Hypnotherapy and Happiness

On my journey to wellness, I have made some decisions since I last posted on this blog.


One was that, although I think Jon Gabriel completely has it right in terms of changing the way one thinks about food, oneself and healing, I felt I needed to delve a little deeper into the reasons I gained weight in the first place. In fact, Jon Gabriel suggests in his book that if you have deep-seated issues, it would make sense to get some sort of therapy to help dismantle some of the 'stuff' that can get in your way.


So I took his advice.


I really believe that when you are ready to do something, to take a new path, the Universe sends you what you need. You don't always notice it but I have worked hard to try to recognise the messages I get from time to time.


What changed my thinking was doing something called The Dip in the Nip, a skinny dip in north west Ireland to raise money for cancer charities.  350+ people got naked and dashed into the ocean. Here is a post I wrote about it on my blog, The Sound of the Night. 


Getting naked when I was young was no big deal. I had a great body. What's so hard about skinny dipping when you know you look good? Well, when you're 53 and overweight, it's another matter all together.


Funnily enough, it was seeing my bare ass in a national newspaper the next day that set me on the path to where I am now. I was faintly embarrassed about it but, on thinking about it, I realised I wasn't THAT embarrassed and started to think about how doing the Dip had really affected me.  What it did, in the end, was make me realise that, despite being overweight, I didn't look that bad and, after all, it was only fat, and could be got rid of.  I know that sounds easy but, in fact, it was a turning point for me in my sense of self worth. 


If I could get naked and be in the papers and not be worried about it, what was to stop me from finally tackling the issues?


Remember I mentioned signs from the Universe above? The the day after the event, we bought all the newspapers to see what had been written about us swimming naked. The event was in every Sunday paper. In one of the papers, I came across an article about hypnotherapy for weight loss and filed it in the back of my mind.


A couple of weeks later, I dug out the information and checked out the website, Weight Loss Clinic Ireland,  and made the all important phone call to see if I could afford the program.  It was expensive but I figured it was going to be more expensive in the long run when I started getting serious health problems.


Here's a video testimonial from someone who went through the program:

What they do as part of the program is a hypnotic Gastric Band!  The last session of the 6 in the program is dedicated to creating an idea in your subconscious that you have had a gastric band fitted. I figured with the underlying work being done on your subconscious prior to that, that the hypnotic band would be more effective than a real one as it seems to me that the real one is only dealing with the physical side of weight gain and nothing to do with the psychological reasons most of us gain weight.


I decided to go for it.


My next blog post will be about how it's been going and what I have learned. Watch this space.


Would you consider hypnotherapy for healing what ails you?

Visualising

I am reading Jon Gabriel's book and gradually coming to the place where I am going to try the visualisations he recommends.  For some reason, I have had a resistance to it and I am trying to dismantle that resistance.

Maybe it's because I am still holding on to the extra weight I have on me and losing it will mean dealing with the issues that caused it.

Maybe I am too damn lazy.

No, I think it's the former.

It means taking a real look at how I created this suit of armour to protect myself and why I created it. I don't want to bore anyone with the details really and I am also afraid to be really open about it all.

Peonies are in bloom right now. They're my favourite flowers.

I think I have to ease myself into this whole thing. I mean talking publicly about it. Somehow, though, I know that just the act of talking publicly might and probably will, dispel some of the negative stuff I have in my head a lot of the time. Mostly about myself. 

I have always found that talking about a problem seems to halve its impact.

So, here goes.  I think what Jon Gabriel says about putting on weight being related to high stress is extremely accurate. I also think he's right that it depends on the messages your subsconcious self is sending to your body. For me, it's the 'protect yourself because you're in danger' message.

Not literal danger but the kind of danger that my subconscious thinks is real.

I started to put on weight after a disastrous pregnancy that ended in a horrible miscarriage and 2 years of hormonal problems afterwards. Well, actually, it was longer than that but I was lactating for 2 years after the miscarriage!  My hair started to fall out, I gained weight and became clinically depressed. 

Some of it was due to the painful nature of the miscarriage ( I didn't realise I had 98% scar tissue in my womb making maintaining a pregnancy dangerous and painful) and some of it was due to the relationship I was in at the time.

The long and the short of it was that it ended any chances of me having children and it was also the end of the road for me in terms of feeling like I could have a good relationship.  At least that's how it felt then.

I don't want to dwell on the past but it's important to acknowledge this as the starting point of the weight problem.  

A nutritionist I saw last year asked me when I had started to gain weight and I told her and she said that this event would have triggered a stress related change in my hormones, increasing my cortisol levels, which, in turn, affect your insulin levels.  It makes you crave carbs, mostly at night. She asked me if I snacked a lot at night. YES. She asked me if I felt unsatisfied no matter how much I ate. YES.  Her answer to this was that I needed to get my insulin levels balanced out again  and the way to do that was to eat regularly but with fewer carbs, especially at night.  I did what she told me and, hey presto, she was right. I lost 28lbs in 4 months.

That was last year, when I was living with my sister in Canada and had a great support in eating healthily. Since I got back from there, I have gained back about 14lbs and realised that I needed to look more at the cause of my weight gain as well as the physical aspect of it.

So, that's it in a nutshell. I am working on dismantling my 'story' so I can move on and be healthy and fit again like I was before all this. Of course, being 20 years older doesn't help. But, no excuses, I am here to get real about this issue and share it with you.

Can you relate to what I am saying here?

Jon Gabriel and his Method

I've been struggling with my weight and, consequently, my health, for about 10 years now. It really goes back further than that but seems to have got a lot worse in the last few years.  

Some of you know why I've been more stressed out the last few years and I may write about that here. It will take some courage though so bear with me.

My plan is to write about the journey of discovery as I head back towards being healthy, slim and fit again.

Rather than start at the beginning, I want to talk about something new I discovered in the last few weeks. My friend, Sancha, who's known me since 1994 and seen me through the ups and downs of dealing with my weight, sent me an enigmatic email. All it said was 'Check out The Gabriel Method'.  At first, I thought it was something to do with angels and was skeptical. Not because I don't believe in angels, I do, and with good reason (I might tell you about that sometime too!), but because I am tired of trying some new method to lose weight and, having tried them all, I knew that a diet wasn't something that was going to work for me and doubted that any angel thing was going to help much either.

However, I trust Sancha.  So I looked it up on Google and discovered a website by a guy called Jon Gabriel, an American who emigrated to Australia, who lost 103kg without dieting.  Yes, it's true and not only that, he had no saggy skin afterwards either.

Of course, this intrigued me so I bought the book and CD and downloaded the files and started to listen.  What I learned in the first listen really made sense.  

He talks about WHY you get fat. He talks about the stress triggers that send the incorrect messages to your hormones to retain fat, no matter what.  No wonder dieting had never worked for any long period for me. 

He spent years studying the biochemistry of the body and, having learned that, discovered that using visualization methods while in what he calls SMART mode, makes an enormous difference if you want to change your way of thinking or being.  SMART stands for 'Super Mental Awareness Re-education Training Mode'.  Apparently, when we are in SMART mode, we can absorb suggestions and ideas much more readily. We can learn more easily and train our subconscious to behave differently.  Jon is the living embodiment of that.  

As I've been reading, I have found that everything he says makes sense and have started to gradually put it into practice.  I listen to the CD in bed at night and fall asleep to it. You're supposed to do that. It also helps me sleep really well, another bonus.

So, the journey has only started but I can see that things are gradually changing in my thinking.

I will use this space to talk about those changes and what I am learning on this interesting journey. It's also a way for me to be honest about what's going on instead of what I've been doing for years: thinking I am hiding my stress. Yeah, right!