Thursday, June 29, 2006

Hypnosis and pregnancy

Interesting. Hypnosis helps to overcome fear of childbirth.

"What it does: Hypnotherapists believe that some women feel such fear about childbirth, being a good mother or guilt about past abortions when they start trying to conceive that they send the wrong signals to their body about pregnancy. Hypnosis tries to release the emotional barriers and relax a woman's attitude to conception.

The practice focuses on the hypothalamus, the area of the brain that is sensitive to stress and turns emotional messages into physical reactions. Hypnosis may help women to overcome their subconscious concerns about becoming a mother.

More than a million people in Britain visit a hypnotherapist every year.

Does it work? In an American study, more than half of women who attended a "mind-body" programme focusing on self-hypnosis conceived despite having previously failed to get pregnant, compared with 20 per cent of women who did not use the technique.

Another study found that women who were hypnotised during IVF procedures were twice as likely to become pregnant from them."

(NLP in Asia)











Tuesday, June 20, 2006

About critters, bugs and cockroaches

Do you not love those little creatures that pop up at places you don't expect them? Are you one of those persons who cannot stand cockroaches or any other bug that creeps and crawls through houses, gardens and into your food, hair or, God beware, your clothes?

NLP and hypnosis are great in working with these .... BUGS. As they are with other phobias.

In fact, a phobia really is a great example of the tremendous strength of your subconscious mind and it really shows that it wants to protect you. Nothing else. Something happened in your life and you get scared, frightened, terrified. The moment you see this bug, or the elevator, or the bird (yes, there are bird phobias), - boom: Your mind reacts. Immediately. And in an awesome way. Serious - how fast this goes! And sure, it will protect you, because something bad happened. It protects you to prevent a repetition. Only that you don't know this anymore, consciously. Only that something like irrational fear grips you and you react.

They provide processes that allow to go directly into the subconscious mind to rectify and re-direct the energy. Because what you need to use a tremendous energy to keep this phobias in place. In fact, phobias can change the way you live your life. Isn't it better to live without them?

Learning to live with the world’s creepiest critters
Sam with Charlotte the cockroach after receiving hypnosis for her phobia Photo David Skinner Please don't use this pic on front page - thanks, Sam They are among the most reviled creatures in the world – and, all of a sudden, they seem to be everywhere in Bermuda. Thanks to high humidity and heavy rainfall, the Island’s cockroaches have come out of their winter hiding places and are making their presence felt.

But what can a person do who really can’t stand to be around them?

Royal Gazette reporter Sam Strangeways found out.Nobody likes cockroaches, right? There surely can’t be anyone who welcomes the first roach of the season into their homes with open arms, laughing merrily as the creature suddenly takes flight, aiming directly for their face.

Cockroaches are probably one of the least cuddly, photo-friendly critters in the world – but in Bermuda, most people have learnt to live with them. Moving to the Island earlier this year meant I would have to do the same thing – despite a lifelong terror of anything falling under the heading “creepy-crawly”.

Long before my suitcases were packed, my work permit was issued and my house in England was placed on the rental market, the thought of Bermuda’s unfeasibly large flying cockroaches preyed heavily on my mind.I knew the sub-tropical climate here would ensure a reasonable number of nasty critters but initially I figured: how bad can they be be?

A colleague who had visited the Island enlightened me.“The cockroaches are absolutely massive and they have wings and they fly into your face and get caught in your hair,” he told me, gleefully.It was just what I didn’t want to hear.

My only previous encounter with a cockroach had been on a trip to southern Asia when I freaked out at finding a medium-sized one in my hotel room. Although no tears were actually shed in front of the porter who came to remove it, it’s fair to say I was not at my most controlled.

The idea of living with roaches on a daily basis – and in all likelihood making a fool of myself every time I came across one – was genuinely worrying.

The first few months here in winter were a breeze – only a single cockroach spotted, some distance away, slowly walking along a garden wall. That I could deal with. What I didn’t enjoy were the endless personal horror stories I was forced to endure. One man told me how, as a teenager, a large cockroach had flown into his eye and exploded while he rode his scooter.

He crashed the bike and was whisked to hospital where pieces of roach had to be removed from his eye. Others told of waking up to find a roach in their bed, on their pillow and even, in one case, on their cheek.Inwardly quaking, I vowed to follow all the helpful advice that hardy Bermudians gave me on keeping the monsters at bay.

That included keeping my apartment spotlessly clean, throwing out brown paper bags and never leaving the door open at night.The tactics seemed to work and I really thought Islanders might be over-stating the case when it came to the size of the cockroaches and the scale of the problem.

That changed last week when I found a huge cockroach resting on my front door at eye level as I arrived home from work.I panicked and was barely able to get inside the building. When I did, my racing heart made it clear that the moratorium was over.The next day I picked up the phone and called hypnotherapist Monica Dobbie.

A friend at home had advised hypnosis as a way of making my phobia more manageable and now seemed the perfect time to enlist her services.Amazingly, Monica told me she had never treated anyone for cockroach phobia on the Island before.Instead, she’s had patients come to her with all kind of fears from feet and cats to more common phobias, such as spiders, toads, needles, flying and public speaking.

Monica reckons that her success rate is pretty high and that most patients repeatedly report a dramatic lessening of fear.That was enough to convince me to allow her to bypass my critical conscious mind and communicate directly with my subconscious.The idea, as Monica explained, is to re-programme the sub-conscious to make it respond in a more appropriate way to irrational fears.I arrived for my session (only one is usually needed) at Holistic Health, based in the International Centre on Bermudiana Road, Hamilton, with an open mind about what was going to happen.

Monica asked me a series of questions about why I disliked cockroaches so much and it was the first time I had really given that any thought.I told her that I associated them with filth and squalor and that they were ugly and I couldn’t bear the thought of one touching me.

It sounded a bit daft, when put into words.Monica explained that an incident in childhood might have sparked my fear of insects and, as we chatted, I remembered when I was a small child and was bitten by some kind of beetle in the strawberry patch in my back garden.We were to return to that trigger point when Monica hypnotised me – but first, I was to meet “Charlotte” the cockroach.

I’d had a nagging worry in the back of my mind that Monica might produce a cockroach and I was right.Thankfully, this one, captured on her patio the previous evening, was in a jar. That still didn’t stop my heart starting to pound and a horrible feeling of panic rising in my throat.Monica, who has an air of incredible calm and compassion, convinced me that the insect would not be coming anywhere near me. I trusted her.

She explained that she’d given it a name to make it seem less daunting and asked me to rate my fear of it on a scale of one to ten.An overwhelming desire to head for the door made me plump for a rating of eight - I really didn’t want to be in the room with Charlotte, trapped or (especially) otherwise. The next part of the therapy involved the Emotional Freedom technique.

Monica tapped acupuncture points on my wrists and head and made me repeat several statements after her.I had to look her in the eye and say that despite my fear of Charlotte I completely and totally accepted myself. That made me want to giggle, for some reason, but I forced myself to say the words without laughing.

After a few more affirmative chants, I hopped on the couch and the hypnotherapy proper began. Monica explained that patients had to really want to get better in order for the hypnosis to take effective. I really did want to nip my phobia in the bud and as such, I slipped into a very relaxed state with alarming ease. The truth is, I don’t remember a huge amount about what happened while I was “under”. Monica talked soothingly to me about relaxing various parts of the body and then the mind and a strange sensation of weightlessness washed over me.The couch underneath me no longer seemed to be there and I just kind of…drifted. It was very similar to that peculiar state of semi-dreaming that’s experienced just before proper sleep.

Monica later explained: “Hypnosis is a very natural state of being. It’s a bit like daydreaming and I find that people go into this relaxed and pleasant state very easily. “Once they are there, I give them beneficial suggestions, which enable them to change the way they act, think and feel about their phobia.” Monica took me back in my mind to the strawberry patch incident but asked me to consider it this time as a rational adult.I was able to answer questions about what happened but can’t remember anything that I said.

I have a vague recollection of Monica talking me through a hypothetical situation involving a cockroach in my flat. She told me I was calm, confident and able to deal with the situation.The next thing I knew I was being brought back. What had felt like ten minutes had actually taken 45.My limbs felt heavy and I could have happily curled back up on the couch for a lengthy nap. Instead, Charlotte made a re-appearance. This time I picked up the jar without thinking and examined the insect in close detail. My heart wasn’t racing, I didn’t feel like crying and my fear factor had probably dropped to about a four.

I still didn’t want Charlotte crawling all over me but I felt considerably calmer. The change was actually pretty dramatic.Charlotte accompanied me back to the office for a photograph and I then (calmly) released her back into the wild. Whether or not Monica’s positive suggestions will have a long-term effect remains to be seen. The real test will be discovering one at home, which has yet to happen.But several outdoor sightings over the weekend proved successful and non-eventful. The thought of cockroaches no longer makes my skin literally crawl.I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that one doesn’t explode in my eye, get tangled in my hair or crawl onto my cheek – but in the meantime, I reckon I can rub along quite reasonably with Bermuda’s least popular pests.

Source: http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060617/NEWS/106170194

What an unbelievable great article.

(NLP in Asia)

Monday, June 19, 2006

Networking with fun

Networking should be fun - you are going to great meetings, meet nice people to talk to, meet them at a later stage again, have lunch and sooner or later, you are doing business with each other.

Only one thing doesn't go right - if you go to organised networking meetings, then everybody is desparate to get your attention (speak: business card) to surely be able to contact you at a later stage again. Those that do are the ones that sell investment proposals, financial advisors, and may be the real estate agents and similar.

Or the jerks.

It could be amusing if not everybody would embark on the same strategy. This was probably the reason why online networks developed, but then - boom - you get jerks as well. May be not real jerks, because I don't know them.

And that is the problem - I get plenty of invitation to my online network from people that have 500 or 5,000 connections already - how do they handle their network, and develop their personal touch? - May be they don't and just like the business card collector, they collect business contact online.

A nice and different type of networking is outlined at the "Selling to Big Companies" blog.

Jill describes a way to organise a networking event and have fun doing it. The organiser of the event she attended to invited her contacts to a canoe networking trip. Participants were linked up, put into a canoe and start to work together.

Not only are you stuck together for a while and you have to figure out how to move the canoe forward (not always easy!), but it provides a common platform for teamwork - and as such, generating friendship.

Great idea - and it is so much easier to do business with friends. How about a networking event to Taman Negara in Malaysia? Or an adventure trip in Kuala Lumpur - three hours traveling through the jams of KL? Surely a truly bonding activity!

(NLP in Asia)










Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Walking speed and energy

We all have different energy levels. Which I think is fascinating to observe. Where I get a headache, so, is in shopping malls, when I am on the roll and need to go somewhere quickly. At this point of time, there is always someone in front of me, coming from the side, etc, and moves slow. Slenders. Blocks the way, not purposely, of course.

But heck, it bugs me, lol.

Since my mum is on visit, I realised something else. She is a busy bee, and quite in a rush - I probably inherited my speedy movement and time consciousness from her. Then, when we move around in a shopping mall, there is the Malaysian speed - allow me to call it that way. It is a slower speed, more adjusted to the environment. Hey - how fast can you go in a mall, and for how long can you go fast, even if you intend to walk fast. The end, the next wall, is closing in soon. :)

So, sure, Malaysians walk slower, since they have adjusted to a limited and less spacious environment. Sure, you can walk plenty of floors in Times Square, longer distances in 1U or up and down in Megamall - but still, these are malls, and how often can you walk from one end to the next?

In contrast, in Europe, people walk much more. And there are not that many cars that can drive to the city or shopping areas, because firstly, parking houses are really expensive, and parking, overall is limited. So Europeans tend to rush - they have to overcome longer distances and have more places to walk. They are not limited in the extend that they can walk. So may be here is the impact that a limited space has on the speed of walk. My conclusion, so may be not conclusive :)

What say you?

And still, it bugs me when I am in a rush!!

(NLP in Asia)









Saturday, June 10, 2006

Keep developing your personal values

It is so easy to get dragged away by bad memories. So easy to replay what didn't go well in your mind - over and over again. Saying, "I shouldn't have done this, I should have done" or, "argh, if I had only walked over to this beautiful girl there, the evening would have been much better."

It is easy to say "I am not confident", "I cannot do this", "others are so much better", "I don't deserve this" or worse "I am too stupid to do this, let others do this first."

Does this sound familiar?

I am not sure how often I have written about this already - but let me give it another try.

The question that I want to ask you is: "What holds you back?".

Damn it, it is your life? You are the actor in your life! Do you really want to be on your deathbed and, looking at your life say: "Hm, I missed out on 2,345 great chances and opportunities in my lie. I should have..."

Sure, there will be times, when things don't turn out well. The girl over there doesn't like to talk to you. Others are better than you. But so what? There are other girls, other boys, there are times you win and others where you lose.

But just make sure that you learn from your failures, because failures are only failures if you haven't learnt from them. If you keep repeating the same mistake. Otherwise, they are learning opportunities.

Sure, you can also say that it is easy to open my mouth - I am secured in my job, in my life, and have achieved a lot. Let me tell you - I am not secured in my job, I still have plenty of goals in my life build on earlier successes and failures (oops - learning opportunities), and have achieved a lot - yeah, that is right, but I worked hard for it.

Talk about my professional life. I am coaching, for sure, but I have a job in a "normal company". I have been hired to serve a client and boost the moral of a demoralised team. My client is demanding, and I am the first in a long line of team leaders to push back unreasonable demands. My client sometimes shouts at me, nags and is cynical, is angry at me at times, and it takes time for them to understand that the way I am operating is with the best of theirs in my heart. I know that there is opposition to the way I operate, but only because I am confident in my abilities, and secure in my feelings about my future am I able to keep going.

I am working at developing a second career, because I learnt through bad times that it is good to stand on two feet. I lost jobs before, in Asia and Germany, and it is not easy, and not getting easier for people like me, a Mat Salleh, to find a great job in Malaysia. What will come next, after this job? A fulltime coaching service for executives, personal life coaching, training and workshops.

What does this give me? I have earnt the right to stand up and tall and say things as I see them. As long as I have my integrity.

What does this mean to you? Think about what makes you valuable, what makes you tick. Develop your skils. Develop your network and see what makes them tick. Be informed about your industry to see changes ahead. Always be ready to jump boat and develop your own career, your own life.

Not ready yet? Hey - think what you have achieved in your life?

You went to school, you started to work, you have a great education, you have presented before, you have kids that grow up nicely, heck, there was a time you didn't know any of the things you know today. Isn't this success? Isn't this a sign that you can achieve something?

Ask yourself - when did you give up risking something?

Start taking small risks, and celebrate things that work. Move out of your comfort zone, because only if you move out, you succeed and grow.

Hah - enough said - now give it to me!!

(NLP in Asia)









Friday, June 09, 2006

One great article about hypnosis

Sometimes, it is difficult to find good articles about hypnosis published elsewhere. Too often, they still rant about stage hypnosis and how volunteers are made to chicken around on stages as chickens.

Not this article.

It is one of the best I have ever read:

"With dreams in his eyes and fire in his veins, 28-year-old Vikram Kumar, a senior executive in a US company, had everything going his way. When the strapping youngster came to India a year ago, he seemed out to conquer the world. That was until his own world came crashing down after he met with a life-shattering accident. What followed was a coma spanning over three months and a whopping 47 major and minor surgeries. The dreams in his eyes withered into a failing vision and the high-flying job that once defined his identity disowned him. A nervous wreck by then, he merely bade his time, exhausting all possible methods of healing. Then someone suggested hypnotherapy.

For the next two months, he had regular sessions with Dr Malathi Kuppuswamy, a Mumbai-based certified clinical hypnotherapist and past life regression therapist, who used hypnotherapy to "feed positive suggestions into his subconscious and let go off his traumas". Soon enough, he regained confidence. Today, his eyesight is near normal, he is back in the US heading a company and is set to tie the knot.

For many, hypnosis has long been about mind-control techniques straight out of childhood stories or stage shows where normal subjects ended up clucking like chicken. But what was hitherto equated with psychological mumbo-jumbo and casting magic spells through the eye is now gaining ground as a complementary self-healing technique.

More Indians are now approaching qualified hypnotherapists to get over physical and psychological disorders. "In the last five years, there has been a hundred per cent increase in the number of people seeking hypnotherapy," says Dr Ramanand Rao V. Jhingade, a Bangalore-based hypnotherapist, and founder of `A Cure For Incurables' Clinic.

Self-healing technique

Contrary to popular perception, clinical hypnosis is only used to guide the patient to help him heal himself. The prerequisite for the therapy to be effective is to give up notions like hypnosis supplants the will of the hypnotised individual or that it is a sleep state that could permanently alter one's personality. "Hypnosis is a state of consciousness in which your logically analytical faculties are reduced sufficiently to allow deeper levels of your subconscious mind to be utilised for health benefits," explains Dr Malathi.

"A hypnotic trance is a state of `focused concentration' in which you are neither fully awake nor fully asleep but are open to suggestion, and can be de-sensitised to fears, phobias or pain. While being virtually oblivious of what is going on around, you are acutely aware of a narrow range of stimuli the therapist calls to your attention."

Adds Dr Jhingade, "It is you who is in control and if you don't like something, you can just open your eyes and say you will not do it."

He says hypnosis works by programming the sub-conscious mind. "The hypnotist only guides you into a relaxed, altered state of mental consciousness by causing your brain frequency to slow down to 7-13 cycles per second when your mind becomes highly susceptible to suggestions or instructions. By giving constructive suggestions to your subconscious mind, you can change your life for the better."

Dr Malathi claims that even those suffering from cancer, kidney problems and psoriasis have responded positively to hypnotherapy. Like Chetan Khaire, now in his late 20s, who started getting epileptic attacks a few years ago due to an emotional shock. "I was under allopathic treatment, but to no avail. With repeated attacks, I couldn't continue my job," he says.

He then consulted Dr Malathi, who used hypnosis and past life regression therapy to help him dig deep into the root cause of his mental trauma and overcome it. "I'm now working with a multinational company," says Khaire with a smile. "The fits I dreaded so much haven't recurred."

There are different techniques of hypnotherapy. "Those generally talked about are the
Ericksonian and the Kappasinian techniques," says Dr Jyotika Chhibber, a Gurgaon-based certified clinical hypnotherapist and past life regression therapist. "In the Milton Erickson-devised indirect or inferred approach, individuals respond better if they are given options and allowed to make their own decision, thereby utilising their creative potential," she explains.
Kappasinian hypnosis involves having the therapy make sense to the client, providing psychological groundwork, and giving hope to the client by explaining the process, building momentum and leading to the solution, she adds.

Explaining the merits of hypnotherapy, Dr Malathi says, "It is the mind that is the origin for thought, which leads to emotions. The subconscious stores all emotions and experiences, including the negatives. The suppressed negativities result in mental, emotional and physical diseases throwing the system out of balance. Hypnotherapy effectively removes the causative factors and restores balance."

She clarifies that there is no danger whatsoever in undergoing therapy with a properly trained, certified and registered clinical hypnotherapist. It is affordable too.

(NLP in Asia)









Thursday, June 01, 2006

NLP and golf

The variety of areas in which NLP is of help is amazing. It ranges from, well, business to sex life to sport.

Here is now an article that describes how NLP helps those who want to get better in golf.

(NLP in Asia)









Chocolate may boost brain function

How nice. I don't need to scold my kid anymore that he eats too much chocolate (I don't anyway), nor do I need to take care of my waist since well, while the waist is growing, so might my brain functions.

"A new study hints that eating milk chocolate may boost brain function. (...)

"Chocolate contains many substances that act as stimulants, such as theobromine, phenethylamine, and caffeine," Dr. Bryan Raudenbush from Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia noted in comments to Reuters Health.

"These substances by themselves have previously been found to increase alertness and attention and what we have found is that by consuming chocolate you can get the stimulating effects, which then lead to increased mental performance."

To study the effects of various chocolate types on brain power, Raudenbush and colleagues had a group of volunteers consume, on four separate occasions, 85 grams of milk chocolate; 85 grams of dark chocolate; 85 grams of carob; and nothing (the control condition).

After a 15-minute digestive period, participants completed a variety of computer-based neuropsychological tests designed to assess cognitive performance including memory, attention span, reaction time, and problem solving.

"Composite scores for verbal and visual memory were significantly higher for milk chocolate than the other conditions," Raudenbush told Reuters Health. And consumption of milk and dark chocolate was associated with improved impulse control and reaction time.

Previous research has shown that some nutrients in food aid in glucose release and increased blood flow, which may augment cognitive performance. The current findings, said Raudenbush, "provide support for nutrient release via chocolate consumption to enhance cognitive performance."


Okay - it is not clear how many people participated in the trial, but what the heck - let's eat that chocolate.

(NLP in Asia)