The group session combines hypnotherapy, self-help and life-coaching techniques to help you lose weight without resorting to a diet.

It is being held at Precious Health holistic therapy centre in Hale village centre and will be jointly led by Michaela and Julian.

Gain Control Over Your Eating

The session will provide a thorough introduction to the mindful or conscious eating approach which helps you to gain control over your eating whilst enhancing your genuine pleasure in food.

You will be familiarised with the key elements of the approach and with techniques for getting in touch with your body’s genuine food needs. This will be reinforced by hypnotic exercises to give you the motivation to achieve your goals.

Even if you have some familiarity with the mindful eating approach, you may still find this session a useful opportunity to clarify your understanding, share your experiences and motivate yourself.

The workshop can also be useful if you simply want to manage your eating more carefully, avoid gaining weight or maintain yourself at your current weight. Follow-up sessions will be made available depending upon the interest of the group.

Booking Information

Precious Health therapy centre, the venue for our Weight-Loss Workshops

For more information about the content of our Weight-Loss Workshops click here.

To book your place on the workshop phone us directly on 0161 2486879, email us by going to our contact page, or drop in at Precious Health, First Floor, Progress House, 17 Cecil Road, Hale, Cheshire, WA15 9NZ.

The workshop costs £35 and a £10 deposit will be required at the time of booking.

It is generally acknowledged by neuroscientists as well as psychologists that by far the greater part of our mind is taken up by the unconscious.

In a recent Horizon documentary on the BBC scientists were handed a blank sheet of A4 paper and asked to mark in pen the proportion of that blank sheet that was taken up by the conscious mind as opposed to the unconscious.

In all cases the vast majority of the sheet was allocated to the unconscious mind with, in some cases, only a minute portion being allocated to the conscious mind.

The Role of the Unconscious

So what are the implications of this? Firstly it’s not necessarily something we should be worried about. The unconscious mind performs a very necessary function. It is no longer regarded as the territory of the repressed, a harbour of dark secrets which threaten our status as civilized beings.

This characterization of the unconscious is associated with Freud, who was writing at a time when unconscious impulses were more at odds with prevailing social values.

The unconscious is now more generally regarded as that part of us which performs all those functions which our conscious mind does not have the time, or the capacity to deal with.

Mental Overload

There is only so much information that we can retain in our conscious minds at any one time, without suffering from mental overload. When we are walking, driving a car or using a keyboard we do not want to have to be thinking of everything we need to be doing.

For each of us there was a time when we consciously needed to think about these things, but once they had been learned, we were able to perform those tasks without thinking. This is because they have been absorbed by our unconscious mind and can be carried out automatically.

However, what this does mean – a second implication of that horizon exercise – is that  we have up until recently underestimated the importance of the unconscious. We need now to fully take on board the fact that we are to a large extent run by our unconscious minds.

Hypnotherapy has worked upon this assumption for a long time, recognizing that it is only by reprogramming the unconscious mind that we can change the ways we think, feel and behave.

After much questioning Descartes came to the conclusion that the fact that he was able to think was the one thing he could be sure of – the one thing that wasn’t open to doubt.

Where as he could be tricked by his senses or the world around him might even be something he had dreamed up, there could be no doubt that he was able to apply thought to these issues.

And as long as he was thinking then he must exist. This could not be called into question.

Inevitably, as is the way with philosophy, Descartes statement has been questioned many times since. But there is no doubt that we place great importance upon our ability to think. Where would we be without it?

It is disconcerting therefore to consider how little control we actually seem have over our own thinking. Many psychological problems develop because we cannot control the thoughts that come into our heads.

We often drift from one thought to another without knowing why we are doing so. Things come into our head which we don’t want to be there. They hang around in the form of worries and anxieties when we’d prefer it if they didn’t.

Thoughts can become repetitive and obsessive. They don’t always go away when want them to… however hard we try.

So where do thoughts come from, what makes them linger and where do they do they lead us? How much control do we really have over our own thinking, and therefore over that key facility which according to Descartes defines us as existing beings?

Hypnotherapy appointments can now be booked with us in Hale, Cheshire. at the Precious Health holistic therapy centre.

Precious Health is situated in the centre of Hale village and close to Altrincham and Timperley. It offers a comfortable, relaxing and elegant environment for hypnotherapy consultations.

As usual we will be specialising in hypnotherapy sessions for confidence, stress and anxiety, as well as related issues such as phobias and panic. Our tailored programmes of treatment for weight-loss and irritable bowel syndrome will also be available.

In addition we will be offering our Weight-Loss Workshops at Precious Health, Hale, for those who would like to deal with this issue as part of a group.

For individual appointment you will usually be able to choose whether you wish to see Michaela or Julian. Appointments will be available from the beginning of May 2012.

To book an appointment or make an enquiry about hypnotherapy with us at Hale, phone us directly on 0161 2486879 or contact us by email. Full contact details and further information about us are available on our website.

Self-hypnosis is a simple way of relaxing your mind and your body into a pleasurable state of creative calm. It can involve breathing exercises, relaxation of the m

Our Self-Hypnosis Workshops in Levenshulme, Manchester, close to Didsbury, Chorlton and Stockport, will familiarise you with these techniques and help you to find out what works best for you.

You will learn more about how your mind functions and discover how to tap into its powerful unconscious resources. We will show you how to start using your mind more creatively.

By devoting just a few minutes a day to to this rewarding activity you can reduce stress and anxiety in your life and can bring about changes in the ways you think, feel and behave.

The session will also help you to develop practical self-help techniques based on the same principles, which you can use in everyday situations to increase feelings of calm and confidence.

For more information about our Self-Hypnosis workshops follow this link to Self-Hypnosis Workshops for Calm and Confidence.

The emphasis of these group sessions is on developing self-help techniques which give you the independence to take control over your eating on a long-term basis.

Lots of hypnotherapists offer one-to-one weight-loss sessions, but our workshops give you the chance to work in a group setting where you can share your experiences with other people.

The workshop should not be regarded as a one-off hypnosis session which will provide you with a quick-fix, or magic cure, but a long term solution, giving you the techniques to bring balance into your life and your eating.

We will give you practical strategies for taking control over your eating and changing your attitude to food. These strategies can then be reinforced by hypnotic techniques for motivation and for putting you back in touch with the genuine needs of your body.

An Alternative To Dieting

The ‘conscious eating’ approach which we use has been very well received by our clients. It is an alternative to dieting and will help you to cut portion sizes and reduce snacking without feeling hungry or deprived.

In fact the whole emphasis of this approach is on getting you enjoying your food again – not obsessing about it or treating it as a guilty pleasure.

All too often we eat for the wrong reasons, perhaps because we’re bored or tired, or even when we’re not aware of what we’re doing. If you’re watching TV or on a mobile you’re not thinking about what you’re eating.

The purpose of our workshops is to get you eating again for the right reasons, to take pleasure in your food and satisfy your body’s real needs.

For more information about our workshop and our approach to weight-loss follow this link to our Weight-Loss With Hypnotherapy Workshop.

Winter trees near to us at Cringle Park Manchester, warmed by the sun on a cold February morning.

Moods can change with the weather, but are also like the weather. The cultivation of mindfulness helps us to appreciate their changeable nature.

Mindfulness teaches us to observe our moods rather than get too caught up in them – or at least to recognize that the way we are feeling now is not the way we will always be feeling.

This of course goes for good as well as bad moods – for excitement and joy as well as for sadness and depression. But to be aware that even a good mood won’t last for ever perhaps allows us to appreciate that mood a little more, and tempers any dip in that mood which might follow.

By being more mindful we can watch our moods in the same way that we might observe changes in the weather. We may even come to appreciate both the cloudy and the sunny day.

And in this way we can in time achieve a greater degree of equilibrium and calm.

Our interests range widely and include mindfulness, hypnosis, neuroscience, and spirituality.

We are practising hypnotherapists with a special interest in using mindfulness approaches to maximise potential and appreciate life to the full.

Hypnotherapy has taught us the value of the interaction between the conscious and unconscious mind and between logical left hemisphere of the brain and the intuitive right hemisphere.

Helping clients deal with problematic thoughts, feelings and emotions has also highlighted for us the importance of the relationship between the mind and the body.

My interest in the mind began early in life and was enhanced by the discovery in a family bookcase of a book about Zen Buddhism, which may have belonged to my father. I never found out for sure.

Hypnotherapy has brought me back to that interest later in life by a different pathway, but the underlying issues, concerns and aspirations are essentially the same.

The similarities between hypnotic experience and meditation have always been apparent, particularly when hypnotic experience takes the form of self-hypnosis.

Mindfulness based hypnotherapy brings the two together using guided relaxation to help you access the inner calm which can help to bring thoughts, feelings and emotions into perspective.

A mindful attitude can also be reinforced by the beneficial suggestions given during hypnosis, helping you to overcome feelings of stress and anxiety and to deal more effectively with everyday problems.

For more on this and for suggestions on how you can use this approach for self-help purposes, keep an eye on this site.