Monday, August 6, 2007

Using Hypnosis To Obtain A Healthy Lifestyle

Hypnosis is a powerful tool that can be used to release
one's full potential, especially when it comes to enriching
ones life in a number of different areas, such as
successful weight loss, increased motivation, confidence
and memory ending addictions such as smoking, drinking,
gambling or drugs, and has been shown to be very effective
in forming better relationships.

If you have been on diet after diet and lost weight, only
to put it on again, then you are well aware that it takes
more than will power to successfully maintain weight loss.
Even though you know how and what to eat and the importance
of exercise, it can be difficult to lose weight. That is
because losing and maintaining a healthy weight are much
less about will power and much more about metabolism and
psyche.

So often when people try to lose weight, they verbalize a
strong desire. Yet blame for failures is put on a lack of
will power. Hypnosis targets an area of the mind that is
often pushed to the background. By bringing about an
awareness of what lies there, hypnosis can allow you to
have the part of your mind that truly wants to lose weight
and take center stage over the part of the mind that tells
you eating that chocolate cake is what you want right now.

Part of what you have the ability to control with your mind
is metabolism. Metabolism refers to how quickly your body
uses its fuel sources (food) and how much will be stored.
By increasing metabolism you can speed up weight loss and
maintain it. Hypnosis has the ability to let you change
your metabolism.

Hypnosis is often misunderstood. Many people believe it can
force you to act and react in whatever way the
hypnotherapist instructs. Hypnosis cannot make a person
into someone different and cannot control a person's mind.
Hypnosis can only draw upon what is within the person.

If hypnosis cannot change who you are, then you may wonder
how it can improve one's motivation. It is simple.
Motivation is merely a stimulation response. Many things
can motivate a person. For example, hunger motivates us to
go and get something to eat. Or, on an emotional
stimulation response may be that the promise of payment
motivates us to go to work each day.

Sometimes people know what they want, but can't seem to get
motivated to go after it. It may be that the objective is
not a priority, like a paycheck coming in to support a
family or the need for food. This may be true even though
the end goal is something that can improve their life or
even bring short term happiness. That is where hypnosis
comes into play.

Because hypnosis draws upon the information already stored
in the recesses of the mind it can reorganize and in a way
reprioritize goals and objectives. Hypnosis is a self
improvement method of bringing to the forefront of the mind
the information that will serve as a driving force to
action.

Hypnosis used to improve one's memory is an extremely
effective therapy that includes learned behaviors and
reorganizing the material stored in the brain so the
garbage doesn't get in the way of important facts. To
understand how hypnosis can improve memory, it helps to
understand how the brain receives and stores information,
then recalls that information on demand.

The brain receives literally millions of signals a day,
most of them simultaneously. There are sights, sounds,
smells, and feelings that are absorbed, but few of them are
consciously registered. All of the senses in fact come into
play as the brain is receiving bits of information. Much of
this information is not considered useful at the moment, if
ever, and is quickly and automatically pushed to the
background.

Hypnosis works to improve memory by doing a housekeeping
task of sorting and categorizing information. It does this
through first relaxing the body and mind. Then like a
virtual organizer data is sorted into different regions of
the brain. When the clutter is removed and the dust wiped
away, then the important thoughts we wish to remember can
be recalled quickly.

In order to hypnotize one's self or others a complete state
of relaxation must occur. This is referred to as the alpha
state of consciousness. When you are fully awake, aware and
focused on your surroundings you are in a beta state of
consciousness. The alpha state, which is the beginning to
hypnosis, is similar to being completely relaxed and
comfortable such as when drifting off to sleep. However,
this is also the state you are in when you are fully
engrossed in a book, computer game or even while driving a
familiar route. Contrary to what many people believe, those
under hypnosis are still aware of their surroundings.
People who have claimed that they have never been able to
become hypnotized may not realize that you don't have to be
mesmerized in order to have been effectively hypnotized.


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Steve G. Jones is a board certified Clinical
Hypnotherapist. He is a member of the National Guild of
Hypnotists, American Board of Hypnotherapy, president of
the American Alliance of Hypnotists, on the board of
directors of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Lung
Association, and director of the California state
registered Steve G. Jones School of Hypnotherapy.
http://www.betterlivingwithhypnosis.com

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