I recently spent a few days at Temenos retreat in McGregor. While there I meditated on my own quest for knowledge and enlightenment. It seems I have been seeking something all my life, and all that has been found is more questions, more goals to be attained. Then it occurred to me that being a seeker was not the only way to be on the road in a quest for truth – one could also be a pilgrim. Read More
The concept of “living in the Now” has become popularised in recent years through the books of people such as Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. They tell us how important it is to live in the present moment and not to get distracted by fears (which are future projections) and hurts (which are perceptions of events in the past). If we can just stay focused in the present, we’ll discover true freedom and the end of suffering.
Well how many of us have got it right to actually do this? What seems to happen is that we become focused in the moment, and then suddenly the phone rings and it’s someone with bad news. Then where does our precious “Now” go to? It vanishes, and suddenly we’re back in psychological time and we’re suffering – except that now instead of just the bad news to cope with, we’re also beating ourselves up for being so easily thrown out of “The Now”. Read More
I’ve started work on a new web site for hypnosis enthusiasts – www.hypnotechniques.com. This is where I’ll be posting articles on the theory, practice, and techniques involved in hypnosis and hypnotherapy. It’s still early days, but I’m hoping this site will become quite a resource. Contributions are welcome ( I don’t want to have to do all the work ! )
Before you began reading this sentence, while you are reading the sentence, and after the sentence is finished being read, awareness is here. Can you see the futility of seeking present awareness? It is what is, what is awake, what is simply being right now.
If you’re looking for Enlightenment, this article on Awareness by Scott Kiloby will help put an end to the search. Read the complete article.
We all have goals and dreams – things we’d love to achieve in our lives. But have you ever wondered whether some of those dreams are really what you’re meant to do in life or whether they are simply fantasies?
At a Passion Test workshop recently someone asked me that very question. Say, for example, you dream of becoming a renowned concert pianist. Is this a worthy goal or is it an ego-based delusion?
Well, here’s a test you can do to help you identify what’s behind your dreams and goals.
Step 1: Extracting the Value
Every goal you set for yourself will be inspired by a higher-level value or emotional state of being. We all do things because of how they make us feel, right? So this feeling is the true motivation of your actions – and it’s going to tell you a lot about whether your goals are worthy of pursuing. To access this value, you simply ask the following question repeatedly until the answers start repeating: ‘When you have what you’re looking for, what will that get you?’
You’ll end up with high-level Values like happiness, fulfillment, security, and inspiration.
Step 2: Testing the Value
Once you have the Value you’re trying to elicit, you need to test whether you can get the same Value without achieving success in your goal. In other words, are you dependent on a physical outcome in order to achieve the desired emotional state. Why do we need to do this? Because a dream is only worthy if it’s done for its own sake and is not an attempt to buy happiness or some other state of being (remember all that about staying in The Now).
The way to test this is simply to ask, ‘Suppose you never achieve goal, will you still be able to be Value?’ (Replace Value with the particular state of being that’s motivating your goal, for example ‘happy’).
Let’s look at some examples.
Example: “I want to write and publish successful novels”
Step 1: Extracting the Value
When you have written and published this novel, what will that get you?
‘An audience, fame.’
And when you have an audience and fame, what will that get you?
‘Money.’
And when you have money, what will that get you?
‘I’ll be able to do the things I love.’
And when you are doing the things you love, what will that get you?
‘I’ll be inspired, at ease.’
When you are inspired and at ease, what will that get you?
‘Happiness’
So the Value here is happiness, with the flavour of inspiration and ease.
Step 2: Testing the Value
Suppose you’re never able to write and publish those novels. Can you still be happy?
‘I don’t think so. It would be difficult.’
So this tells us that the person is wanting to buy happiness by writing novel. They are dependent on a physical outcome in order to achieve an emotional state. They don’t actually want to write novels because it’s their deep purpose and joy, so this goal is an ego fantasy.
Let’s try something else:
Example: “I want to be a renowned concert pianist”
Step 1: Extracting the Value
When you are a renowned concert pianist, what will that get you?
‘The joy of performing in front of large numbers of people, the excitement of performance, the knowledge that I’m creating a moving experience for people.’
When you are experiencing the excitement of performing in front of large numbers of people, and you’re creating a moving experience for them, what does this get you?
‘Joy and inspiration – I’ll be living my purpose.’
And when you’re joyful and inspired, living your purpose, what will that get you?
‘Pure joy and gratitude, pure inspiration. ‘
So the Values here are joy, gratitude and inspiration.
Step 2: Testing the Value
Just suppose you’re never, ever able to be a renowned concert pianist – will you still be able to feel joyful and inspired and grateful in your life?
‘Yes. I enjoy playing piano regardless of the size of the audience. I can still feel that joy and inspiration if I’m playing for one person or just for myself. It would be great, though, to play to thousands of people. That would really turn me on.’
In this example, the person is not dependent on a physical outcome to achieve their desired emotional state of feeling joyful, inspired, and grateful. They recognize that they have access to these feelings already, so their work as a musician is done for the joy of it. Of course, they will be paid for their work, but it’s not the primary motive, it’s simply the natural energy exchange for the work they love doing.
Conclusion
Many of us make the mistake of thinking that by having something or doing something we’ll achieve a lasting state of being. In fact, the creation process begins with being and flows to doing and having – when you are happy (a state of being), you will do things and have things that reflect this happiness.
So look carefully to see whether your desire is an attempt to reverse this order, in other words to try to achieve a state of being by having something or doing something. If you take away the having or the doing, can you still achieve that same state? If not, you need to check your motives.
Want to do The Passion Test and get clarity on your goals?
I present The Passion Test in workshops and individual sessions. Let’s work together to find out what you really want and how to get it. It all begins with finding clarity on your true purpose.
Article Source
Inspired Coaching & Hypnosis – expert coaching and hypnotherapy in Cape Town.
How I really feel about weight-loss products
If I had one piece of advice for anyone struggling with weight and food issues it’s this – stop with the $%## diets already! You know they don’t work. It breaks my heart to see good people going out there and spending small fortunes on herbal potions and weird slimming shakes and all they’re doing is just setting themselves up for more disappointment.
Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh but I feel quite strongly about this. I see quite a few clients with food issues and in 99.99% percent of the cases the only way to stop the inappropriate eating is to find out the emotional need that the food is trying to fill. Get this, guys – IT’S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD! You can write that in big letters and pin it to your computer so you can know to give yourself a break when another diet fails. It’s not about the food, and it’s not about your weak willpower. You have amazing willpower, after all these years of struggle you’ve built that willpower muscle until it has superhuman strength … but here’s the thing – it’s all for nothing, because emotions are much stronger than the conscious mind and its puny willpower.
So give yourself a break here as well. When you find that the magic herbal potion and weird slimming shake don’t work, don’t beat yourself up. It’s not about you, it’s about what’s deeper than you. Come and see me or another therapist and let’s do some real work on this. Or just save your money and dump the expensive diets and be happy the way you are . Ultimately that’s where we’re going anyway – to be happy with yourself. So just go there. If you need some help, get it from a trained therapist, not from some snake-oil salesman peddling disappointment. There, I’ve said it. Let those herbal potion people come sue me if they want to!
“It’s not about the food”
- Russel Brownlee
I’ve just got hold of a really cool piece of software (Neuroprogrammer 2) that enables me to make my own hypnosis recordings. I can add binaural beats and other clever things to subtly tweak the listener’s brainwaves and help them drift deeper and deeeeeper…
So my plan is to begin offering these as freebies to clients and website visitors. And the first one has just gone live on this site! Here’s the link – free 10-minute relaxation mp3.
This is my invitation to you as a client and a companion on the path of remembering. It is also a manifesto of my approach to this work.
The Invitation …
When we meet, you are the only person in the world. You get an hour and a half of my total attention.
There are no rules about how you should be or how you’re supposed to feel. There are no secrets because everything is accepted completely and without judgment.
You are in control of the pace of the work – we can go as slowly or as quickly as you like. There are no rules about how long it should take.
You are not your problem. No matter what you think you’ve done or what you think someone has done to you, you are not that.
You are not anything you tell me you are.
You are not anything I or anyone else will ever know.
If you recognize this in your heart, let’s meet. Transformation can happen in an instant. The enlightenment you seek is already here.
Hypnosis cures for eczema, psoriasis, and other skin conditions
It’s fairly well accepted in medicine that skin conditions often have a strong psychosomatic component – in other words, they are often largely caused or exacerbated by psychological processes. Eczema and other skin allergies, for example, are the result of an over-reaction of the immune system where the immune system wrongly identifies a harmless stimulus as a threat. This mistaken identification is essentially a psychological process or learned behaviour, which can be corrected by resetting unconscious thought-patterns. In fact, it has been said that almost anything you can treat with cortisone or antihistamine can be treated with hypnosis.
Hypnotherapy procedure for skin conditions
A therapist can use regression techniques or ideomotor responses to discover the cause of the problem. One way is to look at these seven factors:
- Conflict: Is the problem in some way related to a conflict you have or a difficulty reaching a decision on something?
- Motivation: What does it mean to you when this condition flares up? Is this condition in some way a chance for you to get some benefits that you would not otherwise get?
- Identification: Is there someone close to you, now or in the past, who suffered with a similar condition?
- Self-punishment: Do you feel that this condition is in some way payment for something you’ve done?
- Suggestion: Is this condition a learned behaviour, or did it begin with some particularly powerful or traumatic event?
- Organ language: Is the condition a physical representation of an underlying situation that can be expressed as a figure of speach, for example ‘she’s a real backstabber’.
- Past experiences: Is there an upsetting past experience connected to the condition?
People suffering from chronic skin conditions should take heart with the knowledge that their problems are typically very responsive to hypnotherapy. I recommend working directly with a therapist, at least for one or two sessions, to uncover and release any underlying psychological issues causing the condition. Then you can follow up with self-hypnosis recordings to reinforce the learnings.
Ease Eczema self-hyponsis recording
If you can’t get to a therapist, try the self-hypnosis recordings on their own – sometimes this will be all you’ll need.
Try the Search box on my MP3 Downloads page, or jump straight to this Ease Eczema self-hypnosis recording.
Research has shown that hypnosis for fertility can double the success of IVF treatment. But how does it do this? Well, essentially there are two main objectives for hypnosis in IVF:
- relaxation and preparation of the body for fertilization
- identification and removal of fears and unconscious objections to pregnancy
Let’s look at these more closely.
Preparing the body for fertilization
One reason for IVF failing is that the womb is in a contracted state during the crucial embryo transfer stage. Hypnosis can be applied with specific suggestions to relax the body and allow the fertilization process to proceed.
Relaxation will also help the body become chemically more receptive to fertilization. Remember that our thoughts directly affect the levels of hormones in our bodies, and high levels of stress don’t only diminish sex drive – they diminish reproductive capacity as well. The body needs to feel that everything is OK before it opens up to the possibility of pregnancy, so stress needs to be dealt with.
Another factor is simple performance anxiety. It’s like when you can’t sleep and the harder you try the more awake you become. Couples trying to fall pregnant can often end up putting so much pressure on themselves they end up closing down a process that should be effortless. When your lover becomes just a ‘sperm donor’, that’s a sign that you need a bit of a holiday! Hypnosis can help restore your inner sense of being OK with yourself no matter what happens, so you can safely take the pressure off and restore some of the softness and light-heartedness to the relationship. And remember, babies like softness and light-heartedness too!
Resolution of unconscious objections
Without knowing it, you may be holding some deep fears about the consequences of pregnancy. This is where you will benefit from working directly with a therapist who can help you uncover any of these unconscious patterns. But you can begin your own process of discovery simply by going within and asking yourself questions like these:
- Is there someone you know or who are close to, now or in the past, who had a bad time with pregnancy or with bringing up a child?
- What benefits are there to not having a child (or another child)?
- Will you lose something important to you if you have a child?
- What phase of life will fall away when you have a child?
- How do you really feel about your partner?
- If there is any part of you that objects to this pregnancy, who is it?
- What scary thing that might happen if you do fall pregnant?
Some of those questions are a little challenging and they might not apply to you, but if any of them grab your attention, just sit with them for a while and see what comes up. You might get a valuable insight.
Hypnosis for Fertility MP3
It’s a good idea to work with a therapist in person, especially if you think there might be some unconscious objections at work. But if you just want to restore a sense of hope and possibility, and you want to guide your body and mind into a receptive state for pregnancy, you might benefit from listening to a self-hypnosis recording. The power of belief can really work miracles. Have a look at this Hypnosis for Infertility session and see if it appeals to you.
