Everybody Has A Brain

Written by: Debbie

Happy Friday! Take some time to be kind to your brain this weekend. Here are a few tips to help you be a better brain owner:

Loving Your Brain Tips

Take some time to relax, avoid stress as if it were poison, because truth be told it is! Psychiatrist Milton Erickson used to say, ‘if you meet someone who makes you feel bad about yourself – run!’ There are situations that are unavoidable in everyone’s life, however, we can choose whether or not to sacrifice our happiness for a long-term goal – a uniquely human capacity. Sometimes terrible things happen over which we have no control. Then we have to learn how to manage our painful feelings and accept some changes to our self and world view.
Be sure to get enough sleep. You may have noticed that when you don’t get enough good quality sleep, it is harder to concentrate the next day. While you are sleeping, your memories of the day are “filed away” in the brain. People who suffer from sleep disturbances often experience memory problems. So be sure and get those zzz’s!
Just as important is getting exercise. Whether you go for a run, go to the gym or participate in an active team sport, move it! Healthy blood flow in your brain strengthens and maintains your neuronal connections. A National Institute on Aging-funded study this year showed that moderate aerobic exercise can actually increase the size of the area of the brain involved in memory formation.
A healthy diet promotes a healthy brain. Eat the rainbow and no, I don’t mean Skittles. When you eat colorful foods; orange, red, blue, purple, and green foods, these foods are loaded with phytonutrients and antioxidants. The nutrients are important brain food and the antioxidants are critical for your cell protection. Lean proteins, nuts, berries and complex carbs are all good for your brain. For a more complete list try this WebMD page: Eat Smart For A Healthier Brain. Even better, here is an article 33 Brain Foods to Help You Boost Your Productivity that has explanations of why these foods are good for the brain!
Remember to practice mindfulness. Stop through out the day and just breathe. Notice what you are preoccupied with or any tensions in your body. If it can be addressed, do it! If not, put it away for a time when it can be dealt with. Don’t waste precious brain power with worry!
Play games. That’s right, brains love exercise. The exercise of the brain is to be challenged and stimulated.

Be sure to take good care of that brain of yours and it will take good care of you for a long time.

How the Brain Works, for kids and dummies like me!

Written by: Debbie

Exercise is great for the body and the mind. Studies have found that walking increases blood circulation and the oxygen and glucose that reach your brain. Moving and exercise increases breathing and heart rate so more blood flows to the brain. Studies have shown less memory loss in seniors who walk regularly. Higher brain functions have been found in those who exercise regularly. All great reasons to keep me moving! But, not the only one.

I have mentioned before that I have a buddy with whom I run or power walk. (Lately, more power walking than running.) When the phone rings to say she is on her way, I have to be honest, my mind races with a million excuses. I groan, but I get ready. When she arrives, we grab our water bottles and we are off for 6 miles.

We begin our walks with catching up on the days news. Limiting that to a few moments. Next, we take turns listing all we are grateful for. It is imperative that we do this. By focusing our thoughts this way, we are creating our mind set for the day. On days it is difficult to feel gratitude, we help each other, by reminding one another just how lucky we really are. After a few moments of gratitude, we begin to discuss our goals and desires. During this process, we set our intent and create our affirmations for the day.

Many times, what we initially think is our desire, we have begun to realize may actually be quite limiting. When we try to control the outcome of every event, we are limited to our perceptions and previous experiences. When we broaden the possibilities, amazing things can and do happen! So we are careful in how we word our affirmations. We finish the walk with a celebration of the accomplishments we have already experienced. We always feel powerful and excited to begin the day.

Recently, I shared this process with another friend. She has been blue and wanted to get out of her funk. She asked if she could join us. Well, after just a few days of walking with us, she has had an amazing turn around. She feels better, stronger and happier. She is aware of all the great things that are occurring in her life. She knows that life only gets better and better!

I work with clients in my office helping them create a desire to exercise. We increase that motivation. I encourage them to put the remote down and get out and move! What a thrill when they let me know the changes that occur after just one hypnosis session. Once they are up and moving how much better they feel physically, mentally and emotionally!

Monday Morning Musing….

Written by: Debbie

My oldest son came home for a visit. I was permitted into the “man cave” downstairs and played pool. I am not so sure I will be invited back into the cave again any time soon, as I opened up doors and windows to air it out, lit scented candles and cleaned the floors and dusted. I still managed to hold my own in the game, as well!

Keep in mind, this son is a math and physics student. These are the type comments I hear as I am trying to hit the ball. ” If the blue spot is the center of the cue ball (i.e. the center of mass), and the ball is struck where the spot is, the ball will have an initial angular velocity (top spin) that will affect the ball’s movement across the table as well as its collision with any other ball.” Huh? I am convinced that if I get the striped balls they will go into the pockets faster because they have racing stripes.

Later, my son introduced me to a new game, actually a very old game, just new to me. It is called Viking Chess or Hnefatafl. Apparently, he found this game at a Ren-Fair. It is simple in style and the rules are easy enough. What I enjoyed was the way this game made me think in other directions and ways than I have in a while. I enjoy regular chess. I am hooked on this new game. In fact, I think I will be practicing until his next visit with any innocent victims I can find. Maybe that way, I will be able to win for a change!

Exercising or stimulating your brain is recommended as part of a brain-healthy lifestyle. Brain exercises have an impact on brain health thanks to the brain’s plasticity. (Plasticity, or neuroplasticity, is the lifelong ability of the brain to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences.) When you “exercise” or stimulate your brain through new or unfamiliar activities, you can trigger changes in the brain. These changes contribute to an increase in what is called your brain reserve. Research suggests that the more brain reserve, the more resistant the brain is to age-related or disease-related damages.

I sent my son back to school with fresh baked cookies. He left the game behind for me. We’ll see who got the better deal.

Wake Up And Smell The Coffee

Written by: Debbie

One of the reasons I fell in love with my husband is his great coffee. He makes the best coffee ever. Further more, he serves it to me in the morning, every morning as I am still foggy from the night’s slumber. Before we were married, this marvelous man would sneak into my home on his way to work and fix my coffee, so that I would stumble down to the kitchen and find a fresh brewed cup waiting for me!

I limit myself to one or two cups of coffee, most days. That is a miracle, considering my heritage. You see, my mother always repeated that we were weaned from the breast by cups of coffee. (Remember that our truths are filtered by the words we hear from birth to age 8, so she was setting me up to have a love affair with the seductress coffee.) I believe I have vague memories of my mother wandering the house hooked up to an IV with a coffee drip. (OK, maybe that was just a fantasy my mother often spoke of.) Coffee ice cream was a treat reserved for something special, like living through the day, maybe? Iced coffee was a staple in the summer.

I have passed this legacy on to my first born. Every Monday, I write him a note in a funny card and include something like an article or a comic I thought he would enjoy, a crisp $20 bill or a gift card to Starbucks. His favorite find is the Starbucks card. My youngest son does not have the same love of coffee and I am wondering if maybe he was switched at birth because of that, but I will save that for another day.

Why all this information about coffee, especially in a hypnosis blog? Well, partly because of the power of suggestion. I just read an article pertaining to coffee and current brain research. Also, anything to do with brain research is guaranteed to interest me and I love to share the news. So, here is the scoop:

Studies in the past have shown that drinking coffee can relieve stress as well as reduce depression, but scientist attributed these effects to the caffeine in the coffee, not to the smell. Scientists have found that the mere smell of coffee has an effect on the brain.

Korean researchers conducted experiments with rats to study the effects of coffee’s smell on the brain. Stressed, sleep-deprived rats and rats that were not stressed were exposed to the aroma of coffee. The activity of the brain of these two groups were compared to two other groups of rats. One group was stressed and sleep deprived, the second group was unstressed, neither were exposed to the smell of coffee.

The researchers found that when the rats were exposed to the smell of coffee, thirteen genes in the brain that control anxiety were stimulated at different levels of activity. The result was a reduction in stress of the sleep-deprived rats.

According to the Korean researchers, for the first time, their experiment provides “clues to the potential antioxidant or stress-relaxation activities of the coffee bean aroma. These experiments indirectly explain why so many people use coffee for staying up all night. The stress caused by sleep loss via caffeine may be alleviated through smelling the coffee aroma.”

P.S. Honey you now know one of the 180 reasons I listed, only 179 to go!

Dear Debbie,

Written by: Debbie

Hi Debbie.

Congrats on another satisfied client. Are the tapes the client is referring to subliminal tapes? If not, I’d be curious to know what your “take” is on this type of device?

subliminal: adjective

existing or operating below the threshold of consciousness; being or employing stimuli insufficiently intense to produce a discrete sensation but often being or designed to be intense enough to influence the mental processes or the behavior of the individual: a subliminal stimulus; subliminal advertising.

In 1957, marketing researcher James Vicary reported significant increases in Coke and popcorn sales after flashing directives to “Drink Coke” and “Eat Popcorn” during a movie. Although Vicary never actually published these findings, his reports created a frenzy of consumer concern and government legislation aimed at stopping these forms of seemingly insidious mind control. There was, however, one significant and often unknown problem with Vicary’s study — it was all a hoax. Years later, Vicary himself admitted this scam was simply an attempt to save his dying advertising agency. Efforts to replicate the results of Vicary’s reports have never resulted in success.

The January 1991 issue of the University of California, Berkeley, Wellness Letter refers to “the complete lack of any scientific evidence that such messages can alter human behavior. Nevertheless, one survey shows that 68 percent of the public believes in subliminal tapes, which are now a $50-million-a-year business.” The article further states, “double blind tests have consistently shown that these products [subliminal tapes] fail to produce their claimed effects.”

Now there are many who today who still tout the use of subliminal(s) in their products, including hypnosis products. If the consumer believes them to be of value, then at some level they are. After all, the placebo effect is a valid part of healing. I, personally do not use them, nor do I recommend them to my clients. If subliminal(s) have any effect on the brain (some research has shown it can be detected with brain scanners) the effect is negated if the brain is busy. Bahador Bahrami, a neuroscientist at University College London, found a way to get around subliminal messages, showing that the brain’s susceptibility to those messages alters as it works harder. “If the brain is busy … it can filter out those subliminal things,” said Dr Bahrami, whose research is published today in Current Science. Well, most often, a client wants to play subliminal audios in the back ground while performing other tasks.

Another question I have is about playing these audios or even mine while you sleep, to help you improve learning, create changes, etc. Hypnosis is not sleep. Therefore, if I allow a client to fall asleep in the office, they are not getting the full benefit of our session. Exceptions are made when I know that a few moments of sleep and then awakening a client will help them better be able to focus. I have clients who have been so relaxed they thought they were asleep, but I knew better, they were simply relaxed, the conscious mnd will wander and drift while the subconscious mind hears everything I say. (I tell my clients I am not that nice, I don’t let you sleep!)

The last brainwave prior to sleep is a hypnotic brainwave, so I don’t object to falling asleep at night to one of my audios. After all, you may be awake longer than you realize and either way, the last words you heard as you drifted off to sleep were words of empowerment! It is just that I want my clients to understand, once you are asleep, the benefits of what I am saying are lost until another time.

My husbands jokes that people around the world sleep with his wife at night, but he knows where she is. The truth is, many people have bought audios from me to help them with a variety of issues and yes, they may fall asleep to them. In fact, my sleeping audios encourage that! The real work is done just before that final moment of wakefulness, as you go deep, deep into a pleasant, restful sleep.

Friday Silliness

Written by: Debbie

Yesterday, my good friend and colleague, The Transparent Hypnotist (Ellie Blunt) left a comment on my blog about the book I reviewed. She mentioned often being given books that require a dictionary, in order to read them. I can so relate to that, my oldest son often gives me books he believes I will enjoy and understand. (Perhaps it is just that he is hoping to raise his mom above the blonde IQ!) I have been enjoying The Owner’s Manuel For The Brain, however, I needed a teaching aid to help me visualize all the parts of the brain.

Well, today I have found it and want to share it with you.