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Spring Into Weight Loss

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weight loss moveIf you are like many people I encounter, your intentions for making a change in your weight since the first of the year have fallen by the wayside. We start out with New Year’s Resolutions and great intentions. Then life gets messy (or busy) and we slip back into old habits. The days slipped by and now it is spring and you are still carrying that excess weight around. Before you know it, summer will be her
e and that means wearing less layers of clothing, but what about the layers of excess fat?

Not only is fat uncomfortable to lug around, it is hard on your body. Everyone knows that excessive weight aggravates, and even causes, many unhealthy medical conditions. The list includes bone and joint disorders, cardiovascular disease, pulmonary problems, cancer, dementia and diabetes.  Being fat is being inflamed.

Spring has sprung and it is a time of new beginnings. Babies in the animal kingdom are arriving every day. Flowers are blooming and we think of spring as a time of renewal. So, why not renew your commitment to your body?  The days are longer and you want to have more energy to enjoy them, right?

The first thing you want to consider is spring cleaning your pantry. I recently had a client tell me that she would do well all day long and then at the end of the day, the cookies would call to her from her kitchen. She lives alone, so the cookies needed to go, along with the “emergency candies”, breakfast pastries and several other items that were keeping her from achieving her medically needed weight loss.   It is time to fill your kitchen with colorful fresh foods.

Just like those lovely May flowers that need April showers, we need lots and lots of hydration. I encourage my clients to cut lemons or cucumbers or strawberries, whatever flavor they enjoy up and put it into a pitcher of water, infused water at the ready all day long. Drinking water and lots of it is important in any weight loss program. I can’t emphasize enough the value of drinking water when working on weight loss, in fact here is another article I wrote about the connection between water and weight.

Now that the sun is up early and longer, it is a great time to get out and move your body. I have two dogs who keep me moving. We walk often, we walk briskly and we cover distance. It is good for all of us. If walking isn’t your thing, find something that is. Weight lifting, yoga, bike riding, whatever you do, just move!

If you need help getting motivated, try hypnosis for weight loss. With the woman who had to clean out her kitchen, we did a session of visualizing the produce department at her favorite food store. She later reported that she found herself craving veggies and fruits. With clients who need to move more, we may find ourselves lost in their favorite sport or activity. Want to increase your water consumption? We may link water to a color or other visual that reminds you it is time to hydrate. The sessions are geared to your needs, the results are powerful.

If you want some quick easy tips on how to get started, I found this article to be interesting and I love their website!

How To Lose Weight Fast: 5 Evidence Based Steps Anyone Can Follow

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Finding Balance

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In The Midst Of Chaos

The message was on my phone when I awoke on a Saturday morning about one and a half months ago.  My mother was found on the floor in a fetal position, scared, undressed and confused. When she couldn’t be helped up, the ambulance was called and she was taken to a local hospital. Since then I have spent part of almost every day with her, first at the hospital and now at the rehab center. As anyone who has dealt with an aging parent knows, it can be a rollercoaster of highs, lows and in-betweens. Simultaneously, I have been spending some time with a friend who has her own health challenges.finding balance

My challenge, I found was to maintain balance. Or at this moment, finding balance. You know the balance I so often speak of? Now was a chance to put into practice what I teach. While I am not new to this, ‘crisis management’ is not my first choice of fun things to do. But, I want to live a happy and fun life.

Naturally the first thing to remember is to breathe. What happens in stressful situations? We get tense and experience shortness of breath. Driving to and from, I noticed I was holding my breath and choking the steering wheel. I reminded myself on the way to visit Mom, take deep breathes at every stop light. I found myself enjoying the commute, it was a chance to clear my head and prepare for whatever I was going to next encounter. Cars that raced ahead of mine I noticed often ended waiting at the same lights with me.  Hmmm…..

Finding the humor in every day is vital. Mom was always a funny woman, bright and a great story teller. I had asked her a few years ago to answer in emails a series of questions about her childhood. This was to preserve those memories for my sons. They have come in handy now, as I could remind her of them and get her to laugh with me. We laughed over memories of pets, naughty things my younger brothers had pulled (as twins they were truly double trouble) and ways she had hoodwinked her own beleaguered mother. What she didn’t know was that some of the things she would say in her moments of confusion, I posted on my Facebook account to allow me to save the humor in even this situation.

Facebook Posts

  • Mom: I need a hypnotist

         Me: Mom, I am a hypnotist

         Mom: A real, bona-fide hypnotist?

         Me: Yes, the real deal, I have won awards for my work.

                  What do you need?

         Mom: Oh never mind, I can’t remember.

 

  • Mom told me her pain pill was confused, it thought it was a computer. I asked her if she could use her programming skills to create a pain free experience. She decided to develop that process.

 

I do my best to get proper sleep, exercise and eat healthy. It is easy when one is busy to forget those things; still it is very important to remember self-care. If I find myself slipping, I practice self-hypnosis. Taking the time for a session can turn the day around! Sometimes it is as typical a session as releasing the stress, other times it might be allowing my subconscious mind to direct me to how to resolve an issue that arises. Always it is a good opportunity to refresh and return to calm within, regardless of chaos that might be surrounding me.

I can’t rehearse for guilt

Another balance tool is sharing a little time with a friend. Some friends I reach out to by phone, others in person. Sometimes it is to vent or cry, but most times to “catch up” and laugh. Just today I had an opportunity to meet with a friend, unscheduled! I had an appointment on my calendar, but it was rescheduled at last minute. This left me with time that I could dutifully go see my mother, work on paperwork, clean or any of a dozen tasks. I thought about it for a moment and decided all those things were going to continue to call out to me, but I craved friendship and balance. I called a girlfriend who met up with me and we had a marvelous time.

As we were speaking, I said to her that I knew I could end up feeling guilty for the things I didn’t do for my mother when she eventually leaves us. However, I also know that the stages of grief will happen. Therefore, it dawned on me that I can’t rehearse for guilt. That wasn’t going to eliminate the guilt later, only mess up the NOW. Balance means living in the now.

Although it is hard to say no when Mom wants me, there are times I have to. Refusing the woman who I have loved my entire life is a challenge. It is then that I must recall that just as she had to say no to me at times as I grew up, I may have to do the same now. At times I allow the professionals to take over.  She sent me to school and that meant that others watched over and guided me, just as the nurses and caregivers where she is are doing the same for her.

Finding Balance

The search for balance is hard but necessary. With a healthy balance, the guilt will not feel as prevalent. The answer is never obvious.  It is important to keep my mind open to new ways to explore it, balance is never that far away. Balance is within.

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Recovering From Post Election Stress

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I am concerned about the many people I have calling me recently about the stress, helplessness and anger they are feeling over the outcome of the election. This is from both sides! Families and friendships have broken up over it. Friends of mine (from both sides of the fence) have posted messages of anger and fear on social media. People speak of feeling betrayed by friends who voted differently.

Post Election Stress Disorder

I have read articles in professional journals recently that others are seeing the same thing. Today I was told about a diagnosis of Post-Election Stress Disorder (PESD).  Like its counterpart PTSD, PESD results when a person is exposed to a traumatic event that overwhelms their normal coping skills.  Common complaints are feelings of shock, dismay, depression, fear, panic and impending doom.  Even this has caused a division, as a veteran who has experienced the horrors of combat or a victim of violent domestic abuse feels it is disingenuous to compare the differing scenarios. What I know is, to the people I speak with their experience is real and they are suffering.

From Survivor to Thriver!

One of the traditional models of treating PTSD, developed by George Everly, PhD, uses a SAFER model to guide one through a crisis. This can be used for PESD as well.  The basic steps are:

  • Stabilize
  • Acknowledge the crisis
  • Facilitate understanding
  • Encourage effective coping
  • Recovery or Referral

Stabilize the situation by turning off the flow of stress, which includes the all-day news channels, social media sites, blogs, tweets and radio rants.  Unfollow political posters for a while. Limit your reading the latest news to a minimum.  For work, develop a list of distracting responses to the question “So, what did you think about the election?”

Acknowledge that this has been a unique experience in our nation’s electoral process.  It isn’t the first time our nation has been at odds, so remember the adage, “May you live in interesting times”. President Kennedy once referenced this in a speech he gave. We survived a Civil War and Nixon’s Watergate.

Facilitate understanding of what took place. It’s normal to have a shock reaction to unexpected events.  The fears and anxieties that are arising are simply the mind’s attempts to find meaning and take comfort in understanding.  Don’t worry about your worries.

Encourage effective coping. Maybe this is not the time to take to Twitter or Facebook and rant about everything that is wrong with the world.  Focus on being the light in a time of darkness. Breathe deep and commit random acts of kindness.  Take a step back and get the wider view.

Recover a sense of normalcy in your life. If you haven’t in the past spent large amounts of time neck-deep in politics, be cautious about submerging yourself into it now.  Swim out of the deep end of political rhetoric and take a walk, listen to music, follow your usual routines. Get back to focusing on chores and the kid’s extracurricular activities.  Rest and restore your energy; you’ve earned it. Listen to a stress relieving hypnosis audio. If, upon awakening, you find your resiliency muscle is in need of a workout, consider referring yourself to a helping professional.

The process of recovery and grieving is not an overnight miracle. However, through hypnosis, changes occur more rapidly than without. It is important to build up your ability to bounce back and to make the shift from survivor to thriver!

The good news is our forefathers had the wisdom to ensure we only go through this process once every four years.

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The Real Love Potion # 9

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loveDo you sigh when you hear the Elvis song, “Are you lonesome tonight”? Remember the guy in Love Potion #9 who was a flop with the chicks? Well, he almost got it right. But, instead of going to Madame Rue for something to drink, he should have come to  Debbie Lane’s Wisdom Hypnosis for something to THINK!

The Real Love Potion # 9

 

Wednesday – February 22, 2017

6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

UP Hypnosis Institute

1810 S Pinellas Ave, Suite G, Tarpon Springs, FL 34689

(727) 943 – 5003

 

Through hypnosis, total relaxation, and deep writing, you will:

        *    measure and build self esteem

       *    determine where you*re stuck

       *    learn how to get unstuck

       *    release the mistakes of the past

       *    thoroughly describe Mr. or Ms. Right                                

Your Investment in true love? Only $35.00

 

Prepare to love and be loved!

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Hypnosis For Test Anxiety *

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Does this sound familiar?

On the day of your exam, you wake up feeling so confident because you have been diligent in your studies and you know all of the material. When you arrive at the exam center (or classroom) you smile, because you know this is the opportunity to show off your knowledge, show how well you have retained all the information needed to pass? The testing begins and you go through the questions with ease, finish up in a timely manner and hand in your test. When the results come back you aced the exam, let the celebration begin!

Or is this what happens?

After pulling an all-nighter trying to get the last of the information memorized and a restless night of sleep you dread what you know is coming next.  You arrive to the classroom and sit down and then the test papers are handed out. You realize that you have forgotten it all. When you finally turn your test in and it is only half-finished or worse, suddenly the material comes flooding back to your memory. Even if you answered every question, you know they were the wrong answers.  You knew the information before the test, you know it now, but during the exam, one big blank panic occurred.

If it is the second scenario, then you like so many people may suffer from overwhelm or test anxiety*.

Maybe the symptom was as mild as “butterflies” in the stomach or maybe it was more severe, leaving you paralyzed in fear. No matter where the anxiety rates on the scale, it causes students to not perform as well on exams as they are truly capable of doing.

Hypnosis can help you overcome this block to your success. I have worked with many people who were preparing for a professional exam and the pressure was causing them to become unable to think or recall the information they knew so well. One such individual called me very excited after his exam to let me know he had passed and would be able to start his new career. I had to remind him to call his wife and let her know the good news!  I have also gone into classrooms and worked with the whole class before a test. The instructors have repeatedly said the class average score went up significantly.

In hypnosis I work with test taking skills and performance, adding a confidence booster. We improve your ability to recall anything you read, heard or studied related to the test and eliminate any blocks that might cause you to blank out during the exam.

So, if this is the year that you have decided to make a career change and need to pass that exam, give me a call. If you are a student who needs help with test stress for improved grades or to pass those college entrance exams, consider hypnosis. You just might find it to be the answer you have been searching for.

(727) 781-8483

 

*Although it is commonly referred to as test anxiety, I do not diagnose nor prescribe.
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Can Hypnosis Help Create New Habits?

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I am often asked if hypnosis really works for weight management. Can it help the person asking eat better, exercise more, create better habits? I can assure you it does, but not through any kind of miracle or mind control. Hypnosis is effective for creating healthy new habits when diets alone just don’t seem to work.

Some of the issues we face when working on shedding those ugly extra pounds of fat may be a result of the bad habits we developed along the way. Our eating habits from our youth may have served a growing body, but now the growth is in the wrong direction. It might be time to learn new, good habits.

Perhaps you were from a large family and needed to grab food fast if you were going to get your share. School lunchtimes are short and so often a child learns to eat quickly if they are going to get the lunch in before the bell. Parents who are tired after a long workday and children who are “hangry” might result in many fast food meals eaten in the car.

What Is A Habit?

Whatever the habit is that is no longer serving you, it can be changed. Willpower is a great asset, but you may repeat a bad habit even though your rational mind objects. The problem is, people think that they need willpower and feel like a failure when they don’t perceive themselves as having enough strength. This can lead to a deterioration of self-esteem and self-sabotaging.

A habit is simply something you do without thinking about it. You don’t set out to over eat, eat too fast or eat the wrong types of foods, it just sort of happens. If you see the donut drive through on your way to work, the one you have stopped for your daily coffee and donut, it seems as if the car turns into it all on its own. Maybe it is that you sit down to eat a meal and manage to finish it before everyone else has been served.

Through the deep focus of hypnosis habits can be changed and improved, because it helps to make the change at the subconscious level. The subconscious mind is responsible for holding our beliefs about life, love, ourselves, other people, other cultures, religion, ethics, etc. It takes care of everything we ever learned consciously.

We’ve had to learn everything since we were born–how to eat, walk, talk, dress ourselves, brush our teeth, etc. While all of this began at a conscious level, eventually it became automatic and was taken over by the subconscious part of the mind. If we had to think through every little action that is required to do every little thing we do, we would go crazy.

Subconscious Mind Is Important

This makes the subconscious the most important part of who we are. It is like a computer program that maintains anything we have experienced, everything ever said to us, done to us, everything we ever learned. It houses our emotions, all the various parts of our personality, all of the roles we play in life and most importantly to this subject, our habits.

Because hypnosis reaches the “hard drive” of the mind, the subconscious, clients often end negative patterns of behavior after receiving strong, direct suggestions. Then you can build healthy and energizing habits that don’t control you. Sometimes it is as simple as the allowing the mind to understand through story telling that there is another, healthier way to behave and it creates new habits all on its own. Unlike the stereotype from old movies, hypnotherapy does not put people to sleep and old pocket watches are not involved. Instead, the client, with closed eyes, is guided through a series of relaxing imagery and ideas. Everyone responds slightly differently to hypnosis, with some slipping into a deep, sleep-like trance and others not feeling much different than having their eyes closed. Every person is different, but most of my clients are able to eradicate bad habits, changing them into good habits.

The hypnosis sessions include figuring out the problem behind the bad habits and symptoms, then improving eating and exercising habits, insuring you are drinking enough water, and encouraging a healthy functioning of the body.  Improving self-confidence, motivation and having the courage and ability to change can help you release protective layers.

So, if you are ready to shed that burden of extra weight and create healthy new habits, give hypnosis a try. You will be glad you did!

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Hypnosis Helps Create A Desire For Healthy Foods

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So you want to improve your eating, start making better choices in the foods you eat. Still you crave junk food and fast food. Well, guess what? Your brain is hardwired against you!

When you eat fatty or sugary foods the pleasure center in your brain lights up.  Just the mention of the word crispy lights up the same area of the brain, so actually eating crispy chips is addictive.

This causes you to desire more of the same, lessening your willpower. It started as a way of keeping us alive. Early man needed fatty fuels to burn and crisp meant fresh. Our food storage and preparation has changed and the brain hasn’t yet caught up.

However, there is hope. The answer lies within. You have everything you need to succeed. It isn’t the latest diet or appetite suppressant. It is finding balance and learning to listen to your body’s signals. Hypnosis can help you create a desire for healthy foods.

The subconscious mind wants to keep you safe and healthy. The cravings you experience for junk food is simply a misinterpretation of the mind. It believes you need those foods for survival. In hypnosis we can change that understanding and create a wonderful desire for lean, healthy foods.

A wonderful suggestion was created by a father-son hypnotherapy team, Herbert Spiegel and David Spiegel. It is “For my body, too much food is damaging. I need my body to live. I owe my body respect and protection.” You can create your own mantra. One 50-year-old client who shed 50-plus pounds repeats daily: “Unnecessary food is a burden on my body. I’m going to shed what I don’t need.”

Visualization is a powerful tool used in hypnosis. Like athletes preparing for competition, visualizing victory readies you for a victorious outcome. Imagining a day of healthy eating helps you envision the necessary steps to becoming that healthy eater.

Furthermore, picturing and imagining the foods that cause you to stumble as being sent down the river on a raft or flying off in a hot air balloon may sound silly, but it works. The language of the mind is imagery and it loves symbols and metaphors.

In hypnosis we have a saying, “there is no failure, only feedback”. If you fall off the wagon, it is an opportunity to learn something more about yourself. Looking at what triggered the relapse can give you insight into what is going on in your life that is out of balance and find a way to bring yourself back to balance.

Think long-term. If you stumble along the journey, it’s OK. Healthy eating habits are hard to establish, and change takes time. Stay positive. Keep your focus on healthy eating.

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Forget New Year’s Resolutions!

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To quote my son who is a scientist, “A year is merely one (roughly) of earth’s revolutions around the Sun, as it has done billions of times. It is a fact of gravity; an inanimate concept that we use to visualize time, and as such cannot be ‘good’ nor ‘evil’.”

Still, many of us said good bye to 2016 with delight. It was a challenging year at so many levels.  The hope for 2017 is to find our way to ‘happy’. In the attempt to find this possible bliss, many of us make new year’s resolutions to improve. Thus we have insured, at least a little bit, that the year will once again become a challenge.

New Year’s Resolutions are one more way to say we aren’t enough.

Not thin enough or rich enough or athletic enough according to the top resolutions people make. What’s more, after the initial exuberance wears off, often we give up. This reinforces our belief that we are broken and not enough.

What if instead of resolving to change, we embraced who we are? What if we began to play more instead of “work out”? Maybe we could experiment more with new healthy recipes instead of diet.  We could make a challenge out of finding ways to spend less and save more. It is really a matter of perspective after all.

I was told a story of a woman who bought a lovely home, her dream home near the water. She loved that she could hear the sound of crashing waves from her windows. Until the first night in her new home, when she heard dogs barking. It sounded like lots of dogs and lots of barking. It kept her awake and her anger simmered.

After several nights of the constant barking, she decided to find this kennel and put an end to the noise somehow. She drove in the direction of the noise and found herself going quite a ways, finally to a road that ran right in front of the beach.

She found the source of the barking. On a big rock, out from the shore were dozens of seals, having a grand time, barking at each other and doing whatever it is that seals do in the middle of the night. They were a long way from where she lived, but the noise carried over the water. She stood and watched and thought she would never sleep again.

Funny thing, she did sleep. In fact she slept peacefully. Somehow knowing it was the sounds of joy and seals gave her comfort. She found the noise reassuring, just like the sounds of the waves on the shore or rain on her bedroom window.

I have found the same to be in my life. The young boys from up the street wake me often when they walk with their dog and their father. Yes, on my days off I like to steal a few extra moments of shut eye, but the pride with which they tell their father how high they can count makes it all so sweet.

What if you believed you have value the way you are? What if you started to act as if that was true? What changes might come about if instead of making new year’s resolutions to change you decided to celebrate who you are now? I can only wonder, but you my friend can find out for sure.

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An Angel Award

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The Hypnosis Education Association graciously awarded me this year with an Angel Award. I am humbled and grateful.

angel-award

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How To Stop Sugar-Cravings With Hypnosis

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sugar-cravings

sugar-cravings

When Muriel first came to see me, she was already on a medical weight loss program. She could follow the diet plan and with the help of the appetite suppressants was eating smaller amounts. Still, she felt as though her sugar-cravings were out of control. In fact she shared with me that it was controlling her. She said it became real apparent to her just how out of control her addiction was when she realized that her own children would stop eating a piece of pie in the middle because they were full. “That had never occurred to me,” she stated, “it was unimaginable to leave pie on the plate.” While Muriel was happy her children didn’t have the same struggles “I did something right”, she beamed. She wondered why at 50 she wasn’t able to do the same thing.

Muriel was concerned that when she stopped taking the medication, she would balloon back up in weight because there would be no governor. This is a common experience of many who chose to go the appetite suppressant route, especially with those who crave sugars. She had a reason to believe this might happen because at a recent family dinner she “tried” a special pie a family member had made and not only ate her small piece, but was snacking from the plates of those who left any on their plates as well as “sneaking” extra nibbles as she helped in the clean up after the meal. She was desperate, she needed to stop sugar-cravings!

Ready To Stop Sugar-Cravings

In my hypnosis practice, I see more and more people who ask for help to stop their sugar-cravings. Hypnosis works really well because it helps the subconscious, emotional mind to find other, more resourceful ways of fulfilling the emotional needs that sugar is currently satisfying. Using the language of the subconscious mind, both visualization and emotion, I will guide my client as they create their own meaningful new ‘programs’ for letting sugar go. They then replace eating sugars with other more positive habits, beliefs and behaviors that they would like to create.

With Muriel, I asked her what would be different about her if she no longer craved the sweets. She instantly said she would be lighter and feel free of entanglements. She said it would restore a sense of hopefulness to her. I asked her if she would close her eyes and imagine herself free from sugar. Then I guided her through what that might look like, feel like and sound like. She told me her self-talk was more powerful and positive. She experienced herself bursting through a light of multiple colors and on the other side of the light she became her authentic self. She realized she had been impatient with herself in many areas of her life and that “success will come”, she just needed to give more power to the steps she was taking to reach her goals.

Since our appointment, Muriel has reported that her craving for sugar and sweets has greatly reduced, it is now manageable. Sweets are no longer her ‘go to’ when upset and taking a bite of something sweet doesn’t send her down the rabbit hole anymore. She has noticed that she has less brain fog, so that reaching her goals is more clearly defined for her. Her tummy is flatter as well.  As an added bonus, her skin is clearer. That really excites her as she knows that reflects what is going on inside her body as well.

Hypnosis can help with sugar addiction as it can assist you in taking back control of the cravings whether they are physical or in the mind.

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