Hypnosis

Hypnotherapy : Does it Really Work?

Pretend for a moment, that your mind is like your lawn out in front of your home. Even some of the best cared for yards, if you look close enough, are going to have a couple of weeds! Weeds are interesting because they are so persistent. You see, most of the yard is made up of good green grass, shrubs, and flowers (the good things about yourself).

The grass has good roots, but the weed’s roots go much deeper. That is why if you try to remove a weed by cutting it off, or pulling it up, and you don’t get all of its root, it is most likely to just come back, and sometimes there are more weeds (symptoms or problems) than when you started.

Taking this example a little further, you could look at the weed and divide it up into three distinct areas: first there is the area where the roots are, the soil, that is equivalent to the subconscious mind; the second area, where the grass is, is equivalent to the conscious mind, the part that is easy to see; and finally, there is the part that sticks up into the air for yourself and everyone else to see, the weed, the part of ourselves that we don’t like.

The part we don’t like might be a bad habit like biting your finger nails, or something more serious like smoking, a phobia, or even some diseases like ulcers.

Some treatments just deal with the behavior or the outward symptom, and that would be like mowing off the weed, it is likely that it will return. In the short term you might feel better, like going on a diet, losing the weight, and then the weight returns, because the real cause of the excess weight was never eliminated! Then you feel frustrated, and may even gain more weight (more weeds!).

Hypnotherapy done properly will remove the problem at the root, by helping the client to see or experience the situation, thought or idea, that started the problem differently. If the root is removed, then the problem ceases to exist!

Hypnosis can help you with the following and more:

  • Stop Smoking
  • Weight Loss
  • Anxiety
  • Remove Fears
  • Drug Abuse
  • Motivation
  • Public Speaking
  • Anger Issues
  • Concentration
  • Test Anxiety
  • Improve Sports
  • Sexual Issues
  • Stress
  • Remove Habits
  • Shyness
  • Relationships
  • Alcohol Abuse
  • Childbirth
  • Stage Fright
  • Pain Management
  • Procrastination
  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Confidence
  • Improve Mood

Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy for Rapid Therapeutic Change

Eliminate Addiction, Irrational Fears, Improve Mood, Increase Motivation, Increase Athletic Performance, Reduce the Affects of Abuse and More. Rapidly Begin To Feel Better and Become More Successful in Life. Hypnosis used as a therapeutic modality often greatly increases the rate of healing through insight, by quickly removing psychological or emotional barriers to your success.

Hypnosis allows access to your subconscious (where long term memory, habits and emotions exist) where the material that needs to be uncovered may lie. Using hypnosis, insight and healing may be accomplished often rapidly because in hypnosis your mind is much more calm creating a mental environment where the vital memories and insights become more available for therapeutic work. Hypnosis helps you to break through the barrier of conscious to the subconscious.

I work with you in helping you make the kinds of changes you want, in a confidential and respectful way

Hypnotherapy is a form of brief therapy. Results are usually experienced from the first or second session. Therapy is usually completed after only three to four sessions, but may run as many as five or six for complex problems, though this is unusual.

Laugh to Heal

What is FREE, FUN and HEALING…LAUGHTER!

We have a wonderful, natural tonic inside of us that promotes a sense of well-being, physical healing and joy. It is called LAUGHTER. It is there to help you lighten your mood, feel good and enjoy yourself.

Think back and ask yourself:

When is the last time that you let go and really laughed out loud? So much laughter your eyes started watering and you had to take an extra breath? Or put on some music for no special reason and just danced around?

Have you ever sung your favourite song out loud and really let go? Or just played like you were a carefree happy child for no reason other than the playing itself?

Laughter is health-promoting medicine and it is free!

When we laugh we actually experience useful positive changes in our brain. The act of laughing releases positive endorphins that feel good. Even better than that research has shown laughing has physical health promoting benefits like enhancing the immune system and reducing our blood pressure.

Dr Lee Berk a researcher at Loma Linda University in California has spent decades researching the positive effects of laughter. His studies have discovered that even the anticipation of laughter itself results in positive physiological and emotional changes in our mind and body.

In his book Mind,Body,Spirit:Exploring the Mind,Body,Spirit Connection Through Research on Mirthful Laughter. and Spirituality, Health and Wholeness, An Introductory Guide for Health Care Professions: Haworth Press 2004, he reviews the amazing findings over 3 decades of research into the benefit of laughter.

Findings suggest that a good belly laugh is a workout for your core and is aerobic! It can bring your immune system back into a systematic balance and it can relieve negative emotional pressure.

Laughing is a win win

So explore what tickles your silly button, whether a joke, video, good friends and move forward into better health.

Panic Attacks

Are Panic Attacks Making Life Difficult?

Approximately 1in 23 people or 4.23% of our population lives with excessive anxiety. Even more people today suffer from panic attacks.

A panic attack is a sudden episode of intense anxiety. This may feel like a rapid heart rate, an inability to breathe, feelings of intense nausea, an out of body experience or the feeling that everything is closing in on you. Many people experiencing a panic attack for the first time believe that they are having a heart attack and often go to the emergency room. This is usually where they first hear the words panic attack.

After the first attack subsides you may find yourself worrying that it will happen again. You may begin to avoid certain situations “in case” it happens again. Initially you may avoid the situation in which it happened. Later on you may notice the things you avoid are more general.

Common situations in which people first experience panic attacks are driving, in elevators, going over bridges, flying and sometimes at home.

Adults my distract themselves from these uncomfortable feelings with alcohol, drugs, food, work and exercise in order to avoid the familiar uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and panic.

As uncomfortable as these feelings are, anxiety and panic are generally very treatable!

When excessive anxiety or panic has developed, the root cause is often found in an event or events that were intense enough to leave a lasting impression. The treatment through a combination of methods is designed to eliminate the strong emotion connected to the event(s).

Through this process the power of these emotions is nullified. Often excessive anxiety and panic can be resolved in 4-6 sessions.

Stop Smoking

Use hypnosis to stop smoking without gaining weight!You can stop smoking for good! Thousands and thousands of people across the country have quit smoking using hypnosis. I am experienced with this important and life-changing issue. I am successful if my clients become non-smokers. I know smoking cessation and the importance of physical, mental and emotional health.

Here is how it works. You will come in and meet with me. I will learn about your smoking habit and discuss how you want to quit. You can stop all at once or taper off.

I require that you make a minimum of two appointments, three to seven days apart. Most people will either stop smoking or cut back to only one or two cigarettes a day after the first session. The next session will usually be ten times more powerful and effective than the first session.

There are small percentage, about 10-20 percent, that will require more sessions to quit smoking. For that small percentage that need more help, I am there for them, too.

You don’t have to gain weight because you quit smoking! Follow my plan and you may even lose weight. My educative component helps you to replace the smoking habit with good positive behaviours. These good behaviours help you to take advantage of the time you used to spend smoking. If you now smoke 30 cigarettes a day and spend about 5 minutes on each cigarette that equals about 150 minutes, or 2 1/2 hours a day smoking. You need to plan for that time. If you don’t, you will tend to gain weight.

I can tell you much more about my program. Call me for more details. I am happy to answer your questions by phone or email.

Are you living with Chronic Stress

In today’s hectic world many people are living with chronic stress. If you answer yes to two or more of these questions you might be living a chronically stressful lifestyle.

Do you:

  • Eat emotionally
  • Feel overwhelmed
  • Drink too much or take drugs
  • Feel anxious, jumpy or panicky
  • Seem more forgetful than usual
  • Lose your temper more frequently
  • Have a hard time falling/staying asleep
  • Have difficulty concentrating
  • Cry often
  • Find relationships challenging?

Your mind is amazing with the best of intentions. It scans each event that happens to keep you safe. If your mind interprets an event as positive you move forward with positive energy. If it is viewed as negative, instantly your body responds physically with the fight, flight or freeze response. This response is hardwired from our primitive days but in the modern world we cannot always use the fight, flight or freeze responses.

Each stress response you experience releases hormones into your body to help you achieve fight, flight, or freeze. These stress hormones have been linked to illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure and diabetes. They have also been linked to negative emotional symptoms like anxiety and panic.

Chronic stress is emotionally and physically exhausting!

How can you reduce this chronic stress?

The first step is to examine the balance in your life. What is your level of commitment to family, friends, work, school, spirituality, self care? Which area feels overloaded? Which area feels ignored?

We feel stressed when we are taking on too much to do it well so look to “give away” the areas that feel overloaded. Brainstorm how you can “plump up” the areas that feel ignored. Creating that balance like leveling out a teeter totter helps to keep you stable and even.

Lean to say no if you cannot or do not want to take on another responsibility. Delete emotionally draining people or situations from your life when possible. Nurture your body (the only one you will ever have) by moving it, feeding it well and giving it the sleep that it needs. Focus on the humour in situations. Remember, it is your mind’s interpretation of an event that decides whether it is positive or negative. Create the most positive experience for yourself that you can.

Find help when you need it. Deep relaxation, therapy and hypnotherapy can help you release negative emotional pressure and restructure old patterns and habits that are holding you back.

“Create your new tomorrow”!

Adlerian Psychology

I am trained in Adlerian psychology. A hallmark of Adlerian Psychology is the promotion family-member equality, parent education, balance in life style, and holism in individuals.

This Therapeutic model originated in the early 1900s from the work of Alfred Adler. Adler was a contemporary of Freud and Jung, yet he had a different take on people and how we work.

Adler saw individuals as creative, goal-directed selves that need a sense of belonging, connectedness to others, desire to contribute to the greater good of the community. He was optimistic about people and encouraging to his patients. Alfred Adler was focussed on developing a model of therapy that was useful in helping all people including children, parents and couples create and achieve harmonious relationships, while being responsible for their behaviour.

Adler believed that people have choices about how they behave rather than being “pushed into behaviour” as was a popular belief with other Psychiatrists at the time.

Adler’s goal for individual or family counselling was for each member of a family or couple to spend time with their therapist/ counsellor. As this one-to-one relationship develops Adler believed the therapist/counsellor can then provide critical encouragement, foster insight, and promote change in each family member’s style of life. Family members “lay down their weapons? to discover new, positive aspects of each other.

Adler had placed a lot of emphasis on how important an early child’s training in life developed and how those early learnings were compiled into their little rulebook for living. This guide book he believed became their “private logic” for living their life. This Private Logic Adler believed was an individual’s guide book directing them throughout their life. The challenge then becomes the understanding that what a child viewed as appropriate, with our adult learning and knowledge might not be a suitable way to move through life.

Therapy assits with understanding the “mistaken beliefs” of the child and remodelling those beliefs into an appropriate system for us as adults.

Adler also was a strong proponent of parenting that fostered a child to become a responsible contributing member of their family which he felt would translate later to a good contributing member of the community. He was friends with Maria Montessori and their shared similar passions for positive encouragement, requiring responsibility and the importance of good parenting.

In my University training at the Adler School I was required to teach a 6 week Parenting Course following the Adlerian philosophy.

In later sessions, the family or couple is unified as a cooperative, caring whole with a more generous view of everyone’s welfare.

During sessions, clients set paths toward long-term goals, develop maps and plans for dealing with life situations, and harness the power in knowing that we can make choices and thus make changes if we choose. Everything can be different tomorrow than it is today.