Patterns of Anxiety

Algorithms; where would we be without them? Even though I know my mind is constantly firing off its equivalent complexes and striving to effect a cause, I still get caught out every now and then. There I was, having just vacuumed the hallway as you do pre-client, duly noting how there was no loss of suction in the way we’re primed to do by the no-so-young Mr. Dyson.

So far nothing out of the ordinary.

At exactly (and I mean exactly) the same time as I unplugged it to take it upstairs, the downstairs extractor fan stopped. Working on algorithmic autopilot, I found myself switching the socket back on to check that it hadn’t become the power supply for the extractor fan. Of course there is no connection but that doesn’t stop that still small voice of pattern hunting certainty from telling me that the extractor fan was now broken.

The really odd aspect of it all is that all the while, my Cognitive Hypnotherapist mind was telling me what was happening, even down to which algorithm was firing and which past experiences were colliding to form the triggers.

It made not one jot of difference.

Through trivial example, my Unconscious mind insisted on demonstrating how it tries to make sense of my universe. Needless to say, I defused the new pattern and laughed myself quietly free of a potential worry over miswired domestic circuitry.

It is from such misconstruances and misconnections that all manner of anxieties, fears and superstitions come into being. Coincidence isn’t something we’re wired to see. Cause and effect reasoning is much more persuasive. After all it gives us a far better narrative. Gods, demons and superstitions are born of such stories.

Mostly though, the connections are innocuous and leave us feeling just a little silly or out of sorts. Occasionally they are bold and brash and insidiously convince us that life is dangerous and filled with disasters waiting to happen. Herein lie the precursors of depression and anxieties; fears and phobias; destructive habits and negative self-talk.

So if you worry that something awful might happen or you’re frequently nervous, anxious or on edge, it might be interesting to unwind the patterns and triggers of the past and find yourself stepping out into a future happiness you didn’t think existed.

I’d be more than happy to be your hypnotherapeutic guide.

Effective connections

Special offer on ‘Now’

There was a time when I brewed and tasted beer for a living. If it weren’t for one of those forks in the trousers of time so to speak, then I might still be doing something similar to this very day. To be fair, I am, it’s just that I no longer receive financial reward for my efforts.

It occurs to me that there’s a difference between those far off days and my current more meagre brews and socially adapted taste buds. It’s not simply that back then I had yet to uncover the trials, tribulations, successes and delights that the intervening period was to bring. Nor that nowadays I tend to ferment fruit rather than grain, though on occasion the wine does actually taste pretty damn good, (although unfortunately every now and then, it tastes pretty damn poor and finds its way drainwards more directly than the circuitous route the good tasting stuff traditionally takes).

Which brings me to my point, unusually quickly it has to said.

It’s all a matter of taste.

Back in the day, when it was part of my role to join the daily taste panel in one of the largest breweries in Europe and pass judgement on numerous brews, I knew what I was doing. There are a stunning number of potential flavours in, well everything, when you know how to find them. And many of those potential flavours tell you a lot about what’s going on in the beer. So it pays to focus.

If a beer is good, it’s important to know what makes it good so that it can be replicated more often. And importantly, if it isn’t as good as it might be, what’s caused it. Especially as depending on the cause, it might be destined for those drains, (albeit far larger ones than my wines occasionally find their way into), or it just might be that the particular problem has an opposite in another brew, neither of which are perfect on their own but their particular deficiencies or excesses can combine to even out or enhance each other so that the blended result is, well, bang on.

This requires an attention to tasting detail that we seldom use unless we frequent some very particular taste-panel-esque environments. It requires us to concentrate our attention onto the extraordinary variety of experience that our senses really can pick up and alert us to.

A lot of the taste is in the aroma. And, weirdly, in the appearance. And the texture. It’s a proper multi-sense extravaganza. And yes, this is beer we’re talking about.

We almost always miss this. Unless there is a very specific requirement to do so, we prefer to go for the overall experience. The sum total of the tastes, rather than being interested in the underlying flavours which make up the whole. It tends to be the preserve of experts.

We don’t deconstruct flavours or aromas or music or painting  or plays or comedy. We just experience the effects that it brings as a whole. We like it or we dislike it. We want it again or try avoid it in the future. But we don’t really know why. We just do.

It’s like that with emotions.

We experience the emotion and react accordingly, shaping our lives and relationships. We rarely focus on the complexities that drive the emotion, so we miss what it is trying to alert us to. We treat the emotion as if it were a problem to be solved by our 21st century brain, existing as we do in a world of primarily cerebral rather than physical challenges. We seem to have lost the innate ability to, for want of a better phrase, deal with our feelings.

This is what mindful awareness, usually reduced simply to ‘mindfulness‘, is all about. Taking the time and effort to experience the different component parts of what we are actually experiencing. Not to pass judgement or to find a way to do something about it, just to become fully aware of what is going on with us at that very moment.

Emotions want us to feel. That’s why they’re there. Their purpose is not to drive us to think about how to solve a problem, rather they try to get us to experience the problem. It turns out that simply by learning to turn our attention onto Now, we dramatically improve our ability to cope, not just mentally but physically too. Even the structure of our brains can change as a result. Just by focussing on Now. By becoming aware. (By the way, did you notice the triple homophonic homonym? It’s surprising what you notice when you try).

It’s as though a fundamental part of us has been forgotten and allowed to atrophy through lack of use, drastically affecting our health. So I would highly recommend  that you spend some time learning how to reawaken your natural awareness. Getting back in touch with what is actually happening, right Here, right Now, [as an aside, those of you who are particularly aware and dedicated followers, you’ll know that both the Fat Boy and Mr Davies have been here before].

If you don’t re-awaken, you might just spend the rest of your life worrying about a future that hasn’t happened because of a past that is no longer there, falling foul of the Born Under Punches lyric: Don’t you miss it. Don’t you miss it. Some of you people just about missed it. You can always rely on David for a good turn of phrase.

As you might expect, I’d love to help. So, if you have 10 minutes a day to spare (yes that’s all you’d need – that and an mp3 player), simply click on the link below and take your first steps into the world of mindful awareness. There are two Mindfulness mp3s. One is a first step into Mindfulness Meditation, the other is Mindfulness for Anxiety. They’re both good.

To save you having to choose, the ‘bundle’ of both mp3s is available at half price to WP readers for the rest of this week (until 18th May). Just use the code WPMAY50.

If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to ask me.

Live life in the moment…

LINKS

Mindfulness MP3 Bundle: (Use the code WPMAY50): Click Here

Related Post: Be Mindful of what you know

Keeping It All Inside
© Tony Burkinshaw 2014

 

Resolving to change. Better?

Its appears that all the work I’ve been doing these last many months in order to create an effective background awareness is beginning to bear fruit. The balance is shifting.

New clients are finding out about me and more importantly, getting in touch. Training is beginning to shift towards Learning: Who you are affects how you Learn. It seems obvious when you think about it but until you think about it isn’t. People are beginning to think. I’m even coaching and therapising (made up word) via Skype as I have long hoped to do. It really is coming together.

There have been some really tricky issues to help client find their solution to. It’s challenging and very rewarding.

And sometimes amusing. The capacity of the human brain to find sideways metaphors to communicate with itself is astounding. Imagine sitting in the therapist chair as a client opens their eyes and smiling hugely, declares:

‘You will NEVER guess where I’ve just been! I’ve just been in a wheel-barrow, being pushed across a high-wire strung perilously above Niagara Falls by a world-famous hire-wire dare-devil!’ [With kind permission of the client]

Why? To learn trust, apparently.

And who was the world-famous hire-wire chappie? Jesus! Well why not? After all, He’s probably got a great sense of balance and a head for heights. And not a bad teacher, by all accounts.

And the truly astounding part? The client came up with the imagery entirely unprompted. That’s the fascination with non proscriptive hypnotic language. It frees the client to work with their own imagination. It’s incredibly powerful. All it takes is a carefully crafted and somewhat skilfully applied nudge in the right direction. Nudge theory? Maybe.

You’ll no doubt be aware that a slice of the work to create fertile ground to enable clients to think of me when they need help is my monthly mental-health well-being column in one of our city magazines, ‘Only Peterborough’.

January’s article focussed, a little traditionally perhaps, on that phenomenon of New Year Resolutions and why some work and others don’t, sometimes because the timing is wrong or the resolution is just too big. Sometimes they fail because of a lack of support through the inevitable self-sabotage that goes hand in hand with best intentions.

Here’s what I had to say:

Changing for the Better               

It’s that time of year again. Christmas and New Year have been and gone, the fun and festivities are over and the world is full of opportunity. It’s the traditional time to start afresh with life-changing resolutions, which some go on to achieve with envy-inducing ease.

But for many of us, New Year’s Resolutions fade away into best intentions and we carry on just as we were before. So why are some New Year Resolutions successful whilst others fail?

Perhaps it’s the type of resolution you choose. Adding good habits can succeed more often than stopping bad ones. Maybe this is why the most popular 2013 Resolution was reading more books but stopping smoking was only 26^th.

Another trick is sharing the effort. To change a habit, your free-will has to wrestle your Unconscious mind. Given that your Unconscious controls your habitual decisions, this is a tough fight! Exercising with a friend or taking that lunchtime walk with a colleague can make all the difference, sharing the mental effort as well as the Resolution.

Be precise. If you want to ‘lose weight’, how much do you need to lose? By deciding to ‘lose 10 lbs in 4 weeks’ you can measure your success. If you only manage 7 lbs, that’s success too. Think of it like passing with 70%. All progress is positive.

The key point is this: Your Unconscious uses habits to keep you safe or bring you comfort and it really doesn’t want to change. So if you don’t keep your New Year Resolution, it’s just that your Unconscious stills needs to be convinced that you’re right. If this you, then the support of someone trained to help is invaluable.

And once you look, you might be surprised at the help you can find.

See you soon?

RELATED

Only Peterborough magazine: website

Tony Burkinshaw Cognitive Hypnotherapy: website

Learning Coaching: What’s it all about?

Hypnotherapy MP3 Downloads: Pain Relief; Migraine Relief; Healing; Relaxation; Mindfulness

If you want to talk to me or ask any questions about what I do, please feel free to email me at: tony@tonyburkinshaw.co.uk

Next Steps?
© Tony Burkinshaw 2014

False Hope: Is it really possible?

Hope.

Hope that Springs Eternal, to misquote a pope which, if you’ve read Dan Brown, is misleading.

It occurred to me today in between the coughs that are all that remain of the second-hand cold I’ve been fighting off since my wife caught it from my sister on Boxing Day, (a sort of genetically modified, festively duplicated cold-in-law perhaps?), that there oughtn’t to be any such thing as a false hope.

It’s a criticism levied at those of us who look positively at negative situations by those chappies who’s own particular stance and opinion is negatively tuned, often by the potential for litigious back-lash. For some, it is apparently better to accept that the worst is reality and that entertaining the slightest optimism for a better outcome isn’t worth the risk of massive potential disappointment if the worst then duly turns up and kicks you right in the teeth.

I get it.

But surely this is simply not hoping; actively deciding that Hope is not worth the risk of Hope being dashed.

This is not false hope nor is it actually making a case for hope to be ignored. It is simply weighing up the pros and cons of entertaining hope and opting for the downside of life as either it is pretty likely to turn up anyway, or grinding your way through yet another disappointment is more than you can bear.

This is not a nice place to be. Life throws some horrible things at us sometimes. Sometimes Hope can feel too big.

But my point I suppose, is that taking the risk of hoping for a better outcome is more than simply ignoring the obvious truth of your situation, as some naysayers would have it.

Taking the risk of hoping can bring some immensely powerful guns to bear on an otherwise hope-less situation. Not least of these is that by truly opting for hope; opting to believe that there just might be way beyond the apparent certainty you’ve been expecting; that one of the most complex and least understood mechanisms in western culture can finally fire up and weigh in on your side.

Those of your that follow me regularly will probably have guessed that I’m alluding to that not-so-mythical mind-body connection. That aspect of eastern philosophy that is being slowly uncovered and accepted as our sciences become more adept at measuring such ephemerous concepts.

Maybe there’s a reason that hope springs eternal. Maybe Alexander was simply expressing a deeply ingrained feature of our human make-up that is designed to get us to stoke up the fires of the mind-body connection and generate every last vestige of opportunity for the bad thing, whatever it that bad thing might be, to be overcome.

Hope really can change your destiny.

But what if it didn’t.

What if, despite Hope, the bad thing happened. Your illness didn’t go away? The pain didn’t recede? It really did turn out to be the death that comes to us all, scythe in bony hand depending on your local anthropomorph?

Does this mean that the hope was false?

Not at all. Hope is just that. Hope. Nothing more.

My point is that by hoping, you bring every last possibility to bear on the side of your own victory. By hoping, every last possible chance and opportunity has been taken.

And if hope doesn’t work, what’s the consequence?

Well, for the time that you were hoping, life had a more positive feel. You did what you could. You felt as if you were in control. You were in charge of your destiny, not the bad thing.

The disappointment of losing your personal battle is no more disappointing because you hoped.

The hope wasn’t false. It was just hope.

If you look at Hope and you decide that it is not for you, then I’d ask that you consider your decision having thought and felt a little more about what Hope might bring, if only you dared to entertain it. It brings so much more than wishful thinking. It just might turn the tide.

One of the key aspects of my therapy practice is enabling clients to find Hope in what they had previously considered to be hope-less situations.

It’s one of the key turning points in therapy.

Once that fire of Hope is lit, we’re homeward bound.

RELATED:

Hypnotherapy Website:

Hypnotherapy downloads: (Pain, Migraine, Healing, Mindfulness Meditation, Relaxation)

 

They hope it reflects progress
© Tony Burkinshaw 2014

Effectively Challenging: The Future?

Of course the downside is Cognitive Hypnotherapy is way too effective.

It may sound a little weird coming from a therapist but from a purely business perspective, clients do tend to get well pretty quickly which means that I need to find a constant stream of new clients with new problems.

As a Cognitive Hypnotherapist, I’m delighted that the techniques I use with my clients can make profound differences to their lives in a such short space of time. However, as someone trying to earn a living, there is the occasional pang of jealousy for other therapies where a client may keep coming back to you many months, sometimes even years.

There are a couple of things which have brought this to mind over the Festive Season, which has done its usual trick of disappearing too quickly and returning to normal again? Must be something to do with it being Twelfth night, (depending on which definition of twelfth you plump for).

I’ve started trialling AdWords, which I’ve had in mind for some time but have never quite been prepared to risk actual budget on, so Google came to my aid and offered me a pretty decent voucher to try it out. So I’ve ventured out into the world of AdWords Express, the delightfully easy version which is incredibly easy to set up and which, if you don’t keep a close eye on it, eats into said budget like a ravenously hungry eating thing.

That said, it has delivered a couple of prime client enquiries and many multiples of views of my AdWords ad. It’s definitely been worth it for name awareness and probably for return on investment, especially because so far, there hasn’t been any.

I’ve put it temporarily on hold whilst I explore taking my new-found AdWords Express know-how and see if I can apply it more cost effectively to the grown-up AdWords proper version before my voucher completely runs out. That’s part of next week’s work. With luck it’ll deliver more control of the context that the ad’s words turns up in & so makes the C.P.C., (for those in the know), less costly per click, (which gives away the esoteric knowledge needed for the previous TLA which is a throwback to previous posts).

So there I’ve been, advertising my services alongside the usual possibility that my website might actually turn up in its own right, (not that I’ve noticed it doing so thus far), and the occasional view that it gets from the Hypnotherapy Directory, which has also paid its way, by the way, and beginning to find that I was getting some new clients from other than word of mouth (hooray) only to find that my current clients all went and got better, (double Hooray) except that this means that the boost in client bookings pre-Christmas wasn’t a boost so much as a replacement.

Ah well.

Then I find that my carefully crafted triple-checked ad that I’m trialling in the local villages, (yes, all six of them: villages that is, not magazines), magazine ‘The Village Tribune’, which has its own website, (take a look if you like), didn’t actually say that I’m local which was kind of the whole point. That’ll need updating for the next edition in March, I suppose.

It’s all a learning experience and leads unfortunately for you readers of this blog post, into a rambling discourse on advertising and client flow. Nonetheless, if you’ve got this far, your finding at least some entertainment value, so keep up – here we go again.

In short (not really) this is where I find myself at the beginning of 2014’s adventure.

I’ve been able to significantly help my most challenging clients and, again significantly, they fell within the expected 3 – 7 therapy session range. They’ve involved anxieties, migraines & pain, depression, PTSD, stress triggered epilepsy amongst other interesting conditions. It’s kept me on my toes and 2014 is shaping up to continue in this vein.

My dalliances with advertising, (more toe dipping than anything else, really), will almost certainly turn into something more ongoing. Allied with my mental-health well-being column, this should provide pretty reasonable background awareness with the intention that when a prospective new client finds themselves prospecting, so-to-speak, about who to approach, Tony Burkinshaw Cognitive Hypnotherapy should have passed the number-of-times convincer test.

In essence, if they’ve seen my name around, consciously or unconsciously, more than 3 times in different environments, this lends a level of validity that wouldn’t exist if they had only come across me for the first time. That’s the theory.

I’m also about to run the very first Unlock Your Learning Potential course for the Chartered Insurance Institute. It’s a course I’ve designed from scratch specifically for them, following a series of conversations with them last year. I’m pretty damned excited about it too, which is probably why it has the least space in this post.

Odd.

On top of this I’m seeking to do a revamp of my website, possibly moving it over to WordPress.org so I can SEO the hell out of it, to borrow a phrase from Victoria, (another excellent Cognitive Hypnotherapist of my close acquaintance). I might also rework the Facebook page associated with this blog and change its name & purpose so it links more cleanly between blogging and the business of actually providing therapy. This all needs some proper thinking through and whatever suggestions you might have would be welcome.

There are, as with any future, potentially good outcomes and quite a few potentially challenging ones. The point is in my line of work, an important skill I teach to others is how to focus on the potentially good outcomes. It makes the future much brighter, (although perhaps no longer Orange, following their multiple mergers). After all, challenges are simply what they say they are. Challenges. They’ll either be met and over-come, met but not over-come or completely ignored in the hope they’ll go away.

Whatever the outcome, challenges eventually disappear into the past, leaving the bright future to get even brighter whilst you enjoy now. Mindfulness.

All in all it’s shaping up to be a good year.

Even though we’re only a few days in, I have a good feeling about what lies ahead.

See you there?

Related

Random Acts of Kindness: a new slant on Twitter… follow me here

Tony Burkinshaw Cognitive Hypnotherapy: click here

Out of the past & into the future
© Tony Burkinshaw 2014

Parliament? It’s an award, apparently!

The Parliament Award was created by Bishop Eddie Tatro, (you should check out his blog, if you haven’t already), and was given to me by Ewa  from fibromyalgiaandselfdisorders. It is really appreciated!

The Rules of this Award are simple:

1. Firstly, display the Award on your site (see Award page or sidebar!) You earned it and you deserve it!
2. List a few things that make you a loyal member.
3. Thank the person who nominated you and link back to their blog.
4. Nominate at least five (5) well deserving bloggers whose loyalty and love you value and consider part of your Parliament and Pack; for the Award and let them know the wonderful news by sending them a message on their site.

Here we go…:

1. I try to make each of my posts a meaningful or entertaining read. If you’re going to take the time to read what I write, I want to make it worth your while.
2. I try to write every week but the more astute amongst you will have noticed that I take the occasional sabbatical. It’s nothing personal, I simply didn’t find that spark that was worth your time. Be patient – I always turn up again, like the proverbial bad penny!
3 The last two years (longer?) have taken me on a pretty amazing journey. Some if it fantastic, some of it pretty tearful. I’m trying to share the highlights.
4 If I read something that I like, well, I ‘like’ it.
5 I love comments, whether good or bad. Feedback is the breakfast of champions & you guys keep me sharp.

So. Over to the nominations…

I would include the legendary Bishop himself but as he created the award, it would seem a little narcissistic, so Eddie my friend, you will have to be content the mention in the very sentence of this post! (…and in the last one – almost)

1. secondhalfwoman

2. jadereyner

3. heilablog

4. herheartandsoul

5. petitemagique

Thank you & have a fantastic 2014

 

The space between. A time of promise.

There’s a lull between Christmas and the New Year, when you’ve sufficed sufficiently but can’t yet relax your guard because there’s one more day of celebration ahead and depending on your heritage this could be a really big day.

Whilst I’m partly descended from those lads north of the border, the bloodline is thin enough for me not to feel the compulsion of first-footing and all that downing of multiple not-so-wee drams. That’s not to say I’m planning to abstain nor that I won’t partake of another drop or two from that freshly opened bottle of Talisker, more that I’m hopeful that I’ll surface sometime before mid-day on Wednesday with a more or less intact inner constitution.

Given that I’m booked in to the local pub New Year’s bash from 7.30, that could be a bit of a tall order.

Then again, 2013 has been a year of expanding horizons and honing new talents so you never know. As this will be my first New Year’s Eve as a published columnist and hypnotherapist, anything is possible. I’ll be starting the New Year with clients booked in for exam-anxiety & learning coaching, stress and anxiety management, pain & illness hyper-sensitivity,  PTSD, and weight loss.

I’m advertising through Adwords & our local village magazine and the next column is out in early January. Although website views are increasing, it’s time to begin the first proper website overhaul and maybe transfer it over to WordPress.org so I can SEO the hell out it. Time will tell.

On top of that, my Financial Services consulting career has taken a turn for the complicated and is bearing fruit with high-level competence assessments and some learning coaching courses booked in already. It’ll be an interesting first quarter. Not only that. I find myself in a better place than I’ve been personally for some while.

This is in part because as my Cognitive Hypnotherapy career progresses, I’ve become adept at identifying and dealing with issues that I’ve either long-ignored or taken for granted. It’s also in no small measure because a beneficial side effect of a career in Cognitive Hypnotherapy, is that you spend your working life eliciting trance phenomena in others in a calm and gentle manner which you have no choice but to listen to as well. I find that I leave most sessions having received therapy by proxy. In some measure, the all hypnosis is self-hypnosis philosophy applies even for the therapist.

Whatever the reason, I find the end of 2013 to be a pretty chilled affair.

People are even downloading and benefiting from my mp3 recordings. I spent some considerable time deciding how long these should be. If you search out there in Google & Bing land, you’ll find a whole host of hypnotherapy mp3s & CDs.

I wanted mine to be long enough to provide serious help but short enough to be something you can pick up and put down when you find yourself in whatever form your own ‘bit-of-a-pickle’ might be. It is a strange truth but if you are for example, extremely stressed, it is nigh on impossible to find 20 minutes to listen to something which will relax you. People in pain quite simply hurt too much to be able to spend time listening for half an hour to something which may relieve that pain.

In the end I settled on 10 minutes. This seems to be long enough to make a difference and short enough, in most cases, to allow the listener to find the mental effort needed to sit down and listen. I wrote and recorded them through they year to cover areas I found clients needed most:

Relief from Chronic Pain Conditions

Pre & Post Surgery Healing

Relief from Breakthrough Pain

Migraine Relief

Mindfulness Meditation

and just for Christmas,

Deep Relaxation

And they’re all designed so that the effect builds with each listen, achieving best results after about 4 weeks according to feedback so far. If you could benefit too, why not try them. They work. And if you’d like to know more or if you want book in to see me, (face to face or through Skype), I’m always pleased to talk and offer advice. Keep in touch. 2014 is full of untapped promise.

The colouring bin
© Tony Burkinshaw 2013

‘Relax’ – It’s my Xmas Present to you!

Read on : there’s a free gift for you inside!

[…and feel free to re-blog or share this post so that others can benefit too…]

Xmas is getting very close indeed and whilst many are looking forward to the celebrations, the preparations can feel frenetic and overwhelming. This was the topic of my latest article in Only Peterborough magazine in my mental health well-being column.

Rather than just giving advice, I included a Christmas Gift – a specially written and recorded Deep Relaxation mp3. It’s only 10 minutes long but can make all the difference and joins up well with the Mindfulness Meditation mp3 from earlier in the year. The link for the free Deep Relaxation mp3 is at the end of this post. Much as I’d rather you read the whole thing (of course), if you just want to skip to the end and grab your free copy, please hep yourself. You might find you come back to read it all anyway!

Here’s the article, I hope you like it.

Relax. It’s Only Christmas!

It’s Christmas-time again with fun and festivities taking centre stage. Relaxing with family and friends, for many this really is a magical time.

Despite this, relentless pressure and expectation comes hand-in-hand with the Festive Season. So if the thought of Christmas brings anxiety and stress, here are 5 practical steps you can take:

1. Split your Christmas tasks into three:

• Must-do – give these priority
• Nice-to-do –do these once you’ve organised your must-do tasks
• Unimportant –If these don’t get done everything will be just fine!

2. You’ll probably be spending time with family and friends that you don’t normally see. Their ways may not be your ways and this can be difficult. Remember they’re probably feeling just the same so give them some leeway. Pat yourself on the back for being so understanding.

3. No matter how carefully you plan, thing do go wrong. Each evening counteract the day’s challenges by thinking about three things that were special for you; a smile, a song on the radio, frost on a leaf. They can be anything. Your brain loves positive things, big or small. If your brain’s happy, you sleep better.

4. Be good to yourself, especially if you’re playing an important role in Christmas. Whether it’s a walk, a good book or a trip to the pub, always keep yourself on your ‘Must-do’ list.

5. Find a good relaxation mp3/CD. There are many of them around and they’re really beneficial. Listen to it every day so you practice being relaxed. As a Christmas gift, there’s a free Relaxation mp3 on my website at tony.burkinshaw.co.uk/shop.

Follow these tips and you can look forward to a very Merry Christmas. And remember, some of the best Christmas memories are when things didn’t quite go according to plan…

IMPORTANT LINKS

As promised, this is the link to your free ‘Deep Relaxation’ mp3: Click Here

Other Only Peterborough articles: click here or here

The Only Peterborough website: click here

Relaxation is the key
© Tony Burkinshaw 2013

Learning to Reduce Stress

You know how I write a monthly column for ‘Only Peterborough’ magazine? It’s the Understanding You, mental-health well-being column. Well, this is the article I wrote for the November edition. I thought you might like it.

It’s about my other interest in life, helping people learn how to learn.

These days, qualification never ceases and people have to take  professional qualifications for much of their career.

All of a sudden, you find yourself trying to use the same study methods you used at school or University except this time you’re also trying to hold down a career, keep a family happy, not to mention earn a living and desperately search for that mythical work-life balance.

Strangely enough, almost no-one gets taught how to learn.

How to use the way you, as an individual, relate to the world and other people. Take the way you do the things you love. You just do them. It just happens. It flows. And all the effort is worthwhile.

What I do is uncover these aspects of you and show you how to use them to learn everything in that same way. Learning becomes fun again – no matter what the subject matter.

Anyway. Here’s a high-level version of that other side of what I do.

Learning to Reduce Stress

Have you ever seen a toddler achieve some mighty task such as saying a new word, taking their first steps, kicking a ball. Notice that immense concentration followed by the pure joy and delight at learning something new. The human brain is designed for learning and not just in early childhood. Constant challenge can keep it functioning at is best.

So why as we settle into the new academic year or undertake professional qualifications can learning become such a challenge, filling so many of us with anxiety and self-doubt?

Given the choice we’d rather find something that grabs our attention and feeds our preference for mastering things we enjoy. Think about the huge variation in what people choose to learn. Some learn a sport, others become XBox experts, yet more will learn to cook, surf, speak another language, make clothes, take photos, design apps for iPads (other good tablets are available); the list is endless.

But when we’re required to learn, we revert back to our early days of homework and find ourselves trying to learn in that same way again. Without meaning to, we end up recreating a classroom every time we have to ‘study’ whether it suits our learning style or not.  Add in the expectation of having to pass and it’s no wonder that taking exams becomes one of the most stressful things you can do.

So what is the alternative? Uncover what you do when you’re learning something you enjoy and then learn everything else in that same way. If you delight in being with others, then learn in groups or with friends; if you love to sing or play guitar, put it to music. Colours, movement, sounds or shapes, even textures and smells can all be built in to help you learn the way your brain prefers to learn.

It can take a little time and may need some guidance. But once you’ve found your way, learning ceases to be a chore and you just might feel that burst of pure delight at achieving something new once more.

Related:

Only Peterborough Magazine: website

Tony Burkinshaw Cognitive Hypnotherapy: Learning & Memory Coach

…and if it’s all too much: Mindfulness Meditation mp3

Mindful of the Stress

3-2-1: The Launch – A traditional offering…

Exciting Times! 

I suppose it’s been building up to this for a while and I almost can’t believe that the day has actually arrived. My website, (thanks to the sterling efforts of my web-building daughter, Katherine), now sports a brand new, spankingly-good Shop, containing brand new destruct-tested hypnotherapy recordings for you to download at your leisure… if you’re prepared to part with a modest sum for the privilege, of course. Distributor of words of almost-wisdom I may be but I can’t yet run to full-blown charitable works. Mouths to feed and all that.

As with all such enterprises, there are a multitude of people to thank and seeing as the most multitudinous of these multi-whatsits are those of you who are actually reading this post right now, here goes:

THANK YOU

This blog has been invaluable in honing my thoughts and skills to the point where people I’ve never met in person were happy to trial these downloads for me and provide me with the feedback I needed to refine them to the point of, in my own modest way, perfection. Well, pretty close, anyway. You know who you are, all you trialling people and believe me it has been a pleasure to work with you. Thank you all extremely much.

Here are some snippets of feedback so far;

“I have used the recording nonstop daily. It is now at the top of my list of things that work for controlling my degenerative disc disease, permanent nerve damage and chronic pain. I owe you so much!”

“For me personally the audio has been a blessing. Changes are happening (& being noticed by others) & it’s having a positive effect on me. I’d like to say a really big thank you.”

“The surgeon and nurses couldn’t believe how quickly the bruising disappeared after my operation”

Now, I know the how and why of all of this but I’m still in awe of the realisation that what I’ve learned might enable you to re-engage with such immense natural healing ability. The recordings are all based on what I’ve learned from helping my face to face clients which means that they cover chronic pain conditions, migraines, and healing after undergoing medical procedures.

So here’s where I really can give something back at last…

In recognition of all the help and inspiration I’ve had from everyone here on WordPress, I’d like to give you all access to a special discount just for you.

Until 31st August 2013, anyone who reads this post can get 40% discount on any of the Hypnotherapy downloads on my site.

Here’s what to do to:

• Simply click on this link Tony Burkinshaw Cognitive Hypnotherapy Shop …
• ‘add to cart’ whichever download or downloads you would like to have
• enter the code PHSBF13 before you pay
• and get a massive 40% off the price.
• Download your chosen MP3s
• Relax and give yourself the chance to heal

If you think any of your own blog-readers might benefit, all you need to do is re-blog this post and the same code will be available for all your readers as well, right up to 31st August this year.

Given the positive feedback I’ve had so far, you might be surprised at just how glad you are that you read this.

I know I am.

Over the next weeks and months I’ll be designing, writing and recording more downloads and gradually adding them to the Shop once they’ve been tested and refined.

As always, I welcome feedback. Especially on these.

Once again, many thanks and welcome to my brave new world.

If only you could hear
© Tony Burkinshaw 2013