Start Living Today

I am still blown away at the amazing results hypnotherapist and many other types of change workers get. And for a long time I had no idea why or how what many of the techniques and approaches, like hypnotherapy, NLP and coaching really worked. Of course I had all the metaphorical explanations, which I was given, but at the time no one really knew exactly what was really happening in the brain and why people changed?

It was explained to me once that it was like the brain is a black box and we don’t know what happens in the black box. At one end we can use hypnotic suggestions, coaching or techniques and what comes out of the black box, is the result, which gives us clues weather what we are doing is having the desired effect.

And you can work this way and still be a hypnotherapy genius. For a long time I did this learned what worked and what didn’t work and often acted intuitively sometimes with no idea as to why used a certain technique or asked a specific question. I just sort of knew what I had chosen to do would probably work.

However, we really do live in exciting times where neuroscientists are making discoveries in how the brain really works which can provide us with an understanding to help us use our skills even more effectively.

One of discoveries in neuroscience that really made a difference to the way I use hypnosis is reconsolidation theory.

Reconsolidation theory came from some experiments in memory consolidation by researchers Joseph LeDoux and Karim Nader.

In this article Ledoux describes the traditional understanding of the mechanics of memory (consolidation)

“Most neuroscientists, myself included, believed that a new memory, once consolidated into long-term storage, is stable. It’s as if every long-term memory had its own connections in the brain. Each time you retrieve the memory, or remembered, you retrieved that original memory, and then returned it.

Reconsolidation theory proposed a radically different idea—that the very act of remembering could change the memory.”

Ledoux and Nader researched this theory with a series of experiments on laboratory rats. The rats had been conditioned to associate a darken box with an electric shock and very quickly the rats learned to avoid the box, and became fearful and froze each time the box is introduced. When the rats where given a drug that prevented them from creating short term memories, the rats still feared the darkened box, because it was now in their long term memory and remained stable.

However if the rats were shown box just before they were given the drug, the rats would lose their conditioned response, they a forgotten that they were scared of it and the memory had been erased.

Our brains record an experience by firing of a sequence of neurons, which leaves them connected. This memory trace becomes more permanent as synapses connect it with other parts of the brain. This memory pattern is built deep in parts of the brain like the hippocampus and eventually migrates out in cortex.

What Reconsolidation Theory shows us is that not only do memories move from the hippocampus to the cortex during consolidation, but are also returned back to the hippocampus by calling them, at this point they become unstable and can be changed, in effect memory is plastic.

It’s a bit like opening a new word document on your computer so you can see it on the screen and then typing on to the new page. Consolidation could be likened to then saving the document to your hard drive.

Reconsolidation would be like opening this document from your hard drive so it appears on your screen at this point you can change the document so when you save it, it will disappear from your screen and be saved in your hard drive.

So how is this information useful?

As a cognitive hypnotherapist many of the problems I help my clients with, will often to be connected to how they perceive past events in their life, because our brains like certainty and will quickly create behavioural patterns to maintain this.

It’s pretty cool that when we recall a memory that is the reference experience for a problem we have later in life, the possibility exist to change the meaning of that experience so it is no longer a problem.

So when I’m working with a client and there is a memory or belief that is a problem for them in someway then I might:

Make the memory weaker by challenging generalisations that may underpin the beliefs that are connected to the memory.

If it is a positive experience amplify the memory to make it more powerful

Change the meaning of the memory by reframing it and therefore completely transform the impact it has in the clients life

NLP and Hypnotherapy for Insomnia

In this great clip below, co-creator of NLP is teaching a class of Doctors basic hypnosis and NLP techniques for helping with insomnia. Read the rest of this entry »

BBC Radio 4 put together this documentary covering The Story of NLP. In this 30 minute show they interview the co-creator of NLP Richard Bandler and raise some questions around the need for scientific testing of NLP. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things I regularly see clients for at my Southampton Hypnotherapy clinic is stage fright and fear of public speaking, so I wasn’t surprised to the headline ‘X Factor: Katie Waissel to have hypnotherapy in bid to beat stage fright’

One of the key things to remember with stage fright or fear public speaking is that you are supposed to feel nerves, they absolutely should be there. I was listening to Paul Mckenna on the radio recently taking about how Russell Brand and Roger Daltry are both people you would think exude natural confidence, yet the both listen to one of his CDs before going on stage. So everyone needs some help once in a while.

If you’re ready to overcome stage fright or fear of public speaking then book an appointment with me at my Southampton Hypnotherapy Clinic

Lenny Deverill-West DipCHyp, NLPract , MNCH (Lic) www.startlivingtoday.co.uk 07841411951

Lets talk about context specifically the importance of context when working with a client, which I have come to understand training as a Cognitive Hypnotherapist at The Quest Institute. One the things I do when I first see a client is a history take. I have noticed over time that often when client’s come back to see me after the history take, they have already begun to move forward with their issue, goal, problem etc. Read the rest of this entry »

I'm often asked relationship questions like 'how do I get the relationship I want?', sometimes by people in relationships, so they might not be happy with the relationship they are in, and by people looking for a great relationship because their experience thus far has not been great. Often it comes down to a one of two things, Read the rest of this entry »

I started training with the Trevor Silvester at the Quest Institute in Cognitive Hypnotherapy and one of the techniques we have learned on the course is what Trevor calls Timeline Reprocessing. Read the rest of this entry »

Just wanted to recommend this wonderful tip from Michael Neill that looks set to go viral and become an event in its own right. Happy reading Take the day off from striving and struggling for success – and have a wonderfully average day instead…“Happiness and a meaningful life come from making differences. But this is the most important rule to follow: always make the differences you can make, not the differences you would prefer to make but can’t.” – Lyndon Duke

I was talking to my friend and mentor Steve Chandler once when he said to me “have an average day!” A bit taken aback, I asked him what he meant. After all, isn’t the idea to have “great” days, or even “exceptional” ones?

Read the rest of this entry »

A while back some collegues and I were ask to come up with a team building exercise incorporating Belbin's Team Roles, and I think it fair to say we embraced the opportunity to put it together especially since we don’t often get the chance to work so closely together on something. We quickly set about getting a meeting room to generate lots of ideas on how we were going to do this. However, excitement quickly turned to frustration and 2 hours later we had only managed to talk every good idea we had off the table and we all left the meeting pretty dejected! Read the rest of this entry »

One thing that has always struck me is the way different people describe their jobs and to be more specific the way people who are passionate and love their work verses those who are not. Now some might say ‘well of course I’d be passionate or love what I do for a living if did what they do for a living’, would they? Really? Or if they had that job would they find some other of making it sound like they do the most unimportant thing in the world? Read the rest of this entry »