Saturday, November 29, 2008

Your Body Weight: Reflections of Your Perceptions and Beliefs

By Theresa Johnson, CHT

You may be asking yourself "Why aren't traditional diets - even nontraditional diets - working for me? Why can't I keep the weight off once I lose it?" Through my experience as a certified hypnotherapist, I have found that the main reason why the diets have not helped you to create permanent weight loss changes is because you have not made a lifestyle change. Ok, so maybe you already understand that. Let me explain further. If a lifestyle change has not been made then your behaviors have not changed and if behaviors have not changed then your thoughts have not changed. If your thoughts have not changed then your perceptions and beliefs have not changed. Those perceptions and beliefs, I speak of, include beliefs about yourself, your body image, your self worth, and also the beliefs and perceptions about your relationship with food. The beliefs and perceptions related to the behaviors that are keeping you heavy can also be connected to a number of other issues: stress, anxiety, how you react to people, places and events around you, fears and phobias. Many of your perceptions/beliefs regarding these issues and others need to be changed on the fundamental level to create the behavioral changes necessary to eliminate the excess body fat.

Certainly, if what you have been doing isn't working for you then it is time to change what you are doing. If you do what you've always done you will get what you've always got. That is exactly what happens when behaviors haven't been changed on the fundamental perceptual and belief level. Through hypnosis anyone can make changes in their subconscious perceptions and beliefs. As a result, changes will take place in the thought process as well. Why do this? Because if you think what you've always thought then you get what you've always got. Thoughts precede behaviors.

Hypnosis is a state of altered consciousness, similar to daydreaming. For the purposes of hypnotherapy it is used as a process that crosses the critical, analytical, judgement part of the conscious mind in order to access the powerful subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is the part of the mind where your long-term memories are stored, hence, where "perception and belief programming" is stored.

If your subconscious mind has been fed negative information, by others or yourself, then that is what it has been programmed to perceive and belief. The subconscious mind takes in whatever in has been given and the conscious mind acts upon it. So if you believe you are fat or worthless, your thoughts will reflect that belief, and your behaviors will reflect and reinforce your thoughts. One may overeat or refuse to exercise as a reaction to the original beliefs that have now been reinforced through thought and action (or non-action). Now you can begin to understand that what you are feeding your mind is as important as what you are feeding your body.

The subconscious mind unlike the conscious mind will accept what it hears and if it has been fed negative information for a significant amount of time, it absorbs it as fact. It is very much like the mind of a young child. It believes what it hears. The subconscious mind takes in whatever it has been given and the conscious mind acts upon it. So you can see why what you are feeding your mind is as important as what you feed your body. - 16004

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