I used to write this section in our monthly Inspired Minds newsletter, but we figured it would be easier to read online, and all our blog subscribers would enjoy reading it too. At least I hope you do Read April’s Inspired Minds newsletter here.

Downloads Unwrapped – April 2011

Learning to move again

As a hypnotherapist there are few moments more satisfying than helping somebody who has suffered a stroke start to move again.

I remember reading about the young paralyzed Milton Erickson hypnotically evoking past physical movements from the days before polio struck him down. He would vividly imagine himself climbing trees or doing his farm chores. The point is, when your mind strongly and clearly recalls doing something, so does your body.

This approach was very different from consciously trying to make his body move. By simply but powerfully recalling the act of movement, the body itself is unconsciously compelled to move. These tiny involuntary movements are known as ideomotor responses (IMRs) and can often been seen in the hypnotised subject (and also in dreaming people, cats and dogs) when they are vividly experiencing hypnotic/dream movements.

For Erickson they were the gateway to eventual escape from complete immobility.

But our new session Stroke movement recovery is inspired by more than anecdotal or personal evidence from working with those recovering from stroke. Scientific research has shown how hypnosis can be highly effective in helping some stroke victims back to movement. A research study entitled Cognitive Effects on the Neurophysiology and Biomechanics of Stroke Recovery (2004) found that hypnosis is an excellent tool both for stimulating the brain and increasing movement range even after recovery seemed to have stopped in stroke patients. I love working at the interface between mind and body and I hope this new download reflects that passion.

Of mice and men (and women) and fear

It’s easy to wonder why such relatively large creatures as us human folk should ever develop a fear of comparatively tiny creatures. And yes, even the biggest of spiders is tiny compared to the smallest of people. Okay, we might argue that some spiders are venomous so a healthy respect for arachnids is a good idea. And of course the miniscule mosquito can be a deadly spreader of malaria. So what is threatening isn’t always big, or may even be tiny… but mice?

Why would people (including my own mother at one stage) ever develop a fear of these little mammalian fur balls?

Two words: “Startle response.”

If something makes you unexpectedly jump, even if it’s a cute little kitten and you love kittens, you’ll still respond with sudden adrenaline production. Now if you’re not already highly stressed then you’ll calm down and relax as soon as you register the fact that it’s just little Mo the cat. But if you happened at the time to be highly stressed for some reason, the sudden cat pounce could, conceivably, tip you into the fight or flight panic response.

When we panic, the brain learns to tag what it deems to be the cause of the panic with a powerful memory marker that fires off when we next encounter that ’cause’.

This is not very likely to happen with a much loved cat but could happen if we are feeling generally stressed and then a little mouse startles us. After that, mice might well be feared just because we were startled into panic by them once before. At let’s face it, mice (like spiders) really can move fast, which is why they are likely to trigger the startle response that can in turn so easily topple into panic.

Phobias can also, of course, be learned from other people. If we witness our parent screaming at a mouse from the safety of the top of the kitchen table, we can easily become frightened of their fear, and henceforth we tag mice as scary. It’s painfully simple. Our new Fear of mice download takes the context of the fear into account while calming down what has become an automatic response. So (wo)men and mice can live as one.

Connect to your audience – don’t read to them

Head bowed, peering down at the words before him, his audience seemed to be frozen. Not with rapt attention but in inert boredom. He was a nice guy, I’m sure, but no adult audience wants to be read to. And even an audience of kids likes you to make the words your own if you read them a picture book. “Why didn’t he just give us some hand outs!” a woman complained to me in the break. “He hasn’t looked up at us once!”

It’s my firm belief that a great speaker (actually any reasonable presenter) will not use notes during a speech. Do you use notes on a date? When meeting a friend for coffee? During a job interview? When trying to teach a child to play the guitar?

Public presentation isn’t just about imparting information to a group (info they could read for themselves) but about connecting with them, letting them feel part of an organic, spontaneous experience so they can learn and remember effectively. Dry note reading will not do this and is much less fun (although initially it may feel more comforting and safe for the presenter).

Of course, you need to know your stuff and using slides as ‘journey markers’ can be useful and visual information can help your audience too. But your humanity, your ‘human-ness’ can only truly be communicated when you throw the notes away and demonstrate you are genuinely confident in what you say.

So the session Speak without notes doesn’t just encourage better content recall during presentation, it also hypnotically trains the mind to flow through a presentation less like an automated phone answering service and more like a creative, live, actual and inspirational… human being.

Go here to read the rest: Downloads Unwrapped April 2011

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I used to write this section in our monthly Inspired Minds newsletter, but we figured it would be easier to read online, and all our blog subscribers would enjoy reading it too. At least I hope you do Read April’s Inspired Minds newsletter here.

Downloads Unwrapped – April 2011

Learning to move again

As a hypnotherapist there are few moments more satisfying than helping somebody who has suffered a stroke start to move again.

I remember reading about the young paralyzed Milton Erickson hypnotically evoking past physical movements from the days before polio struck him down. He would vividly imagine himself climbing trees or doing his farm chores. The point is, when your mind strongly and clearly recalls doing something, so does your body.

This approach was very different from consciously trying to make his body move. By simply but powerfully recalling the act of movement, the body itself is unconsciously compelled to move. These tiny involuntary movements are known as ideomotor responses (IMRs) and can often been seen in the hypnotised subject (and also in dreaming people, cats and dogs) when they are vividly experiencing hypnotic/dream movements.

For Erickson they were the gateway to eventual escape from complete immobility.

But our new session Stroke movement recovery is inspired by more than anecdotal or personal evidence from working with those recovering from stroke. Scientific research has shown how hypnosis can be highly effective in helping some stroke victims back to movement. A research study entitled Cognitive Effects on the Neurophysiology and Biomechanics of Stroke Recovery (2004) found that hypnosis is an excellent tool both for stimulating the brain and increasing movement range even after recovery seemed to have stopped in stroke patients. I love working at the interface between mind and body and I hope this new download reflects that passion.

Of mice and men (and women) and fear

It’s easy to wonder why such relatively large creatures as us human folk should ever develop a fear of comparatively tiny creatures. And yes, even the biggest of spiders is tiny compared to the smallest of people. Okay, we might argue that some spiders are venomous so a healthy respect for arachnids is a good idea. And of course the miniscule mosquito can be a deadly spreader of malaria. So what is threatening isn’t always big, or may even be tiny… but mice?

Why would people (including my own mother at one stage) ever develop a fear of these little mammalian fur balls?

Two words: “Startle response.”

If something makes you unexpectedly jump, even if it’s a cute little kitten and you love kittens, you’ll still respond with sudden adrenaline production. Now if you’re not already highly stressed then you’ll calm down and relax as soon as you register the fact that it’s just little Mo the cat. But if you happened at the time to be highly stressed for some reason, the sudden cat pounce could, conceivably, tip you into the fight or flight panic response.

When we panic, the brain learns to tag what it deems to be the cause of the panic with a powerful memory marker that fires off when we next encounter that ’cause’.

This is not very likely to happen with a much loved cat but could happen if we are feeling generally stressed and then a little mouse startles us. After that, mice might well be feared just because we were startled into panic by them once before. At let’s face it, mice (like spiders) really can move fast, which is why they are likely to trigger the startle response that can in turn so easily topple into panic.

Phobias can also, of course, be learned from other people. If we witness our parent screaming at a mouse from the safety of the top of the kitchen table, we can easily become frightened of their fear, and henceforth we tag mice as scary. It’s painfully simple. Our new Fear of mice download takes the context of the fear into account while calming down what has become an automatic response. So (wo)men and mice can live as one.

Connect to your audience – don’t read to them

Head bowed, peering down at the words before him, his audience seemed to be frozen. Not with rapt attention but in inert boredom. He was a nice guy, I’m sure, but no adult audience wants to be read to. And even an audience of kids likes you to make the words your own if you read them a picture book. “Why didn’t he just give us some hand outs!” a woman complained to me in the break. “He hasn’t looked up at us once!”

It’s my firm belief that a great speaker (actually any reasonable presenter) will not use notes during a speech. Do you use notes on a date? When meeting a friend for coffee? During a job interview? When trying to teach a child to play the guitar?

Public presentation isn’t just about imparting information to a group (info they could read for themselves) but about connecting with them, letting them feel part of an organic, spontaneous experience so they can learn and remember effectively. Dry note reading will not do this and is much less fun (although initially it may feel more comforting and safe for the presenter).

Of course, you need to know your stuff and using slides as ‘journey markers’ can be useful and visual information can help your audience too. But your humanity, your ‘human-ness’ can only truly be communicated when you throw the notes away and demonstrate you are genuinely confident in what you say.

So the session Speak without notes doesn’t just encourage better content recall during presentation, it also hypnotically trains the mind to flow through a presentation less like an automated phone answering service and more like a creative, live, actual and inspirational… human being.

More here: Downloads Unwrapped April 2011

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Full hypnosis download Be more patient – in production

Each month we like to improve one of our long-standing downloads that have been on hypnosisdownloads.com for a while (sometimes for years!). The latest session to get our shiny upgrade treatment is Be more patient.

Getting upset at having to wait, eating too quickly, not being able to listen properly, constantly rushing and ‘champing at the bit’ to start the next ‘to do’ item on our list can leave us feeling miserable and exhausted.

And, of course, impatience doesn’t just negatively impact the impatient one. Oh no. It will also impact anyone who has to be around them. “Less haste, more speed” are wise words. When we take time to take time, we can often become more genuinely productive rather than just chasing our own tail. But learning to be more patient has other benefits too.

Dr LiJing Yan and her colleagues at Northwestern University conducted a 15-year study investigating the connection between TUI (time urgency and impatience) and high blood pressure in young adults. And guess what?

“The higher the tendency of time urgency and impatience, the higher the risk of developing hypertension,” Dr Yan told CNN.

The finding applies to young adults who are impatient and do not have enough time to finish what they need to do. Hypertension is a significant risk factor for heart disease, stroke and many other health problems.

So we wholeheartedly hope our new, improved hypnotic session helps even more people to be more patient than the original.

All the best

Mark

Read this article: Be more patient

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Full hypnosis download Be more patient – in production

Each month we like to improve one of our long-standing downloads that have been on hypnosisdownloads.com for a while (sometimes for years!). The latest session to get our shiny upgrade treatment is Be more patient.

Getting upset at having to wait, eating too quickly, not being able to listen properly, constantly rushing and ‘champing at the bit’ to start the next ‘to do’ item on our list can leave us feeling miserable and exhausted.

And, of course, impatience doesn’t just negatively impact the impatient one. Oh no. It will also impact anyone who has to be around them. “Less haste, more speed” are wise words. When we take time to take time, we can often become more genuinely productive rather than just chasing our own tail. But learning to be more patient has other benefits too.

Dr LiJing Yan and her colleagues at Northwestern University conducted a 15-year study investigating the connection between TUI (time urgency and impatience) and high blood pressure in young adults. And guess what?

“The higher the tendency of time urgency and impatience, the higher the risk of developing hypertension,” Dr Yan told CNN.

The finding applies to young adults who are impatient and do not have enough time to finish what they need to do. Hypertension is a significant risk factor for heart disease, stroke and many other health problems.

So we wholeheartedly hope our new, improved hypnotic session helps even more people to be more patient than the original.

All the best

Mark

Follow this link: Be more patient

Acai Berry Pills

Full hypnosis download Stop being self centered – in production

People are self-centered
to a nauseous degree.
They will keep on about themselves
while I’m explaining me. (Piet Hein)

The more we are suffering, the more self centred we tend to be. For example, if I have just been dumped by my partner or (and this could be just as serious) if I have just stubbed my toe with full force against a steel door, then I will be much more focussed on me and my own experience than any stories you may have, however exciting, of your recent trip to Abu Dhabi. When we are depressed, anxious or angry we see reality through the lens of the current emotion – which will be a limited perception.

We will also, because of the emotional suffering, be more self-referential than normal.

But it can also work the other way. Yes, we will be more self centred when suffering, but by being too self centred we will in turn be more likely to suffer emotional problems.

Now there’s a nice selfish reason to become less self centred but, okay, let’s concede it’s good for the long-suffering folk who come into our orbit too.

Please read me right here. We do need to consider our own emotional and physical needs but beyond a certain point it is much more healthy for us to take our focus away from our own wants, needs and greeds and focus outward.

The new session Stop being self centered is for that rare person – the individual who can actually recognize that they are prone to self centeredness and that this is not necessarily a good thing for them, or for others in their life.

All the best

Mark

The rest is here: Stop being self centered

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Full hypnosis download Stop being self centered – in production

People are self-centered
to a nauseous degree.
They will keep on about themselves
while I’m explaining me. (Piet Hein)

The more we are suffering, the more self centred we tend to be. For example, if I have just been dumped by my partner or (and this could be just as serious) if I have just stubbed my toe with full force against a steel door, then I will be much more focussed on me and my own experience than any stories you may have, however exciting, of your recent trip to Abu Dhabi. When we are depressed, anxious or angry we see reality through the lens of the current emotion – which will be a limited perception.

We will also, because of the emotional suffering, be more self-referential than normal.

But it can also work the other way. Yes, we will be more self centred when suffering, but by being too self centred we will in turn be more likely to suffer emotional problems.

Now there’s a nice selfish reason to become less self centred but, okay, let’s concede it’s good for the long-suffering folk who come into our orbit too.

Please read me right here. We do need to consider our own emotional and physical needs but beyond a certain point it is much more healthy for us to take our focus away from our own wants, needs and greeds and focus outward.

The new session Stop being self centered is for that rare person – the individual who can actually recognize that they are prone to self centeredness and that this is not necessarily a good thing for them, or for others in their life.

All the best

Mark

Go here to read the rest: Stop being self centered

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Full hypnosis download Overcome fear of mice – in production

The thing about some phobias is that other people (well, some other people!) tend to see them as a bit of a joke.

But something I like to emphasise when training students, or treating clients one to one, is that fear is fear. And it makes no difference whether that fear is focussed on unexploded mines or cute furry little mice. For the mouse phobic, fear of mice is important and can feel unbearable.

You may not know that Mickey Mouse creator Walt Disney famously (and oh so ironically) had a morbid fear of mice. I mention this to bring out the point that no one is the only one – no matter what fear they experience.

And the other point I want to make here is that no fear is insurmountable.

Phobias are intrinsically hypnotic (because the phobic stimulus both narrows focus and acts like a post hypnotic trigger), and so using hypnosis to calm the fear away tends to be by far the most comfortable and effective approach.

Too late (alas) for Walt, but not for you, our latest hypnosisdownloads.com session Overcome fear of mice is out now. I’m sure Mickey would approve!

All the best

Mark

See the rest here: Fear of mice

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Full hypnosis download Stroke movement recovery – in production

Having a stroke can, without any question, be a devastating experience. Not just for the person who suffers it but also for loved ones. It’s terribly difficult to have to stand by and watch someone going through the experience of finding that they can now do so little for themselves – especially at first.

It’s vital to keep positive and remember that the brain is ‘plastic’ – which means that it can re-build itself to some degree and that unaffected parts of the brain can sometimes take over the functions of affected parts. Pretty amazing!

I recall working with a man who had suffered a very serious stroke and whose progress had stalled after about six months. By strongly evoking his memories of former times of unencumbered movement, his body started bit by bit to flicker into renewed life.

As a hypnotherapist there are few moments more satisfying than helping somebody who has suffered a stroke recover movement.

We follow in the footsteps of Milton Erickson, himself paralyzed and confined to bed at a young age through polio. Erickson repeatedly focussed his mind on times from his past when he’d climbed trees and played in the fields of the farm he grew up on. By hypnotically re-evoking memories of past movement, his body couldn’t help but produce tiny unconscious movements.

You can try this yourself. Close your eyes and really strongly imagine typing on a keyboard, or writing with a pen. Sooner or later, you’ll notice that your fingers are making small (and even large) movements ‘by themselves’.

This is not ‘trying to move’, but setting the right psychological mode in the mind and brain to encourage unconscious movement. For some people, this can be a gateway out of paralysis.

The new hypnosisdownloads.com session Stroke movement recovery is also informed by research in this field. S G Diamond’s 2004 PhD thesis (Cognitive Effects on the Neurophysiology and Biomechanics of Stroke Recovery) demonstrated how powerful hypnotic help can be in helping stroke victims recover movement even after recovery seemed to have stopped.

I really hope this download is going to help a lot of people.

All the best

Mark

Continue reading here: Stroke movement recovery

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Full hypnosis download Shy child – in production

At a certain age, like millions of kids everywhere, I was a shy child. I vividly recall being the ‘new kid in class’ and finding it really tough to break into the close knit cliques the other children had already established. Eventually I succeeded, and got included in a circle of friends, but it certainly felt really difficult and gave me some anxious times. I would have benefitted (if only such things had been available back then) from a new hypnosis for kids session we’ve just released that uses hypnotic story telling to help kids find their social feet.

Story telling is a well developed ‘delivery system’ for adults and children that has been finely honed by human beings over many millennia. Being enraptured, focussed on and calmed by a story is also an essentially ‘hypnotic experience’ – which is why stories are used to impart new ideas and patterns for desirable future behaviour.

Childhood shyness can stop a child enjoying life as they should. Shyness can get in the way of learning the ‘social rules’ of interaction as well as other life lessons, as the shy child is less likely to ask for help if they find something tough or hard to understand. But the good news is that shy children can be helped to leave shyness behind.

The new Shy child download for hypnosisdwonloads.com uses the timeless art of hypnotic storytelling to help shy children become more socially confident so that they can enjoy the kind of childhood spontaneity and fun that is their birthright. Shy child is part of the hypnosis for children series on hypnosisdownloads.com.

All the best

Mark

Continue reading here: The shy child

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Full hypnosis download Shy child – in production

At a certain age, like millions of kids everywhere, I was a shy child. I vividly recall being the ‘new kid in class’ and finding it really tough to break into the close knit cliques the other children had already established. Eventually I succeeded, and got included in a circle of friends, but it certainly felt really difficult and gave me some anxious times. I would have benefitted (if only such things had been available back then) from a new hypnosis for kids session we’ve just released that uses hypnotic story telling to help kids find their social feet.

Story telling is a well developed ‘delivery system’ for adults and children that has been finely honed by human beings over many millennia. Being enraptured, focussed on and calmed by a story is also an essentially ‘hypnotic experience’ – which is why stories are used to impart new ideas and patterns for desirable future behaviour.

Childhood shyness can stop a child enjoying life as they should. Shyness can get in the way of learning the ‘social rules’ of interaction as well as other life lessons, as the shy child is less likely to ask for help if they find something tough or hard to understand. But the good news is that shy children can be helped to leave shyness behind.

The new Shy child download for hypnosisdwonloads.com uses the timeless art of hypnotic storytelling to help shy children become more socially confident so that they can enjoy the kind of childhood spontaneity and fun that is their birthright. Shy child is part of the hypnosis for children series on hypnosisdownloads.com.

All the best

Mark

View original post here: The shy child

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