Tag Archives: Hypnotherapy

Work Experience

Coaching, Hypnotherapy, Life balance, Meditation, Philosophy, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Planting seedsSetting up in a Hypnotherapy or Coaching practice takes time. Do the study, then some more and then a steep learning curve on how to market yourself and perhaps find a niche.

“Find a niche an inch wide and a mile deep” was a comment made in one lecture I attended.

All well and good, but a couple of years after graduating, I was still looking for that niche like the proverbial needle in a haystack. Around me were fellow students who seemed to have easily and effortlessly slipped into their niches …Past Life Regressions, Lives between Lives, Style Coaching, Relationship Coaching, Business Coaching, Weight Loss, Stop Smoking… and the list goes on.

The bookshelves are groaning with the weight of recommended reading. The printer spits out marketing letters on a regular basis. I have sat down and written about my ideal client so many times I feel like we are conjoined twins…..

Yes, the clients are coming, but for a variety of reasons.

Mostly for weight with an underlying theme of stress.

Now that’s something I understand!

Perhaps I have stumbled upon my niche, except it doesn’t look an inch wide… more like a mile wide and a bottomless chasm deep.

The interest in stress started when I was still teaching. I noticed that if I kept an appearance of calm, then the students seemed to respond better. Combining a teaching job and parenting 2 young children meant that my meditation practice was made up of incidental moments rather than a half hour session at any one time. Breathing at the traffic lights, mindfulness when on yard duty – appreciating the moments of nature… a leaf…. an interesting cloud….

Leaving teaching for a couple of years, I went to a job where I was able to observe how people with learning difficulties reacted to stress. An interest in how the mind adapts to stress grew from here and CBT based Adolescent Counseling beckoned. Back to teaching and full-time for three years. This time the universe threw me a curved ball. Being back in the classroom with a different perspective on student learning was fabulous, but the staffroom was toxic and not entirely from the black mould growing around the school.

But that’s a whole different story to be told later…

I left.

I took time out.

I studied some more and graduated with a Diploma in Clinical Hypnotherapy and a Cert 4 in Training. I didn’t complete the Medical Intuitive course I thought was my next journey.

I went and sat in the Simpson Desert.

Then I went back to teaching part-time and a small client list part-time. Coaching studies to augment the Hypnotherapy and I was just muddling along. I didn’t have anything specifically wrong with my health, but just didn’t have the energy that I used to. Palpitations were becoming more frequent, but I dismissed them as a result of the coffee I was drinking. I didn’t notice that I wasn’t meditating any more. I was asked to speak about women and stress for a local council’s Women’s Network.  Scroll back through some of the older posts and you’ll find that speech somewhere and the events that transpired a few months later!

So now it seems that my niche found me, rather than the other way around.

How curious is that?

I’m presenting a workshop next month with the topic “From Stress to Strength – Building Resilience for the Small Business Owner”  and I’m preparing for that with a bit of work experience…

Yep!! I’m STRESSED!!

Just getting in a bit of practice….. some good stress involved this time with the imminent arrival of a grandson…some bad stress with a blind, diabetic aging dog that has to be let out to pee 2 -3 times a night.

Sleep deprivation is not good for stress management!

PastThe body mind connection is letting me know I need to manage the stress a bit better, so the emWave is getting a good workout several times a day.

Last night was a case in point. I dream. Colour. Action… always vivid. Sometimes so full of action I am tired when I wake up. Sometimes, not very often now, the events are too vivid & I have been known to wake with a blood curdling yell. That didn’t happen last night, but I woke as I threw off the covers and went to confront some intruders that weren’t there and who came through a doorway that wasn’t there….. it took quite some time to convince my conscious mind that they and the doorway didn’t exist.  This time the dog waking and going for a wander down the street at 2am was just what I needed as the activity in going looking for him helped to dissipate the stress hormones and I was able to get back to sleep relatively quickly.

A couple of emWave sessions before starting writing showed that I was entering into “Coherence” fairly easily. More sessions scheduled this morning before the afternoon clients.

It’s all about putting yourself first, to better serve clients.

It could be called Work Experience!

Getting the Right Message

Coaching, Hypnotherapy, Life balance, Philosophy, , , , , , ,

let it goWe are bombarded daily with messages …..buy this…..do that…… and whilst our conscious mind can filter out what is important to us at this moment and what is not, our subconscious mind is listening in, filing the information away, just in case it is useful later on……

If you are familiar with NLP, you will know that the filters will

  • Delete
  • Distort
  • Generalize.

Added to that is how we process the information through our senses.

This could be

  • Visual – Sight
  • Auditory- Sound
  • Kinesthetic –Touch
  • Olfactory –Smell
  • Gustatory –Taste

These are our Representational Systems.

These senses also contribute to the words that we process or use, so using Visual based communication would include pictures but also words that are visual such as “looks like…”, “to get a perspective….”, “beyond a shadow of a doubt…..”,  “appears to me….”, “can you see that….”, “it looks good….”, “focus on……”, “show me…..”. And it is similar for the other senses….

How we view the past is coloured by our perception. Five people with the five different processing skills listed above who witnessed a car accident would have vastly different accounts of the event, yet all be correct. Not only is our  Representational System a major factor in how we remember, but our values or belief systems and our emotions also contribute to how our memories are formed.

If you have young children, you might be aware that they go through a stage where they tell lies. It’s part of the maturational process, but they believe what they are saying is true….. much like our current crop of politicians, but that’s another story…..

They are using their imagination, and we are all born with a fantastic imagination. We can create anything in our minds, we can also re-create our memories. This is especially useful if the memories are painful. Using the Hypnotic state, you can return to any time or place in your past and reframe the outcome to make it more positive or less hurtful. You can use the Gestalt process to have those conversations you wished you could have had at the time – this process is quite healing.

So just perhaps, when the past does call – it’s the subconscious mind bringing up something to work with, to reframe, to heal. You just don’t have to live there anymore and can return to a brighter future, bringing back some gems of wisdom or an insight to help you move forward.

 

 

Life Lessons

Homeopathy, Hypnotherapy, Life balance, Philosophy, Polarity Therapy, Reiki, , , , ,

I came across a saying at a training I went to recently:

“Are you ripe and rotting or green and growing?”

I would like to think that I am still green and growing, even though chronologically am scooting through the years.

The past 12 months have provided me with some great learning moments and the highs and lows of seeking to bring more balance into my life.

Challenged by new learning systems, particularly self paced study with webinars, and not face to face contact, I managed to achieve a bit over the months.  Difficult to find the balance between the detail that is required for submitting University papers and competency based  questions, I probably over intellectualized each question on the Cert 4 papers that I handed in.

The few face to face trainings that I did attend were quite unlike previous lectures or workshops and high energy and at times I was quite out of my comfort zone. All good though and I came away with new skills that I am putting to use on a daily basis.

Most of the year has been out of my comfort zone and parts of it have been a bit of a blur.

Physically, I was knocked out with a cardiac event – the date is indelibly marked in my mind – Thursday 10th February 2011. Emotionally, I was overwhelmed by the support of a few special people who have held my hand as I mended my heart. Particularly painful was the realization that family were not part of the healing process either at the time of the event or after the surgical ablation in July.

A bit like Humpty Dumpty, I felt like I had fallen off the wall and couldn’t be put back together again, but my “healing team”, consisting of a Homeopath, an Acupuncturist, a Hypnotherapist and a couple of Reiki Masters all worked hard to contribute to my improved health. I will also acknowledge the Cardiologist, in that he sorted out the electrical malfunction. New friends have been made and they may not be aware of the pearls of wisdom that they have given me at different times.

The lessons that clients bring are all part of the journey. It truly is a privilege to work with them and honour their trust as they go into a hypnotic trance. Each session has its special moments and it is quite profound to see the relaxation on their faces when they finish a session. Truly a trance-formation!

So the journey continues, veering down the spiritual road now, having picked up the tools of Reiki and Polarity Therapy  that I had set aside for so many years. Just recently I re-visited the EMF Balancing course that I did (OMG – that was last century!!)  And having picked up these tools, I am meeting and noticing people in my life that are claiming their spirituality, acknowledging the subtle energies of the body and feeling so much better for having them in my life.