by Meredith Locher
What does an overweight individual and an athlete have in common? A body capable of surmounting its current condition and limitations, but even more importantly, they both have a subconscious mind. Why is that important? The subconscious mind most likely contains blocks to success in reaching their individual goals. Furthermore, with the help of a trained Hypnotist, the subconscious mind could be put to work encouraging and supporting successful achievement of their specific purpose. Basically, what we can perceive, we can achieve. Hello everyone, and welcome to my column about how to help both yourself and clients become leaner, stronger and faster using hypnosis and self-hypnosis.
Some of the most recent statistics state that 8 out of 10 Americans over the age of 25 are overweight. Obesity and resulting Diabetes in children is on the rise. Athletes are increasingly experiencing heart attacks, seizures and strokes at younger ages as pressure to be stronger and faster encourages them to turn to dangerous, performance –enhancing drugs. The great news is, we are (or can be) armed with tools to help in the form of hypnosis and self-hypnosis. We see success in weight loss with hypnosis documented in print and television media such as Dateline NBC’s diet challenge which compared several weight loss methods and shined a bright light on the strength of hypnosis. We also often hear of elite athletes turning to hypnosis and self-hypnosis to boost their performance. Just a few record-breaking athletes who have used hypnosis to bring their game to new levels are: Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Michael Jordan, Mark McGuire, Rod Carew, Wayne Gretzky, Mohammed Ali, and Olympic Gold Medalist legends Mary Lou Retton and Greg Louganis.
Let me tell you about how I have come to have experience in this area. It all started with my own personal struggle with weight as a teenager which translated at a young age into a fascination with nutrition, weight management and fitness. I went on to become a personal trainer, aerobics instructor, fitness model, and student of diets and nutrition. Eventually, I became interested in the extreme side of fitness and nutrition and became an Eating Disorder Specialist, working for 9 years with Anorexics, Bulimics and Compulsive Overeaters along and their many accompanying disorders such as Anxiety, Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Substance Abuse, Self-mutilation, and ADHD. Frustrated by the shortcomings of modern treatment in affecting long-term change, I sought a more efficient, effective treatment modality and happily found it in the form of hypnosis.
Hypnosis, if done right, is truly the answer to becoming permanently slimmer as well as breaking through barriers to success in all areas of life including athletic endeavors without negative side-effects (such as the negative side-effects of harmful diets, surgeries and performance-enhancing drugs.) How is that possible? Throughout our lives, we all have experiences that make us feel less than loved, less than capable, and less than worthy of success. These experiences are often based on misperceptions we aren’t even aware of and they become written on our subconscious minds and become the tapes we play back to ourselves over and over. Essentially, those tapes we play are like having an abusive person living in our heads. It’s the voice in our head that says, “Go ahead have those cookies, you’ll feel better. It worked last time,” or “Who do you think you are? You’ll never be able to run a marathon in under 6 hours if at all!” Most of us are strong enough to walk, if not run, away from an abusive relationship, but few are aware enough to do anything about this abuser that lives inside their minds.
What hypnosis will do, particularly the 5-PATH® process I utilize, is find those misperceptions which create feelings inside of inadequacy and allow the client to see for themselves that they have been operating under false beliefs. Those false beliefs had created feelings inside which urged the client to eat too much or to be held back from their peak potential due to fear of not deserving success and once the misperceptions are resolved, the client can be free to become their best self. The well-trained Hypnotist will then give positive statements or suggestions which will replace the old tapes with new thoughts about making positive choices, positive changes and empowering the client to achieving their goals. It sounds simple right? The general idea is simple, but success is often in the details and there are a lot of ways the process can be made more consistently successful. I look forward to sharing some of those details with you.
Here are a few of the tips I will be elaborating on in the next installments:
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Individualized sessions including direct suggestions using the clients own words are key to success in both athletic enhancement and weight release.
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Encourage an increase in water consumption both in the pre-hypnosis interview and in direct suggestion. Dehydration is common in athletes and can decrease performance and also can be misinterpreted as hunger which obviously will interfere in the best weight release plans. Water is one of the ultimate building blocks to health and researchers postulate that 75% of Americans are dehydrated.
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Hypnosis is powerful, but to affect weight loss, clients need a game plan to be successful. This game plan should include: what to eat (meal plans such as Isagenix, Weight Watchers or South Beach help with this), when to eat, where to eat, how to eat, and what to do when eating is not appropriate, but the urge to eat arises. Also, important is preparing for typical failure zones like parties or holiday meals. Once these details have been agreed upon, they should be reinforced in hypnosis. You can be the best Hypnotist ever, but if the client does not know proper portion sizes or how to prepare a healthy meal, you will not be successful.
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You will need measurable data. Be sure to have your clients measure and weigh themselves so you know if there has been success rather than simply going by what the client thinks or feels has happened to their body. Success can be subjective and if you don’t have data, you won’t know if what you are doing for that client is working.
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There is a time to do emotional work, such as Age Regression, with athletes and a time when direct suggestion alone would be better.
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Getting specific wording from the client or their coach, when working with elite athletes, will make all the difference in allowing the athlete to experience success in their mind. Thinking or visualizing detailed success has been proven to translate into actual performance success in Olympic athletes.
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A great way to summarize the specifics of completing a given task whether it is a way of eating or a way of performing an athletic act is to have the client find a role model – someone who does it the way they want to. It is much easier and more effective to think, “I eat and exercise daily just like Mary” than to list out all the fine details of what Mary does when she eats healthfully and exercises.
Over the course of this column, I look forward to elaborating on these tips and sharing more experiences, techniques, and suggestions which have been helpful to me in working with body optimization clients whether weight release or athletic performance. It is my desire to share information which will benefit the public at large in understanding how hypnosis can help as well as the experienced practitioner in fine-tuning their work with these issues. As with any issue, there are many ways to be successful and I am always grateful for new ideas and new opportunities to learn so please do share comments and questions. By virtue of the ripple effect, it is my belief that families, communities and the world benefit each time we effect change in a single person’s life. Thank you for reading and for the opportunity to effect even the smallest change in someone’s life.
Stay tuned for more to come!
You can find more information about Meredith on her website for Hypnosis in Los Angeles.
