessen the effects of hot flashes experienced by women after cancer surgery by a whopping 68%. This is very dramatic results and it only used an extremely simple form of mental imagery to accomplish this result. Imagine if they used the advanced techniques that I use to help my clients stop smoking or lose weight! They would probably eliminate the hot flashes altogether!

I’m posting an excerpt from that article and linking to where you can read the rest of it here:

New Baylor research looking at treating hot flashes with hypnosis

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

By Tim Woods

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Attention breast cancer survivors and post-menopausal women: Help for hot flashes may be on the way — without the use of medicine or hormone therapy.

Gary Elkins, Baylor University psychology and neuroscience professor, is beginning a study of 180 post-menopausal women to study the effects of hypnotic relaxation therapy for women who experience hot flashes. The research is courtesy of a $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to expand on a previous study.

Elkins’ earlier study, recently published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, compared 26 breast cancer survivors who received the therapy with 25 breast cancer survivors who did not. Women receiving hypnosis reported a 68 percent decrease in hot flashes.

You can read the rest of the article here

Hypnosis for weight loss?

Is it possible to use hypnosis to lose weight?

Absolutely yes

How would you use hypnosis for weight loss?

In my office in NYC I use Hypnosis to help people take back control over their habits and behaviors. I help them eliminate old unhealthy habits by teaching them how to replace those old habits with new healthier behaviors and then I work with them so that these new behaviors then become their conditioned habitual responses. And when this takes place losing weight becomes the natural response to healthier behaviors

You see, it is our habits, our unthinking, unconscious patterns, that get us into the most trouble. If we condition ourselves to walk into our home everyday at the end of the workday, and drop our packages on the floor, and run into the kitchen for a “treat” of some kind of non-essential food (unhealthy food) and then plop ourselves on the couch in front of the TV, then every day we will feel compelled to do this same unhealthy activity. In fact, if we omit this activity from our normal everyday list of things to do, we will feel out of sorts. We will feel off balance. Things will not seem right. If we complete our day of work with a trip to the gym, or the yoga class, or the meditation circle, we can create this same kind of conditioned response with a healthier behavior. And when we don’t follow through with this new healthier behavior, we will get those same feelings of being out of sorts, off balance, or not feeling right. And those uncomfortable feelings will propel us to stay on track with a healthier behavior rather than an unhealthy behavior.

How can hypnosis help me with developing good habits?

Hypnotic trance is a state where we become more suggestible. We tend to believe and accept whatever suggestions are placed into the subconscious mind when we are in hypnotic trance. In my office, I suggest to my clients that they will start to behave differently. I suggest that they will start to behave in the way that they have agreed to behave during our brief pre-session interview. I link the old behaviors to an extremely unpleasant feeling or experience so they will be motivated to stop doing that unhealthy behavior. Then I have my clients practice the new behavior and link it to an extremely pleasant feeling or experience so they are motivated to follow through with the new healthier behavior.

Why does this hypnosis process work?

Now the reason this works, is that we tend to move away from things that feel bad and move toward things that make us feel good. You’ve heard of the metaphor of the donkey being coaxed in two ways. With a carrot and a stick. Basically this is providing my clients with their own carrot and stick. Nudging them along a path that will lead them to the healthier choices that are required for them to lower their current weight and keep them able to maintain that weight for as long as they want to maintain that healthy lifestyle. This is a lifestyle change, not a remedial quick fix like a short term diet that, because it is so restrictive, is impossible to maintain. When you change your lifestyle and it becomes habitual, its becomes as easy as brushing your teeth every morning, or washing your hands at specific times. And because habits are so very powerful, we make them our powerful allies in our program of weight loss.

In Summary

This then becomes one of the very powerful ways that hypnosis is effective at helping my clients become thinner, healthier and happier. Hypnosis is also a very pleasant experience for people so they have fun, and feel extremely relaxed and more capable. Just a by product of this rewarding way of making changes permanently.

How To get Started Now With Hypnosis For Weight Loss

You can get started by doing self hypnosis. An easy a quick way to learn self hypnosis is with my free 5 day self hypnosis course. You can sign up for it by clicking on this link for self hypnosis for weight loss. You will find a sign up box in the upper right hand corner. Just fill in your name and email, and you will get delivered to your email box the best information on self hypnosis you can find anywhere. It is similar to the self hypnosis instructions that I provided as the author of the new book, “Real World Hypnosis: Insider Tips from Leading Hypnotists”, and you get it for free.