What are the top ways people choose to get healthy and fit? Lose weight, stop smoking and exercise more. Typically, when people want to get healthy, they think about their body and the physical ways they can achieve it. But the equation for health starts earlier. To create sustainable health, we also need to address our emotional body. When our emotional body is healthy, our physical body can achieve greater goals, greater rewards and even maintain them over time!
The truth is this: excess food, cigarettes and alcohol are symptoms. They are symptoms of stress, but even more importantly, they are symptoms of an emotion inside that you just don’t like. Because we’re not comfortable dealing with our emotions, we distract ourselves with momentarily "happy" activities. This excess leads to an unhealthy body, which creates an unhappy mind, which leads to even more distracters.
So, if we think healthy, we can be healthy. This happens in a variety of ways. The more positive our thought patterns, the less stress on our body. The less stress on our body, the more easily we can create and sustain healthy habits. We can also sleep better, attract more rewarding relationships and achieve goals at work.
But, sadly, we self-sabotage. So many times we initiate our goals with enthusiasm. We get up in the morning, eat a healthy breakfast, and go for a run. We may do this for a week or even several. But then we face obstacles and the will power fades: work gets busy, we don’t lose weight quickly, or our social schedule heats up and we consume more calories. Our positive thoughts are replaced with doubts ("I’ll never be able to lose this weight") or limiting beliefs ("I’ll always be overweight."). Soon our resiliency becomes less resilient and we listen to that negative inner voice. Our goals can easily follow a downward spiral.
The language of emotions can empower you. The first step to regaining control, or healing your emotional body, is to learn its language. Emotions are the way our body, mind and soul communicate with each other. At a very simple level, when we’re sad, we’ve lost something that we valued. When we feel inadequate, we’re afraid we won’t be loved or safe, or perhaps even survive. Even anger is a good emotion. Anger is the energy that we need to make fair what’s not fair. But, the key is to not lash out at people or be mean, because that would not be fair. When we stop avoiding or distracting ourselves from our emotions, it’s easier to understand and maintain our motivations; it’s easier to live an authentic life.
But it’s so hard to change. It’s true, people are often more comfortable with the fears they know then the fears they don’t know. There’s always a chance that change could make our situation worse. In fact, this fear of change could even be considered our ultimate survival mechanism. It allows us to create coping mechanisms that are healthy and unhealthy. Our will to survive wants us to be "safe and secure," even when "safe and secure" merely means "not dead." But how can we step past something so innate?
Hypnosis can stop the symptom cycle and refresh our resiliency. Hypnosis is a focused state of attention. We easily hypnotize ourselves every day when we’re on the computer, when we talk on the phone, when we drive. We focus so completely that the world fades away.
In fact, we’re hypnotized right now. So often we’re focused on what we don’t like about ourselves or we’re obsessed with our minor or major grievances against the world. When we focus on the negative or when we ignore our emotions and avoid possible solutions because we fear change, we start to feel frustrated and that leads to stress and unhealthy habits.
Surprisingly, we really need to de-hypnotize ourselves! It’s through hypnosis that we can program and deprogram ourselves. With hypnosis, we can access the subconscious and reveal the root causes of our self-sabotage. Hypnosis won’t change the past, but it can help reveal the fears, misperceptions and limiting beliefs so we can dissolve them away and live a more rewarding life – a more healthy life.
