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In my practice I help people with...
To achieve this, you should train your brain. Unfortunately, most people have got into a mental rut, simply by doing the same thing year after year. They consider that the brain exists in a certain state and that nothing can be done about it - although they admit they are able to change their minds.
At school we are taught to learn things parrot fashion, often without questioning the material we are learning. As we grow up we learn polite social rules and expectations that are met to determine our behaviour within certain circumstances. The healthy mind is one that always questions and incites enquiry, growing constantly beyond the information it has been given by others. We have been encouraged to be model citizens and conform. In our society intellectual recognition is mainly connected with commercial reward.
Retraining
the messages we give to ourselves and the ones we accept from others is
the foundation of positive mental programming actualised through a hypnotic
programme. This kind of psychological shift, at a deep unconscious level,
can change someone’s life and help them to find a new level of thinking
and achievement. Most
people believe that they believe that they are unable to believe in themselves.
My job, as a hypnotherapist, is to help you to believe to believe! BACK
TO LIST
The simple answer is because people who practise self-hypnosis find that their life becomes more balanced and happy. The brain is your central control room where all the strategies of your life are planned and from which they are initiated. It is the place to start if you want to change anything or make new discoveries. In self-hypnosis you are continually in control of your situation, from which you can wake up any time you want to.
Your conscious mind is only a very small fraction of your whole mental capability; in fact, it is probably less than 1 per cent. You could say it is your window on the world where you meet the environment. Probably more than 99 per cent of your mental capabilities work on an unconscious level, therefore it doesn’t make sense, in order to be efficient, to work on a conscious level. You have a lifetime of experience and resources that you have collected and experienced that are stored in your unconscious mind. These may not be available to you consciously but they are unconsciously. WOW! Just think of all the things you have actually experienced - but of course, you can’t, can you, consciously? However, you never forget anything, therefore you never forget anything you have learnt to do well.
We all dream of being really smart and of course we are. Perhaps we may have forgotten that consciously, but the truth of the matter is that we are incredibly intelligent human beings and learning to discover that through self-hypnosis gives you a whole new lease of life. Self-hypnosis is fun as you discover what an amazing brain you have that can help you towards so many of the things that you want to achieve. Learning the ability to go inside and search through those unconscious memory banks gives you a chance to repeat anything you once did well, learn new things, imagining far beyond your possible conscious awareness.
I teach self-hypnosis to clients in a very short space of time, giving them the knowledge and abilities to go out into the world to use it anywhere, anytime, to move their lives forward in a way that is right for them. BACK TO LIST
Stopping Smoking through Hypnotherapy
For many, many years, hypnotherapy has been undoubtedly one of the leading methods to help people who want to stop smoking. It is one of the stock-in-trade treatments that all well-trained hypnotherapists learn very early in their career. I am kept really quite busy throughout the year with people who come to see me to stop smoking.
Primarily I see people first of all for a two-hour session, which includes the consultation and treatment and I always see people for a one-hour follow up session (there is no good medicine without follow-up). For most people, this is all they need. Occasionally someone may need an extra session, but that is quite unusual. Lots of clients ask me on the telephone how long it will take, and I tell them that I work in a cognitive behavioural way and that the treatment is ended when we achieve the behavioural change. Therefore we are aiming towards 100 per cent effectiveness.
I often see clients who fly from abroad and only manage to get to see me for the first session. In such cases I will make exceptions and see a person for one session and then may do a follow-up session over the telephone. Every client is given a cassette tape made in the session, to take home with them, which extends the treatment programme.
People are often surprised and thrilled at how effective this treatment is, and the funny thing is, I often get people telephoning me two or three years later who knew someone who knew someone who came to see me. BACK TO LIST
Hypnosis, Psychotherapy and Weight Control
More than 30 per cent of people in the western world today are overweight. This is often not particularly their fault, as the culture in which we live provides the kind of food that is unnatural for us to eat constantly and maintain a healthy weight. We are continually bombarded by advertising that is specially designed to seduce us into buying junk food. So, we build up a pattern of behaviours at an unconscious level that lead us to be overweight, when, in fact, we are often trying consciously to control our weight.
With the use of hypnosis and psychotherapy, a client can reconsider their options, examining their behaviour patterns that often are out of synch at a conscious and unconscious level. Our lifestyles are often contrary to our health and well-being and many people can not only end up overweight, but can also suffer from blocked arteries, thrombosis, heart attacks, and strokes.
Yo-yo dieting of starving yourself to lose weight and then over-eating to celebrate the loss of weight is one of the biggest causes of eating disorders today. This kind of approach to feeding has been encouraged by popular magazines and profiteering food manufacturers.
I tailor
each treatment to the needs of every individual, helping them to go forward
and not only change their behaviour patterns, but also implementing a
different kind of lifestyle in many ways. It isn’t as hard as many
people think to achieve a healthy and balanced weight and hypnosis is
a particularly strong medium to help maintain that state of good health.
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Many people suffer from low self-esteem and lack of confidence. The thing that always strikes me as funny, strange and even a little sinister is that at school we learn French, chemistry and maths, but often not how to present ourselves in society. Maybe I’m wrong, but don’t you think that should be one of the first things that schools should teach to children?
People from all walks of life have consulted me over the years to help them build new self-images. Indeed I have lectured on several occasions on this subject, and what always came to light was that people were simply not aware at a conscious level how they were building their own confidence.
Through teaching
people how to present themselves with the help of hypnotic techniques,
behavioural modification, visualisation, movement therapy and correct
breathing, it is easy to increase a person’s self-confidence very
quickly. Since I don’t see people for very long in my practice, the
work we do is fast and effective, giving clients levels of confidence
that they can use both in social situations and in private. BACK
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One of the classic symptoms of stress is denial. Daily I see people who are suffering from being overstressed and the one thing they have in common is that that they have been in denial of their situation.
How many times have you promised yourself that you are going to take time out to unwind, relax and let go? You can do that now, with stress management techniques that I will teach you.
Modern-day life makes such demands on all of us and people sometimes need a little help to see, hear and feel the right messages from their minds and bodies. Uncontrollable and excess stress is an unhealthy reaction and will eventually lead to ill-health, including heart attacks, strokes, cancer, auto-immune diseases, depression, migraines and social withdrawal. People feel they have simply lost control, both at a conscious and unconscious level. My job is to help them to have a sense of gaining control of their lives.
I can help you with what you need to know to change your life; in fact you will even be able to fit more in. Time, as Einstein said, is subjective and anything you want to change is within your capability. You can learn what it takes to make it in the careers market while still retaining your own peace of mind. Learn a variety of ways you can take charge of your life and go with the flow, both at the same time. BACK TO LIST
Many people suffer from anxiety and are unaware of the reasons why they are anxious, which can be buried deep in their past. With such people there is a need, sometimes, to review some of those disturbing memories and re-file them, so that the unconscious mind can be re-organised. This can be done very quickly within a few sessions with hypnosis.
As a clinician I am very anti-medication for such conditions and advise clients along with the help of their GP to come off such medication or to find ways forward without using it. Of course there are some cases where people have generally had a tough time and they arrive at my practice already taking medication. But my clinical aim is to reduce the medication and teach the person to cope with their own resources, that everyone possesses at some level of the unconscious.
I understand very well that chronic anxiety can be a cycle that needs to be broken and new behaviour and thought mechanisms installed as automatic responses in the unconscious. This is where hypnosis can be invaluable in helping such people gain relief from long-term chronic anxiety.
This condition
can be treated very successfully and inexpensively in quite a short space
of time. In every case I prefer to work in co-ordination with people’s
GPs, so that all the clinicians involved can go forward in attaining a
new standard of living that includes a great deal of calm, peace, focus
and relief. BACK TO LIST
As a professional public speaker, I am very aware of the need to be confident, calm and collected when addressing an audience. This is something I greatly enjoy doing and have had more than 20 years experience. So, for these reasons and the fact that in my younger years I performed on the stage as a singer and dancer, I am well equipped to help people enjoy addressing the public.
With an ever
increasing need for people in business, academia and public life having
to give speeches, presentations or seminars, sometimes people simply need
to be trained. We are all, at times, afraid of being judged by our performances,
but by using the techniques that I teach in one-to-one sessions, it is
possible for you to comfortably be a confident public speaker.
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People turn up at my practice with all sorts of phobias: fear of flying, lifts, going underground, heights, open spaces, closed spaces, insects, dogs, cats, relationships and so on. In fact, a phobia can take many forms and a person can become phobic of almost anything.
The phobic reaction is an inappropriate response to a stimulus that was at one time an appropriate response to a situation. However, the old response is now no longer appropriate to present-day situations. Of course, people come in saying they don’t know why they’re phobic, but at a deep unconscious level, they do. Without even delving to that extremely deep unconscious level, phobias can be alleviated quickly with hypnosis, systematic desensitisation, reframing, and lots of ego-strengthening.
A thing is only hard to do when you don’t know how to do it, or not how to do it, or you don’t know how to not know how to do it. BACK TO LIST
This is one of the most rewarding areas of my job, being able to help where communication has broken down between members of a family or couple and disagreements have prevailed. Families work on systems and just between you and me, let’s remember, you can choose your friends, but you may need some help to get on with the members of your family that you want to get on with.
People don’t mean to fall out with each other, it’s just that sometimes life gets on top of everyone and we all can lose the plot at times. Couples and family therapy is specifically designed to use the mechanics of communication techniques, negotiation, and observation & listening skills.
Because you fall out with someone, it doesn’t mean you don’t care for them or love them anymore. We can’t all agree on every issue, but we can all agree to disagree and respect each other’s space. For couples and family therapy to work well, all members involved need to come along to the session. Sometimes some members need to have individual sessions. But if someone is in a relationship or family that is difficult for them, they can approach the problem by initially coming into therapy themselves to find out what they can do about their situation. BACK TO LIST
Whenever there is death, every culture has a space for mourning and respecting those who are no longer with us, and that’s as it should be. It’s good to remember those who gave us pleasure in our lives and even those who had a difficult time. For some people, the bereavement process can become unmanageable and they need to seek help to cope and move forward in their lives.
This does not mean you will forget those who have died and even if for a short time, you do, that does not mean you have lost respect for their memory. Life needs to go on and the remaining people sometimes need help to remember the deceased fondly, with pleasure, learning to leave behind the pain of parting.
There are things that we feel or think or remember about those who have died that cannot be shared with the people around you, so it sometimes helps to talk to a professional whose job it is to care and whose pleasure it is to share.
Bereavement need not necessarily be a long, drawn out, painful procedure, because with the right kind of help and care, the period of bereavement can be shortened and the time of fond remembering can arise. The kind of techniques I use in my practice encompass psychotherapy, counselling and hypnosis to help the bereaved person cope and find comfort in their memories. BACK TO LIST
Behavioural and Emotional Difficulties
Lots of people throughout their lives have behavioural and emotional difficulties, for one reason or another. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are unbalanced, as it is simply part of the human condition. Because of the way society is structured, we often don’t have the support mechanisms in place, which are traditional in native cultures.
Life has its ups and downs, and you can learn to deal more comfortably with the roller coaster that you’re sometimes presented with. Relationships, jobs, families, careers and whatever else life throws up can upset us all at times, but getting professional help can really make the difference and change things around.
There are
behaviours that we have which disturb ourselves and others at times, that
we may need to change and install new behaviour patterns. This is a really
effective treatment with hypnosis, as we are able to talk directly to
the unconscious mind, where more than 99 per cent of mechanisms that run
your life reside. Quick, effective help with emotional and behavioural
problems can alleviate the suffering people often go through unnecessarily.
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Many people contact me because they may have memories, that are disturbing to them, of abuse they suffered earlier in life. This abuse could have taken many forms - physical, mental, emotional, sexual or social. Those memories can either be in full consciousness or they can come in the form of flashbacks, where someone gets little pieces of memory flashing into their mind. These situations can be very disturbing to people and they can find life difficult to cope with, needing to get help to sort things out.
There are many different hypnotic and psychological techniques to help people to deal with these past, disturbing memories, allowing them to live fuller, more satisfactory lives in the present and future. There have been some therapies that have delved deeply into that past abuse in order to help a person forward. I do not work in that way. In my practice I use brief effective therapy to help a person quickly deal with those memories to become fully psychologically, emotionally and socially whole and integrated once again, or in some cases, for the first time in a person’s life. BACK TO LIST
I get a lot of telephone calls from people panicking about examinations and tests which they have to take. I get them most often when people are just about to do the tests, and they have developed a state of panic, anxiety, self-doubt, and fear of failure.
To avoid this situation, it is always best, throughout the period of study, to plan carefully your study and performance schedule. This can be done efficiently and effectively with the help of advanced learning techniques and hypnosis within the therapeutic session, as far as possible towards the beginning of those studies.
For the people who are panicking at the last moment, again hypnosis and accelerated learning can help someone pass those tests more comfortably and confidently in order to gain their accreditation. BACK TO LIST
This means so many different things to so many different people, and when I am telephoned and asked for age regression, the client is not always sure what they want to regress to. Sometimes they can try to uncover memories that they think may be disturbing them. Other times we can uncover good memories that they have from their past, which can be used for the foundation of good experience in the present and in the future. There are times when people have forgotten things and want to have hypnosis to remember things they thought they had forgotten.
There has been a lot of talk over the past few years about False Memory Syndrome (FMS), where people have been forced by therapists to supposedly remember things that never really happened. The way I use regression in a positive and constructive manner avoids any possibility of FMS and I only use regression in a therapeutically beneficial way. BACK TO LIST
This is a deeply fascinating subject and phenomenon where people in deep hypnosis re-experience what they believe to be their past life or lives. For each person the journey is different and the learnings they bring back from those past lives can be enlightening, comforting, entralling and often revelationary.
The metaphysical world can only ever be as we perceive it and it would be wrong in many instances to judge what is real and not real for others. Certainly many of the past lives of people I have taken into deep hypnosis have given them great insight into their present life and understandings of where, perhaps, they might like to go in future.
Past life therapy isn’t just about therapy - it is about a journey that can be wonderful and exciting in a way that is beyond conscious understanding. Sometimes our conscious mind cannot provide us with the answers to the questions that life poses and we need to go beyond consciousness, time and space. BACK TO LIST
Hypno Healing and Psychoneuroimmunology
For thousands of years, healers have been using different forms of hypnosis to help the unwell become well once again. Just think about it for a moment - your body is composed of billions of cells, not run by your conscious mind, but regulated and organised by your unconscious mind. So doesn’t it seem logical that when helping people to heal, the unconscious mind is one of the very first places you need to start?
Modern medicine often attempts to heal everything at a conscious level and if you consider that the conscious mind is less than 1 per cent of your whole ability, then is it any wonder there is chronic illness in the world?
It has been
scientifically proved, time and time again, over the past 50 years, that
the use of hypnotic healing and the field of hypnosis and immunology (psychoneuroimmunology)
has had phenomenal results in helping people, who in many cases, become
well again. I help people with cancer, HIV and Aids, ME, Irritable Bowel
Syndrome, and general immunological breakdowns.
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We all have huge, untapped psychological resources that not only have we never used, but also have not consciously been aware of. However, at an unconscious level, your unconscious knows you have those resources, doesn’t it?
There are many accelerated, superlearning programmes that can be used, along with hypnosis, to help you become a fast and effective learner. This can be in any field, including languages, academic study, even remembering street maps, people’s names, numbers, and whatever you want to remember.
In teaching superlearning to people, I am very conscientious about giving them the tools to take away into their own lives, so they can do it themselves. Often when people discover how intelligent they really are, their life can be transformed in different ways, freeing them from their old misconceptions about their limitations. Superlearning is also fun and in a world that is now very competitive, and people sometimes have a number of jobs and careers, there is a need to have a great brain. BACK TO LIST
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
This is a most debilitating condition where someone who has encountered a traumatic event in their past becomes very dysfunctional because those images haunt them. It can be any kind of traumatic event, and will cause sleeplessness, high anxiety, irrational behaviour, erratic temperament, and poor social skills. It can affect people who are in car crashes, subject to violence or abuse, or soldiers in battle.
As traumatic
and debilitating as this condition sounds, it is treated very successfully
with hypnosis and a technique called Eye Movement Desensitisation and
Reprogramming. This wonderful hypnotic method was discovered in the late
1980s and since then has changed sufferers’ lives so they are able,
in most cases, to return to normal functioning and enjoy living.
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As part of my services, I offer clinical supervision to students and practitioners of clinical hypnotherapy. As a doctor of clinical hypnotherapy in this field, I have very strong views that the supervision being provided for many students throughout the world is presently highly inadequate.
It is important that every student is fully aware of what is expected of them as a practitioner - what progress they are making - and how their supervisor is assessing them. For far too long students have been subject to inexplicable marking, being in a position where they are unable to assess their progress and therefore ask for the kind of help they need.
Let’s face it, too many schools are only interested in extracting as much money as they can from their students, leaving them at the end of their studies without the ability to practise clinical hypnotherapy at a very high standard. Since all I do for a living is therapy, teaching and writing about human behaviour, I am totally dedicated to my subjects and to any students I teach or supervise. BACK TO LIST
Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Crohn's Disease & Gastro-Intestinal Disorders
Many disturbances of the gastro-intestinal system including digestion and spastic bowel are not only due to physiological disturbance, but psychosomatic nervous disorders. These can often be treated very successfully and quickly with dietary considerations and hypnosis. It has been known for some time that not only does the gastro-intestinal system respond to ingested substances, including macro and micro nutrients, but also it is extremely sensitive to thought patterns and behaviours that respond to hypnotic suggestion. BACK TO LIST
There are several kinds of eating disorders that range from malnutrition to obesity and include anorexia nervosa, bulimia, binge-eating, nutritional deficiency combined with obesity, and eating disorders arising as a direct result of physiological illnesses and medical treatments.
All eating disorders can benefit dramatically from dietary consideration in which we follow a naturopathic model and the use of hypnotherapy. BACK TO LIST
There are two kinds of depression: endogenous and exogenous.
Endogenous when a person is suffering from bodily imbalances, for example hormonal disruptions, effects of operations or illness, and is the result of disease.
Exogenous is also known as reactive depression and the result of the way in which someone is unable to process life events.
Both of these two types of depression are treatable by hypnotherapy with a very high rate of successful resolution. BACK TO LIST
Insomnia and sleep disorders can come about for several reasons. They may be due to somatic disorders, reactions to medication, or emotional disturbances as a result of unprocessed personal issues. During hypnotherapy we can deal with the different kinds of sleep disorder, without the assistance of medication, which often tends to exacerabate insomnia. BACK TO LIST
Many people experience periods of their life when they abuse alcohol, recreational drugs and prescription drugs. They often find they delay trying to get help because of social stigma. With hypnotherapy and psychotherapy, these problems can be overcome very quickly with the co-operation of the client.
At the end of 2006, police in NSW gained the right to pull over and drug test motorists. They can test for cannabis, crystal meth and ecstasy. An initial oral fluid test is taken through the driver's window. If the police find the test positive, the driver is required to give a second oral sample in a police support vehicle. If the person tests positive to that second test, their sample will go to a lab to be tested. If the presence of any of those three drugs is confirmed, the person will be required to appear in court, charged with driving with the presence of an illicit drug. Penalties for first offences include $1,100 fine and licence disqualification. Harsher penalities apply for second offences.
Hypnotherapy is a very fast way to help someone overcome addictions, but of course the person needs commitment to the programme and awareness that they can live quite comfortably without addictive substances.
Re-Educating Breathing and Managing Asthma
There is a profound over-diagnosis of asthma within allopathic medicine, and the drugs that are administered often only serve the person's ability to breathe well. In hypnotic breath re-education, the client is taught how to use their lungs and breathing to maximise oxygen intake at times when they need to and in general everyday life.
Many people
also suffer from a condition called hyper-ventilation (over-breathing)
or hypo-ventilation (under-breathing) or they may have a disruptive breathing
pattern that swings from one to the other and causes immune deficiency,
depression and other ailments. In hypnotic re-education of breath, the
client is not only helped to reprogramme their breathing, but also to
use their body in a way that utilises all of the body's systems.
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©O'Keefe & Fox Industries Pty Ltd 2004