Aspire Therapy

Police Use Hypnotherapy to Quit Smoking

The police are calling upon the skills of hypnotherapists to help officers quit cigarettes in the lead up to the July ban on smoking in public places.

The West Midlands Police Force is offering to pay for officers to have a single session of hypnotherapy to help them kick the habit. If all its estimated 3,500 smokers take up the offer it could cost the force £100,000.

How Happy Are You?

Did you know that you can train yourself to be a happier person and that it is possible to actually re-wire your brain to think happy thoughts naturally and automatically?

So says Dr Robert Holden who first came to the public’s attention in 1996 when he featured in the now famous BBC QED programme ‘How to be happy’.

According to Dr Holden, (also known as ‘the happiness psychologist’), we are responsible for the level of happiness and fulfilment that we enjoy on a day to day basis.

The Energy Bubble

The mind very often does not distinguish between reality and imagination.

This is why we can so easily feel anxiety or fear, even when there is no real ‘threat’. Just thinking of a scary situation is enough to bring on the feelings associated with it!

But while the imagination can work in ways which are unhelpful, we can also use it to bring about positive effects.

For a demonstration of the power of your imagination try The Lemon Test in our NLP section.

Many NLP techniques teach us how to harness our imagination in order to take control of our moods and emotions and so remove barriers and achieve success.

The Energy Bubble is one such technique. It is a simple exercise, which can be especially useful for stressful situations, anger management and increasing feelings of detachment. Use it if you want to feel calm and unaffected by what is going on around you.

A Night with the Buena Vista Social Club

The Buena Vista Social Club is one of our favourite bands, and this week we had a rare opportunity to go and see them in Manchester at the Bridgewater Hall.

We’d been looking forward to it for ages, but when the time came, we wondered if we’d done the right thing. It was a Monday evening, and we never go out on a Monday evening! It was cold and windy, it was a long way to go, there was a match at Old Trafford so the traffic would be bad - and we just had so many other things to do.

But we’d bought the tickets, so we went…

An Exercise in Self-Acceptance

If you’re feeling down about yourself and unappreciated try the following NLP exercise. It’s a simple but effective way to help you regain a sense of self-acceptance, self-love and self-respect.

A Room With A View

We live out much of our lives in what could be regarded as trance states, caught up in our own world and in our own way of thinking.

This notion may seem puzzling at first, but if being in hypnosis is simply this kind of absorbed attention, then it can be seen as a frame of mind which dominates our experience of life.

In our article When is a Trance Not a Trance we have talked about trance states being part of our everyday life, but to say we spend large periods of our lives in trance states takes this idea a step further.

The fact we inhabit such states is inevitable and not necessarily something that should worry us. But it can mean that we become closed off to alternative possibilities and to different ways of viewing our lives and our problems.

A Change of Perspective

A brisk walk can be one of the best ways of relieving the mind of stress, anxiety or depression. As you walk try not to allow your mind to get caught up in that incessant weave of inner thoughts. It’s precisely those thoughts which are probably causing you to feel the way you do.

Open yourself up to your surroundings. Actually see, here and feel where you are. Breath in the fresh air if you’re in the countryside or by the sea - see the sights, hear the sounds, feel the feelings…

So often, even when we’re out walking, we shut ourselves off from the world around us. Only by becoming aware of the fact we’re doing this can we break the habit.