Has you diet been destroyed by the abundance of Easter Eggs?  Do you feel that everything is out to sabotage your weight loss.

Here at my Leatherhead Hypnotherapy Clinic many of my weight loss clients feel this way.   I always explain to them that losing weight with hypnotherapy is not about going on a diet and never eating a chocolate or cake again.  This type of diet nearly always fails because we will crave the things that are forbidden.

Losing weight with hypnotherapy is about life style changes.   A lot of clients come to see me in Leatherhead because they want to lose weight for a special occasion or a holiday.  I always ask them what are you going to do when the holiday is over. The choice is a crash diet to lose weight for a few weeks or a change in the way they think about food and to lose weight for life.

No food is bad food.  It is the quantity of food that is important.  Small portions are the key.

It is all too easy to pile our plates with pasta or eat extra slices of bread.  Eating more slowly and savouring the flavour leads to our eating less.

To eat a chocolate and to enjoy it is not going to make anyone gain weight.  Eating a whole box of chocolates in one sitting highlights an unhealthy attitude to food.   Binge eating can be as bad for your health as binge drinking.

Eating and enjoying food is important.  Small portions of good quality tasty food are far more enjoyable than mountains of junk food; and better not just for our weight but also for our long-term health.

Summer is coming.  Start to explore tasty alternatives to junk food.  Salads, fruit, berries are all coming into the shops in abundance soon and we can re-educate our taste buds to help us eat healthily for rest of our lives.  

Contact me to find out how hypnotherapy can help you reach your weight loss targets.

March 12th is National Stop Smoking Day.  Many of the clients who come for hypnotherapy to stop smoking here in Leatherhead have given up smoking many times.  The comedian Dave Allen said, ‘Stopping smoking is easy. I do it every day’.

Smoking is a habit as much as it’s an addiction.  Nicotine is addictive, but because it is such a fast acting drug the cravings can be dealt with quite quickly.  The habit however, is harder to deal with.

Smoking wraps itself around all the things we do in life.  For example when we have a coffee we will have a cigarette with that. When we are trying to stop smoking it is the habit part of our mind that is nagging us to have a cigarette with the coffee.

Another example is how we use cigarettes as a reward ‘when I have finished this job or task I will have a cigarette’.  We use cigarettes to motivate ourselves, ‘I will have this cigarette and then I will do that job I have been putting off’.

All of these behaviours and many others make stopping smoking hard.  Smoking is almost our friend and companion. Clients worry about how they will cope without the crutch of a cigarette to lean on.

In hypnotherapy we reprogram that habit part of the brain and help it to find a new habit that is more advantageous to the smoker.  

The subconscious has always thought that giving up smoking would be a good idea and our conscious mind is fully aware of the dangers posed by smoking.

Make 2019 the year you stop smoking for good.   Book an appointment now and one treatment may be all that you need.

Are you making the same resolutions again this year – lose weight, get fit, stop smoking, cut down on alcohol etc?  By the middle of January have you given up giving up?

When life kicks in, the good intentions fly out of the window.  Do the commute to work in the cold, the daily school run, the trip to the supermarket combine with the wind and rain see you opening the wine or heading for the chocolate once again?

Here at Leatherhead hypnotherapy many clients want to change their lives.  They are not happy with their weight, their health even their job and they are looking for the motivation to change.

One of the mistakes we all make when we do our New Year resolutions is the shopping list.  ‘I will stop smoking, drinking, lose weight, go to the gym’ and then when we fail at one resolution we give them all up.  

The best way to achieve change is baby steps.  Try cutting out one thing at a time. For example giving up the chocolate biscuit with morning coffee is not telling your subconscious you can never have a chocolate biscuit again, it is sending the message that you are in control over when you eat the biscuit.  

If we try to deny ourselves too much at once we rebel and then we give up giving up.  By taking one step at a time, make one New Year resolution that you can keep then in three month’s time the success of that step will help you take another.  The feeling that you have achieved something even if it is only the habit of those morning chocolate biscuits will encourage you to try something else.

You can make a resolution any day of the year because every day is the start of a new year, maybe Big Ben doesn’t chime on the 10th February for example but if you join the gym on that date and then stay with it for the next 12 months that was a new year resolution.  

So on January 1st take one step in the right direction towards reaching your goal and after six weeks (because this is how long it takes to form a new habit) then think about the next goal.

If you do want to stop smoking, lose weight or cut back on your drinking then don’t forget hypnotherapy can help to reprogram your subconscious mind.

Contact me today to see how Hypnotherapy can help you achieve your 2019 goals.

Some clients come to my hypnotherapy clinic in Leatherhead because they have repeatedly failed their driving test.  Learning to drive is important in today’s society and many young people start to learn as soon as they reach the age of 17.

Failing the driving test first time is acceptable.  Many learner drivers almost see their first test as a practice.  If they fail the second time then they become more anxious but continual fails cause anxiety and a change in their thinking.

Each new test is viewed with dread and their thoughts become not whether they will pass this time or I can do this but instead they think  ‘Please don’t let me fail again.’ Their belief system eventually becomes so overwhelmed with the thought that they can no longer visualise passing their test.  Sometimes this leads to them giving up all together.

When the client is older they find it even harder to pass their test and the statistics bear this out.  One client I had here in Leatherhead was taking her test for the first time at age 45. She came to me saying ‘I can only do this once.’ Fortunately with a good driving instructor and hypnotherapy to reinforce her confidence she did pass first time.

If a client has failed a number of tests then in hypnosis we rewind those negative events and put positive feelings in place.  We also rehearse the driving test in hypnosis helping them to see and believe in positive outcomes.

Helping the client to believe that they can pass their test is very successful and a number of clients have passed their test after 4 or 5 failures.  Like many things in life, what we believe, we can achieve.

It is many years since I took my driving test I still remember it as one of the most nerve-wracking things I have ever done.  I also remember the feeling of elation I felt when I passed.

Get in touch to find out how hypnotherapy can give you confidence for your test.

There has been much written about mindfulness and it can appear to be quite difficult to apply to our everyday lives.  Often it gets confused with meditation and people think they have to set aside time every day to be mindful.

Mindfulness actually means paying attention in a particular way.  It means focusing on what we are doing and not worrying about the past or future.  Mindfulness doesn’t conflict with any beliefs or traditions, whether religious, cultural or scientific.

We might go out into the garden and think the flowerbeds need weeding or the grass needs cutting.  A young child will call out “Hey, I’ve found a caterpillar”. We don’t take time to notice the roses in bloom or the daisies turning their heads to the sun in that over long lawn.

Mindfulness is simply noticing what we don’t normally notice because we are so busy with our lives.  Being mindful helps to focus our attention, and when we chose what we focus on then we are living mindfully.

Mindfulness can relate to our everyday lives.  When we are washing dishes we are often thinking about what other tasks we have to do, perhaps even being cross or annoyed at the everyday task.  But if this becomes a mindful activity we begin to notice the water temperature, the texture of the bubbles, even the rainbows in the soap bubbles before they pop.  We notice the sounds the water makes as we move the cups and plates around. We begin to notice many things that normally pass us by.

Mindful walking brings many pleasures.  Rather than worrying about the past or the future for a short time we can look around and notice what we see and hear – flowers in front gardens, moss in the cracks of the pavement, the changing seasons even if we live in towns.   Recently on a morning walk in Leatherhead I saw a wren on the brambles. Such a tiny bird. I stood and watched it for a short time before it flew off about its own business.

We can notice the movement of our arms and legs, the sensations created by walking on different surfaces.    We can also pay attention to the sound of our feet on a gravel path or the feeling of a sharp stone through the soles of our shoes.  Perhaps we hear the snap of a twig underfoot.

The more we practise, the more we notice how intrusive thoughts force their way into our mind and that’s okay.  The only aim of our mindful activity is to keep bringing our thoughts back to the activity and to be mindful of it.

Mindfulness is not meditation or hypnosis but here at my clinic in Leatherhead I often find that helping people to become mindful in their everyday life can be a great benefit especially for those who suffer from anxiety and overthinking.

I am a fully trained in mindfulness in therapy. Contact me to find out how mindfulness training could help you.

The weather here in Leatherhead has been very cold and snowy.  Many activities have been cancelled and schools closed. This is just the type of unusual event that can throw us of track with our resolutions.  

Whether we plan to get fit or lose weight, even stop smoking can be derailed by unexpected events often outside of our control.  If we are stranded at the train station on our way home from work or our journey on the motorway takes three times longer than planned, the pie, pasty or chocolate bar is more tempting than usual.  

The visit to the gym is cancelled because of the snow or our daily walk is cut short because the paths and pavements are so icy.  It is very easy at this point to give up. Maybe your weight loss has stopped or even crept back up a pound or two. The motivation to exercise can be harder to kick-start after an enforced break.

Here at Leatherhead hypnotherapy I tell my clients to see that these events are not a failure in their new lifestyle or plan but a chance to kick start the process again.  

Using hypnosis we can reprogram the subconscious to see a set back not as something that has ruined everything so that we have now failed but an opportunity to remind ourselves of our long term goals and how important being fit and healthy is to us.

Weight loss in particular can be a series of pit falls.  No sooner have we eaten all of the Christmas chocolate than along comes Valentine’s Day, followed by Mothering Sunday quickly followed by the chocolate festival that is Easter.  However much we tell our families not to buy us chocolate and sweets some of them still arrive, accompanied by such goodies as Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, Simnel cake. The list is endless.  

If we are going to lose weight and keep it off then we have to learn to deal with these pitfalls.  One piece of cake, a chocolate or a piece of Easter egg is not going to cause us to put all the weight back on that we have lost.  Eat it and enjoy it then give the rest away. Share it with friends, family and work colleagues but enjoy a small indulgence yourself.  Denying yourself any treats will turn you into a martyr and eventually you will break out and over indulge. Then you will decide that you are hopeless and give up all together.

I don’t tell my clients here at Leatherhead hypnotherapy that they can eat cake and chocolate every day, after all a treat is not a treat if we have it every day, but once in a while take the cake or chocolate sit down in peace and quiet and savour the flavour.  You will find it easier to carry on eating healthily, and get back into the routine of doing your favourite exercise when the cold and the snow have gone.

Contact me to see how hypnotherapy can help you.

Clients who come to my clinic in Leatherhead for hypnotherapy suffer from a variety of painful conditions.  They may come to lose weight for example because the doctor has advised this will help relieve their arthritis or to stop smoking again on doctor’s advice.  

One question they often ask is “can hypnosis relieve pain?”  The simple answer is ‘yes’ sometimes.  When a client is stressed or anxious then pain is often worse.  If a client is in pain this may cause them to tense their bodies and muscles and therefore the pain increases.

The client can take home a recording of the technique they have been taught in the session to use at home.  A client can also learn a simple self-hypnosis technique which will enable them to find relief quickly.  

If the client has a visual modality then they can turn the pain into an object or a shape and visualise it shrinking and getting smaller.  The client can do this between appointments when using self-hypnosis.  

Another technique for reducing pain can be asking the client to imagine they are in the control centre of the brain and finding a dial that they can turn down to reduce the pain.  A simple lock on the dial can keep the pain at a lower level for some time.  

One of the techniques I have used successfully at my Leatherhead clinic is to ask the client to visualise the site of the pain and imagine what it looks like.  For example an arthritic knee could look red and inflamed inside.  If the client has a good visual imagination they can imagine soothing the joint with cream and lubrication.  One of my clients who learned this technique was able to use it on a regular basis.  A car journey of three hours, which had become six hours because of the need for frequent stops to move the painful joints, was reduced back to three and a half hours when the client as a passenger used this technique.

As a therapist I am always careful to leave a residue of pain.  For example if the client scored his pain at nine or ten on a scale of one to ten, this could be reduced to two or three to make it more bearable but still remind the client that the injury or disease was still there and they wouldn’t try to over do things.  Pain is nature’s way of telling us that all is not well and we should take care.

Contact me to find out more.