Leaner, Stronger and Faster with Hypnosis – Installment 4

Hypnotist Meredith Locher

by Meredith Locher

Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is aimless. Vision with action will achieve.” – Anonymous

Welcome to the final part of this series bringing you the information necessary to support your clients in getting leaner, stronger and faster with hypnosis. In previous installments, I have covered many specific guidelines and tips to help you work successfully with physical optimization whether the goal is slimming down or speeding up. In this final column, I will be discussing two factors imperative to success with any issue using hypnosis, but especially important in the areas of weight loss and athletic amplification: Confidence and Commitment.

Confidence

Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right.” – Henry Ford

Our bodies can do anything if we are in the right state of mind, but to get someone to that point, we have to be in the right state of mind ourselves. As Cal Banyan, my mentor, often says, “Hypnosis is a confidence game, if you lose their confidence, you will have no game.” In order to work with either weight loss clients or athletes, it is imperative to believe you can affect change with your process. How do we get to that point of confidence? 3 Ps: Preparation, Practice, and Personalization.

Preparation does take time, but it pays off huge dividends when your clients are successful and the referrals start to pour in. How do you get prepared?

  • Start by taking quality training courses and workshops.

  • Read books about Hypnosis and gather different approaches from the legends in the field.

  • Build on your knowledge by joining a community with other hypnosis professionals such as OurHypnoSpace.com or the many Yahoo Groups offered for such a purpose.

  • Join professional associations – read their journals and attend conferences.

  • Develop a plan of action for your process which includes back-up plans.

  • Create all necessary forms and handouts to be used.

  • Get organized – it shows.

My father taught me that the only way you can make good at anything is to practice, and then practice some more.” – Pete Rose

Practice always builds confidence and I highly recommend that new Hypnotists start by working with clients with less complicated issues. Once confidence is developed with other issues, you can graduate to working with weight loss and athletic improvement. It doesn’t take long to practice your way to confidence, but that time invested will make a big difference in the way you handle more complicated cases.

You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” – Michael Jordan

Personalization means try your own plan on yourself first. If you are carrying around extra weight, it will be difficult for you to feel confident in doing the work with others and it will be difficult for them to believe you can help them. It is possible to use your plan on yourself and use self-hypnosis to affect results in your own body or if you need extra assistance, invest in your own hypnosis process. Once you see the results, whether you follow your own plan or someone else’s, not only will you have more confidence in hypnosis and your process, but you will present to your clients as being more effective as well.

If you have never been an athlete or know nothing about the sport your client plays, do a little research prior to meeting with the client. I typically get all the information I need, including proper verbiage, from my athletes themselves during the pre-hypnosis interview, but if you find yourself lacking confidence because you know nothing about the sport, it is easy to do a little internet research prior to session and that preparation will go a long way to increasing your confidence with that client.

Commitment

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” – General Douglas MacArthur

You are indeed fighting a battle when working with clients tempted by every meal, snack and social gathering as well as helping clients to be stronger and faster than all the competition in their sport. That said, in order to be successful, it is imperative to properly prepare your clients to decrease resistance and increase commitment to the process. The client’s will to win makes all the difference. In and of itself, this topic is worthy of textbooks, but I am a fan of keeping things simple. Proper preparation requires a thorough pre-talk which educates the client about what hypnosis is and isn’t and alleviates and fears or misperceptions. It also requires covert testing of depth of hypnosis to be sure the work will be successfully received. And for best results, the use of convincers to show the client they were indeed hypnotized so the typical, “but are you sure it will work because I am not even sure I was hypnotized” type of reaction won’t nullify your work.

Equally important to the client preparation for successful hypnosis is motivating them to want the results even more than they did when they contacted you. A motivated client is a committed client and typically becomes a much more successful client as well. I motivate my clients by gathering lots of information about what they do want and I use that information during each session of hypnosis to show the client where they can be with the changes desired versus where they will be if they continue to do what they have been doing. This is doubly successful in that what we visualize, we tend to achieve, but also, what we really want (ie. looking great in a bathing suit) being connected to what we may only partly be motivated to do (ie. eating lean meats, fruits and vegetables) encourages us to do more regularly what we would normally do rarely.

And finally, don’t be afraid to take it away. Take what away? The whole process. If I sense any hesitation from my client to commit fully to the process either during the first call or at any point in the process, I diplomatically will say something like, “maybe this isn’t for you.” You will be surprised at how often one reverts to being like a little child with a toy being taken away in a situation like this and will quickly do anything to get the toy back. If you have properly built rapport with the client and confidence in the hypnotic process, the client will commit more fully to the process once an ultimatum has been issued in a professional manner. The truth is that people will live happily on the fence about a lot of things until urged to choose. Potentially taking away a process the client has come to hope will be their answer is enough of a push to help a resistant client instantaneously recommit.

It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.” – Muhammad Ali

In my experience, the work we do as Hypnotists is the most advanced form of behavior modification available today. As long as we do it right, people will continue to get leaner, stronger and faster with your help using hypnosis. Believe that what you do affects lives because without question, it does.

About the Author:

Meredith Locher is a Hypnotist with a private practice in Los Angeles, CA. In addition to advanced certification in hypnosis, she has a Master’s Degree in Psychology and extensive experience working with Eating Disorders, Weight Loss and Athletic Performance.

You can find more information about Meredith on her website for Hypnosis in Los Angeles.


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