Showing posts with label sleep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sleep. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Hypnosis for fear of flying

 
 
Fort Smith Hypnosis
 


Fear of flying phobia

More and more people come for hypnotherapy to help overcome flying anxiety. Some people are mildly anxious about flying and find that it gets worse over time - others simply develop a full blown phobia for no apparent reason.
In our experience, there are three types of "fear of flying". There is the fear of crashing, the fear of not being in control and the fear which seems to be more a symptom of claustrophobia.
Strangely enough, more often than not, the nervous flyer fits a profile of someone who has flown often in the past and didn't always have the fear. Although, it certainly isn't always the case, we do generally find that the phobia or fear can be traced back to a particular incident but didn't necessarily become chronic at that point. The intensity or panic symptoms developed later
Often fear of flying begins at a time when someone is going through other problems or traumas and almost becomes an extension of that situation.

Overcoming a flying phobia

Practically speaking, what can be done about a fear of flying? Hypnosis can be extremely helpful and often helps to eradicate the fear completely. You need to start with a goal. Would you like to be able to enjoy flying or simply to cope with flying? If not enjoy, then why not?
We recommend hypnosis where you can choose from an extensive range of options.

Flying phobia, inconvenient as it may be, is essentially always positive. That may sound strange but then consider the idea of removing a phobia of flying to such an extent that you become happy to run onto a plane which is clearly not in a suitable condition to fly? This couldn't possibly be healthy.
Hypnotherapists have always seen a healthy benefit to fear, if that fear is logical. Illogical fear or irrational fear is just fear that has become a bit too intense. Hypnotherapy will certainly help you to desensitize the fear. You will always have an internal warning system should you ever need it but confidence in this fact allows you to get on and enjoy your life in the way you deserve.
If you could overcome your fear of flying, where would you go? Imagine you could confidently walk into a travel shop and book tickets anywhere - which destination would you choose?
Imagination can be used to create possibilities or to restrict you from doing something. Perhaps today could be the day you start to use your imagination in a different way.

Scared to Fly?

2
Turbulence can be uncomfortable, but is a normal part of flying
People are often frightened by turbulence, because they don't understand what is happening. Nervous flyers are scared, as it seems that the plane is falling out of the sky. They focus on the downward bumps as these are the most apparent, but in fact each downward bump is followed by an upward bump. These bumps are actually caused by slight tipples in the air, which is normally perfectly smooth. Think of it in terms of bumps in the road. It doesn't take huge craters or bumps to make for a jerky ride in a car. It's the same with turbulence - small disturbances in the air can make a plane ride feel uncomfortable, but there's no real danger.
The plane is designed, built and tested to rigorous safety levels
Modern airplanes have to be designed and built to comply with rigorous safety standards which are set out by independent aviation authorities. Airplanes and their equipment are manufactured by systems also monitored by aviation authorities. Once built, they are then tested in flight before being given a final seal of approval. They are built to withstand many more stresses and strains than they will ever encounter in flight - the safety margins are enormous. Aircraft are intended to be in the air - it's what they were made for.
Flying is routine
Everyday, just under three million people fly safely all around the world. If you watch planes taking off and landing at your local airport, or look at the arrival and departure boards in the airport, you'll understand just how many flights operate safely each and everyday. Flying really is just routine. It happens all the time with no problems.
The importance of thinking positively
Think positively all the time. If you catch yourself dwelling on negative thoughts, stop and bring yourself back to the positive. Focus on what is happening in the present moment and not what could happen in the future. It can be easy to start imagining a disaster film scenario - make the effort to redirect your wild imagination somewhere more positive. Distract and occupy yourself by reading, doing a puzzle, listening to music or watching a film, or having a conversation.
Tips to cope with feeling nervous
When you are frightened, you breathe more quickly and your heart starts to beat faster. Try this exercise to calm yourself. Push your stomach outward and slowly taking a deep, long breath in through your nose, fill your lungs with air. Hold this breath for a moment, then let it out gradually. Do this once or twice when you are feeling nervous and you will start to feel better. This is a simple but effective technique for calming yourself down. Practice it whenever you feel tense and soon it will become easy and natural.
Fear or panic itself cannot hurt you
The sensation of fear is your body's way of telling you that it perceives a threat to your safety. It is a protection mechanism, preparing us for the "fight or flight" response, and will not do you any harm in itself. Once you understand that the threat poses you no danger, the feeling of fear will vanish. A panic attack will not lead to heart attack or a loss of consciousness.


Friday, February 7, 2014

Athletic performance

Fort Smith Hypnosis
  
Athletic Performance


 
Hypnosis has been a useful tool for athletes for many generations.  Whether you're a professional, or wanting to improve your tennis serve for weekend tournaments, hypnosis can be offer many options for improved mind-body performance and coordination. Anything that's a part of your daily ritual affects how you perform in your chosen sport or activity.  By learning about what personally motivates your peak performance, is how working with the unconscious mind can be of most benefit.  This is where meditation can be especially powerful when visualizing a victorious outcome, or improvement in any physical goal. Most successful people in sports or physical fitness will tell you the key element in their suburb performances lies in their ability to visualize the event.  Runners will visualize a better time, martial artists will visualize faster more powerful punches and kicks, skiers will visualize moving through a course with ultimate ease and grace. 
Setting A Realistic Goal


The best formula for making improvements in your game or activity, is having a clear insight into "where you are" at the present time physically.  Always keep in mind that a stride toward an objective is most effective when knowing what your full potential is now.  Hypnosis in sports is based on training your ability to consistently engage in a daily structured regiment that will result in a higher level of performance. The short term benefit of hypnosis, is a renewed enthusiasm that results in a visualized outcome, based on improvement for the next event. Of course, the long term benefit of hypnosis along with meditation, is the empowerment of a new daily structured training discipline.


Monday, February 3, 2014

Hypnosis for improved concentration

 
 
Fort Smith Hypnosis
 
 
 
Hypnosis for improved concentration
Lack of concentration affects all kinds of people. The symptoms are hard to ignore – rather than focus on the matter in hand, you regularly daydream and drift away to escape from whatever you’re doing. You’re easily distracted and avoid tasks that require a lot of thought or focus. Instead you’ve a ‘grasshopper mind’, jumping from one thing to another. Often your memory is unreliable, as is your sense of time and inability to organize yourself properly.
 Advanced concentration abilities is the main reason for good performance level in school, work, or in other activities. Concentration is not possible when you experience emotional problems, physical pain, or loss of interest towards something. Improved concentration is attained with factors like dedication and interest to the assigned task, skill and ability about the certain task, balanced physical and mental state, and a suitable environment with fewer distractions. Balancing these factors and practicing to focus will enhance your concentration ability. The reason for concentration problems varies depending on the individuality of a person. Hypnotherapy can provide insight, guidance and direction to establish personal learning goals, boost self-esteem and create motivation. Enhanced learning and improved memory result.
In hypnosis, your brain’s ability to sustain concentration at increased levels will grow, not recede. Hypnosis serves as a very effective set of training wheels of sorts which can be slowly lifted, then finally removed as your ability to improve concentration and focus — or “steer straight” — gets better and better. Hypnosis is a safe and effective way to cleanse away unproductive old habits and negative emotional associations to clear the way for success.
Besides getting you into a state of total concentration, hypnotherapy also allows you extreme peace. This relaxation helps prepare your body for waking states of action by giving you deep levels of rejuvenation and confidence which greatly enhance your ability to carry out actions that require to improve concentration.
During hypnotherapy, you can still think logically but you also have access to the ‘software’ of your mind so that you can update instinctive emotional and physical responses. In fact the hypnotized subject (not the hypnotist) calls the shots. Hypnosis will give you more control in your own life because of what it enables you to do. This is a great way to improve concentration. Hypnosis is a safe environment to ‘try out’ new behaviors and emotional patterns before you experience them for real.      Terry Everson  http://www.fortsmithhypnosis.com/
 


Sunday, February 2, 2014

Fort Smith Hypnosis Facebook

 
Fort Smith Hypnosis
 
 


Hypnosis for insomnia

 
Fort Smith Hypnosis
 
 
 
Hypnosis for insomnia
 
 
We've all "been there." Tossing and turning, getting up, maybe reading a little, or watching a little TV. Then more tossing and turning, still unable to fall asleep and, finally, out of sheer exhaustion, we do "drop off."
Or we have occasionally fallen asleep and then, only two, three, or four hours later, woken up, unable to go back to sleep. We may even ask ourselves, "What's going on here?"
These two experiences are the more common forms of insomnia, i.e., 1) Inability to get to sleep. 2) Inability to maintain sleep. When either or both of these conditions become chronic, they can easily affect our ability to cope and our overall capacity to effectively function in our everyday activities.
The good news is, once we understand the real behavioral dynamics at work here, these conditions can be easily corrected.

How We Get To Sleep

Let's examine how a person who has no difficulty getting to sleep actually does it. Most people are unaware that someone who lies down in bed and "goes to sleep" actually moves through four different stages, the last of which is unconscious sleep.

The four stages of sleep are:

  1. Thinking
  2. Fantasy
  3. Hypnoidal
  4. Unconscious Sleep

Stage 1 - Thinking

When we get into bed, we start thinking about the events of the day or, possibly, what will happen tomorrow, or any myriad of things.

Stage 2 - Fantasy

Whether the person is consciously aware of it or not, his thoughts eventually turn to thoughts ASSOCIATED with relaxation. (Perhaps thought of a future vacation or activity in a place that person already associates with feeling relaxed.)

Stage 3 - Hypnoidal

As both the mind and the body relax, the muscles release tensions, and the person enters a light stage of hypnosis, known as hypnoidal. When a person enters this state of mind, he is still conscious, yet he also experiences time distortion and some amnesia. We actually must enter this hypnoidal stage because it is what enables us to attain the last stage. (No one, for instance, can honestly say, "Last night I fell asleep at 11:34 p.m. and 17 seconds.") It is the amnesia and time distortion aspects of the hypnoidal stage that make it impossible to identify the moment of transition from hypnoidal to unconscious sleep. We simply "drift" from one to the other.

Stage 4 - Unconscious Sleep

We are not consciously aware of anything going on around us.

People who have difficulty getting to sleep

This person has great difficulty transitioning from thinking to fantasy, or he simply stays in the thinking stage way too long; usually because he is worried about something or doesn't know how to control his own mind.
Now that we know about the four stages, the strategy for someone having difficulty initially getting to sleep is to skip the thinking stage altogether. Therefore, when the person gets into bed to go to sleep, he needs to begin visualizing or imagining the fantasy stage. Remember, the fantasy stage needs to be thoughts associated with relaxation.
One way to develop a fantasy stage is to reflect upon some real experience where you really were feeling relaxed. This could be when you were on a vacation or involved in some activity that you associate with relaxation. One of my clients visualizes riding north on Pacific Coast Highway, while another visualizes an imaginary round of golf on one of his favorite courses. Yet another visualizes being on a beach on the island of Maui. It is important that you use your own experience because you already associate that occasion with relaxation. It is most important that you stay in or maintain that fantasy thought process. That will eventually draw you into the hypnoidal stage and then into unconscious sleep.

Alternative method for getting to sleep

Yet another way of understanding how we get to sleep is to recognize that the combination of stages 2 (fantasy) and 3 (hypnoidal) result in the person actually hypnotizing himself. A person may not be consciously aware that that is actually what he is doing, but, in fact, it is.

How to use Self-Hypnosis to get to sleep

Self-hypnosis (like meditation) is possible because of two Dominant Laws of Suggestibility. (These laws of suggestibility, of which there are five, are literally how we learn everything.) The Laws of Association and Repetition are what make self-hypnosis possible.

Hypnotizing Yourself

Step One is to make sure your body is relaxed. Relaxation occurs when there is an absence of tension in the muscles. A good technique to accomplish this is to sequentially tense and release the muscles in the different areas of your body. Starting with the area of the feet up through the knees, first tense, then release the tension. Next, concentrate on the thighs through the hips, again, tensing and releasing the tension. Then bring your focus to your abdomen, chest, and shoulders, and do the same (tense and release), followed by the areas from your shoulders down through the arms and hands, all the way to your fingertips. Lastly, do not tense the mouth and jaw areas, but simply release any unnecessary tension there.
The next three steps replicate the physiological (body) changes experienced by anyone entering hypnosis. Take a really deep breath, hold it for a moment, then slowly exhale. (The brain and body require more oxygen to enter hypnosis.) Now create a swallow (you can do this by pretending to swallow something.) Next, roll your eyes up (eyelids closed, looking up into the forehead). This causes the eyelids to "flutter," replicating the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) of sleep.
There are several options for this next step. You could visualize or imagine your "fantasy" stage, as mentioned above, noting that it is very important to control your thoughts and stay in the visualization. Another option is to concentrate on your breathing and, only on the exhale, repeat a series of words, such as: peaceful, restful, sleep or beautiful, deep, restful, sleep.
With either option, you have by now, indeed, hypnotized yourself, and that state of mind will draw you into unconscious sleep.

People who have difficulty maintaining sleep

Let's ask a very important question: What would cause a person who has fallen asleep to suddenly be reawakened to consciousness? The usual culprit is something I call toxic worry. When we are worried about something that will occur the next day or about some important issue going on in our lives, it can interrupt our sleeping through the night. It is similar to children who are excited about Santa coming on Christmas Eve. They have difficulty getting to, and maintaining, sleep. I call it toxic worry because during those hours when it affects us, there is usually very little we can do, if anything, about the "issue" in question. No business is being conducted, people we may want to contact are probably sleeping and, at that time, when fatigued, we are not at our best.

Strategy for maintaining sleep

This strategy for maintaining sleep throughout the night is based on two elements of human behavior: 1) As we approach sleep, we become more "suggestible." Remember that to attain the unconscious sleep state, we must pass through the "hypnoidal" stage (of hypnosis). As we approach this stage, our mindset is one of receptiveness, or increased suggestibility. (For this reason, it is also a good idea to avoid depressing, fear-provoking news programs prior to sleep.) 2) There is one person in our lives to whom we are the most suggestible: ourselves. We talk ourselves into and out of things. Whatever we tell ourselves, we are more likely to follow through on.
Considering that toxic worry can trigger us out of unconscious sleep, a good strategy for maintaining sleep is to give ourselves a "suggestion" when getting into bed. Say to yourself (aloud or silently), "I refuse to worry during my sleep state. This kind of worrying accomplishes nothing. I deserve my peaceful, restful, sleep." When we tell ourselves that, we are certainly more likely to follow that suggestion (or advice).

Getting back to sleep

Sometimes, we do wake up in the middle of our sleep, whether it's for a trip to the bathroom, a pet disturbing us, a change in room temperature, a loud noise, a light going on or off, or toxic worry. An excellent strategy for getting back to sleep is to concentrate on your normal breathing. (What you are really doing is controlling your thoughts.) Become aware of how your normal inhale and exhale actually feel. This takes some practice, but once you concentrate on your normal inhale and exhale, begin repeating a series of words only on the exhale: peaceful, restful, sleep or peaceful, deep, restful, sleep.
What this repetition of words (silently or aloud) actually does is prevents you from going back into the thinking stage. You could also think of this repetition of words as a "substitute fantasy stage." With practice, you will most likely be back asleep within five to ten repetitions of the series of words.

Terry Everson Fort Smith Hypnosis   www.fortsmithhypnosis.com