As you know, in addition to my Personal Training and Fitness side to the business, I am also a counsellor. On both sides of the business I deal a lot with people’s thoughts and perceptions about themselves. I’ve said it before, that thoughts are very powerful as they directly affect our feelings, which then can have a knock on effect to our actions and emotions etc etc. But it starts with a thought. The simple idea then is change the thought and you change the feeling which will then change the action and the emotion. Sounds simple but it can be very difficult for people to implement on their own because of those limiting beliefs that we (or others throughout our lives) have drummed into us.
As professionals in our fields there is a requirement to keep updated with our skills and keep our training relevant and current. At present I am doing a CPD course in Hypnotherapy to assist with my counselling practice techniques. As a Yoga teacher I already use hypnosis through the Yoga Nidra, which we use for relaxation and meditation at the end of practice. This powerful state of Yoga Nidra (means Yogi Sleep) is the point between consciousness and unconsciousness - very similar to when you read a book late at night and you feel yourself start to ‘drop off, at this point we are very responsive to auto-suggestion which is why we will often ask pupils to make positive affirmations whilst in this state of being.
As part of this current course I have been learning about Neuroplasticity - which basically means how our thoughts and beliefs can affect mood, health and wellbeing. I am particularly interested in Self Directed NeuroPlasticity (SDN) - which is how we can create new neural pathways through changing our thoughts and beliefs.
I read a very interesting paper yesterday that said that it's believed that 95% of our daily thoughts are subconscious thoughts (automatic). So this means that we are conditioned to think these thoughts and we automatically process them as ‘go to’ responses. So these thoughts may be for example; ‘I have never been any good at running’ …. Or …’I never have enough time, I’m always rushing to get things done!’ or ‘I keep seeing all these adverts on TV at the moment of people baking, I wish I could, I’ve always been useless in the kitchen!’ These are all automatic responses to beliefs that we have instilled in us. Nobody is born the perfect athlete, nobody is born with the perfect sense of time and nobody is born a master baker, (even Mary Berry!) We all have the potential to achieve what we want to, we just have to condition our way of thinking to alter our response.
If we take one example, ‘I’ve never been any good at running’ ….. That statement does not just appear, you don't just say I’ve never been any good at running - you must have experienced running at some point for that thought to come into your head. From that experience, we can assume it wasn’t a good one as somehow or other it has led to the belief that you ‘have never been any good at running’ . So you , or someone else (maybe an old school PE teacher way back when ) has bestowed a ‘limiting belief’ on you that you are no good at running So when ever, you see something about running, or perhaps think about getting fit…. This limiting belief pops up and stops you from doing it. It is an automatic response, a habit , a subconscious thought that limits our potential. Change the thought and the limiting belief is reset. Often though because we have had these beliefs instilled in us for so long it is not so easy to just ‘unlearn’ them. That is where hypnosis can help, at the point of auto suggestion we can help to reset those beliefs and unlock that potential!
