Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy, NLP, and Coaching with Caitriona Reed in Los Angeles CA

Weight Loss through Hypnosis

Published in Weight Loss. 0 Comments Tags: diets don't work, Hypnosis, los angeles, mindfulness, weight control, Weight Loss.

Weight watchers may be focusing on the wrong thing. When you watch your weight going up and down, up and down, where is your focus? On not being overweight, on not being fat. Your unconscious mind doesn’t understand ‘not’. It’s very child-like in this respect, which is why using hypnosis may be ideal. because hypnosis is learning to talk to that child inside that we refer to as the unconscious mind. It’s the child-like part of us that is at the center of all our learning and habitual behaviors.

Weight loss and weight control is a concern for just under one third of the population of the US. That’s how many people are officially obese, give or take a few million.

your ideal weight

Since special weight-loss and diet programs are a 40 billion dollar a year industry you might conclude, as many have, that diets don’t work.

Watching your weight is like my asking you to not remember the sound of fingernails on a blackboard. You’ll think of it anyway and it will probably put your teeth on edge. And even if you are now thinking of a hot fudge sundae instead, you had to first think of the sound of the blackboard in order to not think of it. Now if I ask you to stop thinking of that hot fudge sundae, you may start to think about the fingernails on the blackboard again.

Focusing on your weight, your diet, or on not going to the refrigerator between meals works in the same sort of way. You go round and round inside your head and rarely achieve any results.

Weight control programs, short-term intensive weight loss boot camps, fat farms, will power, fasting … you name it, none of them have permanent lasting success for most people; and the reason is simple when you understand what does work.

What works? It’s the combination of simultaneously changing:

your attitude
the underlying emotional issues
your diet
your lifestyle, and how you exercise i.e. doing exercise that’s fun
and the way you bring awareness and mindfulness into how you live

Easy, you say? Yeah right!

Actually, if you learn to live with a positive mindset and bring focus to what you do – especially eating – it is a lot easier than you might think.

Mindfulness and focus are important. When you learn a few simple hypnotic techniques you will learn to get out of your own way, and trust your unconscious mind to help you on the road to good health. A balanced diet, comes from balance life. A balanced life comes from congruent values, confidence, and a positive attitude. Obsessing about what you can or cannot eat, chronic anxiety and habitual stress won’t help you. By learning simple steps towards maintaining clearer focus you will make more deliberate, conscious choices day by day, and moment by moment. Mindfulness helps the hypnotic process, and the hypnotic process makes it easier to be mindful.

Thinking, controlling, depriving yourself doesn’t work. Hypnosis can help you find an alternative because it gives you new inner strategies, and an unconscious impetus that moves you towards effortless awareness and inner congruence.

When you are nourished by your life as a whole, and feel satisfied, fulfilled, and safe, why would you need to abuse your body with excess weight and unhealthy food? When you work with your unconscious mind, and when you realize that it wants you to be healthy, there’s no stopping you.

That’s why hypnosis has been the most effective path for anyone who is ready to stop watching their weight, and minding their diet once and for all. When you’re ready to live your life fully and joyfully, effortlessly maintaining your appropriate ideal weight, you will discover that hypnosis can bring you the simple permanent ongoing solution to eating-disorders, losing those few pounds, or obesity that you’ve been looking for.

Published on November 19, 2009

Hypnosis is Dangerous?

Published in Hypnosis. 0 Comments Tags: Hypnosis, Meditation, NLP, spiritual, zen.

Hypnosis From an interview with Caitriona Reed by Sweeping Zen

Question: There are many critics out there of hypnotherapy, a practice you are clinically licensed to facilitate. Much of the criticism surrounds the very real danger of the hypnotist planting “hidden suggestions” in a client’s mind or the possibility of false memories arising. I wonder if you would agree that these are real dangers and if you could describe how a competent hypnotist can steer clear from these entrapments? In addition, what are the benefits of hypnotherapy as you see it?

Caitriona Reed: I have found that those who criticize hypnotherapy usually have very little exposure to, or practical understanding of, what hypnosis is. In my experience “”hidden suggestions” are just as likely to be planted by a charismatic religious teacher (Buddhist or otherwise) as by a hypnotherapist. More so in fact, as the hypnotherapist is likely to have more specific understanding of what they are doing in this context.

My understanding is that both the teaching and practice of the Dharma, as well as the use of trance in a clinical setting, both have as their goals the awakening of personal accountability, personal empowerment, and healing for the student/client. In the words of Milton Erikson, our work is to “transform the trance of disempowerment into a trance of empowerment.”

It may be helpful to understand that both hypnosis and meditation are inductive rather than deductive processes. In other words, they seek to use capacities of the mind that are beyond the reach of the merely rational.

There are of course differences between hypnosis and meditation, though many of those differences may be merely contextual. Without question, for hypnotists, as for Dharma teachers, integrity is an essential requirement. In addition, it is important to understand that “there are many roads to the ocean.”

For information on our training in cutting-edge Hypnosis and NLP techniques
Click Here

For the text of the complete interview Please go to Sweeping Zen

Published on November 18, 2009

Doing What you Know Best, for Yourself, the Planet, and Everyone around you

Published in Conscious Leadership Training. 2 Comments Tags: conscious leadership. plan, functional website, media, press release.

I am astonished by the countless number of creative people I meet with powerful innovative ideas.

conscious leadership training international

To effect positive change
To create a new business
To provide a service, product, or information conduit than could have a profound positive impact on people’s lives

I’ve been meeting lots of people with solid integrity and a wealth of creative potential who still feel blocked from contributing on the scale they would like.

Perhaps you are one of them? Are you someone with creative solutions that you are not yet implementing or using to full advantage? Are you frustrated at not getting the full power of your work-message-solution out there where it belongs?

If so, there may a couple of missing pieces that you can add fairly easily.

Two missing elements. An integrated approach to successful marketing.

The means to get the word out to an audience that can benefit from your message.
The means to clarify, sharpen and refine your vision, so that your message comes across loud and clear.

Number one - how to create a fully functioning website, give it visibility, promote it using the array of means that are available, and gather a list of people interested in what you have to offer. Also, how you can use social media to it’s best advantage, and how you can make use of press releases, blogs, videos etc.

Number two – how to create and refine your vision, get out of your own way, develop a viable plan. and obliterate any emotional or logistical obstacles that are in your way. In other words, how to create the mindset to utilize these tools and make it all work. And then to GET DOWN and make it happen!

Regardless of where you are in your career, if your work and skills are as important as you know them to be, how much longer can you afford wait before getting it out there on the scale you know it deserves? Don’t you owe it to yourself and others to make your best talents and perspectives accessible?

Conscious Leadership Training Global looks forward with excitement to the trainings we will be kicking off in Sydney in April and May of 2010 that will specifically address your ability to make your important work available in ways that allow others to take full advantage of it.

Stay tuned for more. Click here

missing.

Published on October 18, 2009

Emotional Freedom, two basic truths

Published in Life Coaching. 0 Comments

Two basic truths for

life,
business,
education,
relationships,
spiritual well being,
emotional health.

Do you ever forget that what now seems obvious was once a revelation? Or that some of the most basic things in life are things you most easily take for granted, then forget about, then remember, then forget again, over and over again.

Ideas and principles that have been around forever are still brand new when you get them for the first time; or when you get them again in a new and deeper way. Like peeling away layers to rediscover something new about what you thought you had understood. This is the nature of the two basic principles here.

Basic Truth~Principle Number One. Hamlet said it, in a moment of desperation, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Alfred Korzybski also said it so clearly that it is now an axiom, “the map is not the territory.”

We each live with different models of the world. You could say that we live in different worlds, with different maps, and often with entirely different ways of thinking.

One of the wonders of the world is that despite our different models of the world, and our different points of view, we still manage communicate with each other at all!

If you want to be a good parent, friend, salesperson, communicator, teacher (and you’re not a member of a cult where people are encouraged to hold the same basic model of the world) then respecting others’ values, point of view, assumptions, predisposition, and taste will stand you in good stead.

In short, respect the way other people view the world, however different from your own point of view that may be.

Basic Truth~Principle Number Two. Everything we experience is filtered through our emotions. and our attitudes that both inform and are informed by them. This includes the expectations we have of the world and of ourselves. It includes how we respond in times of difficulty.

It means that children learn best when they are happy, safe, and held in high regard. And of course, the same is true for adults.

We tend to fulfill what is expected of us, including and especially what we have learned to expect of ourselves. The world and the people around us also tend to respond to us according to our expectation of them.

When things go wrong it is better to treat the experience as a lesson, to pick yourself up, and move on.

Blaming yourself or others won’t help. Asking “what can I learn from this?’ will!

Explaining and justifying the situation won’t help. Asking what you can do differently next time will.

Indulging in self-pity, anger, resentment won’t help. Evoking a sense of gratitude for what you still have will!

In short, maintaining a positive attitude and a positive emotional state will always work to your advantage. And it will benefit everyone you come into contact with.

Two basic truths to live by:

The map is not the territory; and
Live at cause, not as a victim.

Published on October 17, 2009

Entrepreneurial Spirit, Leadership Spirit, Organizational Spirit, and Spirit

Published in Conscious Leadership Training. 0 Comments Tags: art of conscious leadership, busines, intuition.

entrepreneurial spirit The Art of Conscious Leadership is a course for business leaders that Clare Mann, and I conduct in London twice a year, to which people come from all over the world.

This morning I wrote a list of some of what we cover on the course. Then I realized that although the substance and the language was different, the essence of what I wrote was much the same as something I might write to describe a personal development training, or even a meditation retreat.

Some of my outline was specific, and included elements that would only appear in a course designed for business or organizational leaders; for example – business needs analysis, comprehensive systems for performance analysis, effective assessment in the hiring process etc.

But it also included the following:

Secret ingredient #1: developing your intuition. You already see (or would like to see) yourself as a leader. Perhaps you are already in a position of leadership. If so, it is because you have a naturally intuitive capability. Now learn concrete new ways to develop your intuitive capability.
Secret ingredient #2: Rapport and communication: the Principle of ‘Liking”. People follow you because they know that you understand, appreciate, and like them. This is not something you can fake. However, you can effect changes within yourself that will echo the internal patterns of some of the greatest and most charismatic leaders, so that people will trust you.
Secret ingredient #3: What are the things that help you focus best?. This is different for everybody. Knowing what helps you focus best and what supports your best performance, and then by systematically reinforcing that focus, you can enhance everything you do.
Communication is more about listening, and knowing what to listen for, than it is about getting your point across. Everyone has heard that listen is important, many people have not yet learned how specifically to do so.
Leadership (as described by Nelson Mandela) is often best done from behind, so that people feel they are leading themselves, as they must, to become leaders in their own right.

I often hear people say that personal development and business development are the same. I wish this was always true. I think only the very best training is fully comprehensive. When it is, there’s another ingredient you can add. There is business, personal, and organizational development. Then the next element that seems to insert itself is something you might call ’spirit’. Of course, spirit is a loaded word, and means different things to different people. You could call it ‘inspiration’, but it’s more than that.

I leave it to you to call it what you like. Suffice to say, that the best training, whatever its ostensible purpose, leads you to greater happiness, greater effectiveness, and greater congruence with your own deepest values – greater ’spirit’. Call it Jung’s Transcendent Function, call it congruence between conscious and unconscious, or call it spirit–we all recognize it when we are living and working effortlessly towards full capacity.

In this context we believe the Art of Conscious Leadership to be one of the very best and most comprehensive trainings of its kind available anywhere.

http://consciousleadershiptraining.com/

Published on August 26, 2009

Are You a Cultural Creative?

Published in Life Coaching. 0 Comments

cultural_creatives I’ve been asking people,“Have you heard of the term ‘Cultural Creative’?” Most people I ask say that they have not.

Then I ask “Do you know what a Cultural Creative is?” Most people, even though they have not heard the term before have a pretty good idea what it means. They also identify with it, “Oh yes, that’s what I am.”

Wikepedia suggests that a quarter of those living in the US are Cultural Creatives, slightly less in Europe. Who’d have thought!

There are green Cultural Creatives, there are high achievers in business who are Cultural Creatives – embracing ambiguity, and thinking outside of conventional norms.

Cultural Creatives are by nature free thinkers. We may have specific ideals and values orientations, but we are flexible and don’t generally join groups. Nor do we identify ourselves as Cultural Creatives – affirmed by all the people who had not heard the term before.

It’s a label that works well for our times. Gone are the days of singular class identity, singular ethnic affiliation, at least for some of us. If you identify as more than one thing – an artist AND a social activist AND a contemplative. Or if you are am Entrepreneur AND a poet AND a serious advocate for alternative energy – then you are also probably a Cultural Creative.

Cultural Creatives value authenticity, social justice, creativity, sustainability, feminism, plurality, independence, spiritual practice outside of the bounds of organized religion, education, volunteerism… Add your own. If you’re reading this the chances are you are a Cultural Creative, or know one.

So what’s the point of this new label? As always, to add a little clarity. I remember one friend whose face lit up in excitement, “Oh yes, that’s what I am, a Cultural Creative!” It was comforting for her to have something to identify with even though she didn’t ‘do’ groups or identify with any particular demographic. She was a Buddhist meditation teacher, a writer, of mixed race, a free thinker.

Now she could condense it all into the single phrase, “I’m a Cultural Creative!” at least for that moment.

More at http://www.manzanitavillage.org

Published on August 14, 2009

18 Ways Meditation Will Change Your Life

Published in Meditation. 1 Comment

18ways_meditation Here are 18 ways that meditation can help you. (from a combined NLP-Buddhist perspective) There’s more! A lot more, actually.

This list forms the basis of our online and teleseminar meditation classes Meditation Teleseminar Classes Click Here. Note: The class will be a teleseminar, so you can attend regardless of whether or not you are in Southern California. All you need is a telephone and a commitment to start putting the tools you will learn over the course of the six-week class into practice. Join our list to be sure you receive registration info.

Also listen to a Podcast on 18 Ways Meditation can change your life.

We also have frequent meditation retreats at Manzanita Village .

Note: This list of 18 is the ‘Why’. The ‘What’ and the ‘How’ will be covered in the upcoming class.

Focus
Focus is first because it is the most basic. Every other benefit of meditation comes from your increased capacity to focus; how you focus; and what you focus on.
Sensory Perception
Through focus you derive increased sensory awareness, as well as increased awareness of your own internal process. The world becomes more vivid as does your own internal representations of it.
Open options and choices
With greater awareness and clarity comes a greater range of behavioral choices and options, how you live, what you do, the choices you make.
Change State
With more focus comes the realization that you have the ability to choose your emotional state, just as you choose how you respond to events. It’s all up to you.
Let go of what doesn’t work
You can let go of what doesn’t work. Happiness is a real option.
Change perspectives
Meditation leads to greater flexibility and flexibility means that you can change your perspectives as you learn new information
Flexibility
Changing perspectives means that you have greater behavioral flexibility
Deduction and Induction
With focus comes clarity of mind and the ability to learn, inductively and deductively, rationally and intuitively.
Empathy – respecting others’ point of view
When you are able to naturally respect others’ view of the world and interact with them based on who they are rather than who you might like them to be you communicate and empathize naturally.
Gratitude
Appreciation for others, and for the miraculous circumstances of living.
Generosity
A sense of unlimited potential, a sense of intrinsic abundance
Love
Love is an expression of generosity and joy, in celebration of others
Energy
Focus and congruence bring energy
Health
Freedom to make the choices outlined above lead to less stress and greater health
Motivation
Focus brings clarity and the means to effect strategies that work. Clarity also means being clear about and congruent with your intentions, plans, and aspirations.
Levels of perspective and priorities
Focus also brings the ability to see things from multiple levels of abstraction, to see the big picture as well as being aware of the necessary details.
Time and time-line flexibility
Your experience of time is relative. Standing in line at an airport for an hour can seem to take longer than a leisurely afternoon spent with a good friend. Skills learned in meditation allow you to speed things up or slow them down at will.
The Transpersonal Dimension.
All the above contribute to a sense of the interplay and interconnection between the elements of your life and the life of those around you. The world is your lover, the world is you!

These are just a few potential benefits. The specific ways meditation benefits you is something that is revealed over time.

Published on July 26, 2009

Permanent Personal Change

Published in Life Coaching. 0 Comments Tags: change, choice, gregory bateson, meaning, milton erickson, NLP Training, virginia satir.

whirling There are those who make change in their lives willingly – because of restlessness, because of inspiration, or through curiosity. They begin by changing their habits, or their external circumstances, or the meanings they give to things. And once they truly change any one of those things, the others change too.

Then there are those who accept change only when they must.

How we change is our own responsibility and our own choice. Change is not good or bad in itself. We each look for happiness after our own fashion.

There’s an idea in many circles that real change is hard – personal change, social change, organizational change … But often change is simpler than we think. By looking from a new perspective, by considering factors previously disregarded, by challenging basic assumptions, a new world of possibility opens up to us.

One of the great masters of Budo (a physically demanding Japanese dance and performance-art form) didn’t take up the art until after he was seventy.

Thomas Edison went to school for a total of only three months then went on to become the man we consider the most brilliant inventor and engineering innovator of all time. The original business of Richard Branson, which have made him one of the richest men in the world, was named Virgin because everyone in the company, including himself, was completely new to business.

Neurolinguistics (NLP) is based on studying how we make change, internally and externally, and how we make, and can change, the meanings we make of things.

It’s not a religion, or a cult, or a sales technique. Originally it was developed by modeling such luminaries as Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson, and Gregory Bateson.

As someone who has been passionately interested in the nature of change for as long as I can remember – as a Buddhist teacher, as a poet, as a clinical hypnotherapist, and as a women of transsexual experience – my passion for Neurolingistics has reawakened because I have come to it as the tool par excellence for implementing effective person change in any area of your life or work, and as the ideal compliment to any personal or spiritual discipline for change.

- I hope you can join us for our ten day training in July http://www.manzanitavillage.org/retreats/nlp/

Published on April 26, 2009

Stress, anxiety, anger, and depression

Published in Anxiety and Stress. 2 Comments Tags: anxiety, change emotion, Depression, NLP, personal change, state of mind, stress.

Ribbonwood

Stress, anxiety, and depression are the order of the day for many. I always make a point of checking my own state of mind. Denial is not an option (it never was) nor is anxiety, despair, anger, or fear. These are not places to live. They are emergency emotions. If you spend any significant time in any of them I have to ask you to consider how you manage to do so? I mean, doesn’t it take an awful lot of energy!?

The fact is, such emotions don’t leave you in a state to be very creative or resourceful!

Of course, people do live in negative states, especially with all the current talk about the economy, not to mention the environment … as though we’ve collectively woken up to the fact we have a global environmental emergency on our hands. H-E-L-L-O … where have we been for the last several decades?

And people do live in negative emotional states like anxiety and helplessness because they’ve learned to do so.

Are they real? Of course. It’s always real. But whose reality does it represent? Where did you learn to be in that state and who or what has been reinforcing the idea that it’s a useful thing to be stresses out, bummed out, freaked out?

My point … and the reason I’m even writing this is that you have a whole lot more options than you may have imagined and it begins with your own ability to manage you own internal states, to change the words and pictures in you own mind. Because you can do that you know. It’s a whole lot easier than you think too!
http://www.manzanitavillage.org/retreats/nlp/

Published on March 17, 2009