Don’t Dream – Act!

Whether I am working in Hypnotherapy, Personal Training, Business Consultancy, and even when giving Seminars, I find a common theme keeps happening:

People focus on what they want, and not on the how and what they need to do in order to get what they want. And sometimes they don’t even get as far as knowing what they want – they remain stuck in what they don’t want.

For example, think about “I want a million pounds.” That’s a great want, a desirable want. And it is achievable, and many people dream it. And yet why do so many people not achieve it?

In my experience people concentrate too much on what they want and not on the important parts – the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ that helps them actually achieve that want. Miss this out and you can want all you like, you’ll probably never achieve it. You’ll remain a dreamer.

So what do you actually want? And with that want, have you even worked out on the how and what you need to do in order to actually achieve it?

In Hypnotherapy clients come to me wanting the end to their depression, anxieties, phobias, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, performance issues amongst so much more – and the majority of the time they are focusing on what they don’t want. Some focus on what they do want. But very few actually focus on the all important journey to get to where they want.

Another example is within fighting. An example I often demonstrate during my fight seminars is how people tend to concentrate on what they don’t want rather than on what they need to do. For example, an ankle lock could be applied, and the fighter struggles like mad to escape, concentrating on the ‘want’ to escape. Yet their focus would be better directed by concentrating on what they need to do in order to actually escape. Its about focusing on what you need to do in order to achieve the want.

This is where I give assistance with coaching as part of my Hypnotherapy service. We work out where people are now, and where they want to be. The points ‘A’ and ‘B’. We work out the further direction for when they have achieved point B. Now we have the journey direction we work on the how and what they need to do to achieve point B and beyond. We remove limitations and add resources so that the client has a clear journey ahead of them. We add emotion to fuel the motivation. We look at the processes to make sure that they are congruent with whom that person is and to mitigate any adverse reactions in their wider ecology – how they live their life and the interactions within.

My good friend and mentor Tom Mullins was told me that you ‘vote with your feet’. Unless you take that first step, you’ll never achieve. So are you taking that first step, and gaining momentum, focusing on the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ that will achieve what you want?

Hypnotic Focus

I’m currently working with a journalist, Mark Carling, on his latest epic journey – from being unfit and a non-fighter to taking his first professional MMA (cage fighting) bout, all within 12 weeks. A television programme ‘Unfit2Fight’ is being made documenting him every step of the way.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have been invited on the ride, and I am, amongst other things, helping him through my Sports Hypnosis. Through hypnosis I am helping Mark become the very best fighter he can be, providing a support structure to the physical and technical training, helping him train better, removing limitations, to improve faster, and focus on the tasks at hand. And the work is starting to pay off big time.

A great example of the effects of our working together happened on Tuesday during one of Mark’s training sessions. We’d done various bits of filming Mark training and then it was time for him to do a killer physical conditioning circuit at the end. I had the pleasure of watching this whilst sitting on a boxing ring apron with his personal trainer, and we were chatting about the effects the hypnosis was having on his preparation.

Halfway through the circuit Mark was doing an abdominal exercise and was pushing himself every step of the way. His face was screwed up in pain, he was ‘forcing’ himself through the pain barrier and I could feel the burning his abs were going through!

“Watch Mark”, I said, before issuing one clear voice command – “technique”. Mark’s face instantly softened, the pain seemed to disappear straight away, his technique got better, smoother, more effortless, better posture – it was as though he had a new lease of life, a massive change in his physiology. His whole focus changed. And he maintained that focus. His Personal Trainer remarked that he was amazed at the instant transformation.

And all this came from just one word.

Before the session I had anchored the word “technique” during hypnosis. The moment Mark now hears this ‘trigger’ word from his coach he enters the required state of mind that allows him to focus completely on the perfect execution of the technique. It is not about focusing on what he wants, but instead on what he needs to focus on to fulfil that want.

It was a perfect demonstration of the effects of a tiny part of my work with Mark via hypnosis. It was a clear and precise influence with tangible effects for all to see.

Next time we just need the cameras rolling while we do it!

Value The Words You Use

The words we use, the way we say them, the syntax of how they are put together, and the representations of the metaphors and symbols we use within, all are representative of the thoughts in our heads. So if you want to get a better understanding of how someone is thinking then listen carefully to the language they use.

As my study moves deeper into cognitive linguistics the more I understand about language and communication, and exactly what is being communicated to me. Because when you look a little closer people tend to tell you far more than they may be aware of.

I will often take time to study a piece of communication to see exactly what message is being communicated. Here’s an example. Have a read of this extract which comes from a report issued to me by a Local Authority Planning Department, in respect to a proposed development for a small block of flats:

“The block plan does not show the proposed development in relation to properties on **** Avenue. However it appears that the proposed development will result in an overbearing impact to the occupiers of these dwellings.”

First read, and the meaning probably is quite straight forward.

Now read it again and look for a deeper meaning – what can you gleam from the words used, the order, the syntax. Because when I read it, it suggests to me that this is nothing but ‘fluff’ or ‘filler’, and that the person writing the report has not carried out her job properly.

Let’s break down the statement.

The first sentence sets the scene – it provides the information for the statement that follows. The second sentence provides the opinion of this person following consideration of the first sentence. The word ‘however’ links yet at the same time dismisses the first sentence, leading to the conclusions of the second.

If you look at the words used, in the first sentence, ‘does not show’ means that information is not there. Yet, then ‘it appears’. So the author has hallucinated something which is not there, and then goes on to state an opinion based on this hallucination. Without the required information how can they offer an opinion?

So I would question whether this person is actually doing their job, as it is clear to me that they are forming opinions without the true facts to support them. Or they are just providing 'fluff' and 'filler' to a report. And as this statement has a massive financial and business impact (via any planning decision on the proposed development) I would question whether this is acceptable.

I wonder if the author of the extract would have valued the words they used a little more if they had read this blog post first. Do you value the words that you use?

The Perfect Strike

Poor Rob, I didn’t mean for him to collapse on the floor. My knee (during sparring) came effortlessly into his abdomen forcing all the air out of his lungs giving him no option – his legs buckled and he dropped to the floor. As I remember him gasping for air down there, I also remember how easily and effectively the strike was made. And for that, I guess I can thank my studies of NLP.

Now, whereas I am certified to Master NLP Practitioner level, I would never call myself an ‘NLPer’, as I am far more than that. There are also some misguided views on what NLP is and isn’t by some of the public and also scarily by some NLP Practitioners! So sometimes it's best not to label yourself with what a few people may perceive as a limitation. But here I feel it is definitely relevant to give a quick explanation of what it is.

NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a field of work started by two academics who ‘modelled’ several of the top therapists of the time. The idea is that if they worked out how they used their bodies, their language, and how they think - then they could produce a ‘model’ of that person’s performance. And once you have a model, other people could follow that model to get similar responses.

On a really basic level this is exactly how we learn as a child – we observe, we replicate, we learn.

The modelling of these therapists also left behind a trail of highly effective techniques and patterns, originally basically ‘swiped’ from top fields of psychology, psychiatry, linguistics and physiology. These techniques are utilised by hypnotherapists such as me, life coaches, business and management consultants, politicians, marketers, advertisers, and sports persons – every walk of life.

Yet if you go back to base principles NLP is nothing more than a system of modelling.

And that is how I achieved this knee strike.

During my fight training I like to learn and develop, whilst reinforcing what I know, expanding knowledge, and aiming to leave a training session better than when I started. So when I spar people, and find they have an effective technique or application, I like to learn how they do it.

One of my training partners, Jesse, has a lovely technique he often uses during sparring. He has a ‘walk through knee’ which he uses to great effect. It is a simple technique – you just step forward and lift your knee into your opponent – yet he seems to make this more effective than most. So the last few weeks I’ve set out to model how he does this, so I can gain some of his effectiveness.

The first week I sparred him normally, and started to notice what positions and movements I made that allowed Jesse to use this knee. Every time he used this technique I ran the movie of this event back in my head, working out exactly what position I was in when he did it. How was I positioning myself for the knee?

In following weeks I developed this knowledge, using my sensory acuity to notice his position immediately prior to throwing the technique, every part of his posture, noting where his attention was – I now had the ‘trigger’ positions set in my head that allowed him to throw it.

Then I worked on noting the individual movements of the knee – everything from breathing to posture, to all the little micro-movements, the tension and relaxation, the acceleration, the focus and attention – all the way from before the technique to after the technique.

Again, I stored it as a movie, complete with added sounds and feelings, making it a sensory ‘recording’ of exactly how Jesse went about throwing the knee. I ran this many times in my head, using self-hypnosis and visualising the recording time and time again. I now had the base information from which to work.

And then I started to ‘mirror’ his movements, working on everything from posture down to the smallest micro-movement I could detect. In doing this I found a key element was the positioning of the feet – the angle, the weight distribution, and the contact points with the canvas. Following this mirroring I started to copy his exact movements, using my mind to fill in any gaps, or to make any adjustments for the fact that our bodies are physiologically different.

This last step was actually quite easy – I had practised already with a technique known as ‘deep trance identification’, or DTI. It sounds fancy, but it’s quite simple. I run the recording time and time again in my head of Jesse throwing the knee. And then I allow myself to become Jesse, kind of ‘possessing his body’ in the recording, seeing through his own eyes, hearing what he would hear, and feeling what he would feel. Think of it like Casper the Friendly Ghost going into someone else’s body. And then, experiencing this knee strike completely from Jesse’s perspective, I allowed Jesse to ‘morph’ into me, so I was running the recording with me totally experiencing the perfect knee strikes completely from my perspective, and totally immersed in the complete experience.

One of the best bits of our neurology is that our minds cannot determine between vividly imagined and reality – both are treated the same. And if you add in the kinaesthetic element, or actually throwing the knee as you are running the recording, you really strengthen the neurology – you are totally throwing the knee exactly how you want to.

So last Friday at sparring I tested my work. I did a round with Jesse, and did a last bit of fine tuning as I observed (and then felt!) a perfect knee strike from him. It was time to put my work into practice.

And Rob was my ‘victim’. I started the round as usual, got myself prepared mentally, and then allowed myself to become this recording I had worked on. The moment Rob fell into the perfect position according to my recording I instantly stepped forward and executed the perfect knee strike. It was so effortless, so easy, so perfect it kind of went in a whole lot further than I had intended. I had mixed emotions as I looked at Rob gasping for air like a fish out of water on the floor. One part of me was feeling bad and thinking ‘oh sh*t!’ for hurting a training partner even though I was never intending to – the other part of me was thinking ‘cool’ for how effective I had been in developing this knee!

The above is the bare bones of the process I used, there is far more detail that can be added, as I do when I’m working with my sports clients. Yet at the same time every reader who plays sport can use exactly the techniques listed above to help them improve any technical element of the game.

Now I have got the perfect ‘walk through knee’ I wonder what, and who, I will start to work on next…

How Do You Knock Someone Out?

So how do you knock someone out? This is a very misunderstood subject especially in the fight world. If you ask a number of fighters how you knock someone out you will get a bevy of answers ranging from speed, brute strength, accuracy, timing, explosiveness, kinetic linking, penetration and follow through – and the list goes on.

And yet I’ve dropped someone to their knees with a couple of taps on their head. This doesn’t seem to fit in with the above list, doesn’t it?

In order to understand how to knock someone out I believe you must understand the knockout process – what is going on inside that person. Only then can you apply yourself effectively and achieve that knockout you desire.

There are two ways of knocking someone out – concussion, or by inducing the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS, commonly and in my opinion incorrectly termed the fight or flight response.)

For concussion you need to literally rattle the brain around inside the skull, causing damage to the cell structure, resulting in shut down to protect itself. This is trauma within a fight at its most brutal. To effect this trauma on the brain you need to create movement in the head, allowing the brain therefore to crash and rub against the skull and the deviations in the internal surface of the brain, damaging cells, breaking neurology, creating bruising – not very nice!

This movement can be achieved two ways. The first would be sheer force of violent impact, displacing shocking and moving the head through pure force of impact. Here power development and the application of this behind a shot is paramount.

The next way would be through identifying the mechanical weaknesses in your opponent, in particular how the head sits on the neck. A hook to the side of the point of the chin could create a much greater twisting movement in an opponent’s head. Compare this to just hitting the side of the opponent’s head with a hook where his strong neck may absorb and prevent the required violent movement.

Concussive blows are accumulative – the more times you hit someone with power and create the violent movement in the head the more damage and the closer to a concussive knockout. Of course, this is the one element of our fight sports that no fighter should forget. If any of us get hit concussively in training or competition we must monitor ourselves and take precautions, including no alcohol or returning to impact too soon. If in doubt, any doubt, seek appropriate medical attention. Actually, if you take a concussive blow seek appropriate medical attention anyway – let’s play safe hey?

The next way to effect a knock out is by inducing the GAS. This response prepares for the freeze-flight-fight (fear-faint) response, which happens in that order. When we suffer a shock we freeze. If this doesn’t release the stress we know this response is not working, and we quickly move to flight directly away from the source of the stress. Again, if this doesn’t remove the stress we increase our response yet again, now to the fight response. If this doesn’t resolve the stress then we enter a state of fear, similar but different to the freeze. And when we come to the last of the body’s defences there’s nothing left to do but to shut down everything apart from our life support systems – we faint.

And it is possibly for the shock to be so great that we can almost instantaneously shoot through the responses to the faint response. This is what happens with a ‘flash knockdown’.

To induce the flash knockdown stress has to be induced, and rapidly increased. This is why the ‘shot we didn’t see’ can create the stress and therefore the reaction.

Stress is much easier to induce in a novice or intermediate fighter than at the higher echelons of our sports. With the novice and intermediate fighters in training I often set up what I term the ‘limbic loop’ (the limbic system creates the GAS), inducing stress gradually, hitting once to increase stress and the freeze, then again to get them to move away with flight, once more for fight and reading their physiology to instantly hit them as they respond again inducing fear, then tapping them on their head to induce the knockdown, usually a drop to the knee.

Sometimes, as its training, the stress doesn’t quite reach the fear as I keep the contact light, instead sometimes trapping my partners in a never ending limbic loop of rotation through freeze-flight-fight.

So that’s how you induce a knockout. Either by concussion or by inducing the GAS. Hopefully now you’ll be better placed to get the knockouts you desire – and I’ll have to watch out for you in sparring and competition! I'll better blog on evasion and defence pretty soon...

Listen To Yourself – You Know What You Need To Do!

I’ve had several hypnotherapy clients recently that have wasted their time. They haven’t wasted mine, as I’ve been paid, and have got some great learning from working with them too. And this is the reason I’ve written this blog post, so other potential clients might not waste their time either.

These clients came to see me with problems that were definitely real. And they left without their problems. So why did they waste their time? Read on and all will be explained.

And then you may not be surprised when I solved all of one of these client’s problems with three words. Yes, literally three words.

When a client talks with me I listen to the words and structure they use, the way they say those words, and the body language that they use as they tell me. With the body language I look at everything, from their overall posture down to the smallest of undetectable movements, the pupil dilation, even the skin tone and colouration. I swear I know one of my peers that see pores actually opening! All of this tells me more than you could possibly imagine.

So in a session when I ask a client to tell me how they do their problem, I receive an incredible amount of information. And, being lucky to have had (and continue to have) some good mentors, I’ve learned that a client will always make my job easy. All I have to do is listen with my whole body, listening to their words, listening to their body, and listening to their eyes, and of course listening with my intuition.

And through listening to them I realised that they weren’t just telling me how they did their problem – they were also telling me exactly what they needed to do to solve it.They literally told me in their own words EXACTLY what they needed to do to solve their issues.

A recent depressive told me that he “couldn’t see” what he needed to do. So as he told me how he did his depression, through listening to the message he was telling me, he was also telling exactly what he needed to do to lift him from everything that caused his depression. I made lots of notes, and showed him these notes. He could then literally ‘see’ exactly what he needed to do. The realisation on his face was, well, just special. He always knew what he needed to do. He couldn’t see it. Now he could.

Though my best one was a stop smoker – forty a day plus for thirty years. Lung problems, health problems, complications, asthma – the smoking was literally about to drop him dead. And then he told me exactly what he needed to do. “I just need someone to tell me to stop smoking!” he said, exasperated.

So I held my nerve, and obliged.

“Stop smoking, now.”

Priceless!

Pain Management – Hypnotherapy

This carries on from my last two posts on pain, and here I will give a ‘general’ approach I often use when working with clients who have pain. Please note that every client is an individual, and as such, deserves an individual approach relevant to them. This is just a general approach I may utilise.

Hypnosis and the management of pain have a long documented history and hypnosis is commonly used as an analgesic and an anaesthetic during operations – and has been for centuries. Yet this is just one aspect where hypnosis (and other tools that a hypnotherapist has) can be used to work with pain.

Of course, the first thing in respect to working with pain is to ensure the client has appropriate medical attention. The last thing you want to do is remove a person’s migraine pain is if the pain is actually a signal from a growing tumour! It doesn’t matter whether it is knee pain, migraines, joint pain, back pain – I want to know what I am working with, and ensure that my client is actually getting the right medical attention where necessary. I know I am not a medical doctor – I know my limitations.

I also get a list of any drugs, painkillers, or any other treatments they have been having, together with a history of the pain. I want to know whether the drugs are preventing the process of nociception (the pain signal from tissue damage or risk of tissue damage), or are working inside the neurology of the brain, or even whether they aren’t working at all. The history will give me a great starting place too and let me know the origins of the pain.

If it is ethical and morally right to continue, and the client is happy with the process, I then start work on the emotional and learned behaviours behind the pain. Examples of these I am often presented with include:

“I’ve had a rear end shunt so I must have whiplash.”
“I pulled my back bending down and now every time I bend down I get a pain.”
“I only get my knee pain on the way to training.”
“My migraines started around the time of a severe emotional trauma.”
“Even though the doctors say nothing’s wrong, it still hurts.”

All these are clear examples to me of psychosomatic pain. The first task I undertake is to educate my client to what pain is, and that by paying attention to the signals of pain then there is no need to feel the pain. I also explain the origins of pain. Often, this is all it takes. It seems this is quite usual with sportspersons who train hard or are competitive. They tend to have ‘niggly’ pains on the way to training but at no other times. Educating them about pain often removes the problem immediately.

Actually, according to people like Dr Sarno, a medical doctor who is a leading pain specialist, if an injury is not getting worse and is not being aggravated and the pain has persisted for more than 6 weeks then it exists at the psychosomatic level only. And he includes amputees in this category too.

If the pain persists following education I then look for learned behaviours or unresolved/repressed emotions behind the pain. I often use hypnosis for this although often the client can present the signal behind the pain immediately – pain is a great inducer of hypnosis! I use all the tools in my hypnotherapy kit as appropriate to reframe the learned behaviour or resolve the emotions – I work with the client to pay attention to the signal.

With recent clients this has immediately removed or reduced pains from backs, shoulders, necks and knees. More than that, with pain just being one form of psychosomatic signals, this afternoon I worked with a stop smoking client who also has severe psoriasis. Interestingly as I was paying attention to the emotions driving him to smoke, the psoriasis started to considerably improve. Whether the psoriasis has psychosomatic origins here or not is not really important – what is important is the clear and tangible change for the better has taken place and exactly at the time of dealing with an unresolved emotion.

Of course, not all pain is psychosomatic, from learned behaviour or unresolved emotions. Some pain is obviously from tissue damage. Two of my recent clients have had pain almost across their entire bodies. Their consultants haven’t known what pain to attend to medically – there was so much of it. So together we are working first on the emotional pain, then the learned behaviours – so all that should be left is pain from actual damage to tissue, giving the medical consultants clearer signals to work with.

Once the medical practitioners are paying attention to these signals of damage, I can then work with my clients to turn down the pain. This pain is an important signal, and one that needs to be paid attention to. However, where it is interfering with a person’s recovery from that injury, such as prohibiting good sleep, then it is appropriate to turn it right down – or even off for certain parts of the day. As all pain is a perception within the mind, and again let me assure you that all pain is very real, I find that hypnosis is a great tool with which to do this.

Some damage to tissue is also untreatable. Think about certain long term conditions here, degenerative orders, or worse. Here whatever the signal there is no attention that can be paid to the source of the signal. Hypnosis is well documented in assisting these persons have a much more comfortable time.

I have had some good experimentation with control of pain (switching on and off), and regulation of pain (extent of the perception of pain) with my fighting friends. Last year on the Combined Services Judo Course I would often get a shout of “Gary, another one!” from the coaches. Often a twisted knee, impact trauma or the like was the source of pain. I’ve also carried out similar experimentation with my fight training partners.

This experimentation has often centred on their ‘perception’ of the pain – after, of course, I check that they will be paying attention to the signal. I ask them to visualise the pain. What does it look like? How big is it? What colour? Is it moving? And as they visualise it and experience it, I get them to change their experience by shrinking it, moving it away, fading it out, ‘sucking it out’ of the body. This is a surprisingly quick way of regulating, and often controlling, pain. Give it a go – after you make sure you’ll be paying attention to the signal that is!

So there we go – a three post journey through pain. So that’s a few thoughts, a few bits of my study, and a few thoughts all thrown into the mix. I wonder how many of you who read these three posts find that just by understanding pain a little better, your own pain becomes easier to manage?

As always, I welcome all feedback – please feel free to add comments!