Prescription: two doses of affirmation per day..

Let's prepare ourselves for the weekend, shall we? Take two doses of 'affirmation' per day and see the results... that's right, let's bring that stress all the way down... and in order to help you, I put something together for you.

Repeat the affirmation below as you start to fall asleep and as soon as you wake up in the morning... the more you repeat it the more it will become 'engraved' in your subconscious. Try it and see it working after a week or so:

"Everyday in every way I am becoming happier, healthier and wealthier… I am feeling freer… lighter… more confidence in myself… CALM … and as I say this I notice myself becoming happier … calmer… more relaxed… the more I say the word CALM the more my subconscious mind will associate this word with those positive feelings I am feeling now… happiness… health… wealth… peace…relaxed body…relaxed mind… the more I repeat the word CALM the more my subconscious mind will begin to treat this new habit as a reality … time and time again… during day and night… as a result I will be able to attract and encounter circumstances that would make me calm and healthy… CALM…CALM…that is all it takes to change my life…"

Hope you enjoy it!

Best Wishes

Costa

It's Friday at last...

... and let's renew our energies!

Ok, energy is all around us, it permeates all things and is our life source. It is as important as any other single body system because involves all of them (despite not being able to measure energy). Our energy levels are often affected by the busy lives that we lead. We sometimes feel tired or exhausted and can’t quite put our fingers on the reasons why...

... or we sometimes don’t have the motivation to make the changes that we desperately want: be that in our relationships, losing weight, going to the gym, changing our jobs, following our passions, or simply giving ourselves permission to stop, relax and feel rejuvenated again.

In life, we are presented with many different challenges and some of them are fun, exciting and make us feel alive! We wake in the morning with an excitement (not always.. I know... I know) and curiosity at the what the day will potentially bring us. Other challenges may feel like cumbersome obstacles in our lives, where decision making can be a somewhat difficult process! This can, in turn, stop us from embracing situations fully, making us feel sluggish and can keep us stuck in unhealthy patterns which don’t allow us to move forward.

Now, it may be how we approach these challenges that makes all the difference... How do you view your current challenges?

Why not trying new ways of breathing? Yes that's right! Some people are much more concerned with the next door neighbour who has bought a brand new car (given that he has been unemployed for 6 months) that they forget to live their own lives... they forget even how to breath (good job it is done for us!).

Breathe deeply.. yes that's right... many people usually breathe shallow breaths, from their chests and are actually somewhat oxygen deprived. So here you go: breathing using your diaphragm and abdominal muscles promotes relaxation and reduces tension.

Drink water... lot of it! Our bodies are nearly 80%  water... our bodies need it to work optimally. If we become ill somehow, water is a vital part of our recovery as well as remove unwanted and unnecessary materials by excreting them along with the water.

Develop and welcome new friendships (yes I know, we can't get on with everyone). At any moment in time, each and every one of us has the opportunity to bond with others as friends. We all need these emotional connection. It requires a give-and-take of trust to make relationships work, but it is well worth the effort. But hey! You might want to ask me "And IF that doesn't or isn't working?" Well, consider the costs and rewards of it? What are you getting out of it? Is it worth? Think about it..

Today is yesterday's tomorrow and today is tomorrow's yesterday.. think positively in the present tense and feel its effects... allow the power of your own positive thoughts spreading... helping to balance and heal you mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. This balance empowers you, making you able to achieve your dreams and keeping us healthy too. Stay in the now, as the past is over and, although it is good to have dreams, fear about the future are futile. 

Like the past, it can't be undone... but what you CAN do is to forgive yourself and others, by trying to make the right choice and making a little effort to move on in life. Sometimes what seems to be good, is bad and what seems to be bad, is good... it all depends on our perception. I once told the tale to one of my clients:

Once upon a time a farmer sent his son with a horse to graze upon the mountainside... He fell asleep and when he woke the horse was gone. He came back without it and the neighbours said "Oh what bad luck" the farmer then said "Maybe"
 
The very next day the farmer sent his son back to the mountain to seek his runaway... He found the horse and seven other wild ones and took them all home and the neighbours said "Oh what good luck" and the farmer said "Maybe"
 
The very next day the farmer sent his son to the wild horses that needed to be tamed... The first one he climbed on threw him down on the ground and as a result he broke his arm and the neighbours said "Oh what bad luck" then the farmer said"Maybe"

The very next day war was declared and the army men came through the countryside looking for soldiers but they couldn't take anyone... with a broken arm! The neighbours then said "Oh what good luck" and the farmer said "Maybe"

Life is what you make of it! The power to succeed or fail is yours alone and you alone have the responsibility to shape your life and make decisions. Nothing and no one can deny you greatness once you understand this.

Finally, I would like you to consider your free will and no one can cheat you out of ultimate success but you. More powerful then all the success slogans ever written is the realization that everyone has but one boss. That boss is you.

Above all: let's thank God, keep an open mind and feel grateful for our lives: it is the most precious asset you can have at any time!

I wish all my readers and followers a good Friday and would also like to invite you to consider what I have suggested so far.

Till next time...

Let's respect, love and understand ourselves?

Can you counter act negative suggestions?

YES you can! Just by picking up a newspaper or turning the telly on, everyday you hear dozens of stories that could sow the seeds of fear, worry and anxiety... However, if you accept them and take them in, these destructive thoughts may cause you to lose your will to live!!

BUT you don't have to accept them, as you have within yourself the power to counteract all these destructive ideas by autosuggesting constructive messages to your subconscious mind.. 

For a moment, stop and think about what you were not thinking about which is exactly what you need to know now: close your eyes and try to go back to your childhood (if it is safe to do) and remember ALL that negativity coming from parents and relatives... and then from friends... and then from bosses and co-workers and so on and on and on...

Study the things said to you... closely examine the meaning underneath... you might discover that many of them were nothing more than a form of propaganda... AND they were following their OWN agenda... yes their own agenda! We ALL have one, it is normal! and the worse is: they are all concealed or better saying 'disguised'... So you might ask yourself "What is the purpose of it?" Well, the purpose 'was' and still 'is' to instill fear and negative conditions of worth in you!

 When you say "I can't do this" or "I am too old now" you are simply programming  your subconscious with these negative thoughts. As a result you create obstacles... you are in effect telling your subconscious mind that it cannot solve your problems... 

So on one hand you have your conscious mind saying "I can do this" on the other hand you have your subconscious saying "I can't do this".. so it becomes an impasse...

However... you can change it! 

Go somewhere quiet, sit down, take a few deep breaths... try not to think of anything but that moment... and then repeat the following:

"My subconscious knows the answer... it is responding to me now... I give thanks because I know the infinite intelligence of my subconscious knows all things and is revealling the perfect answer to me now... my real conviction is now setting free the majesty and glory of my subconscious mind. I rejoice that is so" 
                                                 
                                                    Dr Joseph Murphy, The Power of your Subconscious Mind


Soo... some of you may say "Oh this is an affirmation!" and others may also say "It is a prayer!" and the answer is... yes and yes! You are both correct. Praying is nothing more and nothing less than an act/affirmation of faith, love and respect towards you, others, nature, universe and God. 

I hope you have found this helpful. If you wish to leave your comments, you may do so on our FB page:    MetaMind Therapies UK


Thank you

Flatliners: the film vs subconcious

We can try to change the past as much as we like, but it's what we do with the present that matters most....

It is true, isn't it? We ALL have something in the past that we decided to consciously suppress or subconsciously repress for any reason. The film Flatliners clearly shows that aspect of our subconscious mind  where a group of student doctors decided to run a few experiments on 'life after death'.

However, when the characters were clinically dead, each one of them in fact, got in touch with their fears and regrets of their past. As they grew up and in order to protect them from pain, their subconscious put defences up by repressing those painful memories.

Again, as they had experienced death, besides regrets, they also experienced remorse... As a result, they now have deal with their past too...

Psychotherapy and Hypnotherapy can be very effective when dealing with those aspects of our subconscious mind, which can offer a safe environment for the Catharsis to take place or just simply help the client to embrace new conditions of worth and move on in life.

Personality Disorder: Internet Use Disorder

The use of the internet is pervasive in our culture. So much that the American Psychiatric Association is recommending further research on the condition called “Internet Use Disorder” in the upcoming diagnostic manual DSM V.

The disorder primarily refers to Internet gaming, however, it does include the criteria of “withdrawal symptoms when internet is taken away.” Sound familiar?

Addiction is not the only mental health condition that the internet can trigger. The other one is depression.

A recent article in the Scientific American suggests that people who rapidly move around on dozens of websites, engaging in fleeting contact, are most likely to get depressed:

“Peer-to-peer file sharing, heavy emailing and chatting online, and a tendency to quickly switch between multiple websites and other online resources all predict a greater propensity to experience symptoms of depression. Quickly switching between websites may reflect anhedonia (a decreased ability to experience emotions), as people desperately seek for emotional stimulation. Similarly, excessive emailing and chatting may signify a relative lack of strong face-to-face relationships, as people strive to maintain contact either with faraway friends or new people met online.”

It is the depth of emotion that is seen as critical for normal affect. The enormous amount of distraction that’s offered online seduces us into paying less and less attention towards a single topic — or people, for that matter.


Another phenomenon is loneliness.We do sit in front of our laptops mostly by ourselves, of course. There may be other family members around, but we tend to not engage much with them when the computer is on.
Even when talking with friends online, like on Facebook, there is a strange kind of loneliness that arises out of peer pressure, as an interesting reflection in hearty magazine point out: “The loss of a person’s ability to think differently than the people surrounding him is, in and of itself, a mode of INsanity that has everything to do with loneliness.”

The dynamic gives a whole new meaning to the term “alone in the crowd.”

Modern man as isolated, intimidated, disconnected and constantly distracted — not exactly an appealing vision of the future.

Multiple Personality Disorder: 'Hide and Seek' the film

So what do you think?

 It is about a girl who seemingly does dark things with the help of her imaginary friend Charlie…Hide and Seek is a 2005 American thriller film starring Robert De Niro, Famke Janssen and Dakota Fanning. 

It is not made clear till the end of the movie however, that David Callaway (Robert De Niro) is Charlie, a man suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder (and not Emily whose mother had just died was a far more likely candidate to develop a Mental Disorder of this type). David Callaway developed this disorder when suffered a trauma: Callawat caught his wife betraying him and as a result he killed her.

Have you also noticed his second personality trait? Ok, we have seen a few ones so far, but what about his Schizoid side? 

David Callaway is a deeply disturbed type of person whose fear of involvement with others is so extreme that he withdraws into himself and attempts to do without human relationships as far as possible. These are the people we call schizoid. Schizoid people come to the attention of psychotherapist in a variety of ways. They are often pressed into seeking help by those who are near enough to them to realise that there is something wrong, because they have little faith in the ability of others to understand or help them. If self referred, the client will complain of not being able to make relationships, especially with the opposite sex; or of being quite unable to concentrate on work or complete work; or of what he is likely to call depression.

Have you also noticed his second personality trait? Ok, we have seen a few ones so far, but what Schizoid types? 

David Callaway is a deeply disturbed type of person whose fear of involvement with others is so extreme that he withdraws into himself and attempts to do without human relationships as far as possible. These are the people we call schizoid. Schizoid people come to the attention of psychotherapist in a variety of ways.

 They are often pressed into seeking help by those who are near enough to them to realise that there is something wrong, because they have little faith in the ability of others to understand or help them. If self referred, the client will complain of not being able to make relationships, especially with the opposite sex; or of being quite unable to concentrate on work or complete work; or of what he is likely to call depression. 

more to follow in the next article...

The power of your subconscious mind speaks "dreams"

In order to understand the psychological and physical aspects of hypnosis the relationship between the conscious and subconscious minds and their roles in the process will be explained.  The conscious and subconscious minds could be compared to an iceberg. What you see above the water, which is the conscious, is only a small chunk of what actually exists. The portion you cannot see which is the subconscious (underneath the water), is the larger of the two. So, whenever we meet someone, we only see the "tip of the iceberg", however, what lies below the water” is another part of the individual.

Hypnosis becomes the vehicle that allows you to bypass or submerge below the conscious mind and explore the subconscious existence (8). It is suggested that hypnosis helps you gain more control over undesired emotions or behaviours or to help you cope better with a wide range of medical conditions.

Once the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to execute it. Evidence suggests that the subconscious mind contains all your memories, emotions, imaginations, intelligence and controls the autonomic nervous system, which regulates breathing, blood circulation, heartbeat etc. A good example of this is riding a bike or driving a car.  When we are learning to ride or drive, we hit many obstacles.  Loosing balance, crunching gears and lack of confidence. However, as we practice and become familiar with the skills, they automatically become habit and are stored away in the subconscious mind to use at any time in the future.  When we become an expert driver or rider, we don’t have to think about how to do it, we just do it automatically. Hence, anything that has ever happened to you and everything you have imagined is stored away in the subconscious mind which acts just like a computer.  All the information is stored away and is available to be pulled back at any time.

The conscious mind helps us with daily decision-making and thinks out new situations where we have to decide what to do and how to do it.  It can hold only a limited number of thoughts and ideas at any one time, which is why we often memorise numbers in small chunks. This is because the conscious mind can hold only between five and nine units of information at any one time. (19)

It is believed that the conscious mind has an automatic resistance to situations.  It reasons and rejects and filters certain situations and acts as our defence mechanism and a safety device, as if it were a “Watchman at the gate”. (The Power of your subconscious mind, page 20)

There are four main types of brain wave. The fastest of the four being beta waves and the slowest being delta waves:

• Beta Waves (15 to 40 cycles per second): These are characteristic of an engaged and focused mind, for instance, a person engaged in a conversation
• Alpha Waves (9 to 14 cycles per second): Present at lighter hypnosis and guided meditation.
• Theta Waves (4 to 8 cycles per second): Present during dreaming and some meditative states
• Delta Waves (1 to 4 cycles per second): These are produced in our subconscious mind and when we are in our slowest deepest state of rest and there are no other waves active

In order to access the subconscious mind, the conscious mind needs to be bypassed through an induction process- known as PMR Progressive Muscle Relaxation - in order to establish the right brain-wave pattern so suggestions can be acted upon. Evidence shows that the role of relaxation (which is caused by induction) is very important, which combined with the element of suggestion, will result in the relaxation of body and mind, narrowed focus of attention, reduced awareness of external environment and everyday concerns, greater internal awareness of sensation and finally the trance state.

So, let's consider the film Inception, a cinematic blockbuster from writer/director Christopher Nolan about the power of dream states. Essentially, the movie is a psychological thriller about the intricacies of the psyche, especially the brain waves of the subconscious mind.

The only language our subconscious understands is: iamgination. So the way our subconscious manifest to us, is via our dreams which are represented via symbols. All products of the unconscious that come to awareness do so as symbolic messages. Archetypes are the birthing agents for symbols. The most common symbols occur as dreams. Dreams are the avenue of egress for the unconscious to gain awareness and, as such, are the axis on which therapy revolves.

The movie's star, Leonardo DiCaprio, said he prepared for the role by reading Sigmund Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams". Jungian dream interpretation differs from Freudian dream analysis. Freudian dream analysis is based on repression; that is, dreams are viewed as the emergence of repressed material from the unconscious. Jungians take the phenomenological view that the drama of the dream represents the unconscious message to the dreamer expressed in symbolic terms (Jung, 1964b).

Right, in treatment, how can we use dreams as a tool to interpret our subconscious mind? I will leave this one for the next post...

References

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     Press  

3   Cherry K, What is Hypnosis? Hypnosis Applications, Effects and Myths

     Found online at  http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/a/hypnosis.htm

4   Goodman K. Hypnosis explained

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5   Hadley, J & Staudacher, C (1996) Hypnosis for Change, New Harbinger Publications

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     page 25  

7   Hilgard ER. Hypnotic Susceptibility. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1965.

8   Hilgard, E. R. (1986). Divided consciousness: Multiple controls in human thought and action.   

     New York: Wiley.

9  JNCI J Natl Cancer Inst (2007) Hypnosis intervention effects on institutional costs*

     Found online at http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/99/17/1304.full

10 Kilhstrom, J. F. (2001). Hypnosis and the psychological unconscious. In Howard S. Friedman (Ed.), Assessment and therapy: Specialty articles from the Encyclopedia of Mental Health. San Diego, CA: Academic Press 

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     Another meta-reanalysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 517-519

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     Found online at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hypnosis/SA00084

14 Murphy, J Dr (2006) The Power of your subconscious mind, Pocket Books

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16 What is the difference between the conscious and subconscious mind?

     Found online at http://www.manifestyourheartsdesire.com/hypnosis

17 The transparency template

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18 Voit R Dr. Will I Cluck Like a Chicken?: Myths and Misconceptions About Clinical 

      Hypnosis -  Found online at http://www.ofspirit.com/rickvoit1.htm