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http://www.hylandshypnotherapy.co.uk/

Hylands Hypnotherapy, Town Lane, Mobberley (2025)

19/08/2024

Do you have any phobias?

Most of us have at least one. Mine is heights, having fallen off the edge of a mountain, skiing on a very icy piste, many years ago. Did it stop me going again, the next year, once my bones had mended? No. Was I terrified? Yes, but my FOMO (fear of missing out) was stronger than my fear of heights, so I had to deal with it, lol.

All phobias are different, but there are some common things you can do to help yourself cope when facing those fears. These are things I’ve explained in previous weeks, controlling your breathing. I had to do this pre-covid, when I travelled through Dublin airport (I think it was) for work. I was faced with the highest escalator I think I’ve ever seen, far higher than between the floors at the Trafford Centre. My legs turned to jelly, my heart was racing.

I had to have a serious word with myself and STOP all the negative thoughts which were rushing round in my brain. I had to take control of the speed of my breathing, and consciously relax my muscles (obviously not too much). I can feel myself becoming anxious as I re-live this now. So I’m doing exactly the same, and I can feel the tension going and I’m beginning to calm down again. It’s so easy to talk ourselves into an anxious state, I’m fortunate that I’ve practiced this so often, I can bring everything back under my control again, quickly. No one around me had any idea what was going on for me and they didn’t need to.

Writing this has made me realise that if I’m asked if I have a phobia I reply with, “I’m not keen on heights.” I use language to tone it down, telling my brain it’s barely anything, it is, I know I can deal with it if and when I’m faced with it.

If you’ve been thinking about your phobia because I have brought it to mind and it’s made you anxious, I’m sorry, but use this as an opportunity to practice taking control of your breathing and thoughts, and see how quickly you feel OK again.

Keep practicing, but if you need any extra help DM me.

12/08/2024

How can we prepare for a good night’s sleep?

The preparation for a good night’s sleep starts hours before bedtime. The first rule is not to drink caffeine after 3pm, remember energy drinks contain caffeine, avoid sugary drinks too. Think about what you can drink instead. Maybe a herbal tea, milk, hot or cold water, best not to drink alcohol as although it causes sleepiness, a few hours later it wakes you up and it dehydrates you, therefore not you don’t wake up refreshed.

Exercising each day helps to wash out any stress toxins from the body, so organise your daily routine to include exercise, especially if you have had a stressful day. Never eat later than three hours before going to sleep, digestion is an active process which works best when the stomach is above the intestine (also unused energy will be stored as fat). There is a magic sleep chemical, tryptophan, found in turkey, milk and yogurt, fish, red meat, all poultry, in eggs, and fruits like mangoes and bananas.

Well before bedtime prepare your bedroom so it is dark and cool at bedtime. Also complete any jobs you do before bed as early as possible as you want to be nicely relaxed when you head to bed. Doing jobs last thing at night wakens you up, so aim to have them all done at least an hour before bed. This includes using screens like your phone and the TV , switch them off and read or listen to something soothing.

Only head to bed when you are tired, if you find yourself unable to sleep within about 20 minutes (don’t time this, just estimate it) or you wake in the night and are awake for about 20 minutes, get up and read or listen to something calming. You don’t want to associate your bed with restlessness, instead it wants to be a place of calm and relaxation. If something disturbs you in the night, like a trip to the bathroom, as soon as you’re done forget it, ignore it and drift back to sleep. Dwelling of the disturbance just annoys you and keeps you awake.

You can always use the breathing exercise from last week, to help you drift off again. If that isn’t working you can work your way down the your body tensing and then relaxing your muscles as you go. Hold the tension in the muscles for 5 seconds and slowly realise it, then move to the next one.

If you are the type of person who worries about things at night, write down the worry and deal with it in the morning, you can’t do anything about it in the middle of the night anyway.

Set your alarm for half an hour before you would normally get up. This sounds crazy I know, but you are training your brain into having good quality sleep at the beginning of the night, your body will learn what time it is waking and therefore adjust the timings of the sleep cycles it goes through.

Once your alarm goes off in the morning get up, and do not snooze during the day, allow your brain to learn to prepare for good quality sleep at night.

If you’d like more information DM me.

05/08/2024

Do you struggle to sleep?

Last week’s post was about controlling the production of adrenalin and learning how to calm yourself. This week’s post follows on from that and is on complete relaxation, sleep.

I don’t want to become tangled up in how much sleep we should have, we all need different amounts of sleep and this varies throughout our lives. I just want to focus on what we can do to improve how easily we can sleep.

There are a number of things we can do to help ourselves prepare for a good night’s sleep. The first of these is having a negative prospective on sleep, saying things like, “I can’t sleep, I lie awake for hours, I’ve never slept well, I only had x number of hours last night” you get the picture.

Telling ourselves and others all these negative things about our relationship with sleep also tells our brains that we don’t sleep well. Each time we say it or think it, it’s reinforcing the inability to have a good night’s sleep. STOP the negative chat about sleep, instead find something positive to say, “I listened to some lovely bird song early this morning, I heard the planes last night, I wonder what wonderful destinations they were going to/coming from” for example. This way the experience of being awake is more pleasant and it’s more easy to relax when we are contented.

Another thing we tend to do if we are awake is keep checking the time. Instead set an alarm, or many if you struggle to wake up when you need to and turn the clock around. IT DOESN’T MATTER what time it is or how many hours and minutes it is until we need to be up. Spending time calculating this just winds us up, in the words of the song, “Let it go” it’s not helping. Instead enjoy listening to the sounds around you, notice the temperature, the smells, if it helps put on some relaxing music, something to help switch off your brain.

One thing which can help is the slow breathing I talked about last week and add in counting to distract your brain. This is similar to counting sheep, although as a friend of mine once said, “They won’t stay still and keep running off.” Instead of the sheep on the out breaths start counting backwards from 300, if you go wrong, it doesn’t matter, no one is listening, start again wherever you like. If that’s too easy, do it in 3s or 7s.

Next week I’ll be focusing on what to do before going to bed which will help with unwinding before sleep.

If you’d like more information DM me.

31/07/2024

Anxiety/ Stress/ Panic what’s happening in your body when you’re feeling this way?

Adrenalin is produced and this sends the blood to your large muscles, making your body ready for flight or fight. This means the blood is diverted away from your digestion which is why you feel sick, have a dry mouth and feel sweaty often while also feeling cold. You also feel your heart racing, to keep those large muscles supplied with oxygen and energy.

This response is great if we are an Olympian about to compete, or for when we are facing real danger, but it’s not helpful when it interferes with normal life. So, what can we do to control these feelings when they aren’t helpful?

Adrenalin is broken down in the body in less than three minutes, so the whole effects of it can be over that quickly. First we need to STOP the adrenalin being produced and as daft as it sounds, but you can do this by controlling your breathing. You will notice that when you’re feeling stressed/anxious/panic your breathing rate increases.

Now STOP and take a long and really slow deep breath in, filling all of your lungs and even inflating your stomach, take at least four counts to do this. Then breathe out just as slowly, push all the old stale air out and repeat. Do this at least five times and notice how you’re feeling? Has your heart rate slowed, are you feeling less stressed/anxious/panicked?

You’ve stopped the production of adrenalin and the adrenalin in your blood stream is being broken down. Now you have to keep this slow deep breathing going for up to three minutes, to allow all the adrenalin to be broken down and you’ll feel better. No one even needs to know you’re doing it.

I’m not saying this will be easy, you’ve spent years learning the stress/anxiety/panic response, now you need to learn and practice the calm and relax response, it’s a skill. Every opportunity you have STOP and breathe slowly, learn how to do it at the drop of a hat, until it becomes second nature when you’re feeling stress/anxiety/panic.

As you become good at doing this, you can picture situations where you’ve felt stressed/anxious/panic in the past and recognise how it makes you feel now, if necessary you can practice this technique to make yourself feel calmer. Take every opportunity you can to practice.

DM me if you’d like more help in dealing with stress/anxiety/panic.

22/07/2024

I mentioned processed food two weeks ago and how it’s best to avoid it, if possible. This week I’m going to look at what is classed as a processed food and I’m actually meaning ultra processed foods, and just abbreviating it to make it easier.

Processed foods include fizzy drinks, ready meals (microwave meals), takeaways, crisps, sweets, cakes, biscuits, breakfast cereals, muesli, Pringles, Tortilla chips, nachos, burgers, sausages, bacon, sausage rolls, pizzas, vegan/veggie burgers, cheese slices, cheese triangles and in a tube.

Most of these I was aware of before I started researching more, one which I was ignoring, or refusing to acknowledge, but deep down I realised was cheese slices and now I’m going to avoid them as often as possible (I know sometimes I will still buy them, and SOMETIMES is OK).

So what’s bad about these foods, why should we avoid them most of the time, how can we easily recognise them?

They are most easily recognised by their long list of ingredients, these lists will contain ingredients which are unrecognisable, include sweeteners and emulsifiers, E numbers. Be careful of low fat products, because the fat is often replaced with sweeteners of some sort to make them tasty.

A report in the British Medical Journal has linked these foods to 32 harmful health outcomes. These include anxiety, depression, low energy, type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease and poor sleep. They contain virtually no nutrients or vitamins.

These processed foods are easier to eat than natural foods, which leads to us eating them faster and therefore eating more of them. The way they affect our blood sugars (the energy flowing round in our blood) means are hungry again soon after eating, so we snack more, this all leads us to putting on weight.

I’m not saying you can never eat a sausage or burger again, if you’re planning a BBQ (when the sun comes out again) buy your burgers and sausages from Woods or the market in Knutsford. Pick up your wholemeal buns from Mobberley Bakery, buy a block of your favourite cheese from the Coop and slice it yourself (note to self). To make life easier batch cook and freeze the extra portions so you don’t have to cook every day.

Remember the 80/20 rule aim to eat healthily 80% of the time, 5 or 6 days a week. Once you are doing this you will notice the days when you don’t, you’ll feel less energised, have a lower mood and eat more. Try it out, let me know how you get on. If you’d like more help sticking to eating healthily DM me.

Next week I’ll be looking at what you can do to reduce the anxiety and stress you’re experiencing.

15/07/2024

A Healthy Diet includes ALL the food groups, so your body has all the vitamins and nutrients it needs to support you. That’s Protein, Vegetables, Legumes, Fruit, Nuts, Whole grains, Carbohydrate and Healthy Fats. The picture below shows the amount of each food group you should have on your plate.

Protein can be fish, animal or plant based, you need to remember that red meat and cheese intake need to be limited because of the unhealthy fats they contain. Pulses are a great way to eat protein if you’re a vegan or vegetarian. Protein helps you to feel full for longer too.

Vegetables and Legumes should make up 50% of your diet. Make your plate as colourful as possible, eat as many different types of vegetables and legumes (beans, chick peas, lentils) as you can each week (see how close you can get to 30 different vegetables a week) you can count herbs and spices too.

Fruit contains more sugar than vegetables so it’s best to stick to just two different portions of fruit a day.

Nuts are a great source of nutrients, and protein. Eat a variety, in their raw state with the skins on if possible and no salt or other coatings on them. Limit yourself to a handful a day.
Whole grains that’s brown rice, lentils, quinoa, ideally these should be cooked from dry rather than in the pouches which go in the microwave, but if time is tight, microwaveable are much quicker. Avoid the ones with flavours added.

Carbohydrates are needed to provide energy to our brains, choose from wholemeal pasta, squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes, wholemeal/brown rice.

Healthy Fats these are found in oily fish, olive oil (add it to salad dressing), raw nuts, and avocado. If cooking a stir fry its probably best to use rapeseed oil as it’s better at the high temperatures required to fry.

Drink between 8-10 glasses of water a day. Avoid sugary and carbonated drinks and drink alcohol sensibly (remember there are a lot of empty, i.e., no food value, calories in alcohol.) If you struggle to sleep, it’s best to avoid caffeine after 3pm.

Next week I’ll be looking at processed foods in more detail. DM me if you’d like help sticking to a healthy lifestyle.

Picture sourced from Holistic Family Living

08/07/2024

How would you like to finally have the body you want, by being kind to yourself? Making small changes, which over time make big differences.

Remember even if you had a gastric band fitted today, you wouldn’t wake up 3 stone lighter tomorrow. It will take time, require us to make long term changes but they will make us feel, as well as look good. This time, do it for the long term.

What do we need to consider? To start with I don’t want to focus on weight loss, but being healthy and the weight loss will follow.

With that in mind I want to introduce the 80/20 rule, live healthily 80% of the time that’s 5.6 days a week, let’s call it 6 days with one treats/rest day.

What will make a difference? 80/20 again: It’s 80% what we eat and 20% exercise. Let me give you an example of why I say that.

Many years ago, I ran the Chester half marathon. When I finished I was given a goodie bag, which contained, amongst other things, a Mars Bar. I didn’t and don’t like Mars Bars, but I was hungry and I’d just run a half marathon, so I could afford the calories, right? No, in that one Mars Bar I replaced ALL the calories I’d just burned.

The point I’m making is, you can’t out exercise a poor diet. So next week I’ll focus on what a healthy diet is. In the meantime think about how you can cut out processed foods from your diet.

How do you identify processed food? They are anything you don’t cook from scratch. Look at the ingredients of the food you’re buying - how many ingredients are there, are there ingredients you don’t even recognise?

DM me if you’d like more information.

Hylands Hypnotherapy

19/08/2024

12/08/2024

05/08/2024

31/07/2024

22/07/2024

15/07/2024

08/07/2024

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Monday	9am - 8pm
Tuesday	9am - 8pm
Wednesday	9am - 8pm
Thursday	9am - 8pm
Friday	9am - 8pm
Saturday	9am - 8pm