Suggestion for Self Hypnosis: NEWSLETTER ISSUE 3, ARTICLE 3

Suggestion for Self Hypnosis
Following on from last month’s article on self hypnosis, for those that have been practising here is a short guide to taking the self hypnosis work a step further. Continuing the self hypnosis as last month from steps one to five but this time imagine that you are walking down the steps into a large bath of water. See the water beginning at step five and as you continue slowly down the last five steps feel yourself stepping into the warm, pure water. See the water as cleansing and beautiful. Feel the water as it tickles your feet, ankles and eventually your calves.
Slowly lower yourself into the water. If you are confident in water see the water come up to your shoulders. You can stand but also float or swim if you wish. If you do not feel confident in water see the water the same depth as a bath. You can float nicely and feel calm and content.
You may have already decided what it is you want to work on. If you haven’t just allow your subconscious mind to go wherever it needs to go. See three boxes under the water. Depending on the depth of the water you can either swim to the boxes or gently reach down and collect them. Open the boxes slowly, one at a time. Narrate to yourself what is happening as you open the box.
Avoid using statements that are negative, make sure everything you say is positive. “As I open the box I feel a calming blue light engulfing me, this light is becoming a part of me enabling me to have a peaceful night’s sleep every night. Every morning I will wake feeling refreshed, happy and positive about my day”. “As I open the box a big invisible bubble surrounds me, this bubble is going to bring me confidence so that I can feel strong in any situation I want to”. “As I open the box a little yellow ball jumps out, this little yellow ball will flash before my eyes every time I go to eat something that is not good for my body, the more I see the yellow ball the quicker I am to reaching my target weight”. “As I open the box an image of me at my ideal weight, looking exactly the way I want to look pops out. I stare at the image; I watch that part of me, knowing that I can look the way I want to look. I step into the reflection of me and we become one. Every day in every way I am getting closer and closer to this reflection of myself”.
Repeat your statement to yourself as many times as you wish. Two to three times should be enough. If you are visualising something such as a reflection of yourself looking the way you want to look really look at what is around you. Study yourself. Are you smiling or frowning? Is the sun shining or is it raining? What can you smell? What can you taste? Are there any noises? What or who is in the background? Spend a few minutes really looking around at everything. Sometimes we only see what it is we are looking for, it is important to notice everything else also.
When you have finished opening your boxes and you are ready to continue your day bring yourself out of self hypnosis as instructed in last month’s newsletter.

Twitter and its place in 2010: NEWSLETTER ISSUE 3, ARTICLE 2

Twitter and its place in 2010
Ten years ago if I’d have said I was going out for the evening to meet people that I had “met” in a Yahoo chat room the majority of people would look at me as if I was absolutely mad. However today I can proudly say that on the 25 March I am going to a Twestival. I know that most reading this probably will be thinking right now,
ok she is a F R E A K
but let me explain further.
A Twestival (or Twitter Festival) is a global series of events organised by volunteers around the world under short timescales which bring people offline for a great cause. Twestival began in September 2008 when a group of London Twitter users hosted an event called Harvest Twestival to raise money and collect food for a local charity known as The Connection. The event was intended for 30 – 40 people but on the day there was a waiting list and 250 attendees. On 8 January 2009 the first Twestival Global tweet went out and a month later 202 cities around the world hosted events to raise money for charity water projects.
Twestival 2010 will be held on 25 March. This year all of the money raised will go to Concern Worldwide. So now it’s a little more interesting but still I hear you thinking
but it’s still an event at which you are going to meet a load of people from the internet and more to the point what are you doing on Twitter anyway?!
Over the past few months I have enjoyed using Twitter for business and social purposes. I have to be completely honest and say that I first found Twitter because of the race between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to get one million followers. I was nosy, so I signed up! I soon started to realise that there are a lot of entrepreneurs tweeting. Duncan Bannatyne is a big tweeter as are Peter Jones and James Caan. A lot of celebrities tweet, Jonathan Ross, Chris Evans, Matthew Horne, the list goes on. What I realised is that all of these people are simply promoting themselves. We watch these people as they answer questions on GMTV or The One Show and sometimes forget that they are not doing this for the benefit of the show or us. I knew if I wanted to move with the times I needed to start promoting myself on Twitter.
First step, get some local people following me. If I have local people following me; when they need a Hypnotherapist they will come and see me, if a friend mentions they want to lose weight or quit smoking they may say “I know a hypnotherapist who can help with that”. So this is what I did. As I started to get involved in the Twitter conversations between local people I was pleasantly surprised at what a huge networking tool Twitter is. I soon found out about a Surrey Tweet Up, which was conveniently held in my local Slug and Lettuce. Again I can see you all thinking...
The freak is back!
I wasn’t totally sure but the fact it was being held in a Slug and Lettuce seemed to make it that little bit less geeky! The event was hosted by a local PR Agency @thebluedoor , their bio: “thebluedoor is a specialist external communications agency, with a passion for PR done well. “ And sponsored by @ranjerj aka Julian Ranger, his bio reads “Career 2 as an Angel Investor and serial entrepreneur”. For them this was just another way to promote themselves. For me it meant a good night out, meeting new people, promoting myself and free drinks. Whoever thought that when I left the ‘great big City job’ I would still get free nights out?! There was a slight structure to the evening, Julian as a plus point of sponsoring the evening got to speak for a little while – his chosen topic was along the lines of social media and how our information is lost soon after we write it (along with a new Twitter app that he has invested in which will help with this problem), very apt! Then chat and get merry!
I met some great people at the Tweet Up, some who were also there to promote their businesses others who just use Twitter for fun but it really was an interesting and entertaining evening.
Now I am looking forward to another great evening at the Surrey Twestival. It is being held in Farnham Castle, sponsored by Mars Drinks (which means we certainly won’t be short of chocolate on the night) along with ibundle (Julian Ranger’s company, investing in ideas) and raffle.it – definitely worth a look at for those who like winning (http://raffle.it/). Of course the participant list is online so I have been able to see who is attending; there are some very interesting people who I look forward to meeting and telling all about my work and some others who I have already met that I know promote me to others. I will enjoy having a drink or three with those I already know and a sensible conversation with those I don’t. It’s going to be a good night for business and pleasure. They say the two don’t mix but according to the rules of Twitter Etiquette, on Twitter they have to as you sell your business and yourself with your interesting tweets (which cannot all be work related)!
It seems to me that social media is becoming more and more popular. There are many businesses using Twitter and more recently Facebook Fan Pages to promote their work. We all know that things change as time moves on and technology is certainly advancing faster than ever before. However ‘sad’ or ‘unchic’ it seems it’s only those moving with the times that are going to advance at the same pace. In the words of Mike Elgan:
“The fact is that Twitter can be a breaking news resource, a celebrity gossip site, a business workgroup communication tool, a personal diary, a way to track packages or thousands of other things. It's whatever you want it to be.”
If you are already on Twitter please follow me @jhhypnotherapy. If not some interesting people to follow are @dragonjones, @duncanbannatyne, @timlovejoy, @wossy, @achrisevans. Last but definitely not least – yes I have got some clients through Twitter!

The HypnoGastricBand: NEWSLETTER ISSUE 3, ARTICLE 1

The HypnoGastricBand
Sometimes when I am at networking events I mention my HypnoGastricBand process and people laugh. However the silence prevails as they realise the seriousness of the issue when I tell people that one of my most recent clients had actually been referred, by her doctor for a real Gastric Band. In England today about 46% of men and 32% of women are overweight whilst an additional 17% of men and 21% of women are obese. These statistics are increasing dramatically. The percentage of adults that are obese has roughly doubled since the mid 1980s. The Government have even gone so far as to encourage fish and chip shops to make fatter chips as they contain less calories and fat than the thinner version!
A Gastric Band operation is performed laparoscopically and can involve complications, as with all surgery. Between 5 – 10% of patients will require a second operation. The cost is astronomical – as much as £5000 at some clinics and it doesn’t always work! The purpose of the gastric band is to make one feel full more quickly. The stomach is restricted by the band so that less needs to be eaten to fill the stomach. Now please excuse me if I am wrong here but I do not think obese people are overweight because they are hungrier than anyone else. It’s because they think about food in the wrong way. Many of us do not stop eating when we are full, we continue because we are enjoying the food or to mask another feeling. We eat sweets, chocolate, crisps or biscuits as snacks. Again, not because we are hungry but because we are bored, fed up or something similar. So to simply create something that just makes a person feel full quicker than normal seems to be lacking somewhat. Please don’t get me wrong I am sure in a lot of cases it works wonders but what I mean is that these people need more than to just feel full. The whole relationship with food needs to be changed; they need to address the real feelings so that they can recognise when they are eating because they are hungry and when they are eating to mask a feeling. Once this has been recognised the feelings can be dealt with as they should and they can begin to eat for the right reasons.
Being overweight can affect us physically and psychologically. I always ask my weight loss clients “what is the biggest problem being overweight causes”. The answer is never anything to do with health but always something along the lines of not being able to go into a clothes shop and buy anything they want. This explains part of the problem with overeating. Many people that are overweight get so depressed with the way they look, they eat to make themselves feel better. This immediately creates that vicious circle that is so common with many problems.
My HypnoGastricBand process involves a lot of work to remove any psychological attachments to food. We also do a lot of work to help people to love themselves again. The HypnoGastricBand process is a five session program. The first two sessions involve regression work. This is where the qualified hypnotherapist uses a process known as Hypno Analysis to try and find the reasons for the overeating. It may be something as simple as when a child we were given food to stop us from crying. Immediately in this situation the brain begins to form a relationship between the feeling of resolve and food. As adults we will subconsciously head for the fridge when feeling sad/angry/lonely or whatever it was we were feeling all of those years ago when crying. Or it could be a lot more complex.
The third session in the process is the ‘consultation at the clinic’. In hypnosis the hypnotherapist will take you through this scene. Here your subconscious mind will begin to believe that you will be having the gastric band fitted on the agreed date. This is what would happen if you were really having a gastric band fitted so we make sure the process ties in nicely with this. At the fourth session the hypnotherapist will take the client, in hypnosis, through the ‘gastric band operation’. The hypnosis script was written exactly as a gastric band operation is performed. We have real theatre (surgical) noises playing in the background and the client is encouraged to really focus on the sights, sounds, smells etc that would really be there if the operation was happening for real. Parts of the script are personalised to the individual client but the operation specifics stay the same.
The final session is an open session. This is there for the client to use as they wish. If the eating has changed and they are doing really well they could have a session to ‘remove the gastric band’. If the client feels they need a top up we could have a session that involves ‘tightening the gastric band’. If neither of these is necessary then the client can just come for an hour of relaxation or to address any other issues that they may feel are preventing them from moving forward.
Each client gets a MP3 player with personalised weight loss suggestions on to listen to at home and also a session with a nutritionist is included in the price of the process. The reason for the MP3 player is because sometimes clients feel that they will benefit further by having a regular top up session. It’s much more economical to do this via a recording that they can listen to whenever it’s convenient than having to book another appointment with their hypnotherapist. The session with the nutritionist is very important. Although I can advise my clients on better eating habits I am not qualified to do so. I also know that every person is different and there is a diet that is suitable for some of us but not others. This is something the nutritionist can advise on.
The best thing about this process is that it really does work. The HypnoGastricBand was born when I wrote the script for a client almost a year ago. Since then my colleague Sue and I have developed that into the process I have just described. We now have twelve practitioners across the country using our program and seeing results just like we are. If you feel that you are over eating and your weight is becoming something that affects you health wise or maybe you just want to be able to go back into your favourite clothes shop and buy all of the clothes you love please see my HypnoGastricBand website for further information. If you know someone who may be affected in this way simply forward them this newsletter!