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health self-help

Four Ways to Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally

Four Ways to Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally
By Ula Berggren-Gillion

Since we hear so much about lowering our cholesterol, I think it’s important to put things in their proper perspective. Cholesterol is not a poison that has to be avoided at all times. It is found in all mammals and is an essential structural component of the cell membranes. In order to build and maintain cell membranes, your body requires cholesterol. However, high levels of cholesterol -in particular the bad cholesterol or LDL – may cause blockage of the arteries which increases your risk of heart disease and stroke. High levels of cholesterol are caused when there is more cholesterol in your body than is needed. This usually happens because of genetics, poor diet and lack of exercise. Your body must now find a way to get rid of the excess cholesterol. The extra cholesterol travels through the blood stream and may form plagues on the artery walls, which mean that the arteries become narrower and may even harden. In cases of complete blockage, a heart attack or stroke may be the result. The point is that we have to control our cholesterol intake in order to prevent the above from happening. The good news is that there are ways to do so without prescribed medication.

When you are diagnosed with high cholesterol, you may initially need to take prescription drugs to lower the cholesterol quickly. However, this does not necessarily mean that you are doomed to take medication for the rest of your life. There are ways to lower your cholesterol levels naturally and therefore also without the side-effects associated with prescription drugs. A balanced combination of a healthy diet and an effective exercise plan may be more beneficial to you than many medications.

What you can do to lower your cholesterol naturally:

Healthy Diet and Eating Habits

  • Lower your intake of meat, butter, full-cream milk and cheese to lower saturated fats in your diet. Although your body produces its own cholesterol, about 25% of your cholesterol comes from food intake. All animal fats are saturated fats, so you’ll find that meat, butter, full-cream milk and cheese are high in cholesterol-increasing fats. These fats increase the levels of the bad cholesterol in your body, namely LDL. On the other hand, consuming unsaturated fats decreases the bad cholesterol levels. Monounsaturated fats (which are good for you) are found in peanut butter, avocado, olive oil and canola oil
  • Include more fish in your diet to increase your intake of Omega 3 fatty acids. These have been shown to lower cholesterol and can be found in especially the oily fish varieties which are typically found in cold water. Examples of fish rich in Omega 3 are tuna, herring, trout, pink salmon, sardines and mackerel. Ensure that you do not add unhealthy fats when cooking the fish. Baking or grilling is the healthiest way to go. If eating fish is not your thing, you may use the supplements. It must be said, however, that eating fish is more effective in lowering the levels of LDL than taking supplements. Other food sources rich in Omega 3 are the green, leafy vegetables, certain nuts such as walnuts and almonds as well as soy products. It is important to note that the capacity of Omega 3 to lower cholesterol is enhanced when the intake of saturated fats are lowered. So, in essence, you have to let go of the bad thing to properly enjoy the benefits of the good thing.
  • Eat more fresh fruit and vegetables to add more soluble fibre to your diet. Soluble fibre binds itself to cholesterol-rich bile acids in the intestines and escorts them out of the body. Foods that contain cholesterol-lowering soluble fibre include fruits, vegetables, brown rice, oats and barley. Aim to eat daily servings of 5 fresh fruit and vegetables daily. Apples contain a specific soluble fibre called pectin which lowers cholesterol. Pectin has the added benefit of preventing overeating since it slows the digestive process. Include some garlic in your diet. It is rich in cholesterol lowering compounds. Should we be too busy to prepare proper meals, we are simply being too busy and besides that, a consistently unhealthy diet will ultimately catch up with us and then we will have to make time to fix all our health issues. Time invested in preparing proper meals is time wisely invested. Fast foods increase the levels of cholesterol in our body and have many other negative effects on our general health too.
  • Certain culinary herbs, such as parsley, have cholesterol-lowering compounds and add great taste to meals.
  • Drinks like fruit and vegetable juices, as well as green tea, have been shown to lower cholesterol.
  • Don’t snack mindlessly. Think about what you put into your mouth. We often just grab something to snack on, not because we are hungry, but simply because it was there for the taking. Giving some thought to what we eat, already takes us a long way in controlling our weight. Eating should be a conscious action. Which brings me to the next point:
  • Take time to enjoy your meal.

Please Note: When embarking on a new exercise plan (especially if you have been unfit before the time), please discuss your plans with your doctor.

Exercise

Scientific studies have shown that exercise decreases the bad cholesterol as it reverses the build up of cholesterol on the artery walls. Besides lowering the cholesterol, exercise also helps with weight loss, which is great since carrying extra weight increases cholesterol. Aerobic activity such as walking, cycling and running -any activity that gets your heart pumping, can lower the cholesterol levels. Exercises also stimulate the release of the feel-good hormones, endorphins which helps us to relax and thereby lower our stress levels.

Decrease Stress Levels

Life is stressful. We all know that from experience. We have also learnt that there will always be ample reason to stress, since a challenge isn’t something that comes our way once only. There will always be challenges. There are certain things we cannot change. We can go a long way in reducing our stress by focusing less on the things we can’t change and pour our energies into what we can change. There are many different stress-relieving techniques out there. Having a regular massage, practicing deep breathing, or just walking have been shown to significantly decrease stress levels. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to stress-relief. Take the time to find a way that works for you. Think of something you enjoy doing. That’s usually a good indicator of what will work to relief your stress levels.

Educate Yourself Concerning your Condition

Find out as much as you can about high levels of cholesterol and its effects on the body. In this way, you will empower yourself to take charge of your condition. Speak to your family doctor, dietitian, read books on the topic and visit websites. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. The more you know concerning the harmful effects of high cholesterol, the better you will be able to make beneficial lifestyle changes. And be sure to have regular medical check-ups.

For Some healthy recipe links and ideas on stress relief, click here

Ula is a freelance health and wellness article writer who has 17 years experience in the health industry and holds a bachelor’s degree in science. She lives near Cape Town, South Africa. She is a practicing physical therapist.
Subscribe to free weekly health tips on her website here: http://healthsolutionssa.com

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Categories
Continuous Professional Development Happiness hypnosis Personal Development self-help training

The Impact of Words & Psycho-Cybernetics

The prescription for charity is three fold: (1) try to develop a genuine appreciation for people by realizing the truth about them; they are children of God, unique personalities, creative beings. (2) Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person’s feelings, viewpoints, desires, and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel. A friend of mine kids his wife by telling her, whenever she asks him, “Do you love me?” “Yes, whenever I stop and think about it.” There is a lot of truth in this. We cannot feel anything about other people unless we “stop and think” about them. (3) Act as if other people are important and treat them accordingly.

Maxwell Maltz The New Psycho-Cybernetics (2002). The original Psycho-Cybernetics (of which this is a modernised update) was published in 1960

When I started my Clinical Hypnosis training way back in 1997 one of the books on the recommended reading list was Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics. Since it didn’t seem directly related to hypnosis, and had a slightly odd title, I never bought a copy. Every now and again, since that time I come across references to it and think, I really should read it. Then just a month or so ago it came to my attention again so I had a look on Amazon and finally got hold of a copy. The only thing is the copy I got hold of is not the original, it is The New Psycho-cybernetics which is the orginal re-worked a little to bring it up to date with modern technology and stories that relate better to the modern reader.

I must admit that by the end of the first chapter I was wondering why on earth I hadn’t got hold of a copy way back in 1997, as I could see the life-changing potential of Maxwell Maltz’s ideas.

Still, I’m enjoying it and I came across this ‘Prescription’ yesterday morning. It got me thinking about how I relate to other people and about how my clients relate to other people in their worlds. As I reflected on the quote above I felt quite a deep connection with the words and their meaning and promised myself to be more present with others.

I appreciate that the mention of God might put more people off now than it would in the ’60’s when it was written, but looking beyond the mere words the keys in the message here are appreciation – which is key to our well-being; awareness that to each of us our own personal viewpoint makes total sense – even if it is at odds with the sense of everyone else; and respect for self and others – without which life is extremely difficult and with tends to flow much more smoothly.

So perhaps you could be present with a stranger today: a checkout operator at the supermarket; a waiter; a teller; taxi driver; nurse; customer; the list is endless, but it takes just a few moments of wondering perhaps what their life is like, what kind of a day they are having, whether they are stressed or at peace. As soon as you become present with them in this way you will find that they not only warm to you (whether or not you speak) but also have their lives enriched.

Michael Hadfield


Categories
self-help

After the Affair – how to start to put your world back together

You don’t know what it is, something unusual happens in your day, a strange coincidence, or you just find yourself somehow being pulled…

…but you arrive home at a time when you would normally not be home, You feel a little odd, can’t quite put your finger on it but you know something is wrong. You close the front door quietly and hear a noise upstairs… burglars? No, you hear a woman’s giggle, you climb the stairs… push your bedroom door open… and your husband is in bed with another woman. YOUR BED. The bed that you sleep together and make love in.

Was it like that for you? Or did you discover the infidelity some other way?

What were the feelings? Betrayal, humiliation, anger, rage, embarrassment, sadness, desire for vengeance, sorrow, grief?

Was she younger than you? More attractive? Less attractive? Did you find it difficult to understand what he saw in her? Did you find it harder to understand what she saw in him? Did you question your own attractiveness? Did you question your ability to please him sexually? Did you ask what it was she would do for him that you wouldn’t? How could he do it in our home? How could he do it in our bed?

Do you feel violated? Is your home no longer the place it was? Do you beat yourself up for not realising sooner? Do you now see all the little signs that you chose to ignore?

Did you cry?

If you didn’t then that is your first task? Cry for what you have lost.

From this point on you have a choice – to repair the relationship, or to end the relationship. What a lot of people do is to pretend that everything is ok, they pretend to deal with and heal the rift. They do that because they are not honest enough with themselves to admit that they have a comfortable lifestyle they could not maintain on their own, so the infidelity is tolerated – ‘as long as it doesn’t happen again’, so a lifestyle is maintained and physical comfort is secured. And the blinkers firmly affixed to the head. They do that because they are too ashamed of what family and friends will think. It’s as if they, the innocent party, will be seen as the guilty one by others. It’s as if they think that everyone else will think ‘she mustn’t be any good in bed. Why else would he look elsewhere?’

It’s tough on your own.

It’s tough on your own if you see yourself as too old to succeed in another relationship or to attract another partner.

It’s tough on your own if you have no trust in the opposite sex because ‘they are all the same’.

The biggest problem with repairing the relationship is dealing with the betrayal and learning to trust again. Without trust there is no relationship. Don’t ever try to fool yourself that you can have a relationship with someone you do not trust. Without comfortable physical intimacy there is no relationship. Without love there is no relationship. Don’t ever try to fool yourself that you can have an intimate relationship without love. By intimate, I don’t mean sexual. By intimate I mean a sharing of thoughts, fears and desires, wishes and dreams, hopes and worries. But a sharing that is born out of a sense of knowing that your partner will not make fun of your dreams, or dismiss your worries as if they were naught.

Love – there’s the word at the back of all this.

How could he do this to me if he loves me?

The truth is he couldn’t. Love and betrayal are incompatible. Where there is betrayal and deceit there is no love. Love is an honouring of another. Love is a supporting and an encouraging of another. It is loving to say ‘I want to take a mistress. Do you have a problem with that?’, if part of the relationship agreement you have with your partner is that you are faithful to each other. You might not like hearing it, but love isn’t actually about bending over backwards to please someone because of their particular sensitivities. Love is more about your own integrity and being truthful to yourself and your ideals.

It is worthwhile, at this point, to explore exactly what you think loving someone means. And by explore I mean get out a pen and paper and write down what you think it means. If you are in the process of trying to repair a relationship, then your partner needs to do this too and then you need to swap and each see what the other thinks love is. By doing this you will each have insight into the mind of the other. However, it is important that neither one of you attempts to defend your words or ideas. It is important that neither of you criticises the thoughts of the other – either out loud or in the privacy of your own mind.

If there are points of agreement then there is a harmony that can be built upon. If not then make a choice to each explore, through reading inspirational books such as Marianne Williamson’s Return to Love, the idea about what exactly love is, or make a choice to wish each other well and go your separate ways.

Stay or go?

Attempt to repair the damage, or start a new life alone?

One of the difficulties of this time is the challenge of being able to think clearly. As soon as thoughts return to the state of the relationship, the emotions kick in and clarity falls by the wayside.

There is of course the past – the good times, the memories, the gifts, the children, the mementoes, the accumulations of the passage through time of two people and all they collect together. Is it worth throwing THAT all away for a moment, or a year, or two, of madness and indiscretion. After all he’s weak-minded, the temptation was there, she threw herself at him… what else could you expect to happen.

And there’s the future – the growing old together, the holidays and adventures and romance still imagined… the kids growing up, the grandchildren… why sacrifice all of those dreams, after all he says he’s sorry and it won’t happen again?

And there’s the present – the shame, having to endure those sympathetic looks, the sudden silences when you walk into a room, going shopping with the whole world knowing you failed to keep your man.

None of that matters.

That doesn’t mean that those things aren’t important to you. If something is important to you then it is important. But just because something is important doesn’t mean it matters. What matters is you feeling okay about yourself and your world as soon as possible.

You have choices to make and you don’t know what to do for the best.

You’ve been betrayed and you want to believe it won’t happen again but 5 or 10 years ago you’d have heard it would never happen ever.

The mistake is to believe that you can make a wrong decision.

You can make decisions that don’t bring about what you want. After all you did make a choice to enter into a long-term agreement with your partner wanting long-term happiness together – didn’t you?

So you make choices based on the idea that the choice will bring you what you want. The difficulty here is that you haven’t decided what you want. So that’s a priority here. You have to decide what you want. One of the difficulties that some women encounter is knowing what they want. This is difficult because many many women spend their lives giving themselves away. They give themselves body and soul to their partners, they give themselves to their children, they end up responsible for the care of elderly parents and maybe other aging, isolated relatives, but they very rarely give as much care to themselves as they do to others. This is wonderful. There is nothing nicer than having someone care for you in a loving way when you need someone to do that. But what happens in the mind of someone who is always looking after the needs of others is that they neglect themselves. I’m not talking here of appearance, or nutrition, I’m talking about feeling as if life is fulfilling; feeling important; feeling as if you are valued and appreciated.

Because of this the decision as to what exactly you do want, right now, at this very difficult moment in your life, can seem beyond your ability to make. The very act of thinking about you and your needs immediately brings on associated thoughts of how this choice will affect the children, the parents, the friends, the partner and so on. And there is this huge and very loving desire to minimise the hurt to anyone else, even if that means sacrificing yourself.

So your first choice is to decide whether or not you’re ok with continuing to sacrifice yourself and your needs and put others first. If you are ok with that then the problem is solved. Just do whatever your partner wants you to do. Do whatever it takes to minimise the impact on family members. If you totally and genuinely make this choice you will be okay because you have decided to have no needs and no desires and no wants and that will make your life very simple. If you make this choice because it avoids making any other then you will not be okay.

If you have made the choice not to sacrifice yourself any longer, and to live a life that feels fulfilling, then you are ready for the next step.

Please visit my website for more information on how I can help you to feel much better and be able to live your life the way you want to live it.

Michael Hadfield

Categories
hypnosis Personal Development self-help

Self-Hypnosis vs One-to-One Treatment

If you can do it yourself, why pay for expensive therapy? After all, with DIY jobs around the house you often end up with a better quality job than when you pay a so-called professional to do it for you.

Self-hypnosis is great for those times when you want to just re-program your automatic thinking and behavioural processes. The very act of spending time every day with you, caring for you, in a state of deep relaxation, is hugely beneficial. Using your imagination, in this state of deep relaxation, to set up an intention for your future and to plant messages in your subconscious mind without conscious interference is an excellent way to manufacture beneficial change in your life.

When you visit a skilled hypnotherapist you are with someone who is listening to you and caring for you. To have someone listen to your story, without judgement, is of itself hugely therapeutic. You are also with someone who notices details – what you talk about, what you don’t talk about; what your mood state is; and most importantly – a skilled therapist will notice and seek to address the real causes of problems.

Let me give you an example: say you have a problem with confidence.

The self-hypnosis route would perhaps have you repeating a mantra along the lines of “I am filled with confidence in all situations” or “I feel confident and find myself expressing my thoughts and ideas fearlessly in meetings and conversations”. Accompanied, maybe by a visualisation of you, in a situation where you have lacked confidence, behaving in a confident manner and feeling feelings of success and achievement.

A hypnotherapist would probably have you engaging in that sort of visualisation during your therapy anyway, so why bother paying all that money when you can get it for free if you DIY.

Well, for me at least, lack of confidence is not as simple as that. Lack of confidence is about fundamental belief in self, and it is this belief in self, or rather lack of belief in self that I would seek to correct using hypnotherapy. Lack of belief in self is the result of early programming by those adults who had the greatest impact on our development as a young mind. So the problem is quite deep rooted and consequently needs gentle, loving guidance to discover how this lack of belief in self came to be present. In other words it is important to teach, and experience, the huge difference between something you believe about you and something that is true about you. This doesn’t happen with self-hypnosis. So if your lack of confidence is the result of one highly critical parent always finding fault, then therapy would seek to correct this; if it is the result of over protective parents who were excessively fearful of you taking risks – like climbing trees, or going out alone – then therapy has a different problem to solve. There are other reasons why an individual might lack confidence – early classroom experiences with a teacher who doesn’t love children or the job, or a highly sensitive physiology… The problem with self-therapy is the lack of experience at understanding self, and correcting the real problem.

Another area where an experienced therapist is beneficial is in the area of challenge. We are constantly making up ideas about our world that simply aren’t true. More than one person in my consulting room has considered themselves a total failure. They’ve never succeeded at anything and they never will. If you believe that you believe it and because you believe it you will not seek to change it because no one seeks to change what they see as a truth. But if you believe that you always fail at everything you do, doing self-hypnosis to achieve success isn’t addressing the fundamental belief that is in error. It’s like using self-hypnosis to win the lottery and never bothering to buy a ticket.

However, as soon as anyone tells me they are a total failure, or they never succeed at anything, I have to challenge it. And my challenge is always successful and I can always point out several occasions in anyone’s life when they have been successful. They just never see it because their erroneous belief about themselves blinds them to their successes. What I also do is challenge the meaning of success to them. Usually it’s lots of money, promotions, material possessions, good relationships, and so on. They fail to see small successes, like still being alive after x number of years, like having raised beautiful children, like passing a driving test, like honouring others by being punctual, like gifts to charity, like small acts of kindness to strangers… there are successes in everyone’s life. The real problem with feelings of failure in life is an inability to see, to honour, and to appreciate the small successes. Just allowing someone to look at themselves and their life from a different perspective is like lifting a huge burden off their back, and that’s even before the hypnosis starts and is used then to reinforce these new learnings.

So your friendly neighbourhood hypnotherapist is actually providing you with something more than you can do for yourself. The best course of action is to have a consultation or two with a hypnotherapist in order to establish what the real problem is and to receive guidance and training in how to use self-hypnosis most effectively. That way you get the best of both worlds.

Self-hypnosis is highly beneficial and I would encourage you to try it out, just recognise that it has limitations.

Michael J Hadfield D.Hyp., MBSCH

Categories
hypnosis

Hypnosis – Quick fix or permanent change

Look, I want to have loads and loads of money, but I don’t want to do any work in order to have it. Have you any suggestions? Seriously, apart from buying a lottery ticket – do you have any suggestions? I want to laze around all day and just have money arrive in my bank account, and not just little bits of money – loads and loads of it, and I want it guaranteed for life. Not only that but I want it right now, and I’m only prepared to pay you £40 for you to give that to me, and even that seems a little steep, so if you could give it for free that’d be great. I don’t want to hear you saying that you might be able to help me, or that I might be able to learn something that might take a couple of months, I need it and I need it now.

I hope you are laughing.

I hope you are at least smiling.

Sounds a bit like a child doesn’t it?

If you change money, to a cure for anxiety, or stress, or phobia, or smoking, or losing weight, or nail biting, or marital problems, or excessive drinking, or blushing, or headaches, or pain, or a whole host of other physical and psychological problems… then what you have in the opening paragraph is what most people expect from hypnosis.

Many don’t want to be responsible for their own health, and don’t want to put any personal effort (other than turning up for one, or at most two, appointments) into getting better and although a hypnotherapist is always the last resort, they expect miracles from him or her that they wouldn’t dream of expecting from a psychologist, psychiatrist or medical doctor.

Hypnosis needs the full involvement of the patient in order for results to be achieved. It needs a commitment to stick with treatment until the problem is resolved or it is quite clear that the treatment is having no further impact on the problem. Sometimes we need our problems, but that’s another article. And when we need our problems we are quite often strongly resistant to having someone help us to resolve them – or even to allow someone sufficient access to our minds to discover what exactly the reason is.

Another reason for the unreasonable expectations people have of hypnosis and hypnotherapists is that hypnosis is seen as some sort of general anaesthetic. I’ve lost track of the number of people (even doctors) who expect me to ‘put them out’, and are disappointed when that doesn’t happen. But because they see hypnosis as a general anaesthetic they expect some sort of ‘mental operation’ to take place while they are ‘out’ and to be ‘fixed’ when they ‘come round’, as if their life-long anxiety pattern, or over-eating habit was some appendix that could be whipped out, the hole sewn up and the pain gone.

These problems can be helped, eased, or restored to what might be considered normal, using hypnosis. Sometimes it’s straightforward, sometimes it takes effort and determination to resolve the issues that are reducing quality of life. I remember in my early days as a hypnotherapist, at the end of a course of treatment a patient said to me that what I had given her was like coming down on Christmas morning and opening a gift to find in it what she most desired in the world, it was like I’d given her her life back.

That’s the potential of hypnosis.
Michael Hadfield D.Hyp., MBSCH

Categories
Manifestation Personal Development self-help

Wishful Thinking – the Fulfilment of Desire

If there were such things as fairy godmothers and wishes that were granted magically, then maybe, just maybe, life would be different. So pretend for a minute or two that you live in a world of wishes and fairies and you have been told that you can have one wish granted – but this wish has conditions.

Your wish has to be for a change in what you do for a living. You will be given three times the income you have now (index-linked naturally), you will be given any money you need to spend in order for your new livelihood to be effective for you, so your new salary will not be reduced by business-related expenses. You cannot fail in whatever you choose to do. Any skills or knowledge you require will be yours for the asking. Any fears or anxieties – such as public speaking, or flying – will disappear. Everything in fact will be just as you wish it to be.

So what would you choose to do?

This wish is only valid for 24 hours.

I have some questions for you and if you want to gain the maximum benefit from this game it would be a good idea to write down the answers to these questions (it will only take a minute).

1. Would you take up this offer, or would you let it expire?

2. What is it that you do right now for a living?

3. What would you choose to do?

4. What stops you from doing that right now?

Now I hope you’ve answered the questions before continuing to read.

Unfortunately, it seems, we don’t live in a world of fairies and wishes. But it’s nice to dream, it’s nice to have a rich fantasy world. Did you know that the inventor of the automatic sewing machine, Elias Howe, couldn’t find a way to make a machine sew until he had a dream about being attacked by savages with spears with holes in the tip? When he awoke from this dream he realised that this was what would make his ‘dream’ work and he put the hole for the thread in the tip of the needle rather than the other end where it usually was.

He wanted to do something that others said was impossible. He wanted to do something that he couldn’t find a way to do. But his desire didn’t accept the impossibility and it communicated a solution that consciously he couldn’t see.

His solution magically arrived because he was totally focused on what he desired to achieve.

If we focus our Power things happen magically.

It’s nice to let your mind wander about all the wonderful things, and people, you’d like to have in your life, the home you desire, the family, the friends, the lover… but there’s something a little scary about fantasising and then have that fantasy realised within hours of imagining it.

Our power scares us.

Marianne Williamson, author of Return to Love, says ” Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It’s our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

Because our Power scares us we keep it at arms length. We defend ourselves against having exactly what we want. And we do it to keep ourselves safe, and we do it to make sure other people continue to like us.

How do you feel about people who have everything they want in life and whenever they want anything new it just sort of appears? If you aren’t aware of anyone who has a life like that, seriously imagine it, then look at your life and see if you’re ok, or you feel some emotional reaction like jealousy, or dislike, or sadness, or even a feeling that good fortune is for others, but not for you.

You aren’t doing what fulfils you because you don’t believe you deserve it. And I don’t mean believe it at a superficial level, I mean believe it deep down right to the very bottom of your subconscious experience of your world. Someone somewhere will have caused you to believe that you don’t deserve, or that it isn’t ok, to have whatever your heart desires. You may have been taught that life is tough, not easy. You may have been taught that money doesn’t grow on trees. You may have been taught that to have everything you want makes you greedy or selfish or unlovable.

None of that is true.

It’s time to recognise the untruths you were taught about you and your world for what they are – the mistaken perceptions of those who were fearful of coming face to face with their own beauty; that is, the beauty of one who was born to love and to enjoy life and to feel fulfilled.

That person was YOU.

And if YOU would like things to be different then find out how easy it is to make changes.

Michael Hadfield   D.Hyp., MBSCH

Categories
Stop Smoking

Stop Smoking – You Can Do It If Only You Believe You Can

The only problem with quitting smoking is that the smoker simply does not want to quit. Even though they may be suffering from breathlessness, cardio-vascular problems, threats of amputation, lungs filling up with fluid, cancers of a whole host of organs… they do not want to stop smoking. They don’t want the ill-health either. They want to smoke and be healthy.

Now if smoking a cigarette killed you within 24 hours, there wouldn’t be many takers, the tobacco industry would never have got off the ground, and Sir Walter Raleigh would have died before he got the chance to lose his head. If smoking killed you within a week, then the connection would have taken a little longer to make but you’d probably have to grow your own tobacco because no one else would be doing it.

Because it takes tobacco anything from twenty to fifty years to do the job; and because death isn’t instantaneous, and instead is long, slow, and painful; then smokers pretend ‘it won’t happen to me’ and the Tobacco Barons are laughing all the way to the bank.

So the real problem is that smokers pretend that smoking is good for them, ignore all evidence to the contrary, and believe that smoking is a pleasurable activity without which life wouldn’t be worth living anyway.

Beliefs are powerful. Even if they have no connection with reality. If you believe something then that thing is TRUE for you. It might not be true for anyone else, but it’s true for you. Smokers believe they are addicted. This is a myth propagated by those who have a vested interest in selling tobacco products: like cigarettes, and nicotine gums and patches. Smokers believe that smoking makes them feel good and that nothing else can do that.

If you have a belief that says ‘life isn’t worth living without this thing‘ then you have a belief that allows the thing to kill you.

The solution is to solve the real problem. Instead of giving up cigarettes, give up the belief that they are needed in order to make life worthwhile. Beliefs are not easy to give up, or change. The more important they are, the more resistant they are. If you have a belief that says I always need to have ten dollars in my pocket in order to feel safe and you put your hand in your pocket and pull out a twenty dollar bill, then you will feel okay. But if you put your hand in your pocket and find it contains only five dollars then you will feel some anxiety.

Change the belief to five dollars makes me feel safe, put your hand in your pocket and pull out five dollars and you feel okay. The important thing here is that nothing has changed in the physical world. All that has changed is your belief. Changing your belief can reduce anxiety levels.

So imagine a belief like ‘Cigarettes keep me safe, I must always have a packet with me’. Imagine having that belief and finding yourself without cigarettes!

Now imagine having a belief ‘cigarettes contain many poisons, I don’t want one near me’. Imagine having that belief and finding a packet of cigarettes in your pocket or bag.

The easiest way to change a belief without having to battle against the conscious resistance that says ‘but this is true, that’s why I believe it’ is to use hypnosis. Hypnosis causes shifts at the subconscious level and it feels almost as if you have just changed your mind about smoking

Michael Hadfield D. Hyp., MBSCH

Categories
Stop Smoking

Nicotine, Addiction & Stopping Smoking

Nicotine is an interesting substance. It is an alkaloid – this is a bitter tasting poison manufactured by plants and stored in their leaves and stems to stop them being eaten by animals. It is a friendly warning from the plant world to the animal world saying ‘don’t eat this it will make you ill’.

Humans are well known for living out of harmony with their natural environment.

I’ve yet to treat a smoker who isn’t surprised when I tell them that nicotine is a highly toxic poison. They don’t know that they are smoking something that is three times as toxic as arsenic and more lethal than strychnine. They are also surprised that nicotine is used as a pesticide and is so toxic that a few drops of the pure substance on the skin can be fatal. This is quite important. Nicotine does not have to be ingested to kill you.

A lethal dose can be quite easily absorbed via the skin.

But of course it is obvious that nicotine can be absorbed through the skin because otherwise nicotine patches would be a waste of time – wouldn’t they?

And of course there is that other favourite – the nicotine gum; so you can spend hours exercising your jaw muscles and get your poison absorbed through the lining of your mouth, throat and stomach.

The real problem is that smokers are treated like addicts who are so addicted that it is a complete waste of time even bothering to even attempt to wean them off the substance they are ‘addicted’ to. All that modern medical science can do for these poor addicts is to separate out the toxin from all the other nasty stuff in the tobacco leaf and give it to them in a pure form.

In its pure form it takes just 60mg of nicotine to turn a 150lb adult into a corpse.

And it does it very rapidly. So it seems like a really good idea to chew this stuff and stick it in close contact with your skin – doesn’t it?

I get smokers coming to see me for help in quitting. A significant number have tried patches or gum. Quite often they tell me they ended up using the gum, or the patches, and smoking as well. That was when they realised they needed some real help if they were to succeed in stopping.

About 600 years ago the very best minds on this planet had no doubts at all that what we know as planet Earth was as flat as a pancake. They were mistaken. Those minds were just as intelligent as the minds we use today. We just have greater knowledge and more recorded history. About 500 years ago the very best minds on this planet thought the sun revolved around the Earth. They were mistaken too.

Some of the very best minds on the planet today believe that nicotine is addictive in the same way that heroine is addictive.

They are mistaken.

Most cigarettes are smoked in response to environmental stimuli e,g, a glass of beer, a cup of coffee, food (afterwards, not during), driving, getting off an aeroplane, telephone calls, sex (afterwards, not during), commercial breaks…

This is not an addiction it is training.

Hypnosis interferes with the automatic (i.e. without thought) responses that trigger lighting up.

Hypnosis makes giving up easier than it can be otherwise.

Stop Smoking at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home
Stop Smoking at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home

Michael Hadfield D.Hyp., MBSCH

Categories
psychoneuroimmunology self-help

I Feel Lousy – Isn’t that Great!

Do you ever listen to other people’s conversations? I mean when you’re standing at a bus stop, or having a drink in a café after a hard morning’s shopping. You know, those people whose voices are just a little too loud and you can’t really help listening; after all you are on your own, and other people’s lives are quite interesting.

What do they talk about? Their problems I’ll bet, with health issues being high on the list. And have you ever noticed how it’s a bit like a game of ping pong. One party will bat a little titbit “my back’s been playing up something awful”, and the other will respond with something ‘better’ and before you know where you are, you know all about all the cancers, and the hip operations, and the chronic chest infections, that their family and friends have had in the past ten years.

Sound familiar?

So illness seems important. If it isn’t, why do we spend so much time talking about it?

Have you ever noticed how you suffer with a bad cold, or dose of ‘flu, or possibly something more serious, when life itself is becoming tedious, work is getting you down, or your husband seems to have lost interest in you. Have you ever noticed how, when you are happy and life is full of joy and excitement, you rarely experience illness? It has been known for a long time that ‘stress‘ has a depressant effect on the ability of your body’s immune system to fight infection. Illness is the body’s way of saying ‘you’re not looking after you‘, and usually the way you are failing to look after yourself is in your mind – your emotional well-being is generally the part which is being neglected when you start to experience illness.

Now, the scientists say that disease organisms, viruses, bacteria, genes, and even your age, cause illness. They may be right. But if they are then those same ‘experts’ are your only hope for defeating illness. Yet with all the drugs and all the scientific advances over that last fifty years – shouldn’t the hospitals be emptying out by now? How easy is it to get an appointment with your doctor? How full was the waiting room last time you visited? All that science seems to be accomplishing is to change the nature of illness without actually removing it.

If illness is a necessary warning system to let you know that you need to slow down, or look at how you are living your life then this is exactly what we would expect to see with scientific advances; a change in the style of illness, but no change in the quantity or quality. Smallpox and bubonic plague have been eradicated, but doesn’t AIDS do pretty much the same sort of job.

So, how can this awareness help you?

Well it can help you if you want to feel better and be less ill. Because the first step to freeing yourself from this pattern of stress/illness is to recognise that the illness is helpful. Now, I know pain isn’t much fun, and I’m not suggesting that life-threatening problems should be ignored. In fact I’m not even suggesting that you stop visiting your doctor for treatment. I would actually strongly advise that you take all the help you can get if you have a health problem.

What I am suggesting is that if you want to be free of illness, you need to start by looking at what illness gives you, and welcome those gifts. You might get a few days off work, early retirement, forced retirement from a job you hate; illness may be the only occasion when anyone looks after you or gives you affection, if you are lonely then illness at least brings you into close contact with people (doctors and nurses) who touch you and treat you gently; if you are trying to cram too many things in your life then illness gives you a break and gives your body a much needed rest.

It would be beneficial then to see what changes you could make to your life so that this ‘benefit’ was no longer needed because you already had it. If you don’t like your job then consider the possibility of doing something you enjoy instead; if you are alone then open your mind to the possibility of this being different. If you are simply too busy then build relaxation into your schedule and see it as just as important a part of life as the ‘busy’ness.

But whatever you do, don’t neglect illness, it is your mind’s way of telling you it’s time for change. And if you decide that change is appropriate for you have a look at Herbert Benson’s excellent The Wellness Book: The Comprehensive Guide to Maintaining Health and Treating Stress-Related Illness which looks at simple techniques to restore health and well-being. Or Carl Simonton’s Getting Well Again: The Bestselling Classic about the Simontons’ Revolutionary Lifesaving Self-Awareness Techniques, which demonstrates the truly awesome power of the mind in the face of life-threatening and (from the medical perspective) incurable illnesses.

Michael  Hadfield    D.Hyp., MBSCH

Is a hypnotherapist who works with visualisation to bring about life changes

Tel: 01928 575784

Categories
self-help Stop Smoking

Is Nicotine Really Addictive?

Nicotine is a substance that is important to the economy of the planet. Yet it is a substance that even most of its users know very little about. For many years nicotine and smoking were pretty much the same thing, but now you can get nicotine on its own in the form of gums, patches, and inhalers. This is a substance that has high toxicity and is lethal in small doses – so why is it able to provide significant revenue for an industry, and for those governments that place high duty on the purchase of cigarettes. The reason is that nicotine is believed to be highly addictive. But it is believed to be highly addictive by only some experts, while other experts are convinced it is nothing of the sort.

There is a world of difference between being addicted, in the clinical sense, to something and to really liking it or liking how it makes you feel. Sex isn’t addictive, yet most people like it, enjoy it, and engage in it over a period of many decades. Those same people, if it isn’t available, may find themselves wishing for a suitable partner and thinking about it a lot. That’s not an addiction. That’s a desire. But as soon as you get engrossed in something that captivates your attention and interest, then thoughts of sex disappear.

I see a lot of smokers who come to me for help in stopping smoking. Around half of them believe they are addicted to nicotine; around a quarter believe it is part addiction part habit; and the rest see it as purely a habit. The interesting thing is that there is no correlation between the number of cigarettes a smoker smokes per day and their beliefs about it being a habit or an addiction.

No one doubts that heroine is an addictive substance. There is also no doubt that some heroine addicts commit crimes to fund their habit. Now it may be that cigarettes are so readily available, and smokers organise their smokes so carefully that a smoker never runs out of cigarettes – but still it’s difficult to imagine a normally law-abiding smoker who has run out of cigarettes breaking into the local tobacconist to pick up a packet of twenty because they’ll be insane with craving by morning if they don’t get a cigarette RIGHT NOW.

That must surely cast a shadow of doubt on the addictiveness of tobacco smoking.

One of the factors of significance in addiction is habituation. Habituation is what happens when the body gets used to, or tolerates, a drug that is taken on a regular basis. It means that the same dose, over time, gives less and less effect. So one of the characteristics of addiction is that the dose slowly increases. Those of you who have taken drugs like valium (diazepam), or other benzodiazepenes, will be familiar with this effect. The first few days of taking them put your world back to normal, but by the time you visit the doctor a week later you are suffering again and so he ups the dose. Then a month or two later the dose is increased again or the drug changed to one with a stronger effect.

Cigarette smokers have invariably smoked the same number of cigarettes per day for ten, twenty, thirty, forty years or more.

That alone must surely cast a shadow of doubt on the addictiveness of tobacco smoking.

When there’s a myth that’s so pervasive within the culture that it has become a Belief, I look to see who benefits. Clearly in my own country (the UK) four powerful groups benefit: the tobacco industry, the government, the pharmaceutical industry, and the National Health Service.

· the tobacco industry makes enormous profits for itself.

· the Government raises Revenue from every tobacco product sold.

· the Pharmaceutical Industry sells nicotine delivery systems and ‘anti-smoking’ drugs.

· the National Health Service attracts massive funding to treat smoking-related disease.

Just to give an idea of the huge size of the smoking ‘pie’; in 2004 Gallaher, third largest UK tobacco company, paid Duty of £5,500,000,000 and claimed a pre-tax profit of £429,000,000.

In the same year, Imperial Tobacco, the largest UK tobacco company paid £8,000,000,000 Duty, and claimed a pre-tax profit of £688,000,000.

In comparison to that the treatment of smoking related disease means the National Health Service can attract £1,500,000,000 per year from the Government – a drop in the ocean compared to the duty that tobacco sales raise. So from the Government’s point of view it makes more economic sense to keep smokers smoking and simply invest a small portion of the Revenue that they pour into Government coffers to pay for medical professionals to look after them when they get sick.

Could this have anything to do with the reason that when smoker’s seek medical help to quit smoking, they are offered nicotine replacement therapy, or Zyban (actually an anti-depressant)? These treatments don’t have a very good track record, but they do keep the Pharmaceutical Industry happy.

Now I’m not suggesting conspiracy here. Just economics. We all know, just like when governments decide that wars are to be fought and individual lives and suffering become meaningless, that with economics money is all that matters, people don’t (except when we need your vote). Just like wars, the economics of smoking is filled with propaganda.

If somebody tells you something enough times, then you may begin to believe it.

The main propaganda that is promoted in relation to smoking is that nicotine is physiologically addictive.

I have treated plenty of 20 a day smokers who happily sit on a 10-12 hour transatlantic flight, enjoying the book, movie, view, conversation… and only ‘crave’ a cigarette the minute they get off the plane and into an area where smoking is allowed. I have never met a smoker who gets up in the middle of the night for a cigarette. Even after they get up they shower, enjoy breakfast, and it isn’t until they sit down to enjoy the mug of tea or coffee that they light up – at last! Yet they can be lighting up at the rate of one an hour throughout the day.

This isn’t addiction – it’s a habit.

Hypnosis could well be the very best treatment to break a habit, because a habit is purely a mind thing.

Hypnosis makes it very easy to just change your mind.

You will agree that tobacco is big business. The Tobacco Barons, the Pharmacy Kings, and the Men from the Ministry are not going to allow Billions to slip through their fingers. If smokers believe that they are addicted to something that isn’t an addictive substance, then the only people who are going to suffer are the smokers. Misinformation means Revenue. Setting the record straight is only of benefit to smokers. Setting the record straight is detrimental to vested interests. So you have a choice if you smoke. You can choose to use hypnosis break the habit and then spend your hard-earned cash on something enjoyable.
Michael Hadfield  D.Hyp., MBSCH