The Guardian and Observer are running a two part feature on massage and relaxation this weekend, and we are listed in the section on Cognitive Hypnotherapy.

Here are some extracts from the article on Cognitive Hypnotherapy.

"Cognitive hypnotherapy provides overworked minds with the toolkit they need to fix their own stresses and strains. It is based on modern psychology and neuroscience and, don't worry, there's not a pendulum in sight ...

... In 2001, Trevor Silvester set up the Quest Institute (questinstitute.co.uk) and introduced the idea of combining hypnosis with cognitive behavioural therapy, tools from positive psychology, cognitive theory and neuro-linguistic programming...

...There's no one way to treat stress or to encourage relaxation, it all depends on the way you see things - your model of the world. As part of a session, the client is supplied with a toolkit for the mind. This enables them to use different tools to fix different mental states...

...everyone has the capacity to adopt new mental tools, and anyone can be hypnotised. The only prerequisite is to be open to the process."

As specialists in Stress, Anxiety and Panic, we can help you to deal more effectively with the strain of modern living. Whether you want to learn to relax more, break an unhelpful pattern of behaviour or find more balance and happiness in your life, we are ready to help you.

When most people think about hypnosis, it is usually Derren Brown or the hypnotist character from the Little Britain TV show that spring to mind, complete with the immortal words, “look into my eyes…”

NCH registered Cognitive Hypnotherapists, Rob & Heidi Woodgate of Gravesend based practice North Kent Hypnotherapy say that neither gives a true picture of hypnotherapy, and think that these popular misconceptions of hypnosis might actually stop people seeking help for issues that could otherwise be overcome in just a few sessions.

Rob says, “We think it’s important to bring to the public’s awareness the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy. It has nothing to do with ‘looking into your eyes’ and more to do with looking into your behaviour.

Hypnotherapy is most often used for psychological problems like stress, anxiety, lack of confidence and low self esteem, and can also help with weight loss, phobias and obsessions. It has also been scientifically proven to be beneficial in smoking cessation and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Heidi says, “Over a decade of scientific research has shown hypnotherapy to be an effective choice for alleviating the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Hypnotherapy routinely produces positive results in over 80% of the people who use it.”

National Hypnotherapy Week is sponsored by The National Council for Hypnotherapy, who maintains the highest standards among its members and is regarded as the premier professional body in hypnotherapy within the United Kingdom.

Well, not quite - but we have renamed our practice “North Kent Hypnotherapy”.

Our practice was originally called Ghost Gum Therapy, a name we chose because it is a great metaphor for the work we do. The Ghost Gum is an Australian Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus Papuana) whose name comes from the white chalky coating it secretes on its bark. By day this coating can be used to provide sun block protection. By night, it provides an eerie glow, enabling people to make their way through the dark. The branches of the Ghost Gum make excellent firewood and the leaves can be used to catch fish. With this amazing versatility, the Ghost Gum provides a great deal help and support to the native Aboriginal people.

The Ghost Gum has the ability to survive in the harshest climates of the Australian Outback by knowing how to look after itself. When the water supply is scarce, rather than dying off, the Ghost Gum cuts off the water and nutrient supply to its non-essential branches, allowing it to lose its excess baggage and thrive. In this way, by making changes and addressing those parts which are not helpful, it is always able to adapt and move forward in its life.

We decided to change to our new name because it simply says exactly what we do and where we do it - Hypnotherapy in North Kent!

The new name also compliments Heidi's brand spanking new counselling website - North Kent Counselling.

A new report from the department of gastroenterology at King’s College Hospital, London, published in the British Medical Journal, highlights the fact that Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a combination of "psychological" as well as physical factors, and that psychological therapies, including hypnotherapy, can be an alternative to medication.

Excerpt from the Daily Mail:

Hypnotherapy could be the latest weapon in the fight against irritable bowel syndrome, providing benefits that last up to five years.
Conventional treatment – including antidepressant and painkilling drugs – is ineffective, according to a report which says doctors should consider offering psychological therapies.
The report says the condition may have a partial "psychological basis".
...
Small trials have found hypnotherapy was successful as a means of managing symptoms, says a report published today in the British Medical Journal.
It found patients with IBS are more likely to suffer from depression and "abnormal" behaviour patterns including anxiety.
They also display somatisation – the conversion of emotional, mental, or psychosocial problems into physical complaints.

Excerpt from BBC News:

Hypnotherapy could help people with severe irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), researchers say.
Doctors should consider using this and other "psychological" treatments such as antidepressants to help sufferers, King's College London experts say in the British Medical Journal.
However, a shortage of therapists could hinder this, they add.
Experts said there was growing evidence that IBS cases have psychological as well as biological elements.
...
Dr Nick Read, a psychologist and adviser to the IBS Network, said he felt that the majority of IBS patients had a psychologists element to their condition.
He said: "There's now a lot of evidence that psychological therapies can be effective, but a lot of doctors remain sceptical, and carry on treating with drugs which have side-effects, and which basically don't work.
"I work with patients with IBS trying to understand what, for each patient, lies behind the illness."

At North Kent Hypnotherapy we specialise in helping people with IBS by treating the mental aspects contributing to their condition, and it is great for us to see the results we see every day being officially validated by scientists.

Read more about our approach to IBS here.

Wednesday 14th March is National No Smoking Day, which this year holds a special significance to many smokers faced with the reality of a total ban on smoking in public places coming later this year.

The Smoking in the Workplace Ban, which has already been implemented in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, comes into force in England on 1st July 2007. From that date all offices, factories, shops, pubs, bars, restaurants, clubs, public transport and work vehicles that are used by more than one person will be required to be smoke free by Law.

The good news is, if you really want to stop smoking, hypnotherapy could make it up to five times easier for you to quit!

Research comparing many different studies of hypnotherapy has shown that on average, smokers are over five times more likely to break the habit with hypnosis than by willpower alone. Hypnotherapy in general is also proven to be more than twice as effective compared with nicotine gum.

To mark National No Smoking Day, and help those smokers who want to beat the ban and quit before July, we are launching our new '5 Top Tips to Quit Smoking' programme which can help you quit all by yourself! Why are we doing this? Because although we are specialists in helping people to stop smoking, there are only so many people we can physically see in a day, and many smokers who are just too far away to come see us.

For those who prefer one-to-one help, find out how we could help you stop smoking in just 2 hours. Or if you are out of our area - why not visit your local ASDA supermarket on National No Smoking Day, as Hypnotherapists registered by the National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) will be on hand in most stores to help and advise you.

As NCH registered Hypnotherapists, we will be at ASDA Gravesend from 10am to 6pm on Wednesday 14th March (National No Smoking Day), so if you have any questions on how we can help you to be 'smoke free' or 'get unhooked', please feel free to come down and see us.

A review of non-drug pain relief therapies suggests that hypnosis and acupuncture may ease labour pain.

"There is too little research to assess how effective many complementary therapies will be with pain management in labour," said lead study author Caroline Smith. Further research is needed, she said, but "the results concerning acupuncture and hypnosis are encouraging."

In addition to hypnosis and acupuncture, the review examined the effects of massage, relaxation, aromatherapy, acupressure and white noise on pain relief. But the review did not turn up enough evidence to determine if any of the other therapies bring women significant comfort.

The meta-analysis compiles data from 14 studies that included more than 1,400 women. Five studies examined hypnosis, while three studies gauged acupuncture?s effect on pain relief.

"More robust research and more research trials have been undertaken for these two therapies versus the other treatments," said Smith, a research fellow at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates research in all aspects of health care. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing trials on a topic.

Hypnosis reduces the need for drug pain relief in labour, lessens the need for medications that augment labour and increases the number of spontaneous vaginal births, according to the available data. The women treated with acupuncture reported more satisfaction with their labor pain management versus the mothers who did not receive that treatment, the review found.

(Newswise - 16th October 2006)

If you would like to learn self-hypnosis for childbirth, why not join one of our antenatal classes

According to the 'Fear of Flying' programme broadcast tonight on Channel 4, as many as one person in five of us has some degree of phobic reaction to flying - that's 20% of the population!

High profile disasters and terrorist atrocities, such as 9/11, only serve to heighten our fears. According to research reported in New Scientist this week, television distorts our perception of reality, making us more prone to misjudging the actual risks.

Known as the "availability heuristic", first identified in the 1970s by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, people are more likely to pay attention to the vividness and emotional impact of past events than on the probability of them happening again. In other words, people tend to rate their chances of dying in a plane crash higher after watching a news item about such an event.

As Hypnotist Lawrence Leyton shows in the Channel 4 'Fear of Flying' programme, it is possible to erase the negative thoughts and feelings of terror with positive feelings, no matter the source of the fear.

At North Kent Hypnotherapy, we use all the underlying techniques shown in the programme (as well as others) to help clients overcome their fears and phobias. Unlike the programme, however, we let clients test themselves in their own time and in their own way (as we don't have to make the experience interesting watching for television).

So if you are one of the many people who suffer from fear of flying, why not give us a call to see how we can help you. Or if you are out of our area, why not select a competent and ethical therapist based nearer home by visiting the Quest Institute or the National Council for Hypnotherapy.

The warm weather that we have been enjoying lately reminds us that the winter is well and truly over and that the summer holidays are nearly upon us. And with thoughts of bikinis and shorts, comes the realisation that there is a little bit more of us to see than last year.

There are over 5000 different diet plans in the world, and there is one problem with all of them. They don?t work long term. The problem with diets is that they trigger your natural survival mechanisms ? your body believes that food (or certain essential food groups) have become scarce, so you start to get cravings that motivate you to find them; fatty or sweet foods become especially attractive because they have high-energy value.

Of course you lose weight initially, but as soon as you stop dieting your body starts storing the surplus to help you build up reserves, in case there is another famine! And so the yo-yo diet cycle continues.

The real issue is that we eat for reasons other than hunger. Hypnotherapy can help you to change your relationship to food, allowing you to take control of your eating habits and break out of the endless diet trap. It is not the cheapest way to lose weight, but it is certainly the most effective and longest lasting. And because you are not denying yourself the foods you love, it is also fun and easy.

Two new studies presented at an international meeting of doctors, researchers, and academics in Los Angeles, as part of Digestive Disease Week 2006, showed hypnosis could help IBS patients who hadn't been helped by other treatments.

The hypnosis researchers included Magnus Simren, MD, of Sahlgrenska University Hospital's internal medicine department in Gothenburg, Sweden. Simren's hypnosis studies had a combined total of 135 IBS patients. The patients' average age was 41; most were women.

In both studies, participants were split into two groups. One group got 12 weekly one-hour hypnotherapy sessions focused on gut-related problems. For comparison, the second group didn't get hypnosis. In one study, the comparison group got 12 weeks of attention from doctors and nutritionists. In the other study, the comparison group got no special care.

The patients rated their gastrointestinal symptoms, quality of life, and depression at the study's start, immediately after 12 weeks of treatment, and again six and 12 months later.

"The hypnotherapy groups improved significantly in both studies regarding gastrointestinal symptoms and the control groups did not," Simren says.

Significant improvement (meaning improvement not likely due to chance) in gastrointestinal symptoms was seen in 52% of the hypnotherapy groups, compared with 32% of the comparison groups.

The improvements were mainly seen with symptoms of abdominal pain, distension, and bloating, rather than for bowel habits, the study shows.

(Web MD - 24th May 2006)

Hypnotherapy could offer relief from severe chest pain that is not caused by a heart condition. Researchers found 80 per cent reported 'significant' relief from pain after undergoing the treatment.

About a third of people who have chest pain have no identifiable cause for why they suffer. Researchers believe that acid reflux or psychological problems could be to blame - and young women seem to be more prone to getting the pain.

(Daily Mail - 20th April 2006)

As we highlighted in a previous article, it pays to be an optimist. Take a look at the following letters:

HAPPINESSISNOWHERE

What did you read? Was it "Happiness is nowhere" or "Happiness is now here"?

According to an article in New Scientist, smokers with lung cancer who continue smoking may prevent the chemotherapy treament from working. Nor are patches the answer, as it turns out it is nicotine that causes the effect.

Srikumar Chellappan and colleagues at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, Florida, looked at how nicotine affected the performance of three anti-cancer drugs - gemcitabine, cisplatin and Taxol.

Nicotine protected the cancer cells by activating two genes called XIAP and survivin, which prevent the cell suicide normally induced by the drugs (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0509313103).

"Patients who continue to smoke have worse survival profiles than those who quit before treatment," says Chellappan. "Of course they have to be treated, but they should be undergoing smoking cessation programmes."

(Issue 2546 of New Scientist magazine, 08 April 2006, page 20)

Hypnotherapy is a safe, natural way to quit smoking, and is up to three times more effective than Nicotine Replacement Therapy (patches, gum etc). Please contact us for more information on how we can help you to quit.

Hypnotherapy is a drug-free, natural therapy with over 150 years of scientific research behind it.

Ironically, the first scientific experiments on hypnosis were performed by sceptical physician, James Braid, in an attempt to understand or debunk hypnosis, which was then the preserve of entertainers and known as 'Animal Magnetism'. His work turned hypnosis into a discipline accepted by the medical community and upheld by scientific experiment, and earnt him the title 'Father of Hypnosis'.

However, in the UK at present, it is almost impossible to obtain Hypnotherapy on the NHS, and there are only a handful of medical health insurance companies offering rebates or incentives for those wanting Hypnotherapy. It appears to be a similar story in the USA, as noted in a recent article in the New York Hospital Newspaper.

And yet, in the long term, Hypnotherapy could save the Government and private health insurers millions of pounds each year... as well as vastly improving the outlook for many patients (and stressed or overworked staff) by complementing medical approaches.

For many smokers wanting to kick the habit, National Stop Smoking Day on 8th March comes as a mixed blessing. For some, it acts as an encouragement to continue the good work they started at New Year; for others, it is a painful reminder that the "season of good willpower" is well and truly over.

Many smokers will be contemplating quitting now that the pressure of New Years is over, whilst others are vowing to stay at home and smoke twice as many cigarettes on the 8th as a mark of defiance...

The Gravesham and surrounding boroughs are organising a number of events to help smokers - according to Gravesend News Shopper, Carbon Monoxide tests and stop smoking advice will be available to the general public at Dartford Priory Centre from 10am - 4pm, all day at Asda in London Road Swanley, and at lunchtime for students and staff at North West Kent College's Dartford campus.

Gravesend's Town Crier will be telling (or is that yelling?) people about stop smoking stands at the Thames Way Asda store, The Grand on the High Street, and the North West Kent College's Gravesend campus.

As we mentioned in our previous blog, Hypnotherapy is three times more effective than patches or gum, so we want to do our bit to help local smokers quit this Stop Smoking Day.

According to Scotland Today, there are calls for hypnosis treatment for smokers to be funded by the NHS ahead of the public smoking ban.

According to research into the most effective methods to stop smoking, hypnosis was found to be three times more effective than Nicotine Replacement Therapy (i.e nicotine patches or gum). A New Scientist article (vol 136 issue 1845 page 6) confirms:

"To find the most effective method to stop smoking Frank Schmidt and research student Chockalingham Viswesvaran from the university of Iowa used a meta-analysis, utilising the results of more than 600 studies totalling nearly 72,000 people.

The results, which were published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and included 48 studies of hypnosis covering 6000 smokers, clearly showed that hypnosis, to use the same terminology as the quit counsellor, was three times more effective than NRT."

Smokers find it so hard to quit because their unconscious mind has a faulty program which believes smoking is serving a positive purpose. And because the unconscious mind is responsible for keeping you safe, it has many ways to override your conscious will. The combination of hypnosis and NLP is so sucessful in helping people to quit smoking because it effectively re-programs your unconscious mind to work with you to achieve your goal.

If you are trying to make that New Years resolution stick, but are finding the 'season of good will-power' is coming to an end, why not contact us to find out how we can help you stop smoking today.