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Nowadays, everybody seems to have everything and many people struggle to know what to give someone as a present when they seem to have everything. Some of us even have trouble trying to think what we would like for ourselves!

One unusual gift that could pleasantly surprise could be hypnotherapy. What else could compare to helping a loved one to overcome a lifelong fear? Perhaps they are afraid of flying but have always wanted to visit DisneyWorld with the kids, or perhaps they are afraid of needles but long to go on an exotic holiday.

Hypnotherapy doesn’t even have to be for a particular problem. Perhaps it would be enough to surprise them with a stress and relaxation session, they could improve their opportunities at work with increased confidence or they could finally quit that smoking habit and cut out the nicotine patches. With hypnosis, there are endless opportunities! One thing is for certain, the gift of hypnotherapy is original and everyone can get something out of it.

Possible infertility is usually defined as when a couple is unable to conceive a child after a couple of years.  There are all sorts of reasons why a couple may not be able to conceive or just hasn’t conceived quite yet and isn’t always the woman’s fault, nor can it always be put down to the man.

Around one in six couples seek help in conceiving.  Just because they haven’t conceived in a year or even two, doesn’t mean they can’t conceive but the more frustrated the couple feel, the more difficult it can be.  There are many medical reasons why a couple cannot conceive, but if they have all been ruled out, then hypnotherapy is an option that can help.

Hypnotherapy for unexplained infertility is very popular and successful treatment in the USA.  It works by focussing on the emotional aspects of trying to become pregnant, being pregnant or becoming a parent, and helps to deal with the stress related to the issues involved.

Doctor have even recommended the process.  It isn’t just about visualisation, but is about helping the mind to influence the body.  As humans, we don’t yet fully understand our mind- body connection, but over the years most of us have come to accept the connection, even if we don’t appreciate just how powerful it is.

Our bodies are influenced by our emotions, thoughts, even our beliefs.  Emotions can affect the hormones, which control the ovulation and pregnancy.  So if you have trouble conceiving and cannot find out why, hypnotherapy is one solution you can use to take action.

As many people have only really heard of hypnotherapy through films and the media, they often have only the dramatised version of hypnosis, which is not only blown out of proportion but predominantly untrue.

Here are a few common myths of hypnosis and the truth about them:

• Mind control – this only helps to boost book sales and sell film tickets.  Hypnosis doesn’t give control to the hypnotherapist.  Instead, the hypnotherapist simply guides the person to control their own mind.  He cannot make anybody do what they don’t want to
• Special powers – to get great results, a hypnotherapist does not have to have special powers or some strange sort of magic.  Indeed, he simply knows the best way to help someone become susceptible to suggestion and help them unlock their own mind
• Lack of awareness – another untruth is that the person is not aware of what’s happening whilst they are experiencing hypnosis, or that they are ‘unconscious’.  This also is not true.  In fact, very few people relax enough to forget what the hypnotherapist says.  The client can hear every word and although they may feel relaxed, they are often more aware of their surroundings than usual

These are just a few of the common misconceptions, so if you have any questions about hypnotherapy, just ask!

Divorce mediation can help couples to make decisions to reduce the likelihood that the divorce will decrease the couple’s assets and in a way that will reduce any negative impact on children.

However, divorce mediation does not suit every troubled couple.  Divorce mediation requires both people to be honest about their situation and want a positive outcome from it.  If one party is intent on hiding assets, making the other person feel miserable or wants to take an unfair advantage of the other person, then divorce mediation will not work.

There are many advantages to divorce mediation.  Firstly, it is cheaper.  The couple usually splits the fee as well.  Without mediation, each person pays their own lawyer, so between them they will pay twice as much.

The main advantage is that the couple get to decide the divorce outcome.  The mediator’s goal in divorce mediation is to ensure each person agrees at each step of the process. Together, the couple decide when to file for divorce, how to divide property and parenting time with children, and everything else.

Without mediation, a judge decided for the couple and they are stuck with that.  If a couple believes they can work together reasonably to finish their marriage, then they should most definitely consider divorce mediation.

Since a young age, Hollywood actress Eva Mendes suffered from a panic fear of spiders.

The actress said:

“Ever since I was a little girl I had this problem. When I would see a spider, some sort of psychological blockade would activate, and my reactions were indescribable fear and I would go crazy. I would call somebody to kill it, and after that I would have to see the dead spider in order to believe that it was no longer there.  When I would see a spider at night, and I could not call anybody to kill it, I could not sleep all night. In those situations, I was psychologically lost.”

A fear of spiders is incredibly common and is otherwise known as arachnophobia.  Eva decided to give hypnotherapy a try.

Eva added:

“I do not know exactly what they did, but it definitely helped. Now when I see a spider, it does not bother me at all.  My life is a lot easier.”

Eva found hypnosis very relaxing and after a few hours of hypnosis, she was cured.  Eva said of the hypnotherapy:

“You lay down, relax, and then go through a few different kinds of relaxation. When you finish, you have the feeling that the whole process took three minutes, but in reality it lasted an hour.”

This description of hypnotherapy is pretty typical of most hypnosis clients.  Hypnosis is a state of relaxation and hypnotherapy is when a hypnotherapist talks to you whilst you are in hypnosis to help you for some therapeutic purpose.

Last Saturday, a self-admitted nervous athlete had just two shots to win the skeet shooting Olympic Gold for his country and he stepped up confidently and calmly to simply blow the disks from the sky.  Vincent Hancock won the gold and hypnosis made the difference.

So how did the 19 year old from Georgia, USA, keep so calm?

According to his coach, a specialist performance coach and hypnotherapist, it isn’t anything to do with his physical form.  The difference between a gold medalist and the rest of the competition is the mental game.

Shooters have to maintain concentration and intensity whilst staying calm.  Not an easy task in anyone’s book.

According to Hancock’s hypnotherapist, hypnosis helps teach the athletes how to get themselves into a meditative state and use the power of suggestion to help reinforce positive, strong thoughts.  It helps them to reach their ‘zone’.

Another method used is modeling where hypnosis is used to reinforce the visualisation of winning and of successfully achieving their goal.  However it worked and however it was done, hypnosis certainly made a difference to this young man.

Earlier this month, there was much talk in the media about the government’s new proposals to regulate all talking therapies, which would include psychotherapy.  This would not just be for the NHS-funded therapies, but they propose to regulate every therapist in the UK.  The government would like the Health Professionals Council to govern all therapies.

Many professional bodies say it will be unworkable and they are furious at the plans.  The College of Psychoanalysts said:

“Under proposed new government guidelines, most forms of psychoanalysis could become illegal.”

As Lord Alderdice put it (the NHS psychiatrist who introduced the Private Member’s Bill for state regulation back in 2001), any prescriptive code of skills or techniques is unlikely to be appropriate as the relationship between the 100,000 therapists in Britain and their clients is unique.

Few therapists agree on anything, but one thing that is usually agreed upon is that one form of treatment is rarely correct and should be ‘imposed’.

The reasons for looking into regulation are fair enough.  Most therapists, including psychotherapists, take a complaint to their governing body seriously, however, many consumers are unsure of to whom they should complain if they have a query.

It is certainly more difficult to regulate psychotherapy than other therapies such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) where it is a quick therapy, easy to teach and easy to evaluate (you are either cured of a phobia or not).  Psychotherapy is much more difficult to regulate.

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy believes regulation in today’s society is essential.

“But,” says Philip Hodson, its chief spokesman, “we have been told that it will be regulated by the HPC and if that is the price of regulation then so be it. I understand the disquiet of therapists, but there are some who argue that there should never be regulation of talking therapists. It is as if we are some kind of super-profession, fit to be our own judge and jury.”

After a 20 year break from swimming, 38 year old paramedic Mark Ransom, successfully swam the English Channel last month in just 12 hours and 23 minutes.

In the process, he raised over £1,000 for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices.

Mark, from Bury St Edmunds, had to wait two weeks to do the challenge as the swim had to be put off due to bad weather.

Mark had hypnotherapy before the challenge to get rid of his phobia of sharks, and following the success of this swim, he added that he wouldn’t rule out trying a similar challenge in future.

Hypnotherapy is ideal for phobias, whether they are physical habits like smoking or nail biting, or something with a deeper root cause or irrational fears, such as Mark’s fear of sharks, or fears of spiders, dogs, heights or anything else.

Having hypnosis to overcome phobias is relatively quick, and can usually be resolved in as little as just one or two sessions.  It is not always necessary to uncover the root cause of a fear in order to cure it and many people are amazed at the results.

Many people know that hypnotherapy can be used to stop smoking, and that it can work very quickly in as little as one session, however, there are other physical habits hypnosis can help with – such as nail biting.

In fact, physical habits are the behaviours that hypnotherapy is most successful at treating immediately and directly.  Other common areas include weight loss.  In a similar way, hypnotherapy is incredibly effective at stopping a nail biting habit.

It may surprise people to hear that nail biting has a lot in common with smoking as it is a physical, ritual habit.  There are usually deeply embedded reasons for a simple physical routine, sometimes even deep psychological reasons or causes.  Regardless of the cause, this sort of habit can be effectively stopped quite easily using hypnotherapy.

Uncovering and resolving deep psychological issues can require many sessions with a therapist, however, in the case of eliminating physical habits such as smoking or nail biting, it is not necessary for a hypnotherapist to work at more than the most basic physical level to stop the habit.  Many people have been amazed, not only at the results, but the speed in which they can be achieved.

Not all physical habits have a deeper psychological reason.  Sometimes it is just a habit for the sake of being a habit and it simply ‘feels good’ for the individual to participate in them.

In an earlier article, we discussed how hypnotherapy can help all of us relax in a modern world, where we have become accustomed to being constantly exposed to noise in one form or another, such as mobile phones, television, computers and radio.

There are numerous benefits to learning once again how to relax.  Relaxation is not just about watching some television, having some me-time relaxing in the bath or going out for tea, it is about quietening our mind’s chatter and really feeling the silence for a short while.

Here are just a few benefits of using hypnotherapy for relaxation:

•    People who have lots to do in a single day usually find they are more laidback and can handle life easily and better than they had done previously
•    Stepping back and taking some real time out for yourself allows you to de-stress.  Without such a high level of stress, life feels happier and healthier
•    Hypnotherapy helps people to slow down generally and enjoy their life more, whilst still doing everything they used to.  As a result, life can become much easier and simpler
•    When a person interacts with many other people in life, they can often unconsciously take on their problems and stresses.  Hypnotherapy allowed them to stay connected to the general life flow