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

Happiness Improves Health and Lengthens Life

Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP can help you to look at the world in a different way, focusing more on the positive and helping you to live in the moment and enjoy every moment for what it is. Of course it is important to have goals and dreams, to know what direction you are heading in but it is as important to enjoy the journey along the way.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2011) — A review of more than 160 studies of human and animal subjects has found "clear and compelling evidence" that -- all else being equal -- happy people tend to live longer and experience better health than their unhappy peers. Full article at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110301122156.htm

It’s no surprise really to hear that being happy improves not only the quality of your life but even lengthens it. Smiling and laughing is the best way to lift your mood.

Studies have shown that laughter boosts the immune system in variety of ways. Laughter increases the amount of T cells, which attack viruses, foreign cells and cancer cells. The amount of stress hormones are also reduced by laughing, some of which are hormones that suppress the immune system. When you feel better after laughing, you really are happier and healthier.

Here is something to make you smile, laughing is also a full body workout. Laughing exercises the cardiovascular system by lowering blood pressure and increasing heart rate, which any aerobic exercise will do. It improves coordination of brain functions, which increases alertness and memory, and helps clear the respiratory tract from coughing. Some researchers estimate that proper stomach hugging laughter for 20 seconds works the heart as hard as three minutes of hard rowing.

So how can we do it?

What makes people laugh varies from person to person but there are ways you can lift your mood, making it easier for you to laugh easily.

Pop on a song that you like! We all know that feeling when one of our favourite songs come on the radio, we sing along and all of a sudden the world seems like a better place. Then the next song is a ballad and all of a sudden we are back feeling low and have a lack of energy and motivation. Music is an amazingly powerful way to change our moods; it can make us full of energy or calm us down after a busy day.
Play around with music and see how it can change your mood. Find that song that lifts you up and try it. Next time you are feeling low pop on your song and sing away, I am sure that after those 3 minutes you will feel in a different space.

It is easy to get stuck in a negative rut and the busy world that we live in today can help to keep that negative spiral turning.

Taking the first steps to becoming a happier, more positive and focused person is only a phone call away, even a single session tailored to your own needs can help you on your way!

Overcoming a Fear of Flying

Do you dream of visiting Australia but settle for Bournemouth? If so you are not alone, fear of flying is a surprisingly common phobia that can limit your horizons both in business and pleasure. Using the powerful combination of Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP you can understand the fear of flying psychology. In a positive, quick and easy way you can overcome your fear and plan your dream holiday instead of talking yourself out of taking it.

Fear of flying is also known as aerophobia or aviphobia, it is caused by the unconscious part of your mind warning you that it is dangerous to get on a plane. This is an important part of our brain that helps to keep us safe and out of harm’s way. This part of your brain is developing all the time form the day you are born and on. Remember when you were growing up and an adult tells you “HOT” to stop you touching the stove. Your unconscious brain learns that when you're told “HOT” that you should be careful. However in the case of flying phobia that protection mechanism has become over sensitive, often from misinformation and is now a casing you to associate flying with danger.

Some people who are afraid of flying they have never even stepped foot on a plane yet they still have this fear. This fear would be appropriate if the plane was missing a wing or was obviously not in a condition to fly, but statistics show that flying is in fact one of the safest things you can do. Air travel remains statistically safer than crossing the road and flying has been proven to be twenty five times safer than driving your own car.

• 21,000 people (on average) die on the road in the USA in a 6-month period. This is approximately the same amount of all commercial air travel fatalities worldwide in 40 years
• More than 3million people fly every day
• A Boeing aircraft takes off or lands every 2 seconds somewhere in the world – all day, every day
• 1 plane in 5 million crashes. Even then people still survive plane crashes, going on to fly again

Hypnotherapy, CBT and NLP will help you to understand why you have this fear, where it comes from and help you to feel relaxed and safe when flying. In your tailor made session you will learn relaxation skills that can become automatic when practiced and perfected. Hypnotherapy can help you to learn a new pattern of behaviour, helping you to simply relax and start to enjoy the freedom of flying and all the wonderful places you can visit.

Remember that during a session you remain in complete control, learning the skills you need to take them out of the session and put them into practice. You will leave the session feeling positive, motivated, confident and in control. All you need to do is bring you commitment and determination to become someone who can fly without fear.

© EKTherapies

Some High Profile Stars Who Have Quit Smoking With Hypnotherapy! Last day to get 10% off your one-off Stop smoking treatment (quote blog)*

Today is the last day you can take advantage of 10% off your one-off stop smoking session.* I thought I would find a few well known celebrities who have used hypnotherapy to help them take control of the power cigarettes had over them.

Samuel Jackson, Ellen Degeneres, Brad Pitt, Ewan McGregor, Drew Barrymore, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon all stopped smoking with hypnosis, while Fergie quit biting her nails, and stopped a drug addiction with the help of hypnosis.

Have a look at this video Matt Damon and other celebrities used hypnotherapy to help them become smoke free (video clip from Access Hollywood Story).

Ben Affleck tells Oprah he used hypnotherapy to stop smoking:
"I finally decided to quit smoking when I found out I was going to have a child. That was the thing that sort of put it over the top for me. I decided to go to a hypnotist. You sit in a chair and the hypnotist sips water and just talks to you for an hour, and explains how nicotine is poison."
"All of a sudden, I thought, 'This is asinine that I've been doing this to myself for all these years.' My last cigarette was on November 10th, 2005, and I feel a huge difference in my health now that I don't smoke. I feel like I'm in better shape than I was five years ago."

(Article snippet from Exposay January 24, 2008. View original article at http://www.exposay.com/a-hypnotist-helped-ben-affleck-quit-smoking/v/16921/
http://www.showbizspy.com/2008/01/23/ben-affleck-tells-oprah-how-he-quit-smoking/)

Ellen Degeneres had famous hypnotherapist Paul McKenna on her show and he helped her quit smoking using hypnosis and NLP techniques.
"I feel so good. I feel healthier! It seems ridiculous but my skin looks better, I just feel like, I feel healthy. I feel really good."

(See full article at http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/hypnotist-helps-ellen-kick-smoking_1011060)

Fox News tells how Winona Ryder used hypnotherapy to quit smoking: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,2015,00.html

It is great to see that hypnotherapy is getting the recognition it deserves. Hypnotherapy is as a great way to help you to achieve your goals. It is such a powerful tool that along with your determination and motivation will help you to become the person you want to be. To see other things that can be treated using the powerful combination of hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP please click here.

*book by 14th March 2011 to receive 10%

Wednesday 9th March is National No Smoking day. To help you become smoke free get 10% off One-Off Stop Smoking Treatment (quote blog) *

Smokers are being encouraged to kick the habit on No Smoking Day. No Smoking day was established as a national event on Ash Wednesday in 1984, and it has grown in status for the past 25 years, helping people to find the motivation to become a non-smoker.

So what is the trick to giving up smoking?

The biggest thing is your own commitment and feeling that you want to become a non-smoker. Have you reached that point of being tired of being a slave to a cigarette and all the restrictions it brings with it? If yes then you are ready to become a non-smoker. You don’t have to know how you are going to do it, just simply that you want to do it. It is important to remind yourself that you are giving up nothing of value to you but gaining so much. Think of all the reasons to become smoke free, as you know there are plenty; health, smelling good, seeing your children or nieces & nephews get married, meeting your grandchildren, being around to a ripe old age with lungs that aren’t full of Emphysema. The list of the benefits you would get from being a non-smoker is endless and also personal to you and your motivation to succeed.

How can Hypnotherapy help you become smoke free?

This is the bit of great news! Using Hypnotherapy you are 10 times more likely to remain a non-smoker. Although Hypnotherapy isn’t a magic wand and still requires your commitment, it is a very powerful tool that makes sure that you have the inner focus and determination to become a non-smoker in a positive way. There is no need for Nicotine patches or gum all you need is a one-off Hypnotherapy session along with your commitment and motivation to want to become a non-smoker.

“Thanks for the session, it has really helped and I haven’t smoked since!” Jehan, London

How about if you have tried to stop before?

There are many reasons why stopping smoking may not have worked for you before. The main reason I tend to find with the clients who come to see me is because they weren’t truly motivated to give up and didn’t really want to stop. Maybe their partner was pushing them to do it or it wasn’t the right time for them to give up. Perhaps their motivation was weak in certain situations or associations. For whatever reason they didn’t have the drive that they wanted to start looking after their future health, being able to breathe easier, taste food, not be out of breath when they climbed the stairs.

“It has been a month since I saw you and smoking hasn’t even crossed my mind, which is amazing. Thank you!” Ben, Surrey

Feeling motivated to take control of you and make that change?

The next step is completely in your hands. When you are ready to take control of the power cigarettes have over you, then give me a call 07952 619939 and we can talk further about helping you have the tools to become a non-smoker and remain one. Remember if you book your one-off session before Monday 14th 2011 you receive a 10% discount (quote blog). I look forward to speaking to you soon and helping you take the first exciting steps to becoming a non-smoker in a positive and focused way.


*book by 14th March 2011 to receive 10% discount