Author: Michael

I have been a hypnotherapist for around 12 years. My specific interests are in stress and physical healing. My fascination is with how the mind 'creates' the world. I am a fan of Esther & Jerry Hicks.

Categories
self-help weight control

Drink Coffee – Lose Weight

I was having a cup of coffee in my local Asda the other day. Now Asda is not the place that immediately springs to mind when the thought of somewhere to relax and enjoy a book wanders through the mind. However, since its revamp, the library coffee bar (my old lunchtime haunt) stopped serving a decent brew since they made some sort of arrangement with Starbucks (though it tastes like nothing Starbucks ever served). Weak, watery, and no detectable coffee flavour – in my humble opinion. It’s also about twice the price of ‘old’ coffee. They do a nice green tea and excellent food though so they are not completely off my list. The biggest problem with the new coffee bar is that it has lost the quiet and intimate atmosphere of the old one. A victim of its own success it is now so busy at lunchtimes that there is never a seat available.

BB’s when it opened several years ago served the finest coffee I’d ever tasted, but that rapidly deteriorated to dishwater. This was when I discovered that a ‘small’ coffee was fine, but a medium (or ‘regular’ in the modern idiom imported from somewhere that thinks a soup bowl is a reasonable size for a coffee cup) was watery. Ah ha! It is the same cup of coffee with hot water added to make up the volume difference, I reasoned. So I started to enjoy a small coffee each day and then they took small cups off the price list!!!

Then Asda Runcorn, bless them, built a huge conservatory in the shape of a giant A (for Asda I guess) on the side of its store, while using up most of the car park to add an extension on the side as well. I could never understand making the store bigger to attract more business, but making the car park smaller so the business can’t get in. Anyway, this conservatory turned out to be the new caff and in the new caff they had a coffee machine. The system was this: queue up for ages while one person manages the till, acts as waitress for orders, and simultaneously serves food to queuing customers; buy a cup for a £1; take cup to coffee machine, press button, enjoy a delicious and totally consistent brew of coffee.

So that’s how I ended up in Asda one day sitting in the sunshine and warmth of the conservatory café enjoying my book on wedding photography when I realised that most of the customers in the café were more than a little overweight.

Interesting, I thought and did a quick count. 8 overweight, 3 about average, and two slim. Then I noticed what they were eating. Now I have to say that Asda is typical cafeteria food – chips, sausage, fried eggs, greasy looking lasagne (that’s just the liquefying cheese though), meat pie… Good variety, but I don’t remember seeing any salad. I had some kind of cake there once and it wasn’t good cake – but there is lots of cake – just don’t eat it if you are a cake lover like me.

So if you wanted to eat healthily you’d simply go somewhere else. I noticed plates piled high, and then cleaned – with one exception. The slim people were a couple with a baby. The young lady had had a plate of chips and other stuff and she had finished her meal. She was enjoying her conversation with her partner and keeping an eye on baby, but about three quarters of the meal was still on the plate (clearly finished and pushed to one side) and no attention was being paid to all that wasted food.

This reminded me of something I’d read about the way that slim people think about food in a way that’s quite different from the way overweight people think about food. Slim people don’t have better metabolisms or anything genetic to keep them that way. They simply see food as fuel and when they’ve had sufficient they’ve had sufficient and nothing would cause them to eat any more – no matter how much is left on the plate.

For a slim person food has no personality; it has no power; it has no way to affect how they feel. If they feel good they feel good. If they feel low they feel low. Food just doesn’t enter into it. Does that mean they don’t enjoy what they eat – no! It means they enjoy it fully while they are eating it, but when they are full they stop. They don’t then mourn the loss of the pleasure left on the plate. They see it for what it is – a congealing mess that if anyone was presented with as it is, would go straight in the bin.

Think about that. The difference between overweight and slim could be nothing more than the way you think about food.

I can show you easy ways to change the way you think about food and start the process of losing weight.

A client of mine a few weeks ago shared a comment with me that has stuck with me since. She attributed it to Kate Moss – ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’. And it’s absolutely true.

Make that your mantra to be repeated between each mouthful and watch your life change as you take back control.

And if you’d like more hints and tips on how to lose weight and develop a ‘slim-thinking’ mindset then check out the first of my series of free videos on how to lose weight now.

Enjoy your food.
Michael

Categories
weight control

Weight Loss – Feeling Out of Control?

Did you know that you were being manipulated?

Being overweight is undoubtedly a problem for most people who experience it. It’s a problem, in part, because society as a whole finds fatness easy to laugh at and simultaneously unacceptable. For instance, when did you last see an overweight leading lady in a film, or an overweight model on an advertising hoarding. People don’t want to see overweight women in bikinis or overweight men in shorts on the cinema, or on tv (unless of course it’s a programme where the overweight person is being humiliated or laughed at).

You can argue the rights and wrongs of this all you want – but as members of a society we are programmed with a particular view of ‘attractive’ and that view tends towards slimness. So we can’t do much about those particular preferences, but as long as we are aware that it is just programming we don’t need to buy into it too seriously. This is really important. If you are reading this because you are overweight and are looking for accessible solutions (rather than the faux-solutions the diet industry parades out for you), you really need to understand that any sense of unacceptability that you have for you because of your weight – is simply unacceptable.

By that I mean that if you disapprove of you because of your weight, your disapproval isn’t yours, it belongs to Society. Because it belongs to Society, it isn’t about you particularly, and so it isn’t in any way personal. So let yourself off the hook.

Another problem with our society is the hypnotic power of the images and words that we see around us. I notice the effects on myself of advertising and how names that we see frequently somehow become benevolent institutions within our own minds and thoughts.

Perhaps the hypnotic nature of this influence is a major reason you should consider using hypnosis to counter it – because hypnosis is working at the same level within your mind as the media.

Advertisers know how this works and know that you don’t need to be in any kind of a trance in order to be influenced by these images, sounds, and words. The snack industry, for instance, has as one of its goals, the creation of instant craveability – that mixture of tastes and textures that instantly creates that ‘more-ish’ feeling. It does this by mixing fats, sugars and salts in ‘entertaining’ ways. These are the key ingredients – usually with a carbohydrate base to carry them.

I remember once I was eating a packet of Walker’s prawn cocktail crisps and they tasted different from the way I remembered last time I’d eaten them (I’m not a frequent eater of crisps). They tasted sweet. This puzzled me. Thinly sliced and fried potatoes should never taste sweet. So I checked on the ingredients and sugar was now in the list. Why on earth there is any need to add sugar to what I thought was a savoury snack I’ve no idea, but it was the last time I bought any.

This subtle manipulation of our foods, adding sugar to crisps to make them that little more appealing, spending millions of dollars researching ways to mix fat, sugar, and salt in ways that taste good, has only one aim – to control you and to control what you eat. Sorry, there are two aims. The second one is to create wealth for the snack manufacturers, by selling you something you don’t want and don’t need, but are being manipulated into believing that you do.

And then there’s the soft drink industry. 7% of calories consumed in the US are consumed as soft drinks. I remember, years ago, I’d just finished sixth-form college and was waiting for my A-level results and my Dad got me a job in Jacob’s (the biscuit factory where he worked). I met another student there who was a year older than me and he told me that the previous summer he had worked for Coca Cola. He said that when he was taken on the factory tour he was shown this huge vat which was more than half full of sugar. He was then shown a glass tube full of dark syrup. This tiny tube was the flavour of Coca Cola for this huge vat. He tipped it in, the vat was topped up with water and that was pretty much it. I had no idea that that drink was almost pure sugar. Coca Cola instantly became something that I only drink when there is nothing else available – which is almost never.

You see how easy it is really. I found out some information about the truth about a product. I instantly decided to leave it alone and there is no difficulty about that. I’m not secretly craving a can of coke or some sweet crisps. I decided that what the manufacturers were doing was unacceptable to me and that was the end of it. No effort. No withdrawal. No battle. But I like me, and I do my best to feed my body in ways that are not only enjoyable but also nutritious.

A key aspect of my Diet-Free Weight Loss program is that the very first step that you must take is to accept yourself just the way you are. You see, as the Borg say in Star Trek Next Generation “Resistance is futile”. Or to put it another way that you may have come across if you are into other forms of self-help – What you resist persists.

Resistance is a state of mind that holds in place whatever it is you are resisting. It does this because in order to resist you need to be aware of whatever it is you are resisting. Whatever you are aware of is in your mind (otherwise you would not be aware of it), and whatever is in your mind is what your subconscious seeks to create. Your subconscious works with images and there is no image for not or no. So the thought, or the awareness, of not wanting to be overweight translates into the subconscious as be overweight. And that’s exactly what you get while you resist what you already are.

On another level, invoking the more real-world practicality of physics, if you push against something like a wall – it pushes back at you with equal force. It has to. If it didn’t it would fall over. So if you push against overweight it pushes right back at you, and like with the wall, you stay exactly where you are – stuck.

The instant you accept that, right now, and just for now, you are the way you are, then you free up all the space you need for change to take place easily and effortlessly.

So think about that for a while. Think about the ways you don’t accept you, or the ways that you kid yourself you do accept you. Then think about how easy it would be to decide that, just for now, maybe even just for this minute as you read this, that you are ok. Just decide that you are a good-hearted, warm, loving, caring individual and that’s fine. If you manage that and you want to stretch a little further – look to see if you can see the beauty that lies within you. This can be a little more difficult, but generally all it takes for you to succeed at this is for you to widen your definition of beauty a little. Move beauty beyond mere physical appearance. That, after all is literally only skin deep. See the beauty in the way you move; in your interests; in your compassion; in your gentleness; in the way you parent your children; in your desire to take control of your life; in your thoughts; in your humour; in your willingness to lend a hand; in whatever it is about you that makes you uniquely You.

You are special – you just need to see it. And as you see that more and more clearly so you will begin to reshape your body.

I will write again on this subject and guide you gently and safely through the minefield of developing a healthy relationship with food. But in the meantime if you want more, I’ve prepared some free videos with what I hope are some interesting slides and a narrative. The first one is called Do You Know the Secret to Permanent Weight Loss. Check it out. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know.

Enjoy your food.

Michael Hadfield

Categories
Alternative health pain self-help

Chronic Pain – Relief or Reduction

One of the things that hypnosis is not so well-known for is chronic pain control. I remember this being a surprise to me when the idea was introduced during my hypnosis training way back in ’97. One of the solutions we played with was glove anaesthesia where, with direct suggestion, one of the subject’s hands are made to feel numb (as if wearing a leather glove) and then that numbness is transferred to the part of the body that is painful. As usual with a lot of the techniques I tried during training, they worked on the person I was working with, but they failed totally on me. (I’m a bit of a rubbish hypnotic subject). Consequently I could never convince myself that glove anaesthesia was worth even attempting – too much risk of failure and consequent loss of a client.

Belief in hypnosis is always a little tenuous and for the vast majority of people it is very much a last resort. So anything that doesn’t happen that should happen (even though everyone is different and different people require the use of different techniques) is almost certainly going to result in a client not returning for necessary follow-up sessions.

Later on in my training I was invited by my tutor to a Masterclass on something called Psychoneuroimmunology – PNI for short. This absolutely fascinated me – especially the part about curing cancer using mental imagery.

The first time I used this technique was when I was doing some counselling work and a client arrived with a headache that had been with her for a few days and was resistant to painkillers (medical attention had been sought). I thought, here’s an opportunity to try this stuff out and see if it really works. Her chronic pain was completely gone in less than five minutes and didn’t return. I was as amazed as my client.

Then, when I started doing hypnosis and a client mentioned they had some chronic pain or other physical discomfort I would spend the first few minutes of trance work dealing with the discomfort and it always lessened or disappeared.

Then one day I had a phone call from a lady who was suffering from something called fibromyalgia (I’d heard the word but had no idea what it was). When clients report any discomfort that they want me to work on I always ask them to score it on a 0-10 scale. 0 being no discomfort, 10 being the worst agony they can imagine. This client scored 8/9 while she was talking to me. Her world was one of never more than two hours sleep a night, being unable to work, and a hell filled with chronic pain.

When she left an hour later the pain was scoring 3.

When she came back a week later she reported 8 hours sleep every night that week and the pain was still a 3.

When she left after that second session the pain was 0. She contacted me a couple of years later still largely free of pain and working (when the pain re-appears she uses the techniques I taught her and it goes away),.

And that brings me to the reason I’m writing about this now, because that was all quite a few years ago. Another client of mine rang me up a week or so ago telling me she was suffering chronic pain. She’d had a lumpectomy followed a couple of weeks later by a mastectomy and was due to start chemotherapy shortly. This chronic pain was reported as preventing enjoyment of life and it was constant. I could see the toll it was taking just by looking at her.

Once I started treatment we had the pain much reduced after about 10 minutes, another 10 minutes and it was gone. ‘Gobsmacked’ is perhaps the best way to describe her reaction and the thing that amazed her most was the total freedom of movement of her arm which, when she arrived, she could barely lift to shoulder height. She hadn’t mentioned the arm to me so that was a nice surprise for both of us.

The other interesting thing is that I decided not to work in trance. So there was no hypnosis here. I just asked her to close her eyes (to facilitate visualisation) and directed her imagination for a minute or two, then we stopped and checked the results.

Of course one of the most difficult aspects of this sort of work is dealing with the disbelief.

There is a severe, or just debilitating, pain that is resistant to painkillers. Doctors – the experts in this territory – are unable to do anything about it. Then I come along, ask you to close your eyes, imagine this, imagine that, for a few minutes, the pain reduces, and maybe even eventually disappears.

There has to be some trick, surely.

I must be tricking them into thinking their chronic pain has gone when it really is still there!

Or it can’t be real. The pain will come back in a minute. I watch them sitting in the chair opposite me trying to recreate the pain, because what I’ve just done doesn’t fit into their ideas about reality and health and it just doesn’t make any sense.

So I had this lady who came in pain and who left, free of pain and totally relaxed, and the treatment itself probably lasted 20 minutes and no hypnosis was used.

And that got me to thinking. I’m very good at this and hardly anyone ever asks me to help free them of their physical discomfort, so maybe the world just needs to know that chronic pain might not be quite what it thinks it is, and it might be possible to be free of it, or to reduce its intensity to the point where quality of life significantly improves.

This is something where I feel one to one sessions give the best results, simply because I can adapt to however the body is responding. But I have created a CD where you can get a taste of this and see how effective the techniques I use are. The Cd may not remove your pain completely, but it may well bring you some relief and you can listen to it whenever you want (which you can’t do with a one to one session). And certainly I can do this sort of treatment easily over the phone. So if you want details of that just email me.

But in the meantime download a copy of the CD and see how it works for you.

You can get your copy here http://www.hypnosisiseasy.com/painrelief.htm

Michael Hadfield

Categories
Uncategorized

Free Aid to ordering glasses on-line

When you order glasses from any of the many reputable on-line businesses you can save yourself hundreds of pounds. The last time I went to an optician (about 8 years ago) my order came to £320.

When those glasses became unwearable (because the plastic lenses scratch so easily – just from cleaning them) I had a look on the internet adn replaced that £320 pair of glasses with another pair for £27. I used the same prescription (my eyesight hadn’t noticeably changed in that time). But the difficulty came when the on-line ordering system wanted to know my inter-pupillary distance – the distance, in millimetres, between pupil centres while looking at something in the distance. I managed this with a plastic ruler and a mirror, but it wasn’t easy.

Now Metsuki are giving away a free specialist ruler (worth £5) to make this task easier. They are also campaigning to change the law to force opticians to put this information on the prescription.

Opticians don’t give away this information in an attempt to force you to purchase their vastly over-priced spectacles.

But there are only 50,000 of these easy to use tools available so act now.

Categories
Alternative anti-ageing self-help

5 Secret Steps to Reduce Ageing

Have you tried every anti-ageing cream under the sun?

But no matter which cream, pill or potion you try… it seems that NOTHING can battle back the ravaging effects of time… a fact that’s depressingly reflected back in the mirror every day.

But as I recently discovered… you don’t need magic face packs (or Botox!) to instantly* look as if you’ve shaved YEARS from your appearance.

In fact, I’ve learned of 5 simple steps you can do in the comfort of your own home… that often knock as much as 10-25 YEARS off your chronological age… a fact that
everyone around you will verify when they next see you!

This “secret” is endorsed by high-profile celebrities and beauty experts worldwide… yet is striking fear into the heart of the multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry, who are frantically trying to keep it hush-hush and tightly under wraps.

They hope you’ll never find this out, but… you don’t need expensive cosmetics (or painful surgery!) to turn back the clock. You just need to follow these 5 simple steps every day… to “activate” instant anti-ageing!

What are those 5 secret steps? Find out at:

http://www.fiverituals.com/?afl=41470

And even better — I’ve arranged for you to take a whopping 25% off the price everyone else is paying… offer expires midnight EST on April 18th, 2011.

Just use the following coupon code at checkout, for an instant 25% off the already-low advertised price:

45K2D466JC

But you must act now… the coupon is good until next Monday only. Grab your ‘anti-ageing miracle’ at:

http://www.fiverituals.com/?afl=41470

Enjoy!

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

Lower Blood Pressure With 6 Natural Foods

Lower Blood Pressure With 6 Natural Foods
By John J Thompson

So you want to take the natural route of lowering your blood pressure? That’s not a bad choice, prescription medications can have dangerous side effects and throw your whole body out of whack. So what are the power house foods that will lower your blood pressure?

Bananas- They are loaded with potassium, and potassium works with sodium to help regulate fluid balance. Studies done in India suggest that 5 bananas per day can lower blood pressure half as effective as prescription medications. Now I’m not sure I suggest you eat 5 bananas a day, some people are sensitive to the high sugar levels in bananas. I recommend eating 2 a day and combining it with other natural hypertension treatments.

Fish- I’m not talking about the fish you buy from the grocery store that’s fried, I’m talking about the kind that’s lean and healthy. You can get salmon at your local grocery store and other healthy fishes. It only makes sense to assume fish will lower your high pressure when you take a look at how many countries have a diet that consist mainly of fresh veggies, fruits and fish. Salmon is high in the fatty acid Omega 3; this fatty acid is very healthy for the heart. Not only does Omega 3 lower blood pressure but it also has been shown to stop and even reverse angina. You will want to limit your salmon intake to once a week though due to the high mercury levels.

Celery- This is probably the most powerful single food you can eat that will lower your high pressure readings. Celery contains unique oil that relaxes the muscles that regulate hypertension, improving flow, and lowering pressure. Just 4 stalks a day (or some celery juice) does the trick. It is a natural diuretic without the harmful side effects, and some studies show it to be just as effective as the prescription form.

I hope these foods have helped you, I also hope they help you see that prescription medications are not the only answer to lowering your high pressure. You can find the link to the 3 other powerhouse foods to lower your blood pressure on my site in my bio box below. Good luck getting that blood pressure down, with proper diet and lifestyle change you can hopefully avoid medication use.

John believes in using natural alternatives for lowering high blood pressure. You can see see the 3 other powerful foods to lower your blood pressure at www.highbloodpressurehelp.info

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_J_Thompson

http://EzineArticles.com/?Lower-Blood-Pressure-With-6-Natural-Foods&id=794898


Categories
Alternative health pain self-help

Alternative Health & Pain Management Medicine

Alternative Health & Pain Management Medicine
By Daniel Euergetes

Conventional Pain Management Medicine

Pain is the natural warning system equipped in all warm-blooded organisms. Initial pain helps us stay out of harm’s way. However, pain can become a chronic part of our lives in the onslaught of incurable disease and other health issues. Pain, having served its initial purpose and is no longer necessary, pain management medicine is available for treatment and relief.

Pain management medicine in the conventional health-care system has been verified by stringent scientific study, experimentation through which it has been proven. Under these circumstances, has been found to be predictable, consistent, safe and effective.

However, conventional medicine mainly entails the use of chemical-based preparations. Though highly effective, they often produce undesired side-effects. Such medicine can become debilitating. Conventional management of pain, especially long-term, is very costly, and for patients lacking funds, treatment may be limited to relief of symptoms rather than cure.

Alternative Pain Management Medicine

Depending on which treatments are sought, alternative therapies for pain can complement conventional therapy, minimizing the use of harsh medications and offering cost-effective health care, especially in the long-term. With all the alternative health solutions available today, there is an alternative pain management therapy for virtually every case.

Though steadily gaining in popularity, alternative health is controversial. Where an alternative pain management therapy is deemed harmless, it may be ineffective, inconsistent or simply not provable by experimentation. Another alternative pain management therapy may have been proven by science to be effective but harmful. Others may be indeed highly effective but have not yet been subjected to scientific evaluation.

Alternative Medicine and the Media

Mostly attributed to the kind of social conditioning we receive (mass media, science, etc) when it comes to controlling pain, most choose conventional medicine over alternative health.

While it is always a good idea to consult a qualified physician first, conventional medicine and therapies, including those for pain, do have drawbacks.

Alternative health has been indiscriminately and unfairly given a bad name simply because science has never been its main objective. Some alternative health techniques simply have not yet been subjected to scientific study or experimentation. For this reason, you should ask your doctor about alternative management for your pain before seeking such treatment and be cleared first by your regular physician to be sure there are no serious underlying conditions or other detrimental health issues.

Today, more than ever, doctors and hospitals refer patients to pain management medicine within alternative health systems. Some even have in-house alternative health options they consider complimentary to traditional pain management therapy. An excellent example of such a referral would be a well-known alternative to regular chemical-based pain relief – clinical hypnosis or hypnotherapy – an alternative health modality that has received its share of misconception amongst the masses due to the entertainment industry and the media.

Daniel Euergetes is working hard to helping you rise above mediocrity and reach more satisfactory and more fulfilling planes in living. One of the ways this is done is through education and appropriate resources.

For the health arena, Daniel invites you to check out your alternatives by visiting http://alternativehealthsolutionsmd.com. Here you will find vast resources and answers to your questions about your health options.

Get your FREE copy of “Your Health Alternatives” report by paying us a visit!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Euergetes

http://EzineArticles.com/?Alternative-Health-and-Pain-Management-Medicine&id=5052669

Categories
health self-help

About Alternative Health

About Alternative Health

Author: Kalynn Amadio

Alternative health practices are gaining popularity simply because they work. Conventional health care treats diseases that have already struck, alternative health care seeks to create and maintain the best health while stopping disease and physical ailments before they begin. Old fashioned methods of keeping healthy are worth another look. That is why alternative health regimens are becoming popular again. The most coveted benefit of alternative health methods is the holistic approach taken by practitioners. The idea that the mind body and spirit work together to maintain wellness.

Health

As large as the health care industry is, alternative health methods are the fastest growing piece of the health care pie. This may be because alternative health offers additional benefits like increased self-awareness, inner peace, a connected feeling with ones body, leading to increased mental and physical health. To realize the types of alternative health therapies currently gaining favor, see Alternatively-Healthier.com. If you feel smothered by the lack of choice of your conventional health care practice, look at comparable alternative health measures that can elevate your general wellbeing and feed the mind and soul.

Body

Do you know what your body needs? People seek out alternative health care practitioners because they tend to treat the whole body including the mind and spirit. Chiropractic care is a type of alternative health care or alternative medicine that specifically focuses on the body’s skeletal structure. This structure is not just bones but nerves and muscles and their associated functionality.

The primary concept of Chiropractic is that the misalignment of the spine (subluxations) is the cause of many disorders or illnesses in our body. Chiropractic treatment primarily involves the use of hands to manipulate and adjust the structure of our body and it does not make use of any surgery or operation in treating spinal and muscular related ailments. More importantly, patients who take the natural approach believe that they are more in control of their health and body.

Holistic

When you consider that scientific evidence has indicated that more than 90% of cancers are environmentally induced, and that about 80% of health problems are either created or negatively affected by stress, it starts to make sense to look at health in a holistic way. Alternative health practitioners tend to emphasize a holistic approach to patient care.

Among the subject matter in these holistic medicine programs are in-depth studies in anatomy and physiology, pathology and disease, detoxification methods, energy healing, herbal medicine (both Eastern and Western modalities), homeopathy, orthomolecular nutrition/holistic nutrition, flower essences and remedies, holistic counseling, iridology, and other natural medicine. There are also courses in holistic medicine that are both degreed and non-degreed.

There are many natural medicine schools that give basic workshops and seminars in holistic practices for the public at large. Sometimes, you can find a beginner’s look into self-massage, homemade herbal remedies, natural vitamins and supplements, reflexology and more.

Alternative health practice looks at how the Mind-Body-Spirit relates to its external surroundings. Alternative health may include taking vitamin supplements, doing yoga and eating organic vegetables, but more importantly it is about creating health while obstructing disease before it begins.

The increased popularity of alternative health is a bonus to chiropractic medicine as an inclusive part of regular health maintenance. The differences from technology to alternative medicine is a strength in our world. We are responsible for our health and it is good to remember that there is always a choice in medical care. Alternative health continues to grow as we seek holistic solutions to our health complaints so we may hold on to a better quality of life for more years than previously thought possible.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/alternative-medicine-articles/about-alternative-health-505278.html

About the Author

Kalynn Amadio is a 3rd dan black belt and practitioner of Alternative Health. Leave your doubt at the door and enter her portal for alternative
health information. Discover important insight to herbal
remedies that treat the body as a whole, instead of one
individual complaint.

Categories
Happiness health self-help

Mental Health Maintenance Is Made Simple

Mental Health Maintenance Is Made Simple

By Cliff Kuhn, M.D.

Your mental health is often drastically improved when you use the techniques Dr. Kuhn teaches in this article. When you are able to experience this improvement, your relationships blossom, career paths open, and people find you attractive and accessible. You deserve to have fun and joy in your life – and Cliff Kuhn, M.D. will help you do that.

In the classic Frank Capra film, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey’s mental health is overwhelmed by the difficulties of his life and he wishes he’d never been born. George’s guardian angel grants his wish and takes him to a grim reality as it would’ve been without him. George feels nothing when he reaches into his coat pocket to retrieve the flower his daughter, Zuzu, placed there – and that’s when George knows that his wish has come true…he’s never been born.

Wishing she had never been born, Roberta became my patient, seeking desperately to improve her mental health. Like the fictional George Bailey character, Roberta’s depression and anxiety had grown so strong as to threaten her ability to lead any semblance of a normal life. Fortunately for Roberta, she soon discovered exactly why the natural medicine of humor is one of the most powerful adjunctive treatments for improving mental health, because humor literally pours water on the fire of depression and anxiety.

Roberta is not alone. As many as 35% of all Americans suffer from depression and anxiety, the twins that make mental health elusive for millions. Your depression and anxiety is exacerbated by your seriousness – taking yourself too seriously. As we move into adulthood, we unfortunately buy into the notion that responsible and productive people must be “serious.” As we make the biggest mistake of our lives and relegate our humor nature and fun to recreational activities (if we experience fun at all), we doom ourselves to all the symptoms of the corresponding seriousness that fills the void – declining health, rising stress, increased pain, lessened energy, impaired creativity, and more.

The good news for your mental health, however, is that we know how to shrink your deadly seriousness to practically nothing and reduce almost completely the sway it holds over your health, vitality, wellness, and zest. The natural medicine of humor is an incredibly powerful resource that you already possess; you’ve only forgotten how to use it to maximum effectiveness. You will soon discover that, while not a panacea, the natural medicine of humor is a tremendous tonic for depression or anxiety and will also supercharge other treatments because it is an amazing adjunctive medicine too!

I have distilled the natural medicine of humor, through my years of medical practice, into an amazing prescription I call The Fun Factor. Based on what I learned over twenty years ago from a terminally ill fifteen-year-old patient, I created a unique set of principles I call the Fun Commandments, then forged these Commandments into my Fun Factor prescription and have been prescribing The Fun Factor with great success for years. This report will show you how to use just three of my Fun Commandments to turn your mental health around, and gain new joy, pleasure, and appreciation from your life!

Improve Your Mental Health Using My Fun Factor Prescription

Step One: Always Go the Extra Smile

The first Fun Commandment I recommend for improved mental health is: Always Go the Extra Smile. This Commandment is doubly helpfully for depression and anxiety because not only does it provide measurable emotional and physical relief, but it also is completely under your control – regardless of your circumstances. Because smiling remains totally under your control, it can be your greatest resource for using humor’s natural medicine to accelerate your mental health.

Smiling produces measurable physical benefits you can experience immediately: your stress decreases, your immunity improves, your pain and frustration tolerances increase, and your creativity soars. And guess what? You experience all these benefits even if your smile is “fake.” That’s right…forcing a smile onto your face perks up your immune system and lightens your mood just as readily as a genuine smile. Fake a smile and you’ll soon feel well enough to wear a real one!

This is great news for your proactive stance on sustainable mental health. You have an amazing amount of pre-emptive control over your mood – you can, literally, choose more energy and happiness. The key for your use of this Fun Commandment in enhancing your mental health is to start practicing right now, so that smiling becomes an entrenched, habitual method of accessing the natural medicine of humor. If you wait to smile until your mental health has taken a turn for the worse, and depression or anxiety has taken hold of you, it will not be as effective.

Step Two: Act and Interact

Smiling leads us right into the second Fun Commandment you’ll find instrumental in maintaining your mental health: Act and Interact. Humor’s natural medicine works best when we are sharing ourselves and this Commandment will teach you how to capitalize on the control you’ve taken over your physiology and mood by smiling. Acting and interacting is now easier for you to do because you’re smiling more. Not only is your mood improved, but your smile is also a pleasant invitation to other people.

My suggestion is that you solidify the power of this Commandment by setting a reasonable goal regarding the number of people you will interact with each day. These social interactions are great for your mental health, forcing you to exchange information and ideas with another person. Combined with your commitment to smiling, your interactions should be pleasant, because your heightened energy, lessened pain, and lowered stress levels are very attractive to others.

Beyond keeping you out of isolation, there is another reason why acting and interacting with the people you encounter fosters improved mental health. It allows you to avoid spiritual “flat tires.” Spiritual flat tires occur when you sidestep, or avoid, an interaction that is about to happen naturally – you duck into an office to avoid encountering someone in a hallway or you don’t answer the phone because you don’t want to talk to the person calling. This type of avoidance drains and deletes your reservoir of powerful natural energy and siphons your mental health reserves.

Have you ever noticed that it usually takes you twice as much mental and physical energy to avoid doing a job than you would have expended just doing it? It also takes twice the energy to avoid acting and interacting with the people who cross your path because you are, in effect, saying, “I’m going to correct the mistake that nature made by putting this person in my path and I’m going to correct it by being mentally and spiritually negligent.” Mental and spiritual negligence have the same effect as physical negligence (isn’t it strange how you get tired if you don’t exercise?). If your mental health can afford to allow this much energy to be drained, then you have a much bigger reservoir than I!

But spiritual flat tires do more than drain our energy, they are detrimental in at least two additional ways:

We miss out on an interaction with a teacher. If nature didn’t have a lesson for you, that person you just avoided would not have been placed in your path. You say that the person you just avoided was a negative influence or would’ve wasted your time? I know we have legitimate schedules to keep, but if I am avoiding people based on my prejudgment of them, I’m cutting myself off from my greatest teachers – those very same people.

We all learn tolerance from the intolerant, patience from the impatient, temperance from the intemperate, gentleness from the ruffian, etc. I am supremely grateful for those teachers and the lessons they give me.

We create a small, nagging spiritual void of dishonesty, the kind of dishonesty that keeps us from laying our heads down with complete peace of mind each night. Our spiritual flat tire is caused by the pothole our avoidance created; it is a natural consequence, or symptom, of our spiritual dishonesty. These consequences clutter our lives with mental and emotional baggage that further drains us of our energy and vitality.

Step Three: Celebrate Everything

The third Fun Commandment which will help you use the natural medicine of humor to charge up your mental health is: Celebrate Everything. Celebrating everything may sound like a monumental task to someone who’s mental health isn’t up to par, but you will find this part of my doctor’s orders much easier to fulfill once you start practicing my first two Commandments. In fact, celebrating everything is more than a maintenance step providing sustainable mental health. It will also become your lifestyle, the more you practice it, because you will enjoy the results so much.

How do you celebrate everything and how will this keep your mental health on the upswing? The epitome of this Commandment is found in the old joke about the boy who wanted a pony for his birthday. Instead, he found a room full of manure waiting for him. But he dove right into the dung, gleefully exclaiming, “With all this manure, there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

Laugh as we might, we’re quick to remember that, as adults, we would never allow ourselves such “naive” enthusiasm. Why not? Do you realize what is behind such a “grown up,” “mature” decision? Your deadly seriousness (taking yourself too seriously) encourages the attitude that a mature adult should not let herself be so optimistic and thus mental health is jeopardized.

We could do more than chuckle at this birthday boy’s unabashed optimism – we should emulate it! When was the last time you encountered an unexpected pile of manure in your life? You had absolutely no control over the mess, right? But you had absolute control over your reaction to it and this is the key to using celebration to keep your mental health improved!

When you celebrate everything, the natural medicine of humor creates spiritual, emotional, and mental health like nothing you’ve felt before. You will find that your fears become much less controlling when you are celebrating everything because it no longer matters so much how things turn out. In fact, you are literally ready for anything because you are prepared to find the blessing in whatever happens.

My daughter-in-law, for example, broke her back last year. My son, who is often my model for the embodiment of my Fun Commandments, can tick off a laundry list of blessings his family has received as a direct result of his wife’s “tragedy.” Not that his mental health hasn’t been challenged, but faced with the choice of depression and anxiety over an event he couldn’t control versus finding the blessings waiting for him, he has chosen the latter.

The choice to celebrate everything is not a panacea; my son’s choice did not change the reality of his wife’s injury. What did change, however, was his ability to respond to the injury and, thus, keep his mental health on an even keel. Celebrating everything changes our lives because it allows us to positively control the only things we have control over – our actions, ideas, and attitudes.

There you have it. Start by going the extra smile, use your newfound smiling energy and vitality to act and interact with people, and celebrate everything to maintain your positive momentum. Say good-bye to imprisonment from depression and anxiety and welcome to your new world of improved mental health!

Start Using The Fun Factor to Improve Your Mental Health…Right Now

Here are some simple, easy steps you can take right now to turbo-charge your mental health.

Subscribe to my Fun Times newsletter. The Fun Times is all about using your natural power of humor to increase the quality of your life – including your mental health. The Fun Times is 100% free, and is delivered instantly, every week, to your email inbox. If you sign up now, I’ll also throw in a copy of my “Stop Your Seriousness” Ecourse and my book, Ten Ways You Can Be Happier…Right Now! which will show you how you can use my Fun Factor prescription in your life to increase your mental health!

Check out The Fun Factor. This prescription has changed so many lives for the better – it would be a shame if you passed it up. Check it out here if you’re sick of wishing for mental health and want to finally achieve your greatest mental health!

My patient Roberta, by the way, learned to use these three Fun Commandments – and the rest of my Fun Factor prescription. She has enjoyed the same job for three years now and was recently engaged to be married. Roberta occasionally has setbacks, as most people suffering from depression or anxiety do. But, her mental health has never been stronger as she continues to apply The Fun Factor to her life.

In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is so shocked by the grim vision of a world without him that he decides he wants to live again and begs to return. He knows he is back when he finds Zuzu’s flower petals in his coat pocket again.

Let this article be like finding Zuzu’s petals. Move forward today with a new, positive outlook on your improved mental health by using my Fun Factor prescription.

Clifford Kuhn, M.D., America’s Laugh Doctor, teaches people and organizations to be more healthy and successful through the use of fun and humor. A psychiatrist, and the former associate chairperson of the University of Louisville’s renowned Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Kuhn now dispenses his prescription for turbo-charging your health, success, and vitality from http://www.natural-humor-medicine.com/EZA3 On his website you will find tons of fun, free ways for you to maximize your sense of humor, and enjoy a life others will envy.

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Categories
Happiness health self-help

Taking Control of Your Health & Well-Being

Taking Control of Your Health & Well-Being

By Georgianna Donadio, D.C., M.Sc., Ph.D.

Do you ever wonder why, in spite of all your good intentions, you just cannot seem to take control over your health and wellness the way you really want to? The answer to that question can be found in the words of Albert Einstein, who reminded us “you cannot correct a problem with the same thinking that created it”. In other words, you cannot change old behaviors without new information.

The Institute of Medicine recently published a study that indicates ninety million Americans are “health illiterate”, which means we do not know how to interpret or use health information to control or improve our health, or prevent chronic disease. Data compiled previously identified, “lack of information as the number one root cause of death”. Understanding that there exists a cause and effect relationship between what we know and how we behave, we need a model of integrating this important information to change the behaviors that lead to chronic disease. According to a 7-year, 1996, Harvard Medical School study, approximately 70% of all cancers are preventable through lifestyle changes. Furthermore, our diseases and conditions are primarily a result of stress, food, environment, attitude, emotions or beliefs that keep us in behaviors that lead to illness. Which invites the question, are we consciously choosing to be unhealthy, or do we just not understand sufficiently the relationship between what we think, how we behave, what we put into our bodies and how we keep ourselves well or make ourselves sick?

In a world exploding with health information, especially on the internet, we are caught in the dilemma of having abundant amounts of information, without a context through which we can understand and utilize this information in a way that is appropriate for our own unique personal health needs. There is, however, good news – making its way into the mainstream of health care is an integrated model of health information and education that provides a “whole picture of health” perspective, allowing each of us to discern and create our own unique approach to taking charge of our health and well-being. Whole Health Education, developed over the past 28 years, in cooperation with Boston physicians, nurses and educators, is an approach to understanding the cause and effect our behaviors and choices have on our state of health. Demystifying the five major factors that influence how sick or well we become, Whole Health Education provides a perspective on human anatomy and physiology, bio-chemistry, psycho-social, environmental and spiritual aspects which allows for an authentic understanding of what we need know to resolve chronic health problems or to stay healthy. Integrating evidence-based information with the wisdom of various spiritual teachings and a whole-person overview of behavioral options, Whole Health Education offers each of us a tool for personal health management by providing personalized health information that explains the physical, emotional, nutritional, environmental and spiritual aspects of a health concern.

For example, Mature Onset Diabetes affects approximately 18.2 million Americans and is the leading health concern in our culture today. As all chronic conditions are, Mature Onset Diabetes is a multi-dimensional disease state and the unique Whole Health perspective, can facilitate the restoration of health for those with chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Physical/Structural

What happens on a physical and structural level with Mature Onset Diabetes? The specialized beta cells of the pancreas, which produce insulin, become incapable of producing adequate amounts of the critically necessary secretion. This happens over a period of years and can begin in our bodies, over time, by eating large amounts of insulin-provoking foods. These insulin provocateurs, which are sugars and starches in the form of complex carbohydrates, require the pancreas to produce more insulin so that the sugars can be carried over the cell membranes to all parts of the body. Serious disturbances occur when we do not have enough insulin to carry the sugar over the cell membranes. Insulin hooks onto the sugar molecule and acts like a lock and key mechanism to bring that sugar into the cell which is then used in the energy cycle of cell metabolism. The nervous system, brain and the lungs cannot function without the proper metabolism of sugars.

Emotional/Social

Just as diabetes is a lack of nourishment on a chemical/nutritional level, so is it a lack of emotional nourishment on an emotional/mental level. It relates to the “feel good” nourishment component of your body. What do we know about carbohydrates and serotonin? Carbohydrates provoke the production of serotonin. Serotonin is a neuro-transmitter that produces a feeling of well-being. There is a direct relationship between what our body is doing chemically and how we feel emotionally. When we crave or build our diet around carbohydrates, this can be a way of “self-medicating” our emotional needs by eating carbohydrates to provoke insulin production.

Sugar problems can affect us emotionally. Let’s say you have a pancreas that is not working properly. What can happen somatic/psychically from the pancreas to the brain? If we are feeling the ups and downs of hypoglycemia, and its biochemical/neurological symptoms, it may undermine our sense of security, self esteem, and produce anxiety and fear.

What is the emotional component of diabetes and the pancreas? Often, it can be a poor sense of self-esteem and a fear of not being “good enough” or not belonging. These feelings, medicated by the serotonin foods, can lead us to not look deeply enough into what is causing our health concerns and allow the feeling/feeding cycle to continue.

Chemical/Nutritional

On the nutritional side, the treatment for people with Mature Onset Diabetes is to decrease the stress on the pancreas by making changes in their diet — decrease starches and sugars and decrease calories. Eat less, eat right. What kind of a diet would be best for preventing Mature Onset Diabetes? Vegetables, vegetables, and vegetables combined with lean proteins such as fish, chicken, water, a little fruit and a little fat. In a hypoglycemic situation, it is wise not to eat grain or sugar, but sprouted grain bread, and other substitutes can be healthy and satisfying.

Because hormones are chemicals, diabetes and hypoglycemia are both hormonal-based problems. What we know about the hormone system is that it works as a balanced interdependent system. Diabetes is an endocrine-related, systemic problem. With a systemic problem like diabetes, you have a body system problem–you do not just have a condition by itself. It is known that the pancreas is related, through hormone interaction, to the adrenals, and the adrenals are in turn related to the reproductive system. It is known that these glands are related through hormone interactions to the pituitary and the pituitary is related to the thyroid gland, the thyroid is related to the thymus, and the thymus is related to the immune system.

Environmental/Internal & External

The environment that we work in, live in, walk through, live near — how does that environment have an impact on the way that we feel and the way we feel about ourselves?

How do we learn to trust in the order of the universe? By behaviors that come from trusting the order inside ourselves. We do this by setting boundaries — codes of conduct of how we are going to behave, eat, work exercise and live. If we don’t violate our own boundaries, we are less likely to let anybody else violate our boundaries. We have to start with ourselves. Our experience of victimization can begin with our own self-victimizing behavior.

Spiritual/World View

A Hindu Vendata truth is that “the whole world is one family”. It is said that there is only one disease, the disease of separateness, separating oneself from the awareness that we are one living organism. Competition creates isolation. The spiritual challenge presented by hypoglycemia and diabetes appears to be involved with over- or under-valuing the self: judgment of self and then others. Where are we in the process of getting to the truth that we are all equally important? The drama created by a one-up or one-down dynamic that we may allow to be part of our experience can lead to psychophysiology and the behavioral issues which can contribute to and create Mature Onset Diabetes.

Whole Health Education can transform our experience of taking care of ourselves. It can provide an understanding of our health concerns and conditions from this multi-dimensional perspective that makes sense in a way we can utilize the information directly and in a meaningful way. In addition, having the information provided in a mindful, respectful way that invites each of us to discern what we know about our health and condition, how to choose to resolve the problem and what kind of care we choose to have, allows each of us to experience whole-person health care through whole health information. Then, WE become the center of our health and healing process, rather than the doctors or practitioners we go to for guidance.

Georgianna Donadio D.C., M.Sc., Ph.D., has conducted a private practice in Whole Person Care since 1976. She is the Founder and Director of The New England School of Whole Health Education, the pioneer of Whole Health Education and a provider of patient and healthcare professional education since 1977. For more information, visit http://www.wholehealtheducation.org [out] or call 1-888-354-HEAL (4325).

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