A man’s own self is his friend.  A man’s own self is his foe.

                             -Bhagavad Gita

STOP: THINK: DO

Before you let your imagination take you to “I’m wonderful…” or “I love myself deeply and completely…” or “I have success/money/beauty/fame/love beyond my wildest dreams…” take a moment to consider.

Give up? In my Never-So-Humble-Opinion, the most powerful and important word in any language is the word “STOP.”
Why “STOP?” Because most of life’s problems over which you have the most control are carried out automatically, while you are in a state I like to call “day trance.” This is the state you are in when you overeat, smoke, drink too much, spend too much, obsess, act impulsively.

“Day Trance” has played a huge part in survival and evolution. It allows us to carry out the most menial of tasks without conscious awareness. Think about how long it would take you to walk, eat, brush your teeth, even speak, if you had to think about each of the actions involved in carrying out these and so many daily tasks. Nature provided us with the ability to do many things while lost in thought, automatically. So valuable, don’t you think?

But, it’s this ability to act without conscious awareness that also gets us into trouble. Habits are automatic, without-thought behaviors. So are addictions, compulsions, obsessions. So is road rage. So is losing your temper. Or engaging in compulsive retail therapy. In fact, so is the act of “spacing out” or the distractability so characteristic of ADD/ADHD.

It should be easy for you to see, then, that “STOP” is a very important message you can learn to give yourself just before you drift into any kind of destructive or unwanted automatic behavior. You can insert this message yourself but it’s much easier and more effective if it is installed into your automatic behavior from a source outside of yourself.

That’s my job. To take you into the accelerated learning state we call hypnotic trance and insert “stop” into your automatic programming. You CAN do it for yourself but it’s harder to do it for yourself. Alternatively, you can buy an hypnosis recording for the specific behavior you want to change and listen to it.

You can even use a technique that I developed that I call “change the channel.” You keep reminding yourself each time you find yourself dropping into the unwanted behavior to “change the channel” or put your attention on something else. Redirect your attention to “I can do this” or whatever you create for your preferred “channel.”

Either way, I’m certain that you can see why I say that “STOP” is the most important word in any language. If there is a habit, obsession, compulsion you need to “STOP,” feel free to give me a call or drop me an email. I’ll give you as much information as I can, no obligation, of course.

If you decide that hypnosis is the best defense against Destructive Day Trance behavior, let’s set up an appointment.

Here’s to your success….

Too Much is Enough

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world,

except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

                                                                 –Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

 ————

Well, here it is Spring again. April 7th. Easter and Passover. Warmer weather promises to peek through. Time to think about spring and summer clothes. Barer midriffs, bellies, waists, shorts. And I got my first call from a client from the ER this year–for over-doing exercising.

This person was with a one-on-one trainer. Males under the age of 25 should not be allowed to train anyone older than 25 and male. They’re full of testosterone (pestosterone?) themselves. Their muscles are crying out to be worked. They’re at peak health (one would assume because they’re in the fitness field).

Testosterone causes a drop in empathy, so say the scientists. Given the evolutionary nature of testosterone, I tend to believe that it’s true. Testosterone causes a number of attitudinal tendencies. There is a tendency to want to  act more independently, be territorial, be more sex driven, and having less ability to empathize. This is not an indictment. It’s simply a fact.

From an evolutionary survival standpoint, somebody’s got to fight the sabre-toothed tiger. For my money, you guys are welcome to that task.

However, when judgement is clouded by over-enthusiasm, especially to create rock-hard abs, there might be room for a bit of caution.

When is too much, too much? I would say it’s too much when unbridled exercise causes an exerciser to pass out, think he’s having a heart attack, or collapse from overexertion. Or even be so sore afterwards that working out becomes a distant dream.

Spare me, guys and girls. Use a little sense when you pick a trainer or workout. Six-packs and flat abs are of no use if you’re passed out on the ground. Or even if you’re rendered into so much after-exercise, over-worked-out agony that you end up with PTSD and crushing gym-o-phobia.

Remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. Slow and steady really does win the race in the end.

Happy Spring Holidays and Happy Summer-time coming.

Here’s to your success…

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances,

I have one more intimate confidant.

My depression is the most faithful mistress I have ever known–

no wonder, then, that I return the love.

         –Soren Kierkegaard

****************

The Blues or the Blahs?

SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is one of those issues that can too easily be dismissed as too touchy-feely, all-in-your-mind, get-a-grip-and-get-off-your-butt problems, dismissed even by ourselves. And yet, like so many mental-health issues, even though there is a ton of credible medical research supporting its validity, the reality of SAD is illusive at best.

I live in sunny, southern California. Yet I go through it every winter. Every winter I doubt myself and try to shake it off. I even asked my own doctor, who is very open to alternative medical ideas; he shrugged it off, saying that he didn’t think it would be an issue in Los Angeles.

However, when I mention it to other Southern Californians, many of them have the same experience. Let’s take a closer look.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is episodes of depression that occur at a certain time of the year, usually during winter. A less common form of the disorder includes depression during the summer months.

As reported on the site Medline.com, the folks at the National Institute of Health suggest the following facts to consider.

There is no real test for SAD. Your health care provider can make a diagnosis by asking about your history of symptoms.

The disorder may begin during the teen years or in early adulthood. It occurs more often in people who live in places with long winter nights are at greater risk for SAD. (No surprise) It also occurs more often in women than in men. (Also no surprise)

The factors that your physician will assess are the amount of sunlight you get in a day, your body temperature, your genetics and your hormones. Symptoms usually build up slowly in the late autumn and winter months. Symptoms are similar to other forms of depression, with a few slight variants.

1. Slow, sluggish, lethargic movement

2. Loss of interest in work or other activities

3. Increased appetite with weight gain (weight loss is more common with other forms of depression

4. Increased sleep and daytime sleepiness (too little sleep is more common with other forms of depression)

5. Less energy and ability to concentrate in the afternoon

6. Social withdrawal

7. Vague feelings of unhappiness and irritability

Actually, as I write this I think about the way people seem to feel when it’s raining. How often, when it’s pouring outside, have you heard someone say: “Today looks like a good day to stay in bed and watch TV?” However, since rain usually only lasts a week or so, perhaps it’s not as crippling as SAD, which can last for months.

As with other types of depression, antidepressant medications and talk therapy can be effective. Taking long walks during the daylight hours and getting exercise can make the symptoms better. Keep active socially, even if it involves some effort. Vitamin D is the latest supplement suggested to help with SAD. So is making sure that you stay warm enough to be comfortable most of the time.

Light therapy using a special lamp with a very bright fluorescent light (10,000 lux) that mimics light from the sun may also be helpful. Your health care provider may also perform a physical exam and blood tests to rule out other disorders that are similar to SAD.

If you decide to try light therapy be sure to get instructions from your doctor and follow them. A common practice is to sit a couple of feet away from the light box for about 30 minutes every day. This is usually done in the early morning, to mimic sunrise. Keep your eyes open, but do not look straight into the light source.

Symptoms of depression should improve within 3 – 4 weeks if light therapy is going to help. Ditto with antidepressants. Some SAD sufferers wisely start preparing around October. More light. More consistency with Vitamin D. Maybe anti-depressants. Maybe a light box. Making sure that exercise doesn’t fall away during the busy holiday season.

People who take drugs that make them more sensitive to light, such as certain psoriasis drugs, antibiotics, or antipsychotics, should be more cautioius when using light therapy.

Most importantly, since the symptoms of SAD can be vague, not totally immobilizing but more like a dark cloud hovering over your days, it’s can be helpful to consider if you’ve been feeling draggy, uninspired, underwhelmed with a bad case of what I call the “I don’t-wanna’s.”

I don’t know about you guys, but when I feel off and I can’t shake it, it helps me to get up and get going if I know that there’s something I can blame it on. It helps me to remember that I’m not irresponsible, lazy or crazy. It’s just the weather. Or the stars. Or even creeping old age. How about you?

Here’s to your success…

Susan French

http://www.hypno4success.com

888-333-3688

References

Gelenberg AJ, Freeman MP, Markowitz JC, Rosenbaum JF, Thase ME, Trivedi MH, et al. American Psychiatric Asosciation. Practice guidelines for the treatment of patients with major depressive disorder. 2nd ed. September 2007.

Tesar GE. Psychiatry and psychology. In: Carey WD, ed. Cleveland Clinic: Current Clinical Medicine 2010. 2nd ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2010:section 11.

My sentiments exactly...

This topic can’t even be considered without first addressing the Buddhist idea of “being in the moment.” As far as I know, only highly practiced monks can do it. I know that I certainly cannot. No matter how hard I try.

The latest buzz-thought in therapy is Mindfulness, as in Mindful Meditation. I love the concept. I love the feeling, when and for as long as I can experience it at any one time. My own inner journeys open pathways of understanding that can not be experienced in any other way.

It is only in these moments of sustained inner awareness that I begin to see the multiple layers of existence. It is only in these moments of sustained inner awareness that I really “get” (if only for a flash of a moment) how glorious it is to “be in the moment.”

And at that precise moment I can feel myself being like a chess-piece in a three-dimensional chess game. Multiple prisms at one time. Infinity…and beyond. And then it’s gone, isn’t it?

It is in these nano-moments that the value of the practice of Mindful Meditation becomes clear. The goal of practice is to learn how to sustain these nano-moments so that we can take just a little bit of a longer look at this reality. To understand it, just a little bit better. To know it, just a little bit more profoundly. And hopefully, to bring some of this expanded reality back into our everyday living.

It is only in this nano-moment of insight do I realize the lesson of attachment and misery. I can experience anything but I can’t hold onto it. I can love profoundly for that moment. But there is no time for thinking about what I might require back in order make that experience worth the expenditure of my time and energy.

This Truth applies to all experiences but especially to “love.” If this all seems a bit too esoteric and abstract: indulge me for just a moment more.

Can you remember a time when you had that wonderful explosion of feeling about something–anything. Bliss! Ecstacy! Even orgasmic! And then immediately following come the worries and conditions. Will it last? Is it real? How much will it cost me? Will hurt follow? Loss? Grief? Despair? Agony?

And just as quickly, it’s all gone. Sucked down the drain of attachment, worry, conditions, entitlement, expectations. Tsk. Tsk.

The trick, to me, is expanding my focus on the moment for as long as possible, staving off intrusion from both the past and the future; probably not for much more than a few more seconds. Hopefully some of it will find its way into my daily existence.

Is it worth the time and energy spent in practice? I think so. What do you guys think? Please let me know.

Here’s to your success….

Susan French

Hypnosis Clinician

888-333-3688

susanfrench2010@gmail.com

Hypnosis: The Bridge to your Inner Divinity

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.
                                                      Mahatma Gandhi

_______________

When you become familiar enough with any subject,  you begin see  the core ideas that emerge. These core ideas are usually clear, simple and concise, magically condensing any subject that once seemed completely daunting into an understandable “Essence.”

So it has become for me with therapeutic hypnosis.  Therapeutic hypnosis can be used to “make magic” in your life; you can be or become anything you choose.  The most important core insight that I’ve had about how hypnosis works is the state of hypnosis helps you connect you to your own ephemeral Divinity Within.

While there are many concepts of God, the Divine Force, Divine Intelligence, Higher Power, it seems to me that at the base of it we have a divine, internal source and resource that is reachable.  That divine internal source and resource also connects to the divine intelligence, Higher Power above, out-there, externally.

When we “go inside” in hypnosis, we are connecting to a part of us that is not particularly well-defined or even acknowledged by our society and yet, most of us feel that part, are aware of that part, even have awareness of it’s great power once tapped into.

Some of us call it our ‘sub-conscious self,’ others call it the Soul, the Spirit, others still call it a Core self. Whatever you might choose to call it, it is this inside self that is our ‘small, still voice within,’ the wise, beyond-humanly-powerful and intuitive part of ourselves that can seem mysterious and unreachable.

It is that magical place we reach for inside for inner strength, self-understanding, understanding of the Universe and God (as you understand God). When we are able to connect with this wispy-seeming Inside Strength, we can ‘make magic’ in our lives.

We’ve all experienced it at least once in our lives; usually more.  That experience in which we are suddenly connected with that inner voice that warns us of trouble in the road ahead or danger lurking outside our homes. Or a vague warning of a body dysfunction or a child in need of special attention.

Or it can be that experience of phenomenal strength that human beings have demonstrated, for instance, by lifting an automobile off of the body of our child with our bare hands.

Sometimes this can experienced as that “click” into the zone when performing music or athletics that becomes like an out-of-body, I’m-sure-not-in-control here-but-I’m-letting-the-experience-take-me experience that cannot be explained but just “IS.”

When clients come to me for hypnosis “magic,” what I’m really doing is teaching them how to connect with and utilize this “Inner Resource.”

It is also my personal experience and belief that it is this inner, core consciousness that connects with the Universal Divine Conscious which most people call God. This is the magical and metaphysical resource that they speak of in the Secret, in Abraham-Hicks, in the writings of Louise Hay and Marianne Williamson.

When my own prayers seem empty and not going anywhere, I go into self-hypnosis because I can always reach God from that inner consciousness. My own direct line to the Divine.

Whatever “magic force” you need to connect with in order to accomplish your own dreams and goals, hypnosis is the bridge inwards into that resource. If you need to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce pain, overcome insomnia or panic, hypnosis opens that pathway inwards into your own inner magic.

Hypnosis itself is not magic but hypnosis is the easiest bridge into that magical resource that we all search for in some way or another; for some purpose or another; that magical resource that exists within every single human being as well as many animals and plants.

If you need to “make magic” in your life, call me for a free, no-obligation conversation. I’m happy to answer all questions so that you can decide for yourself.

Here’s to your success…

Susan French

888-333-3688

http://www.hypno4success.com

Enjoy.

And PLEASE “like” it if you like it. Comments are always welcome.

Here’s to your success…

Susan French

http://www.hypno4success.com/blog

888-333-3688

skf

will this post to facebook, twitter and linked in…or not?

Hmmmm. Hypnosis is used for gastric bypass weight loss. I wonder if....

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2091455/Joan-Rivers-undergoes-ANOTHER-cosmetic-procedure-reality-TV-show.html#ixzz1kUBowO3A

Something to consider.

Sign up for Susan French Hypnosis Blog: http://bit.ly/pWgrcD 

Here’s to your success….

Contact me:  susanfrench2010@gmail.com

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.

                                            –Henry Ellis

———————-

Managing an Attack of the "I-Don't-Wanna's"

The “I-don’t-wannas” is a state of mind and body that my old friend Fran turned me onto. You know. The “I-don’t-wanna’s” is that state that you wake up in and just don’t want to do anything. The days when you want to pull the covers over your head and let the world pass you by.

The ‘I-dont-wannas’ usually come on without warning. You may not even be able to figure out what triggered an attack. When under attack, however, my experience has been that you have to give in to it as soon as you notice it or as soon thereafter as you can manage.

It’s been awhile since I wrote about the “I-don’t-wannas,”  but since I’m just coming out of an attack myself, I thought it would be good to write about.

Every year I forget to remember that I go into the “I-don’t-wannas” sometime around the holidays, usually the day after. It usually lasts until late January but can last as long as until early March. I’m sharing this phenomenon with you in case you experience it as well. I notice that many clients, as well as friends and family, go in and out of the “I-don’t-wannas” also and when it hits, it’s always a surprise and it’s always impossible to fight off successfully.

When we’re in it, we usually just can’t figure out what’s wrong. The simplest tasks seem daunting and undo-able. Forget those tasks that require creativity, problem-solving and energy. That just isn’t going to happen, until the IDW’s pass.

What seems to be most important is to recognize the state and accept it. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to really fight my way through it. At some point, the only option is to give in, climb back into bed if you can, and abandon as many tasks as possible until it passes.

I’ve also found that it WON’T pass if I DON’T give into it. It is in these times I have to really surrender to God, the Divine Energy, the Wisdom of my Body. I sleep, read, watch dumb-ole-TV, listen to music as long as I feel like it, play and sing IF I feel like it.

I let the phone go into voicemail as much as is humanly possible without tumbling the house of cards that my life always feels like (especially during this time period). I hibernate. I even eat sugar and other junk if compelled to do that.

It is only after a true and thorough surrender that my energy begins to return and I can begin to come out of hibernation. I’ve learned not to beat myself up or drive myself through these periods. Like taking care of young kids: it has more energy than I do.

I often find that this is also a time for regrouping, dumping the trash, finding the time-sucks that I can eliminate. I find that it’s best if I let myself return to the flow of life s-l-o-w-l-y. It is truly a time of faith: faith in that the Divine Energy knows best. Faith in the fact that the sky won’t fall and nobody will die if I retreat for awhile. That, in itself, is a profound and useful insight.

So, if you have ever experienced an “Attack-of-the-I-Don’t-Wannas,” or are going through one now, I hope my explanation will help you to navigate it with the least amount of pain and distress.

Please share YOUR experience with the IDW’s. Did they flatten you? Did they mystify you? Did they scare you? Did you feel 1000% defeated? Tell me about your IDW’s. And remember, most of all, they pass AFTER you give in but not before. Don’t waste precious energy fighting it. Give in. Take what your mind/brain/body/spirit needs and it will pass. I promise.

Here’s to your success…

Susan French

Clinical Hypnotherapist

http://www.hypno4success.com

888-333-3688

Contact me:  susanfrench2010@gmail.com