In my previous article I had a look at what ‘pain’ actually is - the signals and the neurology behind it. So now we have a better understanding of pain this blog post introduces approaches to control pain, as well as the management and regulation as to when, and how much we feel.
In summary of my previous post pain is the result of a signal, a signal that says we need to pay attention to something. The source of that signal could be tissue damage or risk of tissue damage, learned behaviour, or unresolved emotions. These signals are passed to our brain where we interpret the signals and pain is perceived. This process is there to protect us from harm – pain is in our best interests for our health and safety.
Some quick definitions for you. Control is a digital switch, a switch on, or a switch off – black and white. Regulation is an analogue scale, the amount, the extent, and timing of pain – shades of grey. Management is the process of allowing life to continue with pain and the process of control and regulation. The good news is that a hypnosis approach can help with all three of these, and my next post will explain some of the methods that we can use.
But first, pain is a perception in our minds, although very real, it is a perception created in our minds. And as such we actually control, regulate and manage pain on an every day basis. This is a usual every day occurrence. Have you notice your pain coming and going, varying at different times and in different circumstances?
Let’s start with pain from nociception – the pain that results from damage or risk of damage to tissue. The two ways of regulating the pain are ‘afferent regulation’ and ‘descending regulation’.
Afferent regulation is the process that can most easily be explained by rubbing your shin after bruising it to reduce the pain. The ‘let mummy rub it better’ approach. This can be explained by the ‘gate theory of pain’ where the neurology is both excited by the nociceptors detecting the pain and inhibited by the signal of rubbing it. Perhaps it could be simple put that by rubbing the injury, further signals from the rubbing are sent to the brain as well as the nociceptors signal that results in pain, therefore giving too much information and dulling the nociceptors signal – and therefore less signal for pain is received.
Descending regulation is something that as a fighter I use on a daily basis. Especially when we compete, and often in heavy sparring, we have to ‘switch off’ from pain. This is common in athletes and soldiers where injuries are incurred but no pain is felt. The suppression of the pain is thought to be carried out in the brain including the area known as PAG (periaqueductal grey matter). This area of the brain sends signals down the neurology effectively depressing the nociception signals coming up.
Pain from learned behaviour has a slightly different approach. Here we have been hurt in the past and therefore our minds look to protect us in the present by giving us a pain signal – often, though not exclusively, from the source of the original pain. I work with many athletes who have pain from old injuries on the way to training, but at no other times. To regulate or control the pain we need to work out what the signal is that the pain is telling us, and pay attention to it in order for the signal to not be necessary. And then we can switch off as it’s not needed.
The final source of pain is unresolved emotions. Dr Sarno is a leading name in the field of psychosomatic conditions including pain coming from unresolved emotions. If you are suffering from long term pain I would definitely recommend reading his works – just by reading his books many people become pain free as they understand the sources of their conditions. I regularly am helping people turn off and turn down long term pain by paying attention to unresolved emotions. Often this pain is first experienced around the time of emotional stress or trauma. As the emotions from this time are repressed by our unconscious minds the pain is a reminder that we need to process or resolve these emotions, even though we are mostly not consciously aware of them. Resolve the emotions, and then there is no need to feel the pain.
It is interesting to note that in my studies I have come across numerous reports as to the use of placebos in pain relief. A patient may be given sterile saline instead of an analgesic and report relief from the pain despite having no drug. A belief that the treatment will work can be enough to cause activation of the pain relief systems of the brain.
In my pain control/management/regulation I work with an understanding of all of these methods, the processes by which we experience pain. And by understanding these methods I am better placed to ethically assist people in living free from pain. In my next blog post I will explain some methods that I use, including some that you can try without a hypnotherapist, to control, regulate and manage pain.
Friday, 16 July 2010
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
What is Pain?
I’ve been working with several patients in respect to their ‘pain’ lately, including in conjunction with their consultants at their Pain Clinics. In this blog post I thought I’d explain what pain actually is, and how we experience it. (Everything here is put as a generalisation to enable simpler understanding.)
In later posts I’ll talk about pain control, management and regulation, together with the uses of hypnosis in the same. But first, what is pain?
Pain exists to keep us safe. It is a response to an alarm signal, our body’s way of saying ‘pay attention’. And this response helps us to avoid harm. Pain and withdrawal reflexes help us to keep ourselves safe. Pain makes us rest injured parts of the body which assists in recovery from any damage. It also reminds us to keep away from situations where in the past we had pain, or to pay attention to emotions that are not yet resolved.
Pain is a ‘somatic sensation’, in other words, it is a sensation felt in the body. But how is it created? Pain is a response to a signal. That signal could be from tissue damage, risk of tissue damage, learned behaviour, or unresolved emotions.
Pain as a result of tissue damage or risk of tissue damage is through a process called ‘nociception’. This starts with the nerve endings, or nociceptors, detecting the damage or risk, and sending this signal through our neurology to our brain. In the brain the signal is received, interpreted, and the synapses within our neurology fire accordingly and often produce the sensation of pain.
It is worth pointing out that the process of nociception is not in itself pain – it is just a signal that we can interpret as pain.
Pain can be as a result of learned behaviour. In the past we may have incurred injury and experienced pain, so if we are about to do that behaviour again, or are doing that behaviour we may experience pain, telling us not to do so. It is also well documented that current social norms also influence pain, and we can learn to feel pain as a result of other people’s behaviour, or even just hearing about it.
Unresolved emotions are also a source of pain, especially those with chronic pain. It has been documented that unless an injury is getting worse or being aggravated pain shouldn’t be felt six weeks after the injury – if it is, there is very likely an emotional element to that pain. Often repressed emotions become a source of pain – the pain being the signal that we need to pay attention and process that emotion through to resolution.
Pain is a cognitive process and it is due to this that our perception of pain can vary. Pain can come and go, may be intense, or just in the background, or we may just not feel it at all. And we can also experience pain whilst having no tissue damage or risk of damage to that tissue. We can control it by turning it off or on, or regulate or manage it to lessen or increase its intensity. And we can do all this because pain is created in the brain.
Now, whilst it is true that all pain is a perception in the brain, whether from tissue damage, threat of tissue damage, learned behaviour or unresolved emotions – all pain is most definitely real. And we all know how real that pain can be. So in future posts I’ll describe pain can be controlled, regulated and managed, so when we experience pain, we know how to pay attention to it.
In later posts I’ll talk about pain control, management and regulation, together with the uses of hypnosis in the same. But first, what is pain?
Pain exists to keep us safe. It is a response to an alarm signal, our body’s way of saying ‘pay attention’. And this response helps us to avoid harm. Pain and withdrawal reflexes help us to keep ourselves safe. Pain makes us rest injured parts of the body which assists in recovery from any damage. It also reminds us to keep away from situations where in the past we had pain, or to pay attention to emotions that are not yet resolved.
Pain is a ‘somatic sensation’, in other words, it is a sensation felt in the body. But how is it created? Pain is a response to a signal. That signal could be from tissue damage, risk of tissue damage, learned behaviour, or unresolved emotions.
Pain as a result of tissue damage or risk of tissue damage is through a process called ‘nociception’. This starts with the nerve endings, or nociceptors, detecting the damage or risk, and sending this signal through our neurology to our brain. In the brain the signal is received, interpreted, and the synapses within our neurology fire accordingly and often produce the sensation of pain.
It is worth pointing out that the process of nociception is not in itself pain – it is just a signal that we can interpret as pain.
Pain can be as a result of learned behaviour. In the past we may have incurred injury and experienced pain, so if we are about to do that behaviour again, or are doing that behaviour we may experience pain, telling us not to do so. It is also well documented that current social norms also influence pain, and we can learn to feel pain as a result of other people’s behaviour, or even just hearing about it.
Unresolved emotions are also a source of pain, especially those with chronic pain. It has been documented that unless an injury is getting worse or being aggravated pain shouldn’t be felt six weeks after the injury – if it is, there is very likely an emotional element to that pain. Often repressed emotions become a source of pain – the pain being the signal that we need to pay attention and process that emotion through to resolution.
Pain is a cognitive process and it is due to this that our perception of pain can vary. Pain can come and go, may be intense, or just in the background, or we may just not feel it at all. And we can also experience pain whilst having no tissue damage or risk of damage to that tissue. We can control it by turning it off or on, or regulate or manage it to lessen or increase its intensity. And we can do all this because pain is created in the brain.
Now, whilst it is true that all pain is a perception in the brain, whether from tissue damage, threat of tissue damage, learned behaviour or unresolved emotions – all pain is most definitely real. And we all know how real that pain can be. So in future posts I’ll describe pain can be controlled, regulated and managed, so when we experience pain, we know how to pay attention to it.
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Coming Off Caffeine
Coming Off Caffeine
This Blog Post follows on from my previous Post ‘Help, I’m Addicted To Coffee!’ So if you haven’t read it yet, please do so!
In my last blog post I explained in simple terms what caffeine is and how it acts on the body. Now I’m going to take this further and show how to safely cut back and remove the addiction.
If you drink a lot of coffee and suddenly cut it out you WILL have problems. If you remember caffeine affects us by ‘blocking’ the calming effects of adenosine in our neurology, allowing our neurology to run at faster speeds.
However, if you consistently take caffeine the neurons become adapted to the smaller amounts of adenosine, and therefore just work slower. Your whole neurology will slow – the brakes will be permanently on.
Without caffeine the neurons fire too slowly, slowing the brain, resulting in the fatigue and the headaches.
So there you go – caffeine can actually slow you down. And that’s not a good thing.
If you want to limit your withdrawal symptoms my suggestion is to not go cold turkey – instead gradually reduce your caffeine by say, a cup a day, giving your body an opportunity to increase the adenosine as the caffeine intake decreases. You need to allow the body to adjust its chemical balance once more.
Something else happens when we take caffeine though, and this is the source of the addiction. We have a reward pathway in our neurology that helps us to form pleasurable associations when our body’s needs are met – and that involves the production of dopamine, which makes us feel good.
And when we don’t take caffeine our bodies desire that dopamine hit – and therefore we get the coffee cravings and the withdrawal symptoms.
How do we increase our levels of dopamine? Fall in love, get good (and flavoursome) nutrition, carry out healthy activities – anything that is an activity which promotes our survival. We are hardwired to reward ourselves for doing this, and this leads to production of dopamine. We reward ourselves for being good to ourselves.
So the first way of removing cravings and the addiction is to replace the dopamine from caffeine with dopamine from being good to yourself. The second is to slowly cut back on caffeine bit by bit allowing the plasticity of the brain to re-adjust to normal levels of dopamine.
Another way is to change our ‘perception’ of the cravings. Allow yourself to have a go at this. The principle works with headaches, cravings, pain too – it works on anything that is a perception within the brain – of which these three are. It takes a bit of practice, much easier to do with a coach or hypnotherapist like me, and it really, really works.
Close your eyes, and focus on the feelings of craving. Give them a score of 1-10, 10 being really bad! Notice where they are in the body. Really notice them. Make them real by putting your hand on where they are. And as you do so, start to notice exactly what these feelings feel like. The physical aspects of the feeling. My bet is that there is movement in them, if only at a minor level. So concentrate. Usually the feelings reconnect with themselves, ‘spinning’. Notice the speed and direction of the spin. Apply your mind, and make it spin faster. As you spin it faster your headache/craving will probably get worse. The same will happen if you make the feeling physically larger using your mind. Very much worse if you spin it faster and make it larger as well.
So do the reverse, and slow it down. Use your mind to change your perception by slowing the spinning…and once it has stopped…spin it slowly at first in the other direction. This is now a different feeling, so spin it faster. And as you spin it faster and faster in the opposite direction, make it smaller. Shrink it down to a size of a pea. Notice how the craving is reducing all the time you slow and reverse the feelings, and shrink them down. Notice what the cravings are like now on a scale of 1-10.
If you want them to go down still further ‘dissociate’ yourself from the feelings. Again, apply your mind (this is all working on the level of perception), and float the feeling out of your body. Float it further away, and then as far as you can so you can’t feel it any more.
Give it a go, and trust me, it works a treat! Certain things are experienced only through the brain’s perception, and these include cravings, headaches and pain. Yes, there will usually be a root underlying physical cause behind it. Often pain which only exists on an ‘emotional’ level as its roots in physical cause – even if the physical cause is long gone, or created by the mind/body connection in the first place. But how we ‘perceive’ those feelings is purely in the mind. And we can change them…
And this will lead me into a future series of articles on pain – what it is, how it works, and what we can do to either control it (switch it on or off), regulate or manage it. And doing this with clients is something I am passionate about, building good experience of freeing clients up from the burdens of chronic pain.
This Blog Post follows on from my previous Post ‘Help, I’m Addicted To Coffee!’ So if you haven’t read it yet, please do so!
In my last blog post I explained in simple terms what caffeine is and how it acts on the body. Now I’m going to take this further and show how to safely cut back and remove the addiction.
If you drink a lot of coffee and suddenly cut it out you WILL have problems. If you remember caffeine affects us by ‘blocking’ the calming effects of adenosine in our neurology, allowing our neurology to run at faster speeds.
However, if you consistently take caffeine the neurons become adapted to the smaller amounts of adenosine, and therefore just work slower. Your whole neurology will slow – the brakes will be permanently on.
Without caffeine the neurons fire too slowly, slowing the brain, resulting in the fatigue and the headaches.
So there you go – caffeine can actually slow you down. And that’s not a good thing.
If you want to limit your withdrawal symptoms my suggestion is to not go cold turkey – instead gradually reduce your caffeine by say, a cup a day, giving your body an opportunity to increase the adenosine as the caffeine intake decreases. You need to allow the body to adjust its chemical balance once more.
Something else happens when we take caffeine though, and this is the source of the addiction. We have a reward pathway in our neurology that helps us to form pleasurable associations when our body’s needs are met – and that involves the production of dopamine, which makes us feel good.
And when we don’t take caffeine our bodies desire that dopamine hit – and therefore we get the coffee cravings and the withdrawal symptoms.
How do we increase our levels of dopamine? Fall in love, get good (and flavoursome) nutrition, carry out healthy activities – anything that is an activity which promotes our survival. We are hardwired to reward ourselves for doing this, and this leads to production of dopamine. We reward ourselves for being good to ourselves.
So the first way of removing cravings and the addiction is to replace the dopamine from caffeine with dopamine from being good to yourself. The second is to slowly cut back on caffeine bit by bit allowing the plasticity of the brain to re-adjust to normal levels of dopamine.
Another way is to change our ‘perception’ of the cravings. Allow yourself to have a go at this. The principle works with headaches, cravings, pain too – it works on anything that is a perception within the brain – of which these three are. It takes a bit of practice, much easier to do with a coach or hypnotherapist like me, and it really, really works.
Close your eyes, and focus on the feelings of craving. Give them a score of 1-10, 10 being really bad! Notice where they are in the body. Really notice them. Make them real by putting your hand on where they are. And as you do so, start to notice exactly what these feelings feel like. The physical aspects of the feeling. My bet is that there is movement in them, if only at a minor level. So concentrate. Usually the feelings reconnect with themselves, ‘spinning’. Notice the speed and direction of the spin. Apply your mind, and make it spin faster. As you spin it faster your headache/craving will probably get worse. The same will happen if you make the feeling physically larger using your mind. Very much worse if you spin it faster and make it larger as well.
So do the reverse, and slow it down. Use your mind to change your perception by slowing the spinning…and once it has stopped…spin it slowly at first in the other direction. This is now a different feeling, so spin it faster. And as you spin it faster and faster in the opposite direction, make it smaller. Shrink it down to a size of a pea. Notice how the craving is reducing all the time you slow and reverse the feelings, and shrink them down. Notice what the cravings are like now on a scale of 1-10.
If you want them to go down still further ‘dissociate’ yourself from the feelings. Again, apply your mind (this is all working on the level of perception), and float the feeling out of your body. Float it further away, and then as far as you can so you can’t feel it any more.
Give it a go, and trust me, it works a treat! Certain things are experienced only through the brain’s perception, and these include cravings, headaches and pain. Yes, there will usually be a root underlying physical cause behind it. Often pain which only exists on an ‘emotional’ level as its roots in physical cause – even if the physical cause is long gone, or created by the mind/body connection in the first place. But how we ‘perceive’ those feelings is purely in the mind. And we can change them…
And this will lead me into a future series of articles on pain – what it is, how it works, and what we can do to either control it (switch it on or off), regulate or manage it. And doing this with clients is something I am passionate about, building good experience of freeing clients up from the burdens of chronic pain.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Help, I’m addicted To Coffee!
I’ve been known to take a wee bit too much coffee. With my will to give my Personal Training clients the best sessions I can, quite often I’ll take a coffee before each one to ‘pick me up’ and check I’m on form. I regularly do blocks of 7 PT clients in a row – that’s a lot of coffee going down me!
Whereas a little caffeine buzz can be a good thing, not many people know what caffeine is, let alone what it does. So this blog post sets out to give you some information.
We can take on board caffeine through coffee, tea, stimulant drinks, chocolate, and a few other sources as well. Interestingly, the average cup of coffee has 100mg caffeine, cup of tea 50mg, 10-50mg in colas, and Red Bull has around 80mg.
Yes, that’s right; the average cup of coffee has more caffeine than a red bull. Interestingly, tea has more caffeine than coffee, but when we take them as a drink we directly ingest coffee whereas tea is infused. Therefore there is more caffeine in a cup of coffee than a cup of tea.
And now a quick science bit.
Caffeine is found in plants as a natural neurotoxin. The plants use it to protect themselves. It’s a defence mechanism against certain bugs.
With us, it plays havoc with our ANS (Autonomic Nervous System). In our neurology there is a chemical called adenosine which has the job of slowing our nerves down. Caffeine blocks it from doing its job, by taking its place, and therefore the nerves are free to work faster. This puts a perceived ‘emergency’ reaction into the body and the sympathetic system kicks in, starting the preparations for the GAS (General Adaptation Syndrome, or the Freeze-Flight-Fight (Fear-Feint) reaction). Voila, you are awake.
In simple terms, caffeine takes the brakes off.
And with the brakes off our neurology runs fast, and creates an increased level of dopamine activity in the brain – just like cocaine and other stimulants. Your body starts to look forward to the caffeine hit.
And the more caffeine you take, the more the body becomes desensitised to it, meaning you need more caffeine for the same effect. This is why you end up taking more and more caffeine to get a ‘lift’.
My caffeine intake levels are too high – and I’ve started the process of weaning myself off the coffee and caffeine. How do you do that? I’ll be posting another blog post soon explaining exactly what happens to cause the addiction, the affects of withdrawal, and of course suggesting some simple ways to handle it comfortably!
Whereas a little caffeine buzz can be a good thing, not many people know what caffeine is, let alone what it does. So this blog post sets out to give you some information.
We can take on board caffeine through coffee, tea, stimulant drinks, chocolate, and a few other sources as well. Interestingly, the average cup of coffee has 100mg caffeine, cup of tea 50mg, 10-50mg in colas, and Red Bull has around 80mg.
Yes, that’s right; the average cup of coffee has more caffeine than a red bull. Interestingly, tea has more caffeine than coffee, but when we take them as a drink we directly ingest coffee whereas tea is infused. Therefore there is more caffeine in a cup of coffee than a cup of tea.
And now a quick science bit.
Caffeine is found in plants as a natural neurotoxin. The plants use it to protect themselves. It’s a defence mechanism against certain bugs.
With us, it plays havoc with our ANS (Autonomic Nervous System). In our neurology there is a chemical called adenosine which has the job of slowing our nerves down. Caffeine blocks it from doing its job, by taking its place, and therefore the nerves are free to work faster. This puts a perceived ‘emergency’ reaction into the body and the sympathetic system kicks in, starting the preparations for the GAS (General Adaptation Syndrome, or the Freeze-Flight-Fight (Fear-Feint) reaction). Voila, you are awake.
In simple terms, caffeine takes the brakes off.
And with the brakes off our neurology runs fast, and creates an increased level of dopamine activity in the brain – just like cocaine and other stimulants. Your body starts to look forward to the caffeine hit.
And the more caffeine you take, the more the body becomes desensitised to it, meaning you need more caffeine for the same effect. This is why you end up taking more and more caffeine to get a ‘lift’.
My caffeine intake levels are too high – and I’ve started the process of weaning myself off the coffee and caffeine. How do you do that? I’ll be posting another blog post soon explaining exactly what happens to cause the addiction, the affects of withdrawal, and of course suggesting some simple ways to handle it comfortably!
Thursday, 1 July 2010
www.fullmount.co.uk Interview
A big thank you to Andrew and the team at fullmount for doing an interview with me - thanks guys, its appreciated!
http://www.fullmount.co.uk/index.php/mma-news/1-latest-news/565-gary-smiler-turner-interview
http://www.fullmount.co.uk/index.php/mma-news/1-latest-news/565-gary-smiler-turner-interview
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
How AWARE are you?
This is the fourth of a series of articles originally published by the now defunct online magazine MMA Unlimited. Its part of a series of articles, and while my knowledge has now moved on, it hopefully makes interesting reading.
How AWARE are you?
Have you ever wondered how some fighters seem to know what their opponent is doing no matter how quick or sneaky their opponents are? How they always know precisely where they are in their chosen arena, whether the ring, cage or mat? Imagine being able to read your opponent so well that you can see inside their mind, and know what they are going to do, before they do, ready to exploit them. If you want to know all this, then this article is for you.
I’m going to give you the skills you need to achieve all of the above and far more. If you haven’t read the first three articles in this series then perhaps you should. These articles are designed as a series and whilst each can stand alone giving really effective advice and techniques that you can employ, right now, they work best in an inductive learning series. Their true power is in the combination of skills. For example, if you don’t understand how the body works under stress, you won’t be able to control your nerves. And if you can’t control your nerves you won’t be able to get into the right state. And if you aren’t in the right state you will have no chance of recognising what your opponent is going to do!
In the next article I’ll show you how to bring all these skills together to influence exactly what your opponent does and when. How you can hit without fear of being hit, and to set up a ‘loop’ in your opponent so you can just hit him at will, however you like, and whenever you like. And of course learn the antidote to stop this ever happening again. If you think this is far-fetched you’d better talk to my sparring partners on whom I’ve been practising. A couple of days ago I got a professional fighter to drop to one knee in resignation while sparring, because he was caught in one of these loops I had set up, and there was no way to for him to break the loop. And I did all this with nothing more than tapping him lightly on the head with my jab hand.
So what’s the next step on this journey to winning your fights more easily than ever before? It’s how you can use your senses to know much more than you do now during the fights. It’s about using your vision, your hearing, your sense of feeling and even your senses of taste and smell to feed you with information. It’s all about AWARENESS.
At seminars, in conversation with other fighters and as my clients’ progress into sparring I often get asked the same question. “During a fight, where do I look?” Some people watch the face, some the chest, some the hands or feet. Some people focus in even tighter and look at the eyes. I think they are all wrong. You see, vision is of utmost importance during fighting. Most of us have vision as our primary representational system in our brain. But if you focus on something you exclude everything else. And the more you focus the more blinkered you are and the more you miss.
You have two basic fields of vision. You have your central vision through which you focus and your peripheral vision with which you see the panoramic. As you focus in on an object you utilise your central vision more and more at the expense of losing the peripheral. So in very simple terms if you are focusing on something, like your opponent’s eyes, you are cutting out your peripheral vision. And in doing so missing all the important information you need to see.
It’s like these articles. If you just read this one, you’ll see something good. But if you read the other articles as well you’ll see the whole picture. And of course you know that the whole picture is always better than seeing just a part.
And as you’ve read my previous article on handling nerves and anxiety you know a very simple exercise which can reduce any anxiety before a fight by at least half, in all cases. There are many more simple techniques I use to help to solve anxiety issues, and actually remove them altogether. This week I managed to help solve someone’s lifelong anxiety of flying in just two minutes flat. But there is a very important reason why I chose the technique for the article, and its all about forming overall awareness.
During a fight you need to see literally everything at once. You need to see the complete environment at all times. You need to know where you are in relation to everything, and everyone. How can you see this if you are focused on just one spot?
And during a fight you need to see every part of your opponent, from the tip of his head to the tips of his hands and feet. Again, how can you see this if you are focused just on one spot?
You should have guessed by now that you need to see as wide as possible in order to take in all this information. To do this you need to be in peripheral vision rather than being stuck with the focused central vision. In my anxiety-busting technique from my previous article you are engaging both hemispheres of the brain by tossing the little ball or object between your hands – and this is very important – across your body. You throw the ball from the far left to the far right and back again. As you get more skilled, keep your hands further and further apart. And now look straight ahead as you throw the ball. As you do note how your vision widens and your focus becomes more ‘fuzzy’, as you pick up more and more in the periphery. Very soon, and with deliberate practice, you will open up your peripheral vision to the extremes; you’ll be able to see your full field of vision.
If you do this exercise for a period of several minutes not only will your anxiety be at least halved, you will also open up your peripheral vision. Your eyes will stay like this for many minutes. And with practice you’ll find you can enter this state of peripheral vision at will, and of course if necessary you can anchor this reaction to a touch, word, or thought.
So now your eyes are able to see everything. You can take in your environment and your opponent completely. But that’s still not the complete picture; you have another four senses to go. Actually, I teach that there are seven senses in total. I teach the first five standard senses, and then describe the sixth sense as being the experience that interprets what the other senses are telling you, combined with that intuition that you just can’t put your finger on. And the seventh sense? Well that was added by a client. He added the seventh one, saying that it was my primary sense. The seventh sense is non-sense, which is developed through my terrible jokes apparently. I’m pleased to report that this client is expected to make a full recovery following my reaction to him telling me this.
So what about the other senses? Your sense of touch is probably the next most important in this context. You can feel so much as to what your opponent is doing. Grapplers can build an entire game purely around the sense of touch. Ever grappled with a blind person? They know where you are better than you do. You can use every part of your body to sense your opponent, from the air from his breath, the vibrations of his movement picked up by his feet, and in a clinch or grappling the sense of touch comes right to the fore.
The sense of hearing is a strong one. You can pick up the sounds from him, from your corner, and from his corner. The sounds from the audience can be used to create energy within you. It is actually possible to learn to focus your hearing, so that you could focus on hearing just the sounds of your opponent’s breathing, filtering out everything else, no matter how loud they may be.
Taste and smell are the senses that give us the least information in this context. You can still smell and taste your opponent, and as an example you can use this to help sense proximity to him. This is actually heightened, or at least made easier, during fights where it is possible to use Thai oil with its pungent smell.
So now you know how to use your five senses to give you information. By using all five senses you can complete as accurate as is possible internal representation of what is happening during the fight. But what information would you be looking for? I’ll now give some examples for to try. My suggestion is to take each one in turn, and sense it in sparring, so you know how to recognise everything on this list. In fact, if you can’t recognise what’s listed for your opponent, you won’t be able to achieve the easy wins that can be had through my next article!
You fighting will take place in some kind of fighting arena, whether a cage, a ring or a mat. You need to know this environment inside out. Its dimensions, its give and take in respect to the cage and ring construction and the floor, any loose areas, any drops or areas subject to slipping, as well as where you are in location to it. You need to know your ‘home’ inside out, so much so that you can move around it with your eyes closed if necessary, working from your internal ‘mind map’ and your other senses. Have you developed your sensory skills to this level?
You need to know everything about your opponent. Starting with posture you need to recognise the angle of his spine, his head position, where his arms and legs are, the weight distribution, the flow of movement through his body. Focusing in you need to really be aware of his breathing, sensing every breath in and every breath out, and recognise how this is exhibited in his body. This is of primary importance. Can you list every signal of breathing in a fighter? And taking it further still, you need to be able to see the tension or relaxation in every muscle, down to which muscle fibres are twitching, even further knowing the rate of his pulse.
Just from this very simple list, which is far from exhaustive, you will be able to learn so much about your environment in which you are fighting, and the opponent that you are fighting. You need to use your senses fully to take in every piece of information from a global perspective through to one of the tiniest details. And it is possible, it’s all about practice. Deliberate practice. As a side-note I want you to remember that practice does not make perfect. It makes permanent.
These four articles now give you the base information which we will use in the next and final article in this series, where we put everything together into complete domination of our opponents. I’ve boasted several times during this little journey as to the incredible results I’ve attained through the development and application of these techniques. Now you have the base information to achieve all this for yourself. So take the time, right now, and imagine knowing exactly what your opponent is going to do, when and how you can induce him to do exactly what you want, and completely dominate him in a fight. That would feel good, right? So get practising, you’ll need to practice all that I’ve told you so far to achieve this. And when you think you have practised enough, the next article will give you what you want.
The fifth article was never published as the magazine folded – I’ve know taken my ‘Limbic Loop’ system still further and it may wait for a forthcoming book or DVD to pull it all together. I can’t give too much away for free on my blog, can I?
How AWARE are you?
Have you ever wondered how some fighters seem to know what their opponent is doing no matter how quick or sneaky their opponents are? How they always know precisely where they are in their chosen arena, whether the ring, cage or mat? Imagine being able to read your opponent so well that you can see inside their mind, and know what they are going to do, before they do, ready to exploit them. If you want to know all this, then this article is for you.
I’m going to give you the skills you need to achieve all of the above and far more. If you haven’t read the first three articles in this series then perhaps you should. These articles are designed as a series and whilst each can stand alone giving really effective advice and techniques that you can employ, right now, they work best in an inductive learning series. Their true power is in the combination of skills. For example, if you don’t understand how the body works under stress, you won’t be able to control your nerves. And if you can’t control your nerves you won’t be able to get into the right state. And if you aren’t in the right state you will have no chance of recognising what your opponent is going to do!
In the next article I’ll show you how to bring all these skills together to influence exactly what your opponent does and when. How you can hit without fear of being hit, and to set up a ‘loop’ in your opponent so you can just hit him at will, however you like, and whenever you like. And of course learn the antidote to stop this ever happening again. If you think this is far-fetched you’d better talk to my sparring partners on whom I’ve been practising. A couple of days ago I got a professional fighter to drop to one knee in resignation while sparring, because he was caught in one of these loops I had set up, and there was no way to for him to break the loop. And I did all this with nothing more than tapping him lightly on the head with my jab hand.
So what’s the next step on this journey to winning your fights more easily than ever before? It’s how you can use your senses to know much more than you do now during the fights. It’s about using your vision, your hearing, your sense of feeling and even your senses of taste and smell to feed you with information. It’s all about AWARENESS.
At seminars, in conversation with other fighters and as my clients’ progress into sparring I often get asked the same question. “During a fight, where do I look?” Some people watch the face, some the chest, some the hands or feet. Some people focus in even tighter and look at the eyes. I think they are all wrong. You see, vision is of utmost importance during fighting. Most of us have vision as our primary representational system in our brain. But if you focus on something you exclude everything else. And the more you focus the more blinkered you are and the more you miss.
You have two basic fields of vision. You have your central vision through which you focus and your peripheral vision with which you see the panoramic. As you focus in on an object you utilise your central vision more and more at the expense of losing the peripheral. So in very simple terms if you are focusing on something, like your opponent’s eyes, you are cutting out your peripheral vision. And in doing so missing all the important information you need to see.
It’s like these articles. If you just read this one, you’ll see something good. But if you read the other articles as well you’ll see the whole picture. And of course you know that the whole picture is always better than seeing just a part.
And as you’ve read my previous article on handling nerves and anxiety you know a very simple exercise which can reduce any anxiety before a fight by at least half, in all cases. There are many more simple techniques I use to help to solve anxiety issues, and actually remove them altogether. This week I managed to help solve someone’s lifelong anxiety of flying in just two minutes flat. But there is a very important reason why I chose the technique for the article, and its all about forming overall awareness.
During a fight you need to see literally everything at once. You need to see the complete environment at all times. You need to know where you are in relation to everything, and everyone. How can you see this if you are focused on just one spot?
And during a fight you need to see every part of your opponent, from the tip of his head to the tips of his hands and feet. Again, how can you see this if you are focused just on one spot?
You should have guessed by now that you need to see as wide as possible in order to take in all this information. To do this you need to be in peripheral vision rather than being stuck with the focused central vision. In my anxiety-busting technique from my previous article you are engaging both hemispheres of the brain by tossing the little ball or object between your hands – and this is very important – across your body. You throw the ball from the far left to the far right and back again. As you get more skilled, keep your hands further and further apart. And now look straight ahead as you throw the ball. As you do note how your vision widens and your focus becomes more ‘fuzzy’, as you pick up more and more in the periphery. Very soon, and with deliberate practice, you will open up your peripheral vision to the extremes; you’ll be able to see your full field of vision.
If you do this exercise for a period of several minutes not only will your anxiety be at least halved, you will also open up your peripheral vision. Your eyes will stay like this for many minutes. And with practice you’ll find you can enter this state of peripheral vision at will, and of course if necessary you can anchor this reaction to a touch, word, or thought.
So now your eyes are able to see everything. You can take in your environment and your opponent completely. But that’s still not the complete picture; you have another four senses to go. Actually, I teach that there are seven senses in total. I teach the first five standard senses, and then describe the sixth sense as being the experience that interprets what the other senses are telling you, combined with that intuition that you just can’t put your finger on. And the seventh sense? Well that was added by a client. He added the seventh one, saying that it was my primary sense. The seventh sense is non-sense, which is developed through my terrible jokes apparently. I’m pleased to report that this client is expected to make a full recovery following my reaction to him telling me this.
So what about the other senses? Your sense of touch is probably the next most important in this context. You can feel so much as to what your opponent is doing. Grapplers can build an entire game purely around the sense of touch. Ever grappled with a blind person? They know where you are better than you do. You can use every part of your body to sense your opponent, from the air from his breath, the vibrations of his movement picked up by his feet, and in a clinch or grappling the sense of touch comes right to the fore.
The sense of hearing is a strong one. You can pick up the sounds from him, from your corner, and from his corner. The sounds from the audience can be used to create energy within you. It is actually possible to learn to focus your hearing, so that you could focus on hearing just the sounds of your opponent’s breathing, filtering out everything else, no matter how loud they may be.
Taste and smell are the senses that give us the least information in this context. You can still smell and taste your opponent, and as an example you can use this to help sense proximity to him. This is actually heightened, or at least made easier, during fights where it is possible to use Thai oil with its pungent smell.
So now you know how to use your five senses to give you information. By using all five senses you can complete as accurate as is possible internal representation of what is happening during the fight. But what information would you be looking for? I’ll now give some examples for to try. My suggestion is to take each one in turn, and sense it in sparring, so you know how to recognise everything on this list. In fact, if you can’t recognise what’s listed for your opponent, you won’t be able to achieve the easy wins that can be had through my next article!
You fighting will take place in some kind of fighting arena, whether a cage, a ring or a mat. You need to know this environment inside out. Its dimensions, its give and take in respect to the cage and ring construction and the floor, any loose areas, any drops or areas subject to slipping, as well as where you are in location to it. You need to know your ‘home’ inside out, so much so that you can move around it with your eyes closed if necessary, working from your internal ‘mind map’ and your other senses. Have you developed your sensory skills to this level?
You need to know everything about your opponent. Starting with posture you need to recognise the angle of his spine, his head position, where his arms and legs are, the weight distribution, the flow of movement through his body. Focusing in you need to really be aware of his breathing, sensing every breath in and every breath out, and recognise how this is exhibited in his body. This is of primary importance. Can you list every signal of breathing in a fighter? And taking it further still, you need to be able to see the tension or relaxation in every muscle, down to which muscle fibres are twitching, even further knowing the rate of his pulse.
Just from this very simple list, which is far from exhaustive, you will be able to learn so much about your environment in which you are fighting, and the opponent that you are fighting. You need to use your senses fully to take in every piece of information from a global perspective through to one of the tiniest details. And it is possible, it’s all about practice. Deliberate practice. As a side-note I want you to remember that practice does not make perfect. It makes permanent.
These four articles now give you the base information which we will use in the next and final article in this series, where we put everything together into complete domination of our opponents. I’ve boasted several times during this little journey as to the incredible results I’ve attained through the development and application of these techniques. Now you have the base information to achieve all this for yourself. So take the time, right now, and imagine knowing exactly what your opponent is going to do, when and how you can induce him to do exactly what you want, and completely dominate him in a fight. That would feel good, right? So get practising, you’ll need to practice all that I’ve told you so far to achieve this. And when you think you have practised enough, the next article will give you what you want.
The fifth article was never published as the magazine folded – I’ve know taken my ‘Limbic Loop’ system still further and it may wait for a forthcoming book or DVD to pull it all together. I can’t give too much away for free on my blog, can I?
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Keep Your Guard Up!
I had some good fun at the weekend, playing with various methods of getting results with my Personal Training sessions. Now, as any good hypnotherapist would, I use embedded commands, metaphors, voice tonality and hypnotic language patterns with my clients while training them. It makes sense to use your skills in one area to help you in another. Rather than meet problems head on, you can gently lead your clients to where they need to be covertly, often during other tasks or just generally chatting during the recovery periods. It gets the results far faster. And I have to be honest – I have great fun doing this!
So while I have enjoyed utilising my linguistic skills, and even inducing covert trance states in my clients, I hadn’t actually utilised physical hypnotic phenomena yet to get results with my fighters – until last Saturday that is.
One of my clients, who (as all my clients do) works very hard and diligently, had an issue with his guard. He just couldn't maintain a good solid guard, his hands dropping far too low. I was having a really good ‘play’ psychologically that day and suddenly I had a 'light bulb' moment. I quickly utilised an adaptation of a simple hypnosis suggestibility test during a demonstration of what I needed him to do for his guard. And this had incredible results on my client, who suddenly was keeping a very, very tight guard perfectly and effortlessly.
I tested this over a few rounds, and the change was almost miraculous. So, as every geek like me would, I decided to test this result. Thoroughly.
I proceeded to totally ‘beast’ my client with pads, he hit more pads in twenty minutes than he’d probably hit in his entire life. I took him through such an intense workout that when he finished the beasting, he couldn’t even lift his water to his lips.
And then I gave him a very technical five minute round of boxing pads, firing the trigger for keeping his guard at the start. His guard was perfect. His techniques came even better as a byb-product. The expression on his face was amazement combined with a little confusion, and of course a lot of sweat! I must have looked like an 8 year old at Christmas.
Later that day I got a text from him, saying “I’m still scratching my head. How you made me keep my guard up even when I was well and truly f***ed is beyond me!”
Of course, I replied, in the immortal words of Lee Francis (Avid Merrion) playing David Blaine – “It’s all...because...of the magic!”
But, the best bit is, I didn’t make him keep his guard up – he did it himself. A little combination of physiology combined with the power of suggestion, something that even the most inexperienced hypnotist could handle, and he quite happily kept his guard up there himself. I hadn’t actually done anything!
Perhaps it is really good to allow experience from one area to cross over to another. It has left a client and me really happy – and I’m still grinning with how stupidly simple the whole thing was to achieve!
So while I have enjoyed utilising my linguistic skills, and even inducing covert trance states in my clients, I hadn’t actually utilised physical hypnotic phenomena yet to get results with my fighters – until last Saturday that is.
One of my clients, who (as all my clients do) works very hard and diligently, had an issue with his guard. He just couldn't maintain a good solid guard, his hands dropping far too low. I was having a really good ‘play’ psychologically that day and suddenly I had a 'light bulb' moment. I quickly utilised an adaptation of a simple hypnosis suggestibility test during a demonstration of what I needed him to do for his guard. And this had incredible results on my client, who suddenly was keeping a very, very tight guard perfectly and effortlessly.
I tested this over a few rounds, and the change was almost miraculous. So, as every geek like me would, I decided to test this result. Thoroughly.
I proceeded to totally ‘beast’ my client with pads, he hit more pads in twenty minutes than he’d probably hit in his entire life. I took him through such an intense workout that when he finished the beasting, he couldn’t even lift his water to his lips.
And then I gave him a very technical five minute round of boxing pads, firing the trigger for keeping his guard at the start. His guard was perfect. His techniques came even better as a byb-product. The expression on his face was amazement combined with a little confusion, and of course a lot of sweat! I must have looked like an 8 year old at Christmas.
Later that day I got a text from him, saying “I’m still scratching my head. How you made me keep my guard up even when I was well and truly f***ed is beyond me!”
Of course, I replied, in the immortal words of Lee Francis (Avid Merrion) playing David Blaine – “It’s all...because...of the magic!”
But, the best bit is, I didn’t make him keep his guard up – he did it himself. A little combination of physiology combined with the power of suggestion, something that even the most inexperienced hypnotist could handle, and he quite happily kept his guard up there himself. I hadn’t actually done anything!
Perhaps it is really good to allow experience from one area to cross over to another. It has left a client and me really happy – and I’m still grinning with how stupidly simple the whole thing was to achieve!
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