Wedding Bells, Bouquets, Bridezilla and the Best Day of Your Life

The royal wedding certainly divides opinion. Personally I think it is going to be a wonderful British event and I am looking forward to seeing London sparkling away with all the pomp and ceremony; and it is not only royal weddings that bring up conflicting feelings!

For many, a wedding day is a day they have dreamt of since they were a little girl, playing dress up with their friends and dreaming of their Prince Charming and the day he sweeps them off their feet. Yet, for many different reasons, some people end up arriving at their wedding day in a stressed heap, focusing on all the little details and what could go wrong.

They forget to focus on their Prince Charming and the reason for the day, to become husband and wife! Ask most girls who have planned a wedding or watched someone close to them planning and they will understand where I am coming from, the word Bridezilla didn’t come from thin air.

We spend so much time planning everything, the colour of the table clothes and centre pieces; oh and make sure they match the chair covers. We make sure we are the fittest we have ever been, looking stunning on the day in our amazing dress but inside we are tired and stressed and on tenterhooks fearing the next possible disaster. Your day should be about you and your husband, not about the family politics or who is sitting where. Yes you need to plan for all this but on the day it is your time to relax and enjoy taking in the wonderful memories as you start on your new path as Mr & Mrs.

I have had grooms saying they don’t recognise the woman who is standing in front of them. They have unleashed this wedding monster, help! What happened to the woman who I asked to marry, will she return? Oh the wedding, I leave that all up to her, I’ll just turn up on the day, that is her project.

So how can EKTherapies help you with your wedding? Using the powerful combination of Hypnotherapy, CBT and NLP we can work together to understand your stressors and help you to focus on not only the day but your life ahead, helping you to enjoy the day as one that is jam packed full of wonderful memories; helping you to arrive at your wedding day full of anticipation and excitement, feeling confident and ready to be a centre of attention for a day, free from all the little stresses, enjoying the day in the moment as you take your first steps as husband and wife. We can also work on freeing yourself from the anti-climax that can come after a wedding, and in preparing for the wedding, allowing the man in your life to be involved, as most men really do want to be, just maybe not in the same level of detail as you!

From practical help with the public speaking for him so the speech isn’t a black cloud hanging over the day to allowing the day to be the happiest moment in each other’s lives, EKTherapies can help with every detail you can imagine. Give me a call today to find out more.

© EKTherapies

Breathe London Ethos

One of my clinics is Breathe London; this is part of the Colombo Centre, a community centre on the Southbank. The clinic entrance is accessed through a gym and although once you get upstairs to the therapy rooms it is a peaceful haven the building itself isn’t the prettiest London has to offer. So why do I choose to work here? The Colombo Centre is a not for profit organization managed by a Charitable Trust, The Jubilee Hall Trust and is overseen by a voluntary board of trustees from Coin St Community Builders.

At Breathe London we are part of the community, with every pound spent by the gym members, tennis players, footballers and the thousands of other users of the centre is either invested back into the centre or supports local community programs. These include childhood obesity programs, youth development and many activities for the elderly in Lambeth and Southwark. All of the rental income from Breathe London is ploughed back into the centre and directly supports their wonderful programs. We are proud to play our part in drawing people to a unique wellbeing facility in Central London and helping to support such wonderful charities.

To many people Breathe London is known as a problem solving sports injury clinic and acupuncture centre. However at Breathe London we recognise that healthy bodies and minds go hand in hand and therefore we also have a team of other wellbeing consultants. I work at Breathe London offering Hypnotherapy, CBT and NLP to help people achieve their goals and realise their inner potential. I am proud to work somewhere where I can give back to the local community, helping London charities to support people who need them.

Stress

Stress seems to be the buzz word at the moment but what is stress?

Stress is when you have insufficient resources to meet your demands.

Stress and anxiety are normal, even healthy, human feelings that can be useful to help you achieve your goals. The chemicals that are released when we are under stress or feeling anxiety can help you to meet deadlines, keep presentations fresh, help actors to make every performance have that spark, even help athletes win their gold medal and give us the energy to do amazing things in times of crises. Stress and anxiety only become a problem to our health when they go on for too long and we don’t expel the chemicals put into our body that are generated by it. Eventually these chemicals can become an illness affecting your mental and physical health.

We, and the world around us, are very good at putting stress and anxiety into our lives but you should ask yourself how long do you spend each day de-stressing yourself?

With the advance in technology making us more contactable and bringing the office into our home life, it has never been so important to make sure you de-stress yourself, being in the moment and enjoying life for what it is, allowing time for ‘you’.

Some signs that you may not be de-stressing yourself enough:

MIND

Do you feel tired or lacking in energy all of the time?
Do you have episodes of panic?
Do you feel worried all of the time?
Are you unable to concentrate on a task for as long as you used to be able to do?
Do you feel unusually irritable, with tasks or people, or get angry quickly?
Are you finding getting to sleep difficult, or are you waking earlier than usual?
Do you wake up feeling tired even though you have slept enough for your body?
Do you feel there is never enough time in the day?
Do you walk quickly everywhere, thinking about certain tasks rather than enjoying the walk/moment?
Do you feel you have so much to do that you can’t focus on one thing and try and spread yourself and your time too thinly, not giving your full attention to anything?

BODY

Do you ever experience a strong or rapid heartbeat? (Sometimes known as “palpitations”)
Do you grind your teeth, either in your sleep or when you are awake?
Do you have regular or constant pain or tension in your muscles?
Do you find that you are often contracting/holding onto your muscles (e.g. shoulders up)?
Do you find that you breathe shallow breaths?
Do you find yourself breathing quickly or more heavily at times of anxiety?
Are you experiencing indigestion or diarrhea?

If we understand how stress and anxiety affect our body and mind, then we can learn how to use this to our advantage, allowing ourselves to relax and de-stress at the end of the day and enjoy the ‘free’ time we have. We will then be more productive and focused at work and at home, feeling calmer and in control. Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP can help you to understand stress and how it affects your body. Teaching you relaxation techniques and giving you the tools you need to help you enjoy life with a healthy level, for you of stress and anxiety.

Tips for Beating Blushing

It is not surprising that in today's "got to look good" society, facial blushing can cause people a lot of stress and worry. At its extremes, the embarrassment from blushing can become so acute that the sufferer avoids social contact as a last resort to avoid the problem.

So what can you and Hypnotherapy do to help yourself to control your blushing?

Acceptance
The first thing to understand is that blushing is a perfectly natural human response. Everybody blushes, of course some people blush more than others but it is a reassuring fact that blushing is a matter of degree, not whether you do or don’t blush. It is a natural occurrence. When you blush, the blood vessels in your face widen allowing more blood to pass through to the skin. The tiny muscles in your blood vessels usually keep the vessels slightly squeezed, but during a blushing episode, nerves in your body send signals to relax these muscles. Because this action is an automatic response, it is nearly impossible to stop once the action has begun. In fact, the harder you try to stop blushing, the redder you will usually get. Acceptance is the first step to controlling your blushing.

Relax
Blushing tends to increase as people start to get embarrassed about their embarrassment, creating a sort of vicious circle. The tenser you get as you start to blush, the more the blood is forced to the face. One trick is, when you feel it coming on is to deliberately drop your shoulders and relax your body. Breathe through your stomach, pushing it out as you breathe deeply and calmly, focusing on calmness or what is happening around you rather than not blushing. This can take a bit of practice to become second nature, so practice deep breathing and focusing on other things on a daily basis. You can learn all of this and more with a Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP session with Erika.

Accept it, don't Fight it
You need to shift your relationship to the blushing. At the moment you are trying to hide it because you are embarrassed about it. If you can work on relaxing about it, it will get better. This will be helped by you accepting it as a current part of yourself. You can try saying to yourself "At the moment, I am a blusher". It sounds strange, but if you can bring yourself to like that part of you more, it is more likely to go away.

Hypnotherapy can introduce you to some techniques that you can employ and keep working with on your own in the future.

Other peoples' opinions
Part of the embarrassment about blushing is caused by the thought that others will see you as weak or silly. However, everyone has had the experience of being embarrassed, it shows in people in different ways. Even people who appear as very confident have their moments of self-consciousness. Remember too that often it can seem a lot worse to you then it appears to be. People are so self-absorbed that they probably haven’t noticed you blushing; in fact it is often only your own change in behaviour that draws attention to it. Does this sound like your experience?


People tease you
If people tease you and point out your blushing they tend to do this because of your reaction to them. If when they tease you, you are able to smile with them, it will usually lessen the impact of their joke and make it less likely that they will push that button in the future. This can be done in a healthy way that does not internalise your anguish, but instead shares it!


Retrain your mind
Hypnotherapy can help greatly as you can train your mind and body to relax as you feel the blushing coming on, or have the thought that you might blush. Hypnotherapy can help you to feel more confident and at ease with the situations that make tend to make you blush.

Your Standards
Remember, you are an unique individual. Like everyone else you have different factors that contribute to make you the person you are. Accept yourself for all that you are, blushing is just one of those things that make you you. The more you accept it the more you won’t mind if it happens. The more you don’t mind the less it will happen as you refind that inner confidence in you.

Ring Erika for a no obligation chat and see how along with your commitment hypnotherapy, CBT and NLP can help you achieve your goals.

© EKTherapies