Hmmmm....hypnotherapy

As an experiment, I've decided to try hypnotherapy. I've wanted to for awhile, but I haven't found a way to do it other than going to a clinic and paying huge bucks. However, I've recently learned about Paul McKenna, who uses a combination of hypnotherapy, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), and Thought Field Therapy to help people make behavioural changes.

In my case, the behaviour that I want to change is eating when I'm stressed and/or bored. So I figure, why not give it a try? I downloaded Dr. McKenna's 25-minute guided self-hypnotherapy CD and gave it a try after work today. And I really liked it. The exercise is really quite simple. You completely relax your body, slow your breathing, and drift into a kind of daydream state. With Dr. McKenna's guidance, you visualize positive behaviours and feelings that you want to replace your negative behaviours with. This includes not only physical behaviours, but ways of thinking about what you do and about yourself as well. Dr. McKenna also makes suggestions. At the end, you gradually come awake when he tells you to, and that's that.

Dr. McKenna stated at the beginning of the exercise that I would likely come out of my hypnotic state (if you want to call it that, although I don't think that I was out of it enough to let anyone make me cluck like a chicken) feeling relaxed and peppy. I think it worked, because the hubby commented when he came home from work that I seemed really chilled out. If that's the only benefit of continuing to do the exercise, that's good enough for me. I'll take my stress relief where I can get it. In the past year or so, I've started having trouble sleeping fairly frequently. I guess I'm stuck in the typical North American young professional trap of thinking about work and life too much to make my brain shut up when it's supposed to. Dr. McKenna also has a sleep improvement exercise, so I'm going to try that tonight before bed. It's a good night for it, as the hubby and I just got home from the gym, and when we go late, I have trouble winding down.

Hypnotherapy/NLP/Thought Field Therapy all seem a bit loopy and left wing to my sadly cautious self, but I'm willing to give it a try. And hey, I didn't stress eat today, and I went to the gym. That's doing pretty good already! And I was definitely aware enough of what was going on during the exercise to know that I wasn't being told to blow up the White House or think I was Princess Diana or anything. Now if only the same thing will work to help my dad quit smoking.... I got that program too, so we'll see how it goes. If it can beat 30 years of habit and addiction, I will be a convert.