One father of two was featured in the media this month after he quit smoking using hypnosis for his two young children.
56 year old Chris Carter from Woodley has two children aged two and six years old and having been a cigar smoker for 35 years, he decided it was time he put his family first and improved his health.
Methods such as chewing gum, nicotine patches and going cold turkey using willpower alone do work for some smokers but for many, these just mean bad moods for days on end before finally giving in to the pull of smoking again.
Using hypnosis, Chris Carter quit smoking with the help of a clinical hypnotherapist.
Hypnotherapy to quit smoking is one of the most well known reasons for using a hypnotherapist although other issues it can help with are becoming better known nowadays (more…)
A couple of days ago, we wrote an article about how hypnosis and hypnotherapy can help the healing process, however, some people may still wonder how it is possible that hypnotherapy can actually help with physical pain.
Often in real life, people have grown accustomed to believing that (more…)
Despite how hypnosis is often portrayed in the media, on films and television, hypnotherapy is a real tool to help people overcome real issues in everyday life such as weight loss, overcoming phobias and quitting bad habits like smoking and nail biting.
Hypnosis is also particularly useful in the area of healing. In no way is it suggested that hypnotherapy should be used instead of conventional medicine and treatments, but it is a valuable alternative method of treatment that can work alongside conventional treatment (more…)
We have talked in previous articles about how hypnosis can be used to assist weight loss and indeed, celebrities such as Lily Allen have dropped dress sizes using hypnotherapy.
According to reports in the media this week, one mother has had hypnosis to help her believe she had had a gastric band fitted. It took five sessions with (more…)
Counselling and psychotherapy are associated with traumatic events, but when someone thinks of examples of where it might be used they often think of dramatic happenings such as returning from war, witnessing murder or other such traumas. However, trauma can come from smaller incidents too.
During a robbery at the Bookers Cash and Carry in Wrexham earlier this month, two members of staff on duty were threatened by the criminals.
Although nobody was hurt during the ordeal, events such as this can be alarming for anybody and all staff members at the Felin Puleston Booker site have been offered counselling by the company. One patient from the site was (more…)
According to an article in the Express & Star, figures released to them under the Freedom of Information Act have shown almost 1,000 police staff members in the West Midlands alone have had to take time off work citing stress as the cause in the last three years with over half of these being front line officers.
Post-traumatic stress is something that perhaps we may expect our police force to suffer from with the things they have to see and do in their day to day work but over reasons given included depression and anxiety.
The figures are from the period of April 2006 to March 2009 and show 959 police force staff from the West Midlands police force, ranging from constables to operations centre offices and telephone operators. West Midlands police explained some of these absences were for external reasons such as bereavement and they have a counselling section to help staff.
A retired police superintendent John Mellor, (more…)
Many people are coming round to the idea of alternative treatments such as hypnotherapy now and recognising that although they certainly do not replace conventional medicine or seeing your GP, they can have beneficial effects and are useful in many aspects of health and wellbeing for people.
Over the last few years, even employers have started to add healthcare programmes for employees in their benefits packages although not all include alternative treatments yet. Employers benefit from healthier, happy employers and a lower sickness or absence rate and employee gain access to alternative treatments or faster health treatment than they may otherwise have done.
One such company is Avanta. Avanta is a firm specialising in offering office space to small and medium sized businesses. The company has introduced a range of improvements to its benefits as it reviewed its entire benefits structure earlier this year.
Amongst new benefits such as salary sacrifice pension contributions, increases to maternity and paternity pay and medical insurance is an innovative offer to help its staff to quit smoking. For any member of staff who wants to stop smoking Avanta is offering an incentive to reimburse them on aids, and this includes any hypnotherapy treatment. Not all companies recognise alternative therapies in programmes such as this, which is a shame especially when hypnotherapy is recognised on the NHS as being a valuable aid for many people.
Some clients may be surprised when a hypnotherapist asks how they are paying for their hypnotherapy session, but money is an interesting topic when it comes to motivation for hypnosis. In earlier articles, regular readers may have noted that we often talk about how the hypnotherapist is only a guide and the real work for hypnosis is done by the client themselves. In this way, it is important that clients really do want to resolve their issue and motivation is therefore key.
In terms of money, if you consider two separate clients who have come to (more…)
Many people feel nervous at the thought of going into a hypnotic trance, probably because of all the hype that hypnosis gets through the media such as films and television, much of which is exaggerated. So how does it feel to go into a trance?
Trance is actually something that we all experience regularly if not on a daily basis. Without hypnosis, you go into a trance whenever you are focusing your attention solely onto a single thing or feeling for some time. Being in a trance is a really nice feeling and having a hypnotherapist to guide you into one is just the same.
Examples of when you may experience a trance include:
• When you are absorbed into reading a good book or watching a great film. The phrase ‘getting lost in a book’ is a good once to demonstrate when we are in trance
• When immersed in exercise, you can (more…)
In past articles, and speaking to clients, we have often referred to the fact that many issues can be resolved using hypnosis in as little as one or two sessions and many clients will express their surprise at this.
The number of sessions that an issue will take depends largely upon several factors, including the hypnotherapist themselves and the client, but in general hypnotherapy is a relatively fast solution.
Perhaps it is because when psychotherapy and counselling is used, the therapist often focuses on why an issue is there and where it came from. Hypnosis, on the other hand, is more focused on the results. However, having an insight into where it came from can often help achieve the results we want too.
Naturally the number of sessions will also depend (more…)