Hypnotherapy can help people not only to lose weight but to keep it off.  One of the ways that this can be achieved is to join a Weight Workshop.

Unlike the usual weekly weight loss programmes  which focus on calorie counting and dieting, a five-week course of weigh loss by hypnotherapy will help to redefine the way you think about food.

Leatherhead hypnotherapy periodically runs a five-week weight loss course that covers all aspects of losing weight with hypnotherapy.  In a small group of no more than about 12 people the weight loss programme uses a combination of hypnosis, Neuro Linguistic Programming  (NLP) and visualisations to help you understand why you eat the wrong foods, eat too much food and eat for the wrong reasons.

During the five weekly sessions you will learn about relaxation, how to visualise the wrong foods and how to replace them with healthy eating.  In the final session you will learn how to do self-hypnosis to enable you to continue controlling your weight until a target weight is achieved.  Self-hypnois will also  help you maintain that target weight in the future.

This is not a diet.  Hypnosis for weight loss works with the subconscious mind to discover where and when eating patterns were formed.  For example if we are given sweets as children to comfort us and to stop us crying, when we are grown ups and something goes wrong the subconscious kicks in and we reach for the chocolate.  

Over the five weeks we will produce a whole picture to help you lose weight and keep it off.

Many clients come to my Leatherhead Hypnotherapy Clinic suffering from anxiety. They may be anxious about a forthcoming event like making a speech or taking a test. Some, however, suffer from anxiety that begins to affect their whole lives.

Anxiety can affect our emotions, our behaviour and our physical health. It can create a feeling of fear that makes us avoid situations that have caused anxiety in the past.

A recent client came to see me because she wanted to pass her driving test. She had now failed three tests and was beginning to believe she would never get her licence.

After our initial consultation here at my Leatherhead clinic I learned that when she was 17 during her first driving test a lorry had jack knifed in front of her. In her panic she had jumped out of the car and run back to the test centre vowing never to get behind the wheel of a car again.

Recently having moved to Leatherhead and now in her mid thirties with two children she desperately wanted to learn to drive. She had failed two more tests when on each occasion her anxiety had got the better of her.

Using an NLP technique to rewind the memories of that first test and a session of hypnosis with positive suggestions and visualisation about driving, her driving instructor noticed the difference in her straight away.

The day before her test she had another hypnotherapy session here at Leatherhead Hypnotherapy and felt extremely calm, relaxed and confident. The next day she took her test at Reigate driving test centre and passed easily. The original event, which had left her feeling so anxious, had been dealt with and four weeks later she is driving with confidence.

When we avoid the situations that make us feel anxious often this itself ensures we feel anxious and we start to worry about the next time. There are many ways hypnotherapy can help with anxiety regardless of the original cause of the problem.

Is the question asked by so many people who come to my Surrey Hypnotherapy clinic in Leatherhead.

The answer to this lies in what happens when we start to smoke. The first cigarettes we have are usually quite horrible, often they make us feel sick or even dizzy and we struggle to finish them.  The majority of people start smoking to impress their friends usually aged about fourteen or fifteen when we are at school.

Therefore we persist until we have learned how to smoke.  Once we have learned how to do something our subconscious mind turns it into an automatic function something we do without thinking about it.  Imagine how complicated our lives would be if we had to remember how to do everything, think back to when you learned to drive and how difficult it all seemed until one day it became automatic and the only time we ever think about driving is if we change our car.

This is what happens when we smoke it becomes automatic, these programmes are then saved in our subconscious memory bank and cannot be removed.  When I treat a client here at my Leatherhead Hypnotherapy Clinic for stop smoking I explain that we can leave these programmes in our memory bank and they will stay there unless we deliberately recall them.  When we are adults and we have children or grandchildren it is amazing how we remember those nursery rhymes and games from our own childhood that have been stored away.  

A recent client from Dorking told me she gave up smoking the day she discovered she was pregnant with her son at his twenty first birthday party she told him off for smoking, and he handed her the packet and dared her to smoke one.  Sadly she did and within two weeks she was smoking up to twenty cigarettes a day.

Anyone who gives up however they choose to do it whether with hypnotherapy or just plain willpower, when faced with the urge to have a just one cigarette must always remember they won’t be choosing to have just one cigarette, but they will be choosing to become a smoker again.

Talk to me today about how you can become a non smoker.

Are your New Year Resolutions already history? Many clients who come to Leatherhead Hypnotherapy started the New Year with plans to loose weight, stop smoking or get fit. Sometimes even all three. Most of these plans have now been abandoned.

One client here at my Leatherhead hypnotherapy clinic said ‘I give up smoking every Monday morning, it lasts until coffee time if I am lucky’. Why do our resolutions fail? We start out with such good intentions. We join the gym or fill the fridge with healthy food then at the first obstacle we give up and revert to our old habits.

Habits are ingrained in our subconscious mind, whether it is to have a cigarette on our way to work or a chocolate biscuit with our morning coffee.

These habits are important to us. Our subconscious had decided that these treats make us feel better. When the weather is cold and grey we reach for the chocolate bar. When work is stressful and deadlines loom we nip outside for a cigarette. When we plan to go to the gym but our favourite programme is on the television we slump on the sofa.

In hypnotherapy we can reprogram the subconscious mind to adopt new habits which are more beneficial for us. We can leave those old habits behind and learn a new way of thinking. 

Instead of seeing the chocolate biscuits as a reward we can learn that refusing the biscuit and beginning to lose weight is a reward in itself. This can lead to us feeling better about ourselves. Skipping the cigarette break in favour of tidying the clutter on our desk can reward us with not only feeling healthier but also working more efficiently.

Here at Surrey hypnotherapy in Leatherhead we can help you get your New Year Resolutions back on track.

Hypnosis is the most natural way to lose weight.  Here at my Surrey hypnotherapy practice in Leatherhead I devise an individual programme for every client.

We all know we need to exercise and eat healthy to reduce weight and with hypnotherapy we can re-programme our thinking to turn this into a new way of life.

Hypnosis helps us to understand the link between our mind and body.  It can help us develop new positive habits by re-educating the subconscious mind.  Many of us develop unhealthy habits often related to childhood days.  

Here in my Leatherhead, Surrey hypnotherapy practice I track down those habits and uncover why they were formed.  This helps clients to develop a new way of thinking.  Habits formed when we are children no longer serve a purpose as adults.

Hypnotherapy can also help you develop a new self-image, as low self-esteem is often a factor in comfort eating.  A client in my Surrey hypnotherapy practise in Leatherhead once told me she didn’t deserve to be slim.  Once we had changed this mind-set she went on to lose four stone and became a healthy ten and a half stone.  Her blood pressure was lowered and she became much healthier overall in the process.

If we understand the reasons why we eat we are more we are more likely to find new ways to lose weight naturally.  This is why in my Leatherhead hypnotherapy practise I use hypnotherapy relaxation techniques to lessen the effects of stress and anxiety.

Hypnotherapy tackles weight loss in a positive way rather than being told what we can’t have, as we all know this just makes us want it more.  If you starve your body of food as is often the case in dieting your body lays down as much fat as possible in case of future starvation and that is why the weight just creeps back on.

How great will you look when you lose weight?  It feels good, you are feeling more confident. You are healthier.  Losing weight at a reasonable rate of 2lbs a week will ensure keeping it off long term. No medications, no shakes or slimming bars, and definitely no slimming clubs!

Christmas is a very stressful time of year here at Surrey Hypnotherapy Clinic we are juggling shopping, carol services, school nativity plays with seeing clients who are more stressed than usual.

Recently at my Surrey Hypnotherapy practise I have been asked what can I do, how can I get through the next few weeks, clients say I’m exhausted but I can’t sleep, I have a constant headache and often one or other members of the family are suffering from coughs and colds to add to the stress. 

Here at my Surrey Hypnotherapy practise I teach my clients self-hypnosis techniques to help them take five minutes for themselves.  The techniques are simple and if taught during a hypnosis session are easy for the client to learn.                                                                   

Clients don’t have to lie down in a darkened room simple eye closure techniques can be taught that they can do any time. Just five minutes away from the bustle of Christmas, even if it means locking yourself in the bathroom after putting on the sprouts, on to cook will give you enough energy to enjoy and enthusiasm to enjoy the rest of the day.

A word of warning though about getting too comfortable, one very stressed out man who learned self hypnosis at my Surrey Hypnotherapy Practise  went home from work and told his wife he was going to do this straight away.  He went upstairs at 6.30 and lay on the bed he woke at 6.30 the next morning with the duvet thrown over him.  His wife decided he looked so peaceful she couldn’t bring herself to disturb him.  

So if Mum or Dad go missing for too long on Christmas morning just wake them gently, or you may end up with soggy sprouts!

Welcome to my first blog post. I thought it might be useful to give you a quick run through on the use of hypnotherapy through the ages.

If you tell your family and friends that you are thinking of having hypnotherapy for whatever reason, you will get a variety of comments ranging from frightening and funny. To find the reason for this we must look at the history of hypnosis.

Relics from ancient Egypt depict something similar to hypnosis. The Australian Aborigines, North American Indians and Hindu Cults have all used a hypnotic state for thousands of years. .Our modern journey starts with Franz Anton Mesmer a charismatic character born in 1734. He originally studied Theology but went on to train in medicine. His first attempts at healing involved the use of strong magnets to move a supposed magnetic fluid around the body. This developed into group healing sessions and Mesmer moved from using magnets to using his hands.

After his death in 1815 a number of his disciples kept his work going. In 1849 an English doctor called James Braid coined the term hypnosis (from the Greek, hypnos for sleep) he noticed that his patients’ eyes often became fixed during hypnosis. He also discovered that the cures were due to suggestion not magnetism

Dr James Esdaile used hypnotic anaesthesia to conduct of 400 operations in India but was ridiculed by the medical profession. During this time a Dr John Elliotson was also demonstrating the use of hypnosis in Britain but he to was hounded by the medical profession.

Sigmund Freud studied hypnosis and came to believe that humans have a powerful hidden mental process and this led to an understanding of the presence of the subconscious mind.

The father of modern hypnosis Milton Erikson was born in 1901 and his pioneering work has helped to bring us to where we are today. Into this mix of colourful characters we must add the way hypnosis is depicted in all forms of entertainment. It is therefore, little wonder that anyone you speak to will ask if you are going to end up clucking like a chicken.

Research in recent years has led to Hypnosis becoming more acceptable as a therapy to address a variety of issues. These include weight loss, stop smoking and the treatment of phobias and anxiety. A number of clinical studies have also shown that hypnosis can help reduce pain in childbirth with beneficial effects for both mother and baby.

Today, most therapy sessions take place with the client seated in a comfortable chair. The image of the patient lying on a black couch with the therapist swinging a pocket watch is confined to the movies.

One big change in recent years is the advent of internet conferencing. Today the client can be at home having treatment from a therapist based anywhere in the world. Clients can keep in touch with the therapist they trust even if either moves away.

A client of mine recently suffered a severe panic attack about flying home from New York and was able to receive treatment from me via Skype to enable him to make the journey home comfortably. With the coming of the internet and easy access to laptops and tablets hypnotherapy is more available than ever before.