Smokers Come in from the Cold

The UK is hardly known for its warm, dry summers or pleasant winters. So let us imagine the scenes on every street corner, outside every business, pub, club and bar across the land as smokers huddle together for warm around the embers of their smokes.

With Hypnosis and EFT there is no need to develop this hardy outdoor nature, instead smokers can change the habits of a lifetime and become healthy and above all warm and dry non-smokers! I know where I would rather be...

If You Build It They Will Come

This is a line from the film 'Field of Dreams' starring Kevin Costner where his character is guided to build a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa. It was maybe not meant to be a mantra for a Therapeutic Practice.

This is what I've built since I began this journey from the Corporate world of Management Consultancy to the quieter world of private therapy practice:

- Qualifications in Reiki Healing, Hypnotherapy, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)
- Continuing professional development in all of the above (learning is a journey not a destination)
- A network of like minded therapists and professionals
- A commitment to ethical practice adhering to professional codes of conduct
- A beautiful, tranquil safe haven in my own home in which to work with my clients
- A professional relationship with excellent supervisors who support me and ensure I'm in a good place to help others

I would like to thank the following people who have helped me so far; Cherri, both the Johns, Faye, Jane, Jacqui, Ina, all the Alisons, Leonie, Penny, and of course my wonderful boys for putting up with all the days I was studying or writing essays and case studies into the wee small hours, Simon and Alex. And finally thank you to my cats who regularly turn up for work and help to put a smile on the face of clients as they face up to times that sometimes they would rather not remember.

So the foundations are laid with love and care. Brick by brick the practice will grow and day by day myself and my clients will work together and learn the lessons that life had chosen for us. As we build it together so this will grow, not in a cornfield in Iowa but in a room in Priory Vale.

Buyer Beware - Dangerous Therapists

I am becoming increasingly aware of therapists setting themselves up as Hypnotherapists or Life Coaches offering Hypnosis to their clients without appropriate training.

How would you feel if you knew that your therapist:

- Had only received a weekend's worth of training
- Was not accredited with one of the national societies who licence reputable and ethical therapists
- Had no supervision
- Had no training in contra indications and the medical dangers of hypnosis (these include asthmatics, pregnant women, epileptics and many more common conditions)
- Have no training in how to deal with spontaneous regression (either to an earlier age or past life)
- Have no training in how to deal with an 'abreaction' (severe distress, panic attack etc)

Is this the person you want messing around with your sub conscious mind?

Please, please always ask to see at least a Diploma in Hypnotherapy and ask to see which society they are a member of and whether they have supervision.

The Hypnotherapy Society has an excellent wesite on which you can find a local therapist.

Beat the Ban Update

Regardless of how you may feel about the 'nanny state' many smokers are taking the opportunity to reassess how they feel about their smoking habit. Knowing that they will be unable to smoke at work, in designated work transport, in pubs, clubs, restaurants and other public places has made smokers think again.

In my hypnotherapy practice I see many people who describe the habit rather than the addictive properties of cigarettes. Many facets of the habit include smoking in breaks at work, the cigarette that accompanies a pint or a glass of wine or the cigarette after a meal.

The Ban on Smoking in Public Places from 1st July is a pause for thought as many smokers' habits will have to change completely. Changing habits to something new is one of the main ways in therapy that we can work to eliminate cigarettes (cigars, tobacco and roll ups) for good.

In an article in this week's Evening Standard (London only) the journalist quoted the shocking statistic that 50% of all smokers will die from a smoking related illness. I'm sure in these last few weeks of being able to smoke in pubs and clubs that few smokers will realise that as they look around at the members of the 'smokers club' that 50% of them will die for their habit. Are those odds they want to take?

Tobacco's natural radiation dose higher than after Chernobyl

If nothing else, this should worry smokers: the radiation dose from radium and polonium found naturally in tobacco can be a thousand times more than that from the caesium-137 taken up by the leaves from the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Constantin Papastefanou from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece measured radioactivity in tobacco leaves from across the country and calculated the average radiation dose that would be received by people smoking 30 cigarettes a day. He found that the dose from natural radionuclides was 251 microsieverts a year, compared with 0.199 from Chernobyl fallout in the leaves (Radiation Protection Dosimetry, vol 123, p 68).

Though the radiation dose from smoking was only 10 per cent of the average dose anyone receives from all natural sources, Papastefanou argues that it is an increased risk. "Many scientists believe that cancer deaths among smokers are due to the radioactive content of tobacco leaves and not to nicotine and tar," he says.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn11974&feedId=online-news_rss20

• 12:00 02 June 2007
• NewScientist.com news service

Eating Away at Self Esteem

Kate Spicer writes in this weekend's Sunday Times 'Eat normally, love yourself...and whatever you do, do not diet'. This is in response to a 16 year old who having seen Kate attempt to become a size zero in an excellent documentary for BBC3 wants to know how to do it!

Despite Kate having shown how bad this is for you, the medical risks and how it left her with her 'eating habits in a mess for months afterwards' this 16 year old girl had edited all this out and just wanted to know how to achieve the figure of Nicole Richie, Victoria Beckham, Lindsay Lohan et al.

Some food for thought (pardon the pun)from the Mental Health Charity Mind:

Some 1.1m people in the UK are believed to suffer from an eating disorder
6000 cases of anorexia nervosa were diagnosed last year alone
Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (Ednos) is increasingly appearing on many woman's medical notes

But it is not the just the women who have developed the full blown eating disorder that concerns me. It is the scores of women who have lost the middle way of true authentic hunger and spend hours in an ongoing debate of what is 'good' or 'bad' and when they inevitably stray into 'bad' find plenty of negative self talk to punish themselves for it.

Kate Spicer recommends and reviews a book called 'Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters' (Published by Piatkus) written by Courtney Martin. Courtney says the title of her book 'is an apt description of the way in which today's girls feel compelled to chase after the dangerous delusion of perfection...'

For many women like myself we feel we can never even aspire to this goal of perfection. The size zero (UK size 4) debate seems miles away from our daily 'Bridget Jones' lifestyle where a size 10/12 figure is our holy grail and the reality is many of us hover above the average UK dress size which is actually now 16. We may not be starving ourselves, at least not on a daily basis - we try it occassionally when our trousers don't do up, but daily we question and fret about whether the food we eat today has been a good day (we might lose a 1lb) or a bad day (we might gain 3lbs!)

Weight Weighs Heavy on our Lives

I see many women who want my help to lose weight. It is not just an issue for my clients but something I have had a problem with myself. Like many women I would say I have been on one diet or another pretty much every year since my teens. The net result is I have yo yo'd up and down the scales and worn every dress size between 12 and 20.

What have I learnt from my experiences and those of my clients?

Diets not only don't work but they actually make the problem worse as your body becomes more and more adept at storing fat.

We spend an excessive amount of time and money devoted to our goal of a quick fix.

I've been wondering what if we devoted our energy, time and money to other goals. What could we be achieving in our lives? If we broke for once and for all the cycle of endless 'when I am thin, everything in my life will be better' deals what could we actually be achieving, right here, right now.

Think about it and let me know.