Hypnotherapy for Habit Change
In the words of F. Matthias Alexander, "People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures."
​
I believe that there is truth in this. Our futures come out of the complex interactions of all of our decisions, yes. But our decisions are often made for us through our habits. If we wish to change our futures, we must first have a look at our habits.
​
Hypnotherapy offers a fast track to doing this safely and effectively.
What are habits?
A habit is whatever you do automatically, without motivation. I mean this in the sense that you do not need to convince yourself to do it. It is a normal, mechanical part of your life - something that sticks around, that you can do without even thinking. Some of these are useful, even essential. We only have limited brain power and space, so much of our life is relegated to the background - beyond life sustaining activities like breathing - how we speak to people, how we think, how we respond to certain feelings or stimuli. All of this is largely determined by habit - by having done it a million times before.
​
This is the key - it's engrained. It has become so normal, such an easy path for your brain and body to follow, that it happens even despite us.
​
If you bite your nails, you'll recognise this. You'll be talking with someone, then all of a sudden you look down and your fingers are being chewed on.
Or if you habitually put yourself down, you'll recognise this.
It just happens, and then you might notice it afterwards and ask, why am I doing this?
Our minds are like the dunes - ever shifting, but still always recognisably the same. And our thoughts are like the sand
- each grain adds to the mass and texture of the dune, and each grain has the chance of changing the direction of the wind.
How does Hypnotherapy help?
Like the many myths and portrayals of hypnosis, hypnotherapy uses suggestions to nuture habit changes - like seeds in the desert, waiting for the rain. Unlike the many myths and portrayals of hypnosis, hypnotherapy doesn't push the idea that the therapist, the 'expert' is in control. We know, from many decades of research, that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. All suggestions are only as effective as the client's willingness to make them their own thoughts.
​
Hypnosis is the activity of having focused thinking - particularly in the context of a stimulated imagination. Imagination is not having pictures float through us behind our eyelids. Imagination is thought in action - it is the world beneath our awareness of the outside - it is the realm that lies within.
​
And in this realm, we spend a lot of time doing things that are habitual. A lot of time thinking about the same old worries. A lot of time thinking about how we are failing, stupid, poor, weak, nasty, wrong or bad. In fact, we spend almost all our time here. So what we think, what we imagine, makes a huge difference to our lives.
Hypnotherapy helps us spend time in this place, the universe within, slows things down, and helps you take a look around. As you do this, pressures ease, tensions release, and the body-mind relaxes. As you relax, you sink deeper, and you hear yourself, from a place of calm, repeating those things that you need to hear - repeating those things that you need to know.
​
You are enough. You can do it. You can learn, and change, and grow. You exist and you are essential. You are at the centre of the world without and the world within. You decide.
​
