Now I want to explain what it means to me to be a whole person. Above everything, the body, emotions and mind that take us through our daily lives, we are beautiful, unique spiritual beings with abilities and potentials that we are only vaguely aware of. We all deserve to love ourselves and to treat ourselves accordingly, yet few of us do. 

Together, we are on a Journey of self-discovery, of becoming aware of our true identities and abilities, and letting go of misconceptions that prevent us from simply being ourselves. This is what the Journey through life is all about - about loving ourselves and becoming more of who we really are. The rest is like the stage and props we use along the way. 

Eating food is an integral part of the journey. We have to have it to survive and it can bring a lot of joy to our lives. Eating should provide energy, vitality and pleasure. Just think of all of the different types of food, with its wonderful aromas and flavors, colors, shapes and textures. Preparing it can be a fun, creative process and eating it is a social as well as a physical experience where we can spend pleasurable time in the company of people we enjoy. So why should we have to constantly suffer and worry about eating? My main point is that we don't. We can nourish our bodies, enjoy our friends, feel good about ourselves and have the ideal body we have been longing for.

RELAXING THE MIND AND FEELING GOOD

If you are new to hypnotherapy and guided visualization, I want you to understand how easy it is. Hypnotherapy is just a way to relax the conscious mind, which is most active when we are in our normal waking state and open to what is below the surface in the unconscious, much like focused daydreaming. It is easiest to achieve this kind of a relaxed state when you are alone in a quiet place. The short example I am about to give you may be used anywhere to achieve a mild state of relaxation to allow you to feel more focused and good about yourself anywhere. The only exception is that I do not recommend using relaxation techniques when you are driving. 

The most powerful transformational tool we have is to focus on our breathing, which is free and available at any time. In a moment I am going to ask you to stop reading, close your eyes and take a few deep, deep breaths. As you do this, imagine that you are taking in pure, fresh air, and fill your lungs completely so your stomach moves out freely. As you exhale, imagine that you are releasing all of the tension in your body and exhale completely. Take your time and fully enjoy each breath. Try this now...

Amazingly enough, most people notice a marked difference in their state of mind just by taking a few deep breaths. A lot of the tension we experience can be related to shallow breathing, so you can easily change your frame of mind by focusing on your breathing and allowing yourself to relax a little. This also increases your body awareness, which most people need to do. 

Next, I would like you to take another few deep breaths and, as you inhale, do it in a loving way, nourishing and nurturing yourself with each breath, feeling the loving energy flowing throughout your body. Try this now … 

You should feel noticeably different now. This is a wonderful way to take a break and feel good about your self. Whenever you feel tense, you can focus on your breathing and imagine sending that pure, fresh air throughout your body, where there is tightness in your neck, shoulders and back, to relax eye strain, anywhere you are tense, all the way down to the tips of your fingers and toes. If you have so many thoughts running through your head that you cannot focus, you can clear the thoughts with the breath. In a short time, you can think more clearly and focus on the task at hand. Just imagine that you are sending that pure energy into your mind, allowing it to become clearer and clearer with each breath. 

I recommend going through this process a few times, until you can do it on your own, without the script. It's so simple, you can do it almost anywhere. It doesn't take any time to take a loving breath. 

As a note, if you found that there was a part that you did not love, or where your body seems to hold a lot of tension, you can continue to breathe energy into that area, and simply allow the feelings that are trapped there to come out. You can ask that part of the body - if it could talk, what would it say? If you are honest and open, you can learn a lot about yourself this way.

THE CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MINDS

Now that we have had an experience of it, I want to talk about how the conscious and unconscious minds work. We could compare the conscious mind to the tip of an iceberg, with just a small point poking above the surface of the water. Many consider our conscious mind to represent 10% or less of what is really occurring. The other 90% below the surface is like the unconscious mind, which is operating independently, with little or no awareness on our parts. 

The unconscious mind is quite amazing. It takes care of a lot of practical functions that are needed for our survival, like breathing, keeping the heart beating and sending blood through the body. Fortunately, these functions occur effortlessly. The unconscious mind also remembers learned responses like how to drive a car. Driving takes a lot of attention at first, but becomes almost effortless after a period of time. The unconscious mind is also considered to be the source of our creativity. 

The most important part for our purposes here is how the unconscious mind takes in and organizes information. It is like a huge computer that records all of our experiences and sorts them out so that we are not overloaded with trivial information. This is a valuable and much needed function. Then it creates programs based on the information it has received. These programs determine how we will respond under a given set of circumstances. Ideally, the information used to create the programs would come from the conscious mind, which would determine the most appropriate response, but this is generally not the way it works. More often, the unconscious mind creates its own programs and sometimes they are based on faulty assumptions. 

A lot of our programs were created when we were young, mostly before the age of 7. This is when we decide what to value in ourselves, how to behave under the circumstances that come up in our lives and so on. A simple example is a young child whose first experience with a dog is being bitten and frightened. This experience goes into the unconscious mind with a lot of emotional intensity and the unconscious sets up a program that says … dog = fear. … This child and future adult may always respond fearfully to dogs, even though his experience was not typical of most dogs who are loving and caring companions. 

Another example from my own experience is a childhood friend. Her father had two nicknames for her: stupid and clumsy. Whenever he addressed her, he used one of these names. Each time her unconscious mind took that information in and what came out was a self-image of being stupid and clumsy. From my observation, she was quite intelligent, but she had a big job ahead of her to understand that herself. In her mind, she was stupid and clumsy, and that was a reasonable conclusion based on her experience. 

Examples like this go on and on. I'm sure you can think of some in your own life. Any input a child receives from a parent, teacher or peer has the potential of being taken at face value as an absolute truth by the unconscious mind. This also extends into adulthood. And as a result, most of us are going around with self-imposed limitations that are based on situations that we have entirely forgotten. Unfortunately, the unconscious mind never forgets and will continue to respond in the best way it knows how until the programming is changed.

EATING AND THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

When we relate these concepts to food, we can understand that we all have reasons for eating the things we eat. It is not that we are out of control. Actually the unconscious mind has a reason for everything. As was mentioned before, we are embarking on a Journey of awareness. You are going to find out why you eat and work with your programming. Some examples of programming related to food are obvious, like a child who picked up the name Chubby at an early age. The name becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, carried out by programs in the unconscious mind. 

For now, the important thing to realize is that the reasons we are the way we are, with relation to our weight or any other part of our life, is because of the way the four parts of our selves, the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, interact. It is all based on the programming in the unconscious mind. With hypnotherapy all of this can be easily changed. As you have begun to see first hand, hypnosis is simply a way to access the unconscious mind through relaxation. Then you can make positive changes in the programming. With this approach, we will use techniques to help you understand your programming, make the changes you need to become your personal best and to stay that way for life. This is in reality a lifelong Journey. You will probably need to make adjustments as you go through the different stages of your life and that it can all be joyful.