Friday, December 5, 2008

Your Body Weight - Reflections of Your Perceptions and Beliefs

By Theresa Johnson, CH

The doctors, the dietitians, the nutritionists, the fitness books all say "eating right and exercising more is the key to losing weight." So why isn't it that easy? Through my experience as a certified hypnotherapist, I have found that the main reason why the diets and fitness fads have not helped you to create permanent weight loss changes is because you have not truly made a lifestyle change.

When changes are made in the subconscious mind where your long-term memories, beliefs and perceptions are stored, you in turn make changes to your thought process. Change your thoughts and you change your life! That's right, and as a result, you can actually change your behaviors and your reactions easily with little to no conscious effort on your part.

Now I am sure that you have heard "if something is not working for you, change what you are doing." Right? And surely you've heard "do what you've always done and get what you've always got". Well that is exactly what is happening to most people who have been unable to lose weight effectively and keep it off. They have continued to do what they have always done and they continue to get what they've always gotten. Let's make that statement even more specific "If you THINK what you've always THOUGHT, then you will get what you've always got." It is in making the changes in that thinking process, in that belief and perception process, where hypnosis is extremely effective.

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.

It is estimated that 75% of our beliefs about ourselves have been imprinted into our subconscious by the age of 7. Therefore, the majority of our personality is determined by the time we are 7. (That puts a whole new twist to "acting like a child" doesn't it.) This knowledge is useful for hypnosis age regression. In a hypnotic state an individual can mentally journey back into their past safely and objectively and look at the framework of beliefs that were established at a young age and then move forward bit by bit to review what other beliefs were established based on the original beliefs.

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.

In hypnotherapy, the hypnotherapist presents positive suggestions to your subconscious mind. Those positive suggestions are what you want for you, not what the hypnotherapist wants for you. We work together to clarify what it is that you want for yourself and we put that in the most positive language possible and feed it to your subconscious mind. Once that new information is in place in the long-term memory of the subconscious, your conscious mind can begin to act upon it. Ultimately you will then act in the new way that is in balance with your conscious desires. - 16004

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