The tracks are:

Transformation Skills 1: Calm

• Calming Thoughts: Calm racing thoughts and learn to relax and deal calmly with life.
• Moods and Emotions: Learn to deal effectively with moods and emotions in everyday life.
• Lifestyle Transformation (free sample): Bring about simple changes in your daily routine which will help you to make the changes you desire.
• Overcoming Resistance: Help for when something inside you seems to be interfering with the changes you want to make.
• Overcoming Habits: Let go of habits you no longer need or want.
• Positive Self-Image: See making changes for yourself as positive and admirable, and yourself as a person worthy of respect.

Transformation Skills 2: Confident

• Setting Goals: Clarify what changes you want to make.
• Regular Practice: Cultivate positive daily habits.
• Energy to Act Now: Overcome procrastination.
• Confident Person: Become like the most confident person you can think of.
• Attaining Goals (free sample): Keep focus on what’s important to you.

The tracks are also available on CD, either as two separate CDs or a double CD set.

These, along with my Healthy Lifestyle scripts, will all be on the MP3 CD which accompanies my forthcoming book. To keep in the loop about that, you can sign up to the mailing list (low-volume, no spam).

OK, that’s enough sales for a while, we return you now to your regular programming. I hope these occasional commercial breaks don’t annoy you too much – I’m operating on the assumption that people who are interested in what I write about may be interested in these recordings. If you’re not, please just ignore me and pass on to the next piece of free content.

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If you have the appropriate software installed, you can listen to it here: Therapeutic Relaxation, or right-click that link to download. (Choose Save Link As in Firefox or Save Target As in Internet Explorer.) Let me know in the comments if you have any problems with the file.

You can get either the audio CD or individual MP3 downloads of the tracks from the shop. The MP3s are $3 (NZD) each. The CD with six tracks is $10 + P&H.

The tracks are:

• Positive Eating – Enjoy eating what will do you good! More than just weight management/reduction/control, Positive Eating is about eating healthily to support your body’s needs for nutrition and energy – instead of eating unhealthily for other reasons.
• Eager to Exercise – Enjoy exercising and the way it makes you feel.
• Therapeutic Relaxation – Enjoy a peaceful, relaxing 15 minutes and rest your body and mind.
• Alcohol in Moderation – Enjoy drinking a moderate amount of alcohol. Alcohol in moderation can be healthy – this track assists with keeping your consumption moderate.
• Smokefree for Life – Enjoy a smokefree lifestyle with this track, which gives support for stopping smoking and for remaining stopped.
• Good Sleep – Enjoy good sleep which supports your physical, emotional and mental health.

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I’ve bought a new and better microphone, a Rode Podcaster, and I’m going through re-recording my hypnotherapy scripts – they should now sound a lot crisper and less muddy. I’m also making small changes to some of them, adding in things that I’ve learned or come up with since I first recorded them.

The first is my self-hypnosis starter script, now six minutes long with the addition of a “deepening” section. As well as rising safely into a beautiful blue sky, you’ll now also be led through imagining sinking safely into a beautiful blue sea. You can also read the text version.

I’m posting this to my “podcast” section since some people are subscribed to the podcast and not the main blog. It’s not brand-new content but it is improved content.

Let me know in the comments or by email (mikerm at hypno dot co dot nz) if you have any trouble with the file. I’ve listened to it in Windows Media Player, using headphones, and it sounds fine to me, but if you experience any difficulties with the audio, the volume or my accent please say something so I can try to do something about it.

The intended use for the script is this:

1. Get clear in your mind what you want to change in your life (you could use a planning technique like my 7 simple steps to a workable personal change plan).
2. Express it in a few short, positively-phrased, present-tense sentences: “I take steps each day to tidy my environment” might be one, or “I find exercise more and more appealing”. You don’t have to memorize these word-for-word, but have the general sense of them in your head.
3. Pick one or two words to act as a summary of your few sentences. “Tidying up” or “Exercise”, perhaps.
4. Sit down and listen to the script. It’s deliberately left open-ended so that you can take however long you like. If you’re worried that you might drift off for ages, set a timer, say for 10 minutes. You will inevitably re-orient (or fall asleep) sooner or later. You can’t get “stuck” in hypnosis.
5. After the script finishes playing, call your sentences to mind and repeat them to yourself in your head. Finish with a few repetitions of the summary words.
6. Bring yourself back to your normal state of consciousness.
7. Use your summary words from time to time during the day to remind yourself.

You can use it as often as you need to. If you find you’re not getting sufficient change happening, let me know (mikerm at hypno dot co dot nz, or leave a comment), telling me what you’re trying to achieve and what you’re doing; I may be able to suggest something, or you may simply be overambitious. This technique is best suited for changes where you already have the knowledge you need and just need some more motivation, or to change how you think or feel about something.

(Update: This recording is just part of my online self-hypnosis course Change Your Mind, which uses video, email and audio downloads to teach you my AIM method for focussing on your goals and improving your ability to deal with the challenges of life.)

Technorati Tags: hypnosis, hypnotherapy, self-hypnosis, relaxation, MP3, recording

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Well, it seems we are wired to experience the consumption of sweet and fatty things as a positive. Mothers’ milk is sweet and fatty, and any human who doesn’t like its taste is unlikely to survive to have descendants. As a very small child, we repeat a process over and over: we are hungry. We get distressed. We cry out. Our distress is relieved when something sweet and fatty goes in our mouths. So in our formative years, when we are laying the foundations of our emotional life, we make a powerful association: Sweet and fatty things in our mouths relieve distress.

photo credit: Marcus Vegas

The problem is, unlike our ancestors, we don’t have to work hard in order to obtain sweet and fatty things. We can walk into any of thousands of shops in a moderate-sized city and get them quickly and with a minimum of effort. Not only that, but our energy output in our daily lives is much lower than that of our ancestors (as I’ll discuss again when I talk about exercise).

The result is, we take in more energy than we need, and when we do that, it gets stored as fat. Now, fat is great when you’re living in a situation where you may need to run away from something dangerous for an extended period, or walk for days to get to new hunting grounds, or keep warm without much shelter, or survive periods when little food is available, but in the postindustrial west we don’t often encounter those situations any more. All body fat does now is increase our risk of heart disease and stroke.

We also have a contradiction at the heart of our culture. On the one hand, fattening foods are widely and cheaply available and heavily marketed as desirable. On the other hand, the body image portrayed as an ideal – often in that very same marketing – is unrealistically (even unhealthily) thin, especially for women. (There was controversy in New Zealand last year when a burger chain used bikini-clad models in its advertisements. Most of it centred around the perceived sexism, exploitation and objectification, and rightly so, but what struck me was that these women looked like they had never eaten a burger in their lives, and in fact hadn’t had a square meal in some time.)

Because we’re social creatures who are influenced by group norms, what this sets up is an inner contradiction between a desire to eat the sweet and fatty foods and a desire to look like people who aren’t doing that. Hence, guilt. Hence, liposuction.

Hence, also, the startling figure that in the US, people are spending more billions of dollars on diet products than the US Government spends on health, education and welfare combined, despite the fact that 95% of people who use these products regain any weight they lose and in fact often end up heavier.

O Noes! photo credit: Janet 59

There’s a better way. (I mean, come on, there has to be a better way.) Basically, it boils down to changing your relationship with food, resolving the internal contradiction, and choosing your day-by-day, moment-by-moment behaviour out of a strong positive sense of self rather than under the pressure of marketing, social expectations and your own transitory moods.

I have plans to produce a CD specifically for food issues, which I’ll announce here in the blog when it’s ready (so make sure you subscribe if you don’t want to miss it). In the meantime, if you’re in the situation that so many people are in – wanting to have a healthy body but struggling with your food habits – what you can do to get started is this:

1. Think about your eating and recognize that a pattern of guilt, yo-yo dieting, and more guilt isn’t working so well. Never has in the past, never will in the future.
2. Cultivate alternative ways to manage your moods.
3. Learn about healthy ways of eating, if you don’t already know. Knowledge by itself isn’t enough – just having a map won’t get you to the other side of town (or even the other side of the street). But to go where you haven’t been before, a map is very helpful.
4. Make a plan and set some realistic goals for moving your eating in a healthy direction.
5. Use my free Attain Your Goals recording to help you move towards those goals.

That doesn’t directly address the internal contradiction or the strong sense of self, which is why I’ll be producing the CD. But it’s a start in the right direction, and will introduce you to some important resources to help you begin a journey to long-term healthy eating.

Technorati Tags: diet, nutrition, food, fat, mood control, mood management, emotions, weight, weightloss, overweight, obesity, body image, guilt, personal change, psychology, goal setting, lifehacks

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I’ve had the relaxation response practice in written form posted for a while, but hopefully this makes it accessible to more people.

As I say on that page, Dr Herbert Benson, Director Emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has done extensive research to show that what he calls the “relaxation response” is beneficial for anxiety, cardiac problems, headache, hypertension (high blood pressure), irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia and pain, among other conditions. He claims that it helps with any disease that is either caused or made worse by stress, in proportion to the contribution of the stress to the disease.

Another thing that it and practices like it do is help you to release the external pressures of life and allow your authentic self to come forward. Along the way, I should warn you, you can experience some fairly strong emotions – often anger – as you stop distracting yourself from feeling them. But this passes, and if you practice regularly you can become a more “in focus” person, more alive, and kinder and gentler.

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Enjoy therapeutic relaxation and benefit your mental, emotional and physical health with this free sample track from my hypnotherapy CD Healthy Lifestyle. Deep relaxation assists in reversing the negative effects of stress and is one of the most significant lifestyle changes you can make to improve your health.

Other tracks on the CD:

• Positive Eating – Enjoy eating what will do you good! More than just weight management/reduction/control, Positive Eating is about eating healthily to support your body’s needs for nutrition and energy – instead of eating unhealthily for other reasons.
• Eager to Exercise – Enjoy exercising and the way it makes you feel.
• Alcohol in Moderation – Enjoy drinking a moderate amount of alcohol. Alcohol in moderation can be healthy – this track assists with keeping your consumption moderate.
• Smokefree for Life – Enjoy a smokefree life. Support for stopping smoking and for remaining stopped.
• Good Sleep – Enjoy good sleep which supports your physical, emotional and mental health.

You can buy these tracks individually (MP3 download) or on one audio CD from the shop.

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Other tracks on the CD:

• Setting Goals – Clarify what changes you want to make.
• Regular Practice – Cultivate positive daily habits.
• Energy to Act Now – Overcome procrastination.
• Confident Person – Become like the most confident person you can think of.

You can buy these tracks individually (MP3 download) from the shop.

No related posts.

The basic idea is to take the time to pause regularly during the day, breathe, focus on your goal, take a drink of water and let go of accumulated stress.

Other tracks on the CD:

• Calming Thoughts – Calm racing thoughts and learn to relax and deal calmly with life.
• Moods and Emotions – Learn to deal effectively with moods and emotions in everyday life.
• Overcoming Resistance – Help for when something inside you seems to be interfering with the changes you want to make.
• Overcoming Habits – Let go of habits you no longer need or want.
• Positive Self-Image - See making changes for yourself as positive and admirable, and yourself as a person worthy of respect.

You can buy these tracks individually (MP3 download) from the shop.

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1. Healthy Lifestyle: Therapeutic RelaxationTherapeutic Relaxation Enjoy therapeutic relaxation and benefit your mental, emotional...
2. What is stress, anyway? And how do you deal with it?worry 1 by xymonau I’ve been reading John Medina’s book...
3. What stress does to your body and brainFollowing on from my previous post on what stress is...

I have found that for people who are completely non-visual it doesn’t work so well, even though the visual component is extremely simple. If this is you, you’ll want to look for a progressive relaxation script instead.

The script doesn’t contain any specific suggestions, so you can make your own.

I also leave it open-ended, without an explicit reorientation. This is unusual, but perfectly safe; you can’t get “stuck” in hypnosis. If you need to end your session after a particular span of time, set a timer of some kind – the one on your stove or microwave is fine. Or if you are making a recording (for your personal use only, please), you can use my script at the beginning, follow it with your suggestions and do your own reorientation – the easiest is simply counting from one to five (or even three), ending “wide awake now.”

Enjoy!

Note: I’ve now re-recorded the script with a better microphone, and included a “deepening” where the scene shifts from looking into the blue sky to looking into a deep, peaceful blue sea. You then imagine drifting gently and safely down into the sea until you reach the deepest level of relaxation. It’s six minutes in length.

(Update: This script is just one part of my online self-hypnosis course Change Your Mind, which uses video, email and audio downloads to teach you my AIM method for focussing on your goals and improving your ability to deal with the challenges of life.)

No related posts.