Awaken2Life

Paul and I are such book worms and we often spend a Saturday afternoon walking from book shop to book shop along Charing Cross Road in London.   We spend far too long in the mind, body, spirit sections (thank the Universe for Starbucks in bookshops these days!!).  Then we stop by our mystical favourites – Watkins and Mysteries.

We haven’t been up town for several months but the book shop bug bit this weekend.  We went to a local town where there are several good bookshops and we were disappointed.  There was a real lack of books on anything metaphysical – few books, no decks and no interest.

Not one for being outdone we went to another town.  And we found the same thing.

Has anyone else noticed this trend?

Hello all,

Today I thought that I might share a few ways to handle stress with you.  Use them in good health and pass them on to any friends or relatives that might be able to use them.

1. Use self hypnosis daily to take some time for yourself. 10 – 15 minutes is ideal.  Visit my site to learn a simple and effective technique for free.

2. Learn to see problems as challenges.

3. Trust in other people. Believing that there is no one decent out there can greatly damage your mind/body.

4. Make sure not to isolate yourself…simply talking things over with someone else can be quite beneficial to you.

5. Recognise that the only person that you can change is yourself.

6. Accept that some things aren’t as important to others as they are to you.

7. Be tolerant and learn to forgive.

8. Avoid unnecessary competition.

9. Recognise stress. Do not adapt to feeling it so much that it becomes a normal part of your life.

10. Examine yourself and find the things that cause you stress then avoid them.

Namaste,

 Paul

Hello all,

Lyn and I just returned from an excellenet week of holiday.  We split it into two parts.  Over the first two days we shopped and from the mid to the end of the week we camped in Glastonbury.  Though it was an excellent time, I am glad to return to the hustle and bustle of my therapy work.

Today I just wanted to share an energy technique that is good for removing negative energy that is causing you to feel uptight or sad. 

!. Rate on a scale of 1-10 the amount of negativity that you experience when thinking on the negative thought.

2. Tap the following points: forehead (one inch above and between eyebrows), Under nose (under nose and above upper lip), under bottom lip (the depression between lip and chin), and chest (upper section of your chest)

3. Repeat this procedure until the negative feelings come down to zero.

Should you find that this pattern does not work or that you can only bring the numbers down to a certain point there is a good chance that you might have what is known as a PR reversal.  Please visit my site or email me at paul@awaken2life.com to learn some ways to get around it.

Namaste

Paul

Good morning all,

 Yesterday I shared a basic anchoring technique that can be very helpful when used in the right manner.

 Today I actually wanted to give a word of guidance.  Too much of one state of mind is never a good thing (yes, even happiness).  So when is the right time to use anchoring to change the state of mind?

Anchoring should only be used when your current state is limiting you and there is no lesson for you to learn from it.  Let me give you an example.  Suppose that a relative has died and you are responsible for making the funeral arrangements.  You are grieving and find it hard to think let alone arrange things.  You might choose to change your grieving state for one of neutrality until the business aspect is complete and then allow yourself to grieve afterwards. 

Obviously in the above example you would not want to stay neutral about your relative’s death forever.  It is important to grieve.

So use anchoring sparingly and wisely.  Help yourself through in rough times, but do not attempt to remain in any state too long nor lose out on life by bypassing needful states.

Namaste,

Paul

PS contact me at awaken2life.co.uk if you wish to discuss this further.

Good morning all,

One of the techniques that I use quite frequently in my practice is anchoring.  This excellent NLP technique can be used in a variety of ways. Today I wanted to give you a simple version.  You use this technique when you wish to change your state from sad to happy. Here are the steps:

1. think of a time when you were the most happy
2. In your mind see what you saw, hear what you heard, and allow the feelings to wash over you. 
3. Now make those feelings greater still by making the picture bigger and brighter and the sounds louder and closer.
4. When you feel at the height of your happiness touch your little finger to your thumb.
5. Do this ten times to make sure that it is set.

Now you are armed.  Next time you are feeling sad touch your thumb to your little finger.  Note how you will change state right away.

If you want to keep this anchor permanently, make sure to use it.

Namaste,

Paul

Good morning everyone,

One of the most FAQs I get from my clients is whether it is better to see a therapist or to purchase one of the million self help books that are on the market and heal himself/herself.  This is a very complex question and so many aspects need to be considered before the perfect answer can be obtained (and please note here that the “perfect” answer greatly varies from person to person).  Today I simply want to scratch the surface with a few factors that I consider to be important before one makes a final decision and pursues it.

1. Money-Many clients wish to balk at the high price of therapy and like to call the therapists attention to the fact that they can purchase a very good book for less.  Though this appears initially true, consider the following point.  Books can be quite complicated to comprehend well enough to act on without some help unless of course the reader has been trained as well as the author or the author has the rare talent of communicating so well that no questions are raised in the mind of the reader.  You will not be able to determine if either one of these is the case until after you have purchased the book.  Thus, you may need to purchase several books along the same lines to fully get the picture.  As a person that buys many books to stay on the cutting edge, I know this can be quite costly.  If it were not necessary for my trade, I personally would rather pay £60 an hour (the time it takes to heal many complications by the way) than to purchase quality books (that cost £20 each on the average) to sort out just one problem.
2. Motivation Factor-Unless you are naturally a very motivated person it is hard to persevere through your healing process alone.  A therapist can help to motivate you in many ways and if worth his/her salt will also be by your side supporting you.
3. State of Mind-Remember that by the time one admits the need for help that he/she is usually not in the best frames of mind.  It is difficult and sometimes impossible for one to change to the necessary state to administer healing for self (especially if depression has set in).

Namaste,

Paul

Good afternoon all,

I spent the better part of the morning researching some “new” therapies for both NLP and EFT.  And by in large I must say that I was impressed with what I saw.  These two fields are always evolving (that is why I choose to be a part of them). 

The interesting thing that I noted there is that the “new” processes were new only at first look.  As I took the components of each practice apart, I found the base components of things that I have been using in my counselling for over fifteen years.  Sure they were renamed and slightly redefined, but they were the same principles.

Then it struck me….the genius of this age is not in finding all new principles, but in taking all of the old ones and combining them in efficient ways to bring healing.  This concept really excites me.  I look forward to all the creative therapies that will rise up over the next few years.

Namaste,

 Paul

Good Afternoon all,

I am a bit late in blogging today.  I spent the bulk of my morning with my son in the A&E wing in the hospital (as a matter of fact I spent three hours last night there as well).  He and his brother got into a bit of a row and one minute the door was being shoved back and forth between them and the next *Shlink!* Daniel was wailing hysterically at the top of his lungs missing the top piece of his little finger on the right hand (this was actually quite lucky due to the fact that Daniel is left handed).

Two x-rays, two specialists, and two hospitals later split between two different days, we found that Daniel needed no surgery and that the only long term consequence of the whole fiasco was that the nail will not grow back on that one finger.

That made me consider just how wonderfully resilient the human body is.  With nothing for Dan and us to do but change a dressing when it gets dirty, his mind and body will regenerate all except the nail.  This turned my mind to the complementary therapies.  Often they are viewed as less effective because there is very little intervention from the therapist.  But this is as it should be.  The healing is all done by the client’s mind, body, and spirit.

There is definitely a time for intense intervention, but those cases are a very small percentage in relation to the suffering population.  It is my position that we would see a lot more miraculous healings if we stopped expecting others to heal us and allowed our unified mind, body, and spirit to do so with some guidance from trained therapists and counselors.

Namaste,

Paul

Good Morning all,

When Lyn and are not knee deep in research, one of our favourite pass times is to watch comedy movies.  For two hours we allow our minds to go on autopilot and we just release and laugh.  One of our favourite movies is the re-make of Starsky and Hutch.  And there is one line in that movie that we rattle at one another when impatient about the overly careful manner that the other is handling a situation.  That line is, “Just do it!”

Though this quote brings a laughter it also helps propel the other one into a more profitable state.  One of the presuppositions of NLP is, “If you want to understand, act.” So many times we fool ourselves into thinking that navigating our lives requires us to constantly be assuming a stagnant pose where we bring our fingers to our chins and “think” about all the things that we must do.  In reality this is but a very small part of the process (about 1% of our energies should be put into good outcome thinking).  The bulk of our energies should be in actually doing it.  There is no way that we can receive profitable feedback by simply dreaming.  Sure other people can give their view on your dream (and that is important during the outcome thinking stage), but how will you ever truly know how your dreams will fly (as planned, or modified) if you do not just “Just do it!” ???

In short dear friends lets make dreams realities rather than regrets of things that never were!

Namaste,

Paul

Good morning all,

Yesterday, in my thoughts of the day, I mentioned that there is a stigma when it comes to going to a therapist.  Today I want to delete an incorrect way of thinking that often prevents people from getting the help that they both want and need.

One of the greatest fears one tends to have when visiting a therapist is that s/he will have to bare absolutely everything.  This is not at all the case.  You only need bare everything if it makes things more comfortable for you to do so.  In fact, I work with many clients that find great solace in telling me graphic details. But, this is their choice not the rule.

Because a therapist is a guide to helping one find his/her inner resources, the therapist need only know generalities.  As long as you know the specifics and you carefully apply the therapist’s general suggestions to your specific case, you can keep closeted the things that you want only you to know about and receive healing.  This process may be applied in or out of a trance. 

So come on.  No more excuses! Live your dreams!

Namaste,

Paul