Many people wonder how well they can be hypnotized. Take the quiz and find out how receptive you are to hypnosis.
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Welcome To JohnWeirHypnosis.com
Congratulations on your decision to empower your life. You have already taken a big step forward to freedom from those old limiting ways simply by coming to this website. Transformation is just around the corner in your life and when you learn how to tap into the incredible power of your subconscious mind success can be yours easier than imagined.
John Weir is an award winning Board Certified Hypnotist and Certified Instructor that has been helping people just like you discover their greatness and realize their true potential. Please take this opportunity to explore the website because it contains a variety of resources to help you transform your life. We encourage you to sign up for John’s newsletter by entering your name and email in the box on the right and to connect through social media. That way you can stay up to date with all the new ways you can empower yourself through your mind.
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Latest ARTICLES
If you are struggling with an issue in your life or have a challenge standing in the way of your success then it’s time to take back control by doing bed time self-hypnosis.
In life, there are so many demands placed upon us that very rarely do we have the time to devote to doing self-hypnosis or simple relaxation throughout the day. However, we all have time at night as we enter that private space inside of ourselves when we lay down to sleep. In fact, when we are lying down and unwinding from the day, our brainwaves naturally begin to slow down without any effort on our parts. As your brainwaves slow down and your body relaxes, your mind continuously becomes more and more suggestible to your self-talk and suggestions. This makes it the perfect time to spend a few minutes doing self-hypnosis since your brainwaves are already conducive to the hypnotic state.
It’s time to take advantage of this natural hypnotic state to condition your mind for success in any area of your life. You can improve something very specific such as increasing motivation to achieve weight reduction goals or perhaps wake up in the morning with more energy. Perhaps, you may just want to improve your general well-being or increase your overall feeling of self-confidence. You can improve anything your like.
The process is very simple yet extremely powerful. Tonight when you lay down for bed, take a few deep breaths, slowly exhale, and let your body relax as you normally do. Once you have done that, close your eyes, and simply begin giving yourself positive suggestions directed towards your goals. Pretend that you are a great coach or the ideal parent that is motivating, encouraging, and loving.
For example, if you desire to reduce your weight you might suggest to yourself:
“Everyday I am getting healthier. It is easy for me to make healthy choices. I value my body and only find healthy things attractive and appealing to me. I can achieve my goals. This is easy for me. I am more motivated every day.”
You can also come up with a simple mantra to repeat again and again so that a single idea can get deeply conditioned into the mind.
Some possible mantras for weight reduction are:
“I eat less and feel fuller”
“Every day and in every way I am getting healthier and healthier”
“I am slim and trim”
“Nothing tastes as good as thin feels”
Tonight at you are drifting off to sleep be sure to remember that you are in a self-hypnotic state. Take advantage of this receptive state by programming your mind with positive suggestion and visualizing your success. Put this process to the test for a month. I know you will love the results.
For more on hypnosis, self-hypnosis, and other self-help techniques please visit www.johnweirhypnosis.com or get hypnotized right now by downloading an effective hypnosis session at www.hypnosisaudiomall.com.
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Shelley Thomas, 53, was wheeled into an anteroom at London's Middlesex Hospital in preparation for pelvic surgery. A patient going into that operation is usually given a mix of painkilling narcotics and nerve-quelling tranquilizers. But not Thomas. Instead she rested on a gurney, alert and calm, taking deep breaths at her Hypnotherapist's instruction. Thomas counted aloud, "One hundred, deep sleep; 99, deeper sleep; 98 ... " "By the time I got to 95, the words and numbers had all gone," says Thomas. "It's quite peculiar. They all go." Minutes later, thoroughly hypnotized, Thomas was rolled into the operating room. There she underwent a 30 minute procedure with no anesthetics and no discernible pain. Her hypnotherapist stayed by her side throughout, monitoring her trance state and refocusing her mind when it drifted.
Thomas' story is not as extraordinary as you might think. Since the early 1990s, thousands of patients have opted for hypnosis - either as a substitute for or (more typically) as a complement to anesthesia - in a wide variety of surgical procedures, from repairing hernias to removing tumors. At the University Hospital of Liége in Belgium, a team of doctors led by Dr. Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville has logged more than 5,100 surgeries by hypno-sedation, a technique Faymonville developed that replaces general anesthesia with hypnosis, local anesthesia and a mild sedative. "Patients tell us that it is a very special experience," says Faymonville. "We now have people coming from all over the world."
Hypnosis was first used as a surgical anesthetic in India in 1845 but was quickly abandoned with the introduction of ether the following year. The practice languished for decades, becoming, at least in the public eye, little more than a parlor trick. In 1958 it was sanctioned by the American Medical Association for use in medicine and dentistry. Since then, doctors have hypnotized patients to help ease such ills as migraines, depression, anxiety and chronic cancer pain.
But it is in Europe that surgical applications of hypnosis have flourished. The new interest stems in part from studies showing that hypno-sedated patients suffer fewer side effects than fully sedated ones do. According to Faymonville, hypnotized patients can get by on less than 1% of the standard medications required for general anesthesia, thus avoiding such aftereffects as nausea, fatigue, lack of coordination and cognitive impairment. In a 1999 study of thyroid patients, Faymonville found that the typical hypno-sedated patient returned to work 15 days after surgery, compared with 28 days for a fully anesthetized patient.
Meanwhile, studies using advanced scanning technology have shed new light on how hypnosis works to block pain. In a report published two years ago in the journal Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, Dr. Sebastian Schulz-Stubner of the University of Iowa reported using heat-producing their modes to measure the pain thresholds of 12 healthy volunteers ("painful" stimuli earning a rating of 8 or higher on a 10-point scale). When the participants were hypnotized and re-exposed to their modes, all 12 reported feeling significantly reduced pain (with ratings of 3 or lower) or no pain at all.
The differences in the subjects' brain scans were equally striking. The typical pain signal follows a well-worn path from the brain stem through the midbrain and into the cortex, where conscious feelings of pain arise. In Sebastian Schulz-Stubner's study, the hypnotized group showed sub cortical brain activity similar to that of non-hypnotized volunteers, but the primary sensory cortex stayed quiet. The "ouch" message wasn't making it past the midbrain and into consciousness.
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Everyone knows that water is important, but have you ever seen it written down like this before?
75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. (Likely applies to half the world population.) In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is often mistaken for hunger. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one's metabolism as much as 3%. One glass of water shuts down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University of Washington study.
Lack of water, the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.
Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a printed page. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79%, and one is 50% less likely to develop bladder cancer. Are you drinking the amount of water you should everyday?
No wonder Coke tastes so good: In many states (in the USA) the highway patrol carries two gallons of Coke in the trunk to remove blood from the highway after a car accident or from road kill. You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of Coke and it will be gone in two days. To clean a toilet: Pour a can of Coke into the toilet bowel, and let the real thing sit for an hour, then flush clean. The citric acid in the Coke removes stains from vitreous china. To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers: Rub the bumper with a crumple-up piece of Reynolds Wrap Aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola. To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour a can of Coca-Cola over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion. To loosen a rusted bolt: Applying a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola to the rusted bolt for several minutes. To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola into the baking pan, wrap the ham in aluminum foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is finished, remove the foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for sumptuous brown gravy. To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of Coke into a load of greasy clothes, add detergent, and run through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola will loosen grease stains. It will also clean road haze from your windshield.
FYI: The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. It's Ph is 2.8. It will dissolve a nail in about 4 days.
To carry Coca-Cola syrup (the concentrate) the commercial truck must use the hazardous material place cards reserved for highly corrosive materials.
The distributors of Coke have been using it to clean the engines of their trucks for over 20 years!
Still want that Coke?
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People around the world might find themselves feeling very, very sleepy today. Today marks the first World Hypnotism Day, sponsored by hypnotists and hypnosis advocacy groups around the world. Professional hypnotists and trade organizations want to clear up hypnosis myths and drum up some clients.
When most people hear the word hypnosis, they immediately think of villainous mind control or crazy after-prom antics. But hypnosis practitioners say the only people who take a ride through a hypnotic landscape are the ones who want to see the sights.
A person has to be willing to be hypnotized. They have the power to reject suggestions made to them at anytime, Weir said.
Munhall hypnotist John Weir has been working his clinical magic on patients for 5 years. He said the brain function under hypnosis is similar to normal activities such as daydreaming, getting caught up in a book, or crying during a movie.
Hypnosis is thought to be effective during these suspension-of-disbelief moments because the patients are more receptive to new ideas and behaviors in this daydream-like state of mind.
Research suggests people willing to hand themselves over to hypnotists on a subconscious platter might reap rewards.
Weir said he is frequently consulted for help with smoking cessation, weight loss, controlling anxiety, or reducing phobias.
One of Weir's patients, Robert Kacey, 26, of Los Angeles, used hypnosis to overcome his fear of test taking before he too the Pennsylvania Bar Exam.
Kacey enlisted Weir's services after his Harvard-ready law school entrance exam score was reduced by 20 points under real test-taking circumstances.
The hypnosis patient said his single session helped reduce his anxiety and made the bar exam feel like any of exam rather than what it was: the test that decided his professional fate.
I honestly didn't think it (hypnosis) would work, but I had to do something. It worked though! I didn't have my stomach full of acid and wasn't running out of the room before the test, Kacey said.
Hypnosis is starting to gain acceptance in medical circles as an alternative to commonly prescribed treatments.
The practice was shown to control pain in a recent English clinical study. Researchers found that cancer patients who were hypnotized felt less pain, and anxiety than patients who received standard care while receiving spinal taps.
Another study indicated that irritable bowel syndrome might be mind over matter. Approximately 7 out of 10 patients reported improvement in their condition after undergoing hypnosis.
Whether the application is medical or psychological, more uses are being suggested regularly.
The American Medical Association recognizes the power of hypnosis and encourages research.
Some practices, such as using hypnosis to recover memories of childhood sexual abuse or other trauma, are frowned upon.
Patients and practitioners insist the technique works if someone truly wants to change his or hercondition
or behavior be it quitting smoking or trying to loop someone out of a recurring dream.
Weir estimates his clients are doing 85 percent of the work.
It's going to be unlikely that someone who uses hypnosis to quit smoking will be successful unless they
want to change, Weir said.
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Like turkey at Thanksgiving and gifts at Christmas, making a New Year’s resolution is tradition. But many people find it difficult to keep their resolutions. IN order to obtain their goals, many people look to hypnosis.
“Hypnotism is the bypass of the critical factor and the establishment of selective thinking in the subconscious mind,” said John Weir, a hypnotherapist, will be conducting a free seminar at the Radisson Hotel Pittsburgh Greentree during the second annual World Hypnotism Day on Wednesday.
Two sessions have been scheduled for Wednesday. At 6 pm, there will be a stop smoking seminar. That will be followed at 8:30pm by a weight reduction program.
We strategically placed World Hypnotism Day on Jan. 4,” said Weir, who has been a hypnotherapist for five years. He is the president and CEO of the Hypnosis Center for Motivation and Habit Management in Munhall.
Weir said the first of the year is the perfect time to promote hypnotherapy. He said people are more open to a hypnotism approach with their New Year’s resolutions fresh in their minds.
Weir said there are many misconceptions concerning hypnotism.
First, hypnotism only works when someone wants to be hypnotized for a certain thing. Weir said people cannot be hypnotized against their will. The participant must be totally relaxed and willing to fall into a state of consciousness that is between being awake and being asleep. Weir explained that some people who are willing to hypnotized aren’t totally relaxed and don’t fall deep enough in that state of consciousness to make significant progress.
“The process is all up to the person when they get into that natural state of mind,” Weir said, adding that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. “The hypnotherapist is just a guide.”
Weir said if a person goes to a hypnotherapist with just quitting smoking in mind, the hypnotherapist cannot put any other suggestion into the person’s subconscious. That means if the hypnotherapist tells the person they will cluck like a chicken every time the phone rings, it won’t work.
Weir said that every client has the power to end a session whenever they want.
Weir said that quit smoking and weight reduction seminars were introduced because those are the two most requested sessions.
With Weight loss, Weir said it is suggested to the client that when he or she eats less, the feeling of satisfaction will be obtained. The client must also do exercises while sitting down at the table, closing their eyes and saying a few words to remind them to be satisfied. Weir said this process becomes automatic to the client.
“They also learn how to eliminate the emotional connection to food,” Weir said.
Weir said some clients can be aided in controlling weight with just one session, while others it may take up to five- depending on the emotional connection some people have with food.
Quit smoking sessions normally last one to two hours for one to three sessions. The number of sessions depends on the client’s motivation and desire.
When the client falls into the trance-like state, Weir will give suggestions, linking the habit of smoking to wanting a glass of water, and placing a post-hypnotic suggestion for washing away the need to smoke.
Linda Walters, of Munhall, went through only one session with Weir three years ago to stop smoking, a 20 year-old habit.
“I didn’t trust myself to do it on my own,” Walters said. She tried to quit cold turkey for years with little success. “I heard about it (hypnotherapy) from several people who said it worked, and John (Weir) was right down the street, so I went.
Walters said she met Weir with typical misconceptions in her head, but the consultation with Weir debunked those thoughts.
“It’s very peaceful and calm and effortless really,” Walters said. She said it was easy and didn’t require her to apply a nicotine patch on her shoulder or chew nicotine gum.
Walters only went for one two-hour session and has not had a cigarette in three years.
“The first two weeks were the hardest,” Walters said, “I still had an urge to smoke, but your brain kicks in and wipes away the urge.”
Walters said the session worked better on her than on her friend that accompanied her. That friend returned to smoking. “She’s a nervous person, and she wasn’t relaxed enough,” Walters said.
Along with smoking and overeating, Weir said he handles people with everyday problems and challenges like stress issues, anxiety, and confidence. He doesn’t take on problems like alcoholism and drug abuse.
For more information on World Hypnotism Day and hypnosis visit Weir’s website at www.johnweirhypnosis.com.
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When I started thinking about writing this column, I have to admit that I had no clue whatsoever. I didn't want to do anything too outrageous or expensive, but it had to be something that you would actually want to read. After all, I had to at least be as interesting as a trip to the gay bar. Then my selfish side kicked in and I decided that I should do something that I actually wanted to do and would still fit into the category of "human experiment." And that's how I wound up getting hypnotized.
We've all seen people get hypnotized for comedic value. You know, that guy who clucks like a chicken whenever a bell rings or a group of people who think they are exotic dancers when the music starts. It always seems as if they remember nothing, but are willing to do anything under hypnosis. Outside of these crazy hypnotic antics, people actually get hypnotized to fix all kinds of problems. Want to stop smoking? Get hypnotized. Want to lose weight? Get hypnotized. Want to improve your golf swing? Get hypnotized (seriously!).
I contacted a hypnotist by the name of John Weir who runs the Hypnosis Center for Motivation and Habit Management in Pittsburgh. Being the nice guy that he is, he agreed to do this article with me. I scheduled an appointment, and then a little bit of panic kicked in.
My number one fear was that I would blurt out random secrets about myself, but John reassured me that hypnosis is not a truth serum. I worried that I wouldn't remember anything after coming out, but I worried more that I wouldn't be able to be hypnotized at all.
I had to make a decision on what to be hypnotized for, and I wanted it to be something that would actually (hopefully) impact my life in a noticeable way. I suppose that I could have quit smoking or drinking. I probably should have tried to get past my shoe addiction, but instead I chose to get rid of stress and anxiety. To be quite honest, since I have no desire to let you, a bunch of strangers, into my personal life, I will just tell you this: every now and then for the past several months I have felt very anxious and stressed causing me to clench my jaw, leading to migraines and general crabbiness. I told John all about it before our session and kept my fingers crossed that hypnosis might knock it out of me.
John asked me a series of questions about what makes me feel stressed, how I physically feel when I get anxious, and how I would like to feel. The entire time, I was sitting in the most comfortable leather recliner ever, which was enough to almost make me doze off. I lay back in the chair and our session began. For those of you who are curious, there was no swinging watch.
John put me deeper and deeper into hypnosis, until the point where I couldn't open my eyes anymore. I honestly couldn't believe I went under; I was so busy thinking about what I was going to write in this article. Then it finally happened. I don't know exactly when or how, but I remember thinking, "Holy crap! Am I hypnotized?" John told me that if I tried to open my eyes I wouldn't be able to, and then asked me to try. I couldn't. He then lifted my right arm in the air and said that I wouldn't be able to put it down and that the harder I'd try to put it down the stiffer it would get. He was right. I remember being curious, though, as to whether if I really wanted to - if I really used enough effort - I could open my eyes or put my arm down. The thing is, I just didn't want to.
I think that one of the reasons hypnosis came so easily for me was John's voice. I would seriously listen to this guy read biology textbooks on tape as a bedtime story -- it's that amazing. The whole feeling was so calming and relaxing, just like those few minutes before you fall asleep at night but are still aware of your surroundings. However, a nap was not on the agenda and, now that I was hypnotized, it was time to get down to business. One of the first things I remember doing was imagining a basement filled with boxes. Each had a label on it, and they consisted of things like "education," "past relationships," "the job hunt." There were even a few people I gave their own entire boxes to. Next, under John's instruction, I pictured an endless black pit in my basement and one by one threw those boxes down the hole. After all of the boxes were gone I grabbed a broom and swept the place clean. Damn, that felt good.
Our next exercise felt a little more intense to me, mainly because I had to deal with conflicting emotions. John touched my left shoulder and told me to think of a time that I was most calm, happy, etc. As he would tap my shoulder, each tap was meant to give me that feeling. Mission accomplished. Then he moved on to my right shoulder, where with each tap I was meant to feel those anxious, stomach-tightening bad feelings. After I was feeling sufficiently crappy from that, he started tapping both shoulders and made it so that the good feelings overpowered the bad feelings, and no matter what shoulder he tapped I could only feel the calm, happy stuff.
I think my favorite part of the hypnosis was one of the last exercises we did, and that was meeting my future self. John had me picture myself with all the stuff that makes me anxious taken away. I had an awesome job, a much better apartment, I could afford all the shoes I wanted and still pay my bills. Then I had to take myself now, and go up to my new self and congratulate her. So I told her she rocked and gave her a big hug. That was about it for my hypnosis, but right before I came out I think I remember something John saying something about the color red. I am kind of fuzzy on this part, but I have since painted two of my living room tables a fire-engine variety.
When I came back to the real world, I felt like I had taken an eight-hour nap in 20 minutes, but the session actually lasted over an hour. I left John's office, got into my car and realized that I became a whole new person! I never in a million years would have thought that the hypnosis would actually take, at least not this well. That night at work I had a table of screaming children and trashy parents who took 20 minutes to decide what flavor of wings they wanted. And you know what? It didn't even faze me! I just kept smiling. The next day, I had a million things I thought I needed to do, but if I wanted to just sit down and relax for a minute, I did just that. It didn't make me feel anxious like it usually would. A few days later I was on the bus trying to get to work and there was construction. This delayed my trip by a good 20 minutes, making me very close to being late for work. I didn't care. The amount of anger and frustration that normally would have piled up inside of me -- at the bus driver, at the construction workers, at the police controlling the lights -- it just disappeared.
Even last night, one week later, as I was starting to write this article, a gigantic SUV backed (hard) into my Beetle while it was parked...then took off! While I did run screaming outside cussing them out as they drove away, I didn't do that when they decided to come back. I was cool and laid back.
It's almost like there are times when my mind is telling me that I really should be anxious right now, but when my body tries to feel that way it just gives up. It won't happen. Now my only worry is that my hypnosis is like a good drug that might wear off any day.
Jodi Temyer recently graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.A. in English writing and English literature. She is currently living in Pittsburgh while working as a freelance writer and part-time waitress. She loves good food, even better beer and shoe sales. Suggestions, comments and letters of admiration can be sent to
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Whether you want to believe it or not, your thoughts do create your reality. Everything begins with a thought and even the smallest one can transform into something very powerful. It is important to closely monitor your thoughts and take an active role in rejecting the old negative programming limiting greater success in life. There is no such thing as an insignificant negative thought. All negative thoughts have the power to implant fear, doubt, and insecurity into the mind regardless of how big or small it may seem. Here is a quote from one of my favorite books “Warrior of the Light” by Paulo Coelho that I feel demonstrates the importance of keeping a close eye on your thoughts:
“The Warrior of the Light pays attention to small things because they can severely hamper him.
A thorn, however tiny, can cause a traveler to halt. A tiny invisible cell can destroy a healthy organism. The memory of a past moment of fear allows cowardice to be reborn with each new morning. A fraction of a second opens the way for enemy’s fatal blow.
The Warrior is attentive to the small things. Sometimes he is hard on himself, but he prefers to act in this way. “The devil is in the details,” says an old proverb.” (pg 49 Warrior of the Light by Paulo Coelho)
It is time to live like a Warrior of the Light and start paying very close attention to the “little things” or the thoughts that are constantly streaming through your mind. We must take an active role in keeping our minds positive if we are going to achieve our dreams in life. In another article, I explained how we enter a natural self-hypnotic state every night before we fall asleep, and how our minds are very receptive to our self-talk during this quiet time. In this article, I want to teach you the right way to deliver suggestions to yourself so you can maximize this time every night and begin removing old negative programming from your life once and for all.
The first lesson in giving yourself suggestions is one of the “little things” that always needs your attention. This simple, little shift in self-talk is sometimes all that is necessary to begin creating new breakthroughs in your life. The lesson is called the Pink Elephant and here it is:
Take a deep breath in and clear your mind. Now whatever you do…don’t think of a pink elephant on a skateboard. Seriously, don’t think about a pink elephant skateboarding. As you read those words what did your mind immediately think about? A pink elephant, of course. This is a valuable lesson to learn because what it demonstrates is that the subconscious mind doesn’t understand negative connotations in speech only on conscious mind (logical part) can.
When I ask new clients what they want to achieve during their initial intake interview, the majority say things like “I don’t want to be overweight,” or “I don’t want to smoke” and after that simple example with the pink elephant it should be clear to you why most people struggle with moving forward. The struggle occurs because the focus of their subconscious mind remains on the negative outcome and the subconscious is designed to actively move toward a person’s most dominate thought or object of focus.
Rather than stating what you don’t want, it is important to make a little shift in your self-talk and affirm what you do want. An easy way to do this is once you say what you don’t want, immediately stop yourself and flip the statement in a positive way. The previous examples could be flipped into a something like; “I want to look great in my bathing suit” or, “I want the freedom non-smokers have.” These types of suggestions get your subconscious mind moving in a new direction and towards the things you desire. So always remember when giving yourself suggestions make sure you are focused on your positive outcome rather than what you don’t want.
Another way you can take advantage of your nightly self-hypnosis time is by creating a mantra for yourself. A mantra, or a scared verbal formula that is used in meditation, self-hypnosis, and prayer, is an excellent way to recondition your mind. This type of suggestion is excellent for self-hypnosis because mantras are easy to repeat with very little conscious effort. Mantras are short, sweet, and effective. Your mantra can be anything you desire.
Here are a few examples of some positive mantras you may consider using:
“I eat less and feel fuller”
“Calm and Confident”
“God renews my life”
“Happy, Healthy, and Joyful”
“Everyday and in every way I am getting better and better” (The famous self-healing affirmation from Emile Coue).
As you repeat your mantra, simply let your imagination flow and imagine yourself doing, having, or achieving what you desire. Have fun creating your mantras and watching your creative mind come alive as you repeat it during your self-hypnosis time before bed.
If you have very specific goals that you want to achieve then follow these 6 criteria for making effective goal achievement suggestions. It is important when pursuing a specific goal that your suggestions are: Positive, Present Tense, Simple, Measurable, Believable, and Carries a Reward.
Following these rules when creating a self-hypnosis suggestion will maximize the effectiveness of your self-hypnosis time. It is easiest to write down your suggestion until it’s committed it to memory. Remember to always keep it simple so it requires as little conscious effort as possible.
Here are a few simple examples of suggestions that follow these rules:
“When I sit down at dinner, I am satisfied with a half portion and feel in control”
“Every day I am more comfortable as a non-smoker and feel proud.”
“When I golf I am mentally focused on each shot and play great.”
If you keep these 6 criteria in mind when creating your suggestions you can never go wrong. Once you have created a suggestion that is specific to your goal, like the mantra, simply repeat it over and over again when drifting off to sleep. Allow your imagination to take over and imagine yourself carrying out the necessary actions to achieve what you want or simply enjoying the benefits of the improvement in life.
These are just a few of the many ways you can recondition your mind with positive suggestions. Be sure to use the time before sleep to your advantage and program your mind for success. Have fun with this and challenge your imagination to become more vivid every time. If you have any questions feel free to contact me at www.johnweirhypnosis.com.
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1. Incorporate Visualization Into Your Practice and On The Course:
Visualization has been thoroughly tested by many research facilities including Harvard University and Stanford University, and virtually all studies report improvements in performance. A study that was done in the 80’s with the Soviet Olympic Team preparing for the Games showed that the athletes that made the greatest improvements spent up to 75% of their time working on the mental aspects of their sports. The least progress came from athletes that just focused on physical training.
The researchers at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado put visualization to the test with 30 college aged golfers. The 30 golfers were divided into 3 groups and were asked to practice their putting each day for a week. One group was instructed to practice physically putting the ball but without any visualization. The second group was instructed to visualize sinking each putt just before putting. This visualization process included mentally rehearsing the entire putt. They visualized the backswing, the stroke through the ball, and the ball rolling in the center of the cup. The third group was instructed to visualize before each shot, but instead of visualizing the ball going in the cup they were told to imagine the ball going left, right, and stopping before the hole. The results after the week were incredible. The physical practice group improved by 11%. The visualization group that imagined the ball going in to the cup improved accuracy by 30%. And for the group that visualized the ball coming up short, their accuracy declined 21%.
If you want to immediately perform better on the course then visualization is a must. Master it and watch your performance take off to new levels.
2. When Facing a “Big Shot” Recall Past Successes:
When faced with pressure situations, the pros recall memories of success to stay positive and fuel their confidence to perform when it counts. A recent example of this point comes from Bill Haas after his victory at the 2012 Northern Trust Open. After the victory Haas was quoted saying, “I’ve done this once, let’s do it again.” When you approach a pressure shot, think back to all the times you succeeded in similar situations. This will direct your mind to be focused on success and the outcome you want to achieve. It will also increase your ability to execute through mentally rehearsing previous successes. Just like visualization, positive memory recall prepares the subconscious mind for success before performance. Take some time to think back to some of your best shots now. That way when the time comes to bring it up your mind, you will have some easy reference points. Put this strategy to the test...I know you will like the results.
3. Expect To Make Some Mistakes:
Many amateurs golf with perfectionist mindsets and the problem with this mental attitude is when a poor shot is made it causes the golfer to lose confidence in their swing and evokes negative feelings and thoughts. Walter Hagan said that his greatest skill was his ability to forget the bad shots. Hagan’s strategy was simple; he gave himself permission to make 7 poor shots a round. If he hit a bad one, he didn’t stress about it because it was just one of the 7. Walter Hagan won 11 majors, 45 PGA tour victories, as well as other milestones, and if he didn’t expect to be perfect than perhaps it is time to release the idea of it from your game too. Releasing the idea of perfection will keep you more relaxed on the course, keep you more in the present moment, and help you maintain a positive mental attitude. If you are a golfer that is plagued with negative thinking on the course, then definitely put this idea to the test...your golf game with thank you.
4. Smile More on the Course...Even if you must Force It:
Believe it or not smiling more on the golf course can actually boost your performance here’s how. When you smile, your body immediately releases endorphins that cause an elevation in your mood and reduction in all forms of stress. Psychologists have also discovered that even if you force a smile it can instantly lift your spirits and break negative moods so as the old saying goes “fake it till you make it.”
How does this translate to the course? Smiling serves golfers in three big ways. First, It is an instant stress reducer which can be used before big shots and in pressure situations. Also, stress creates tension and tension inhibits swing performance. Smiling more often is a natural swing enhancer since it will keep us physically and mentally relaxed. Only in this state will our best performance be consistently executed.
Second, smiling can be used to break patterns of negative thoughts or emotions. In NLP, there is a technique called pattern interruption. A pattern interruption is when a person does a behavior outside their normal actions to interrupt the flow of habitual negative thoughts or emotions. Smiling is a great pattern interruption because when we are smiling it is impossible for negative emotions to exist in us. This is due to a principle of congruency. So next time negativity is creeping into your golf game eliminate it by smiling.
Finally, smiling more will increase your enjoyment of the round. When you are having fun you typically perform better. Plus, researchers in Sweden say that smiling is contagious. By smiling more you will be boosting the mood of your entire foursome. Positive people produce positive results so share a smile.
5. Eliminate Thoughts of Mechanics While Addressing the Ball:
Many amateur golfers and those who are struggling with their swing tend to have their minds focused on mechanics when addressing the ball. While this may be good to do on the practice range while your grooving your swing, on the course it is something that can actually inhibit performance. To perform at your highest level you must get out of your own way and simply execute the swing you have practiced so much. This cannot be done when you are thinking about your mechanics. Your golf swing has been done so many times that your subconscious mind can perform it without you having to think about it. How often do you consciously think about how to turn on your car or lock your doors? You never do, you just do it and the same thing can be done with your golf swing. A way to perform your best more consistently is by training your mind to focus on one thought over the ball. In my opinion, the most powerful thought you can focus on is the picture of your outcome. When you can do this I call it performance without conscious effort and it is the supreme zone state. Practice holding the image of your outcome firmly in mind when addressing the ball and then let it rip. You will amaze yourself at how well you will execute your swing and produce the results you want.
John Weir is a peak performance coach who uses hypnosis, NLP, and other motivational tools to help golfers maximize their talents through the power of their minds. He is the creator of the Mental Caddie - Golf Enhancement System http://www.mentalcaddie.com which powerfully conditions golfers subconscious minds for success on the course. This proven system puts golfers on the fast track to reducing their score, increasing focus and concentration, and consistently golfing at a high level. John is an author, speaker, and a self-help product developer. Connect with John Weir on Facebook at the Mental Caddie fan page http://www.facebook.com/mentalcaddie
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Hypnotist John Weir has been guiding people to change their behavior patterns since his South Hills hypnosis center opened.
After he became board-certified in 2001, Weir started his full-time hypnotism practice known as the Hypnosis Center For Motivation and Habit Management in Pleasant Hills.
As a result of treatment, clients have learned beneficial breathing techniques and a more stress-free lifestyle -- not to mention that they have finally kicked bad habits such as smoking and emotional eating.
"Most people want to see a hypnotist when all else fails," Weir says, by Brady Wolfe South Hills Recordphoto by Brady Wolfe South Hills Record and he has made it his mission to banish preconceived notions about hypnosis -- earning him national recognition.
Weir, 27, was bestowed three separate honors last year -- all considered prestigious for a young man -- or anyone -- in the hypnotism field.
He was featured on the cover of the Journal of Hypnotism's December 2008 issue. The quarterly publication is the most prestigious trade journal in the profession with readership in 65 countries.
Weir is the youngest hypnotist in the history of the National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH) to receive that honor.
"People that I look up to have always been on the cover," he says.
"It all just seems so surreal. Your dreams always seem to be in the future. To have actually have grasped it seems pretty surreal. It's always something that I've wanted to achieve. At the same time, I was not actively pursuing how I would get on the cover. This makes me want to fulfill the expectations that have been placed on me. I want to hold myself to another level and do everything I can for the profession."
In addition, Weir has been asked to be a columnist for the Journal of Hypnotism. The column is entitled "Enthusiastic Professionalism."
This past year, Weir received the 2008 NGH Charles Tebbetts Award for "Spreading the Light of Hypnotism."
When notified of the award, Weir was shocked.
"When they called my name it was very humbling. When we went to that convention, the president (of the National Guild of Hypnotists) said, 'This young man is the future of hypnotism,'" Weir says.
"One of my goals was to do something exceptional this year. I never thought I'd actually win anything. There are some amazing minds and great therapists in the field."
Weir has been a member of the local chapter of The Hypnotism Society of Pennsylvania for more than a year. Founded in 1943, the society is made up of three chapters Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Bucks County. The Pittsburgh society has close to 40 members, and approximately 25 of those members regularly attend meetings.
"It's a support group and a learning educational system, and it's really exciting," says Lois Reich, president of the Pittsburgh Chapter for three years now.
Reich, a former massage therapist, became a board-certified hypnotist in 2000. She gives hypnosis lectures in the Pittsburgh area.
Reich says misconceptions are common when people think about the concept of hypnosis.
"People need to know hypnosis can make them feel good about themselves as opposed to reaching out to artificial means like anti-depressants," she says.
The organization works to spread awareness about the benefits of hypnotism, and monthly meetings in Pittsburgh's North Hills are open to the public.
Hypnotism 101 Growing up in Greensburg, Weir didn't think that he would end up helping people through hypnotism.
"I would have never in a million years, even thought I'd be doing this," he says.
He couldn't have imagined being able to help people alleviate a list of conditions linked to stress including everything from irritable bowel syndrome to dermatological problems.
Weir says hypnosis is also a good pain management tool.
"Stress is such an onset for so many disorders and issues -- chronic pain, arthritis, dermatological disorders and hypertension. Hypnosis works by alleviating stress and creating new types of behaviors to deal with the stress," he says.
"Just teaching a person to do self-hypnosis can create triggers inside of people instantaneously and bring about certain feelings such as confidence or relaxation. (After hypnosis) the act of pulling one's ear may trigger the same feeling as being on vacation. Just the process in of itself is very stress-reducing and relaxing."
At 18, Weir went with his sister to see a motivational speaker, and that's when his fascination with hypnotism began.
"My sister was one of the only one of 300 people to go up on stage after a demonstration," Weir says.
"She was hypnotized pretty easily. It took that type of demonstration to sell me. That was my "a-ha" moment. That's when I saw my future. I thought 'I want to learn how to bring potential out in people like that.'"
Weir has used self-hypnosis to stop smoking, and he has remained a non-smoker for nine years.
"I've increased my GPA and decreased my fear of public speaking. I have no issue with it now," he says.
According to Weir's Web site, hypnosis is "psychology in action," and the subconscious mind becomes highly available and receptive to new suggestions, beliefs and ideas.
"I've traveled to various cities and practiced with some of the best (hypnotists) that I could find," he says.
Every hypnotist is required to maintain so many continuing education units per year, Weir said.
"That's 15 to 20 hours of an additional training program."
He particularly gets fulfillment from training new hypnotists."Indirectly, those positive letters come back to me. It makes me feel good to see their success because indirectly I've helped them get to that point where they are out there helping people, and that really gets me charged up."
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John Weir isn’t a golf professional, and he doesn’t sell any of those gimmicky golf training aids you may see advertised on the Golf Channel, but he insists he can help shave several strokes off your game.
How? Through hypnosis.
Weir, 28, has been fascinated with hypnosis since he was 18, and his sister Carolyn was hypnotized at a motivational program in their hometown of Pittsburgh. The hypnotist made his sister so rigid that he laid her face down across two chairs and stood on the small of her back to finish his lecture. Weir was immediately hooked.
Weir went on to study psychology at Point Park University in Pittsburgh and became certified in hypnosis in 2001. He has helped people stop smoking, lose weight, improve sleep, gain confidence and overcome stress, depression and social anxieties.
“People think they’re relinquishing control of their mind to a hypnotist,” Weir said. “That’s not the case. What we do is help people take back control of their minds.”
Weir enjoyed a successful practice working with hospitals in Pittsburgh, but four years ago he experienced an epiphany. He took up golf.
Weir never took a golf lesson, but through self-hypnosis he applied the techniques he used in his clinical practice to his golf game: focus, confidence, trust and staying relaxed and loose. Weir replaced his negative thoughts with a vision of his perfect swing. Within a year, he chopped 20 strokes off his score and began averaging in the mid- to low-80s even though he rarely hit balls at a range.
Soon Weir’s family and friends sought his assistance. His father took eight strokes off his handicap in one season. His 84-year-old grandfather had a handicap in the mid-20s, but after one session, he shot a 78 in his league.
Weir began working with other golfers in Pittsburgh and appreciated their motivation and willingness to do anything to improve, unlike some of the down-on-their-luck patients he worked with in hospitals.
So Weir moved to Myrtle Beach, S.C., and opened his golf hypnosis practice in April.
Last weekend, he conducted seminars at the annual convention of the National Guild of Hypnotists at the Royal Plaza Hotel & Trade Center in Marlboro and remained in the region to teach a golf program Tuesday.
On Monday at Cyprian Keyes Golf Club in Boylston, Weir’s powers of suggestion were put to the test. He agreed to try to solve the biggest golf woes of myself, T&G sportswriter Paul Jarvey and local golf pro Jim Fenner. I’ve had so much trouble hitting my irons that I’ve pretty much given them up in favor of hybrids. Jarvey stabs at his short chip shots near the green, and Fenner turns his right hand over so much on lag putts that he has tried putting left-handed and cross-handed.
Unlike what you have seen in the movies, Weir didn’t swing a watch. During our session, we didn’t even swing a club. While we sat in the clubhouse, Weir told us to close our eyes and imagine that they were too heavy to open. For some reason, I panicked and wanted to run out of the room. Instead, I opened my eyes, and Weir suggested that in the interest of time I observe the other two. They soon fell into a deep hypnotic state. Weir had Jarvey and Fenner extend their left arms and convinced them that they couldn’t lower them. Neither could.
“It felt stiff,” Jarvey admitted later. “It was a strange feeling.”
Under hypnosis, Jarvey admitted to a lack of confidence when chipping and Fenner admitted he couldn’t relax when putting. Weir basically told Jarvey to replace his negative thoughts when chipping with the positive thoughts he experienced when writing, and he urged Fenner to replace his negative thoughts when putting with the positive thoughts he felt when teaching. At the end of the session, Weir told Jarvey and Fenner to open their eyes and asked them how long they thought the session had lasted. Jarvey guessed 20 minutes, Fenner 5 to 10. The session actually lasted 45.
Jarvey, Fenner and I then headed out to play 18 holes to see if the hypnosis had helped.
Fenner turned his wrists on his first putt, but not as much afterward. Weir’s session reminded him to stick with a pre-shot routine and visualize each putt dropping into the cup.
“It helped take some of the anxiety out of the long putts,” Fenner said. “Rather than taking my time and relaxing and hitting the shot, I was rushing through it, and that added to the problems.”
Later in the week, Fenner said he had never putted better.
Jarvey didn’t need to take many short chips much during our round, but he said he was more relaxed in general.
“Did I think it was worthwhile? Yes,” Jarvey said. “But I can’t say that it shaved any strokes off my score today.”
Weir admitted that hypnosis is not a quick fix. He can make hypnotic suggestions, but the golfer must practice Weir’s techniques, the same way a golfer must practice the swing changes that a golf pro suggests.
“It’s like a doctor prescribing the medication,” Weir said. “They can give you all the medication in the world, but it’s still up to the person to take it.”
Weir suggests mental drills and follow-up sessions. For more information, visit his Web site, www.johnweirhypnosis.com.
Although, I wasn’t actually hypnotized, listening to Weir seemed to help anyway. I was definitely more relaxed. I shot my best round of the year and improved my best score at Cyprian at this season by 10 shots. On my second nine, I shot 1 over par. Maybe it was a coincidence because I still hit hybrids instead of most irons.
But maybe it wasn’t.
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1. Morning Meditation
The best thing that you can do for yourself is to meditate every morning. Meditation has been a secret of the major successes in all walks of life. By doing a daily morning meditation it will benefit you in many ways
Morning meditations train your mind to focus. Focus and clarity of mind are two major keys to success. The greatest successes have all stressed that you need to know what you want and keep your thoughts focused on your dreams. Mediation strengthens this ability.
Morning meditations give you the opportunity to cast out your intentions. Tap into the flow of the universe and put the law of attraction to work in your life. Thoughts create energy and by casting out your intentions it will strengthen your ability to manifest your dreams more rapidly.
Morning meditations will keep you grounded, peaceful, and full of well being. As you practice meditation, you will find yourself living more in the present moment with a peaceful mind and in a position to handle life in a calm and confident way.
2. Bedtime Self-Hypnosis
Self-hypnosis is very powerful and it is something that needs to be done on a daily basis to condition the mind for success. While drifting off to sleep every night, the human mind naturally enters a self-hypnotic state. This is the ideal time to be conditioning your mind to produce the results you desire, to bring forth the resources needed to succeed, and strengthen your level of motivation. Here are some ways to utilize this time on a nightly basis to achieve your dreams more rapidly:
Use a Mantra (or Simple Suggestion):
“Every day and in every way I produce greater and greater success”
“I have unlimited confidence and abundance”
“Everything I do is successful”
“Prosperity and abundance continuously flows into my life”
“I am always at the right place at the right time, and the right people as appear in my life.”
Visualize yourself living out your dreams:
Visualize yourself enjoying the prosperity
Visualize clients lining up to work with you
Visualize the freedom to do all that you desire
3. Live your life “As If” you already have achieved your dreams
An easy way to materialize your dreams rapidly is to begin living your life the way you would if you already had everything you wanted. Take time to discover how the most successful you walks, talks, carries their body, gestures, interacts with others, and so on. Begin living as the most successful you now and it powerfully sends out the vibration to the universe to bring these elements into your life. The subconscious mind and the universe operate in alignment with congruency. If you believe that you already are financially prosperous, have unlimited health, and never-ending motivation than your mind and the universe will be actively working at materializing this to achieve congruency in your life.
Simple ways to live as your most successful self:
Smile more every day
Live with an attitude of gratitude
Treat others with kindness and respect
Expect success and believe in yourself
Bless other people’s success
Give to others and be willing to receive from others
Stop complaining and focus on what you are manifesting
Know that you are always exactly where you need to be
Let go of control and trust the universe will guide you to your dreams
Follow these simple steps on a consistent basis and your life will transform in a dramatic way. It isn’t a question of “if” it works, it does and will. The question is, when will you start using these tools on a daily basis to manifest the life of your dreams?
Find out more ways to master your mind at www.johnweirhypnosis.com and experience hypnosis right from the comfort of your home at www.hypnosisaudiomall.com.
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CARY, NC - Richard Skinner has been golfing for more than 50 years.
To this day, he'll do anything to improve his game.
He has fancy clubs that are supposed to improve accuracy.
He has spent hours at the driving range or on the practice green.
And he obeys superstition: Never use a "water ball" because it encourages bad habits and possesses bad luck.
Despite all this, he can't putt consistently.
So on July 15, the White Lake resident drove 100 miles to Cary for a lesson. "If you don't try to get better you're wasting your time," said Skinner, 66, who plays golf at least once a week.
But during his four-hour stay at Prestonwood Country Club, Skinner never touched a club. And his instructor wasn't even a golf pro.
Instead, Skinner entrusted his technique with John Weir, a certified hypnotist who helps golfers shave strokes off their game.
People have long turned to hypnotists for help with overcoming some of life's toughest obstacles, such as weight loss and smoking cessation.
So it makes sense that more hypnotists are catering to those who subscribe to the tired, but true, cliché: Golf is played in the space between one's ears.
"Athletes perform best in a relaxed state," said Dorothy Taylor, a Cary hypnotist who helped organize the event at Prestonwood.
Golf hypnosis, while not exactly new, has enjoyed solid growth in recent years as more athletes discover the link between mental and physical discipline, said Dwight Damon, co-founder of the National Guild of Hypnotists in Merrimack, N.H.
"Only in the last 20-or-so years have we become aware of the mind-body relationship," he said.
The awareness has come as hypnosis in general has become a more accepted treatment. The cartoon misconceptions of swinging watches are fading, Damon says.
"It's being picked up at hospitals more and more," he said, adding that guild membership has grown 70 percent to 12,000 in 70 countries during in the past six years.
In a banquet room at Prestonwood, Weir walked confidently between tables populated with 10 serious golfers who had paid $75 for his three-hour seminar. They listened intently as he talked about the human psyche and the origins of frustration.
"Relaxation is the key to fixing your golf swing," Weir said between PowerPoint slides that featured images of golfers and the human brain.
A person's habits, he said, are a reflection of the golfer's self-image and that self-inflicted pressure can hinder a player's confidence, performance and enjoyment.
Whether a golfer becomes tense before putting for birdie or pulls out a "water ball" before attempting a shot over a pond, negative thoughts undoubtedly change the course of one's game. "It can become a case of the mind not getting out of the way of the body," said Weir, who wore a gray suit and power tie.
To break bad habits, Weir encouraged participants to breathe deeply, relax their muscles and imagine the best shot they ever hit.
"Think about that shot. ... What did it feel like?" Weir said calmly to the participants, whose eyes were closed in the dim room. "Visualize that swing."
Weir told them to play it over - again and again - in their minds. The goal, he said, was to bypass the self-critical thoughts and establish acceptable, positive, selective thinking in the subconscious mind.
Poor mental mechanics are what brought Roxanne Hicklin to Weir's seminar.
The Raleigh resident won the Ladies Club Championship at Prestonwood in 2008. But she still struggles with negative thoughts while standing over short putts.
"I'm more likely to make a 20-foot putt than a 5-foot putt because there's not as much pressure," she said.
Hicklin said it got to the point where she didn't expect to make the short putts anymore because she became tense while trying not to miss.
"The lessons hadn't done any good for me," she said.
Which is why she turned to Weir.
"I'm not desperate," she said. "This is just something I haven't tried. So, why not?"
On Thursday, she took to the green for some putting practice at Wildwood Green Golf Club in Raleigh.
She read the breaks, gripped her club, lined up the putt, took her time and swung smoothly.
She sunk the 15-footer.
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In the world today there is nothing more beautiful than to see you smile. Your incredible smile has the power to light up the entire world as it fills the atmosphere with your loving and positive energy. Every time you showoff that gorgeous smile of yours, you represent all that is good in the world and become a loving example for all to follow. You are an ambassador of love, hope, and peace every time you smile. It is simply amazing how powerful your smile really is. Your smile gives encouragement to the discouraged. It makes the lonely feel loved, and the depressed feel positive. Your smile shows support to those in need. It comforts those in pain and brings peace to the anxious. When you smile, you let your family, friends, and even strangers know that someone loves and cares for them. Yes, that beautiful smile of yours does make the world a better place. It is your silent gift and secret blessing of love that you graciously share with all. You will always find that the more your smile the better you will feel since smiling gives permission for the cycle of love to flow in your life. As an ambassador of love, make the commitment to smile at one more person today than you did yesterday. Decide right now that today you will be a loving influence in the world and bless more people with your radiant smile. Spread hope, love, and peace today by freely giving your smile away today to all you see. That beautiful smile of yours is contagious. One that is sure to have people smiling and feeling good all day because of you. So smile today. In fact, smile a lot today and bless this world with one of your greatest gifts, your perfect smile!
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Hypnosis, with its long and checkered history in medicine and entertainment, is receiving some new respect from neuroscientists. Recent brain studies of people who are susceptible to suggestion indicate that when they act on the suggestions their brains show profound changes in how they process information. The suggestions, researchers report, literally change what people see, hear, feel and believe to be true.
The new experiments, which used brain imaging, found that people who were hypnotized "saw" colors where there were none. Others lost the ability to make simple decisions. Some people looked at common English words and thought that they were gibberish.
"The idea that perceptions can be manipulated by expectations" is fundamental to the study of cognition, said Michael I. Posner, an emeritus professor of neuroscience at the University of Oregon and expert on attention. "But now we're really getting at the mechanisms."
Even with little understanding of how it works, hypnosis has been used in medicine since the 1950's to treat pain and, more recently, as a treatment for anxiety, depression, trauma, irritable bowel syndrome and eating disorders.
There is however, still disagreement about what exactly the hypnotic state is or, indeed, whether it is anything more than and effort to please the hypnotist or a natural form of extreme concentration where people become oblivious to their surrounding while lost in thought.
Hypnosis had a false start in the 18th century when a German physician, Dr. Franz Mesmer, devised a miraculous cure for people suffering all manner of unexplained medical problems. Amid dim light and ethereal music played on a glass harmonica, he infused them with an invisible "magnetic fluid" that only he was able to muster. Thus mesmerized, clients were cured.
Although Dr. Mesmer was eventually discredited, he was the first person to show that the mind could be manipulated by suggestion to affect the body, historians say. This central finding was resurrected by Dr. James Braid, and English ophthalmologist who in 1842 coined the word hypnosis after the Greek word for sleep.
Braid reportedly put people into trances by staring at them intently, but he did not have a clue as to how it worked. In this vacuum, hypnosis was adopted by spiritualists and stage magicians who used dangling gold watches to induce hypnotic states in volunteers from the audience, and make them dance, sing or pretend to be someone else, only to awaken at a hand clap and laughter from the crowd.
In medical hands, hypnosis was no laughing matter. In the 19th century, physicians in India successfully used hypnosis as anesthesia, even for limb amputations. The practice fell from favor only when ether was discovered.
Now, Dr. Posner and others said, new research on hypnosis and suggestion is providing a new view into the cogs and wheels of normal brain functions.
One area that it may have illuminated is the processing of sensory data. Information from the eyes, ears and body is carried to primary sensory regions in the brain. From there, it is carried to so-called higher regions where interpretation occurs.
For example, photons bouncing off a flower first reach the eye, where they are turned into a pattern that is sent to the primary visual cortex. There, the rough shape of the flower is recognized. The pattern is next sent to a higher - in terms of function - region, where color is recognized, and then to a higher region, where the flower's identity is encoded along with other knowledge about the particular bloom.
The same processing stream, from lower to higher regions, exists for sounds, touch and other sensory information. Researchers call this direction of flow feel forward. As raw sensory data is carried to a part of the brain that creates a comprehensible, conscious impression, the data is moving from bottom to top.
Bundles of nerve cells dedicated to each sense carry sensory information. The surprise is the amount of traffic the other way, from top to bottom, called feedback. There are 10 times as many nerve fibers carrying information down as there are carrying it up.
These extensive feedback circuits mean that consciousness, what people see, hear, feel and believe, is based on what neuroscientists call "top down processing." What you see is not always what you get, because what you see depends on a framework built by experience that stands ready to interpret the raw information - as a flower or a hammer or a face.
The top-down structure explains a lot. If the construction of reality has so much top-down processing, that would make sense of the powers of placebos (a sugar pill will make your feel better), nocebos (a witch doctor will make you ill), talk therapy and meditation. If the top is convinced, the bottom level of data will be overruled.
This brain structure would also explain hypnosis, which is all about creating such formidable top-down processing that suggestions overcome reality.
According to decades of research, 10 to 15 percent of adults are highly hypnotizable, said Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford who studies the clinical uses of hypnosis. Up to age 12, however, before top-down circuits mature, 80 to 85 percent of children are highly hypnotizable.
One adult in five is flat out resistant to hypnosis, Dr. Spiegel said. The rest are in between, he said.
In some of the most recent work, Dr. Amir Raz, an assistant professor of clinical neuroscience at Columbia, chose to study highly hypnotizable people with the help of a standard psychological test that probes conflict in the brain. As a professional magician who became a scientist to understand better the slippery nature of attention, Dr. Raz said that he "wanted to do something really impressive" that other neuroscientists could not ignore.
The probe, called the Stroop test, presents words in block letters in the colors red, blue, green and yellow. The subject has to press a button identifying the color of the letters. The difficulty is that sometimes the word RED is colored green or the word YELLOW is colored blue.
Sixteen people, half highly hypnotizable and half resistant, went into Dr. Raz' lab after having been covertly tested for hypnotizability. The purpose of the study, they were told, was to investigate the effects of suggestion on cognitive performance. After each person underwent a hypnotic induction, Dr. Raz said:
"Very soon you will be playing a computer game inside a brain scanner. Every time you hear my voice over the intercom, you will immediately realize that meaningless symbols are going to appear in the middle of the screen. They will feel like characters in a foreign language that you do not know, and you will not attempt to attribute any meaning to them.
"This gibberish will be printed in one of four ink colors: red, blue, green or yellow. Although you will only attend to color, you will see all the scrambled signs crisply. Your job is to quickly and accurately depress the key that corresponds to the color shown. You can play this game effortlessly. As soon as the scanning noise stops, you will relax back to you regular reading self."
Dr. Raz then ended the hypnosis session, leaving each person with what is called a posthypnotic suggestion, an instruction to carry out an action while not hypnotized. Days later, the subjects entered the brain scanner.
In highly hypnotizables, when Dr. Raz's instructions came over the intercom, the Stroop effect was obliterated, he said. The subjects saw English words as gibberish and named colors instantly. But for those who were resistant to hypnosis, the Stroop effect prevailed, rendering them significantly slower in naming the colors.
When the brain scans of the two groups were compared, a distinct pattern appeared. Among he hypnotizables, Dr. Raz said, the visual area of he brain that usually decodes written words did not become active. And a region in the front of the brain that usually detects conflicts was similarly dampened.
Top-down processes override brain circuits devoted to reading and detecting conflict, Dr. Raz said, although he did not know exactly how that happened. Those results appeared in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A number of other recent studies of brain imaging point to similar top-down brain mechanisms under the influence of suggestion. Highly hypnotizable people were able to "drain" color from a colorful abstract drawing or "add" color to the same drawing rendered in gray tones. In each case, the parts of their brains involved in color perception were differently activated.
Brain scans show that the control mechanisms for deciding what to do in the face of conflict become uncoupled when people are hypnotized. Top-down processes override sensory or bottom-up information, said Dr. Stephen M. Kosslyn, a neuroscientist at Harvard. People think that sights, sounds and touch from the outside world constituted reality. But the brain constructs what it perceives based on past experience, Dr. Kosslyn said.
Most of the time bottom-up information matches top-down expectation, Dr. Spiegel said. But hypnosis is interesting because it creates a mismatch. "We imagine something different, so it is different," he said.
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When people want to create a change or improvement in their lives they often ask themselves, “When would be the best time to do this?” I can remember when I wanted to quit smoking in the past, this question would constantly roll around in my mind. Instead of taking action, I found myself just putting it off by creating more and more excuses that were only fooling myself. I had the false belief that it would be easier to succeed during a less stressful time, while on a vacation, or after the holidays. However when those times arrived, I found myself just making more excuses. The truth is the best time to take action and improve your life is now. Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth, told a parable that teaches this lesson. I will paraphrase the metaphor:
A Buddhist master and his new student were walking down the road and the student asked, “Master, how do you start the process of Zen (or the path of enlightenment through mediation and mindful thinking)?” The master stopped and asked the student, “Are you able to hear the sound of the stream in the distance?” After several moments the student responded, “Yes! I can hear it master.” The master replied, "Start from there." They continued to walk in silence and after an hour went by the student asked, “Master, what if I didn’t hear the sound of the water?” The master stopped, looked his student in eyes, and replied “I would have said, start from there.” What is the meaning of this story? The meaning in this context refers to the idea that the time to take action to improve the quality of your life is right now. It doesn’t matter what is going on in your life. If you are stressed…start from there. If you are on a vacation…start from there. If you feel you are or aren’t ready to make a change…start from there. No matter where you are in life…start from there and you will be you happy you did because success is right around the corner when you decide to act.
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Your thoughts are a major determiner of the level of success, happiness, and peace you experience in life. Below you will find a transformational self-talk script that can help you release limitations and increase your level of optimism.
It is an excellent practice to declare positive affirmations or self-talk scripts throughout the day, especially first thing in the morning and before bed, to maintain a positive mental attitude. By doing mental exercises like this, you will begin reprogramming your mind for greater achievement and happiness. So print out this article and read it daily in a positive, optimistic tone of voice. It will get you feeling confident and motivated to pursue your goals every day. Enjoy!
I smile a lot today because it is a glorious day full of love, opportunity, and success! Today is a day of victory and triumph as I powerfully take new actions towards my goals and dreams. I am an action taker and can achieve anything I put my mind to. Today I choose to release my very best into all that I do as I live my life with an attitude of gratitude, love, and optimism. My determined spirit enables me to move past all limitations and lets me courageously go after all that I desire. I am worthy of success and happiness. This worthiness is my birth right and I fully intend on developing the greatness inside of me which I have been entrusted. I embrace my talents and every day I love to reveal more and more of my unlimited potential and success. My creative mind inspires me every day with a potpourri of bright, colorful, and positive pictures of my dreams. These positive images constantly erupt in my mind like a field of blossoming flowers on a spring day. New insights, inspired ideas, and creative thoughts are always coming to me as my subconscious mind works non-stop to get me closer to my goals. Today is my time to shine, my time to succeed, and my time to take positive action. My goals are so compelling that I passionately pursue them with energy and excitement. I love pursuing my dreams as much as achieving them, and every day I have more fun moving along my path to excellence. Today I know in my heart I can do, be, and achieve all that I desire. I am driven, motivated, and excited to take action now. Today, I get one step closer to what I want. I am worthy of success and I believe in myself. I have greatness inside of me and starting right now I give myself full permission to release this greatness into all that I do. Today is the first day of the rest of my life and I live it to the fullest!
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The origin of sports psychology dates back many decades, and the field first started gaining popularity in the 1930’s with the classic basketball experiment conducted by Dr. Blaslotto at the University of Chicago. Since that time, there has been an increasing emphasis placed on the role of the mind in sports due to the growing number of institutes such as Stanford University and Harvard University conducting research studies into peak sports performance. In the 1970’s, Dr. Bob Rotella, a famous golf psychologist, hit the scene which helped popularize the use of psychology in golf, and helped to further validate the importance of the mind in sports. Besides sports psychology, the other field that was simultaneously gaining popularity and proving effective was the area of sports hypnosis. In this article, I will explain to you the differences between sports psychology and sports hypnosis as well as shed some light on the truth about hypnosis in sports.
In my opinion, I think sports psychology is a great thing. However, I feel that it is limited in an area that is so very important. I believe that sports psychology contributes two major elements to athletes. First, sports psychology has been excellent at gathering research, conducting experiments, and providing data about athletic performance. With more and more graduate level programs being offered in this field it is opening the doors to grant money to fund more research projects and ongoing experiments. This leads me to the second contribution of sports psychology which is the data they accumulate and produce. Sports psychologists have definitely provided very insightful information into the minds of athletes and what is needed to produce results.
The downside or the limitation of sports psychology that I see is not in the information, but in the vehicle of communication used to transfer that knowledge to athletes. I believe that sports psychology deals with the wrong part of our mind to affect change or improvements in a person’s behavior. Sport psychologist’s primarily deal with our conscious mind. If we were going to summarize the role of the conscious mind in a nutshell definition it would be: The primary job of the conscious mind is to judge, evaluate, and critique all the information we are exposed to. It then filters this information and only allows into the subconscious mind information congruent with the habits/beliefs established there. Since sports psychologists communicate to and work with an athlete’s conscious mind, the information has to go through our filters and processes of analysis. The end result is the information is intellectually understood but rarely applied in one’s performance. Athletes will know what to do with sports psychology, but following through with the insights and applying it is another story entirely.
The most powerful contribution to the sports world in regards to sports hypnosis is the vehicle of communication. Sports hypnosis provides a unique tool to athletes who want to speed up the learning process. The subconscious mind is a person’s bio-computer that operates things like the automatic processes of the body, provides the storehouse for memories, triggers your habits, and maintains your self-image to name a few.
Information is processed by the subconscious mind non-critically the same as a computer. It doesn’t discern the difference between good or bad it simply moves towards a person’s most dominate thoughts. Additionally, it doesn’t know the difference between real events or vividly imagined ones, and will actually develop the neuro pathways during intense visualizations virtually the same way as if the action was actually being performed.
In my opinion, the natural communication process of hypnosis gives sports hypnotist’s a tremendous advantage over sports psychologists. First, as you can see from the description above the subconscious mind accepts information non-critically as opposed to dealing with the critical conscious mind. This gives athletes the ability to change negative belief systems and habitual behaviors much faster and easier than if dealing only with the conscious mind, which judges all the content. Next, when the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it acts upon it without having to consciously think about the task. Do you have to think about your habits or do they just naturally happen? Sports hypnosis is a way to eliminate negative habits quickly by going to the source of them and makes it easier to implement new positive behaviors as a natural part of your performance. Finally, hypnosis makes it easier for athletes to create life-like visualizations and virtual performance experiences. When an athlete does mental rehearsal like this, the subconscious mind begins developing stronger neuro pathways to physically execute the task. The Brain Imaging Center in San Antonio, Texas said that visualization actually creates 80% of the neuro structures in the brain to perform a task.
Sports hypnotists also have the advantage because they can utilize the information gained from sports psychologists and can condition it in the subconscious mind of an athlete. This is so powerful and important because hypnosis is able to help athletes take the information they intellectual understand and transform it into actual behaviors, which then become like second nature for the athlete. Hypnosis goes beyond understanding and intellectualization, and accelerates the process of application, integration, and the formation of positive habits.
The main disadvantage in regards to hypnosis is that it is a process that is misunderstood by athletes. Many still hold the common misconceptions about hypnosis due to false portrayals from Hollywood. There is a lot of information available that reveals the truth about hypnosis, but let me give you a quick summary.
Hypnosis is a naturally occurring process of our minds that is deeply rooted in science and validated by scientific testing using fMRI’s, EEG’s, and more. When a person gets hypnotized they don’t go unconscious or to some mystical place, it is merely an alteration in their brainwave frequency which naturally occurs 7-10 times everyday so subtly that you don’t even realize it. If you have ever driven your car on auto-pilot and arrived at your destination not remembering how you got there then you know what I am talking about. There are 4 major brainwaves; beta, alpha, theta, and delta. Beta is a fully alert, waking state, and Delta is unconsciousness or sleep. Alpha and Theta waves are the in-between states of mind which are utilized in hypnosis. Everyday when you wake up and every night when you go to sleep you go through each of the brainwaves. Hypnosis is a process that makes use of the alpha and theta states of mind because they are our super-learning states in which we can process positive information non- critically and to the subconscious. Also, the alpha state is what all athletes are in when they are in the zone.
Believe it or not, athletes have been using forms of hypnosis for decades. It has just been packaged under a variety of different names. Athletes are more familiar with terms such as visualization, positive thinking, guided imagery, and mental rehearsal which are all elements of the hypnotic process. However, for whatever reasons they shy away whenever they hear the word hypnosis. When an athlete incorporates these elements while in the super-learning state, or hypnosis, they are able to accelerate the learning curve in their sport, increase their ability to execute tasks related to performance, and establish positive habits that lead to success.
The mind plays a pivotal role in peak performance in any sport. Whether you support sports psychology, sports hypnosis, or both just make sure you are incorporating some type of mental training into your practice regimen. When the mind and body come together thats when excellence happens in sports.
John Weir is a Peak Performance Coach and the Creator of the Mental Caddie - Golf Enhancement System available at http://www.mentalcaddie.com. He is a published author, keynote speaker, and sought after trainer in the fields of performance, motivation, and the power of the mind. Connect with John on the Mental Caddie Fanpage and learn more about the mental side of golf http://on.fb.me/ mentalcaddieFB
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The best golfers in the world have all trained their minds for greatness on the course. Most golfers know the importance of mental toughness and the power of the mind in golf. However, the vast majority have never been taught ways to develop their mind’s for peak performance like the best in the game. What you are about to discover is a simple yet powerful method for conditioning your subconscious mind for success on the course so that you too can begin training your mind like the pros.
The method you are about to learn has two parts; Your Perfect Round of Golf and Bedtime Self-Hypnosis (the easiest self-hypnosis method). Part one of the process is describing and writing out in detail your perfect round of golf. The second part is a very effective way of conditioning this perfect round of golf into your subconscious mind so that you are continuously moving towards that outcome.
Before going through the techniques let me tell you why this is so effective, and why it is worth investing some time in it.
First, let me paraphrase a remark made by a great thinker, Albert Einstein. The level of thinking that got you to where you are now is not the level of thinking that will take you to where you want to go. If you are a 20 handicap golfer and want to become a 15 handicap then you must elevate your level of thinking in order to produce a better result. By thinking about and then writing down your perfect round of golf, it forces your mind to begin thinking new thoughts of higher levels of performance. The great motivator, Tony Robbins, said in his Personal Power II program that a person can change their life by changing the quality of questions they ask. If asking better questions can change a person’s life they can certainly change someone’s golf game. The perfect round of golf exercise makes you ask yourself a better quality of question so you can produce a better result on the course.
Second, the subconscious mind always moves towards a person’s most dominate thought. This is crucial to understand and know. Whatever you hold in mind, your subconscious mind begins moving towards it. For this very reason that is why positive, optimistic thinking as well as visualization are so vital to producing your best results. When you write out your perfect day, not only are you introducing to the mind new thoughts, you are also beginning to get the subconscious mind moving in that direction. What is focused on consistently tends to be realized.
Finally, once you have written out your perfect round of golf, it is time to condition this into the subconscious mind while it is in natural super-learning state. This article will teach you a simple technique for self-hypnosis while going to bed. Why this is so important is because the subconscious mind is the part of our mind that controls much of the things we think and do throughout the day. By programming the subconscious mind in the direction of our choice it more often than not speeds up the learning process and makes the changes we want a natural part of daily actions. The subconscious mind is nothing more than a super-charged biocomputer that needs to be told what to do and how to do things. By combining the perfect round of golf with the simple technique you are about to learn you will find yourself accelerating your ability to execute on the course.
Part 1: Your Perfect Round of Golf Exercise
Give yourself some time to open your mind up again like a child and let your imagination run wild. Take your time with this exercise and have fun. You must write down your answers. It is not enough to simply answer them mentally. When you write down your thoughts something magical happens in the subconscious mind and it tends to make a bigger impact. Simply write out the answers to the questions and use the suggestions as your guide. Make sure you dream as big and amazing as you want. This is your absolute perfect round of golf!
Remember to be specific to make the biggest impact in the subconscious mind.
Where are you golfing and who are you golfing with?
(Write down things like -the name of the course, where it is at, what time is your tee time, who you are golfing with, what you are wearing, what’s in your bag, what is the temperature and the weather like - Do your best to be specific)
How do you feel warming up for the round?
(Write down things like - How does your body feel, how relaxed and loose are you, what is your attitude, what kind of thoughts do you have in your mind, what type of energy level do you have - Do your best to be specific)
What is your attitude on the first tee?
(Write down things like - what is your mental state, what are you thinking or saying to yourself, how are you holding your body (body language), how do you feel around these golfers, what are you visualizing, how does your body feel - Do your best to be specific.)
What is your swing like?
(Write down things like - How does your swing feel, how well do you strike the ball, what type of contact do you make, how rhythmic is your swing, what is your back swing like, where are you at impact, how do you finish your swing, what types of shots do you hit, how relaxed are you over the ball, what is your attitude addressing the ball - Do your best to be specific.)
How accurate are you?
(Write down things like - how accurate is your drive, how accurate are your second shots, how many fairways do you hit, how many greens in regulation, how close are you to your targets, what are you visualizing to increase execution - Do your best to be specific.)
What is your attitude on the greens?
(Write down things like - what is my attitude on the greens, what is my mental state, what am I thinking or saying to myself, how do I move on the green (body language), what do I do to read the putts, how well do I read putts, what am I visualizing - Do your best to be specific)
What do you putt like?
(Write down things like - how many 1 putts do you make, how many saves, how much distance of putts do you make, how accurate are you, what is your putting stroke like, what is going through your mind as you are standing over the putt, how do you visualize the line, what is the entire putting process like - Do your best to be specific.)
Describe events of your perfect round
(Write down things like - what exciting things happened in this round, what amazing shots did you hit, what incredible putts did you make, how did you handle the other golfers, did you golf your game, what are the highlights of the perfect round - Do your be to be specific.)
How do you handle adversity during this perfect round?
(Write down things like - How did you overcome poor shots, how did you stay positive, how did you stay focused, how did you let negativity go, how did you handle the competition, how did you stay relaxed - Do your best to be specific.)
What is the end result of the round?
(Write down things like - what was your final score, what milestones did you achieve, what did you win, how do you feel, what was the day like, what did you learn - Do your best to be specific.)
Who am I?
(Write down things like - describe the type of golfer you are, how you feel, how you look, what is your energy level like, what is your confidence like, what mental states give you the edge, what makes you worthy of great success, what champion qualities do you possess - Do you best to be specific.)
What do I need to do to make this round a reality?
(Write down action steps that move you towards this dream round of golf.)
Part 2: Subconscious Conditioning of the Perfect Round to Boost Performance:
Now that you have written out your perfect round of golf it is time to condition this experience into the subconscious mind. Two very effective ways to do this are; First, watching subconscious conditioning videos. Second, through self-hypnosis.
I have made and will continue to create subconscious conditioning videos to help you program the subconscious for peak performance. You can watch these videos for free at the Mental Caddie You-Tube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMentalcaddie.
Please be sure to click like and post your comments about the video. Simply by watching these videos before heading to the course or throughout the day, you are conditioning the mind for success with the positive images and affirmations. The end result is when you are on the course your mind will remember these thoughts and pictures which will keep you in a positive mental state, a key ingredient to low rounds.
The main way to condition the subconscious mind is through self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis lets us access our subconscious mind, the biocomputer, and program it for success. It is not a mystical process, but one that is rooted in the science of our minds. Everyday without realizing it, you go in and out of a light hypnotic state 7-10 times. In fact, if you ever golfed in the zone then you experienced what it is like to golf in a waking hypnotic state. Hypnosis is natural and occurs simply when our brainwaves slow down.
There are 4 brainwaves states: Beta (fully alert), alpha (light relaxation/hypnosis, the zone in sports), theta (deep relaxation, lucid dreaming, deep hypnosis), and delta (sleep/unconscious). Every morning when we wake up, we naturally go through these states: Delta-theta-alpha-beta. Each night as we go to sleep, we naturally go through the reverse process: Beta-alpha-theta-delta. Since we naturally enter into a self-hypnotic state each morning and night, it makes it the perfect time to mentally play your perfect round of golf. Not only is this fun to do, to simply let your imagination run wild golfing your perfect round, it is also a very effective way at enhancing your performance.
When the brainwaves are slowed, the subconscious mind is more receptive to suggestions and ideas. This means that during this time you can give yourself positive self-talk to change old limiting beliefs and to help you feel more confident. The subconscious in this state also lacks the ability to determine what is real and what is vividly imagined. Studies show that the when an athlete really gets into a vivid visualization they are actually strengthening the neuro-pathways as if the actual behavior was taking place. This means that mentally golfing your perfect round and vividly imagining your perfect successful swings it is strengthening your brain’s ability to execute in that fashion more in the future. Many studies have proven that hypnosis and mental rehearsal are very effective and certainly produce results as you practice the skill.
Here is the Bedtime Self-Hypnosis Process:
Step 1: Tonight when you lay down for bed, start by taking a deep breath in, hold the breath for a few seconds and then slowly exhale. Repeat this several times and let yourself relax deeply. Close your eyes and continue breathing deeply.
Step 2: Once you close your eyes, begin giving yourself positive suggestions directed towards your goals or a general positive affirmation several times. One of the most powerful suggestions to use is “Every day and in Every way my golf game is getting better and better.” Say a positive suggestion several times to create a positive environment in your mind.
Step 3: Let your imagination take over and start to mentally play your perfect round of golf. Think about all the things you wrote down and play out the round in your mind. Completely get into the experience. Feel the swing, hear the sounds, see the flight of the ball, let yourself truly get into it as if it was real.
Step 4: If you are doing this in the morning then after you are finished with the round or simply ready to start your day, give yourself some positive suggestions about the day such as “I am energized and excited about my day,” “Today is full of blessings and happiness,” “The day is filled with productivity and excitement.” Use whatever positive suggestion you like and start your day of in a perfect state of mind.
If you are doing this at night which is recommended then simply get lost in the experience until you naturally drift off to sleep. It is that simple.
Recap:
The two part exercise described above is simple and fun yet very effective. Take some time to write out your perfect round of golf and then have fun playing out that round in your mind’s eye. This is one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to increase execution, motor skills, confidence, and performance through the power of your mind. Have fun with this mental golf training technique and feel free to share this with your friends.
John Weir is a Peak Performance Coach and the Creator of the Mental Caddie - Golf Enhancement System available at http://www.mentalcaddie.com. He is a published author, keynote speaker, and sought after trainer in the fields of performance, motivation, and the power of the mind. Connect with John on the Mental Caddie Fanpage and learn more about the mental side of golf http://www.facebook.com/mentalcaddie
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Not only is the state of hypnosis totally natural, but people slip in and out of it all the time and don't even realize it, says hypnotherapist John Weir.
We're doing it all day long, we just don't call it hypnosis, said Weir, president of the Hypnosis Center for Motivation and Habit Management in Munhall. It's a natural function of our brains. Hallmark doesn't have a card for World Hypnotism Day yet, because this is only it's second year, but Weir will mark the occasion with two sessions aimed at the biggest New Years resolutions: weight loss and smoking cessation.
The main thing I try to do is clear up some of the misconceptions that people might see in Hollywood and the media, Weir said.
You're not giving up control. The person under hypnosis is in complete control at all times. Weir says hypnotism can help a subject return to what he calls the natural you, allowing people to correct their thoughts and learned behavior.
It's like putting new programs into a computer, and at the same time deleting old programs, he said.
But Benjamin Radford managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, said there may be an easier way to lose weight or quit smoking.
If you have the self-discipline, save the $250 or whatever it costs, and do it yourself, Radford said.
Radford, author of the book Media Mythmakers, said many people have a sense that there is some mystery surrounding hypnosis and its benefits.
For a lot of people, they need an authority figure to help them unlock their potential or whatever, Radford said.
Hypnosis is as successful as the subject wants it to be, Radford said, and depends largely on the subject's motivation. Weir agreed on that point; desire and motivation are key to altering behavior via hypnosis, he said. And both agreed that a person isn't going to do something under hypnosis that he or she wouldn't do otherwise.
A lot of people worry and say What if you hypnotize me and tell me to bark like a dog? Weir said.
People who participate in hypnosis stage shows might be persuaded to sing like Madonna then and there, Weir said, but not to bark like a cell phone rings. Your brain won't let you do things it thinks are unacceptable. Radford noted that such people tend to be exhibitionists, to a degree, who already are willing to go along with premise of hypnosis before they go onstage.
Radford said he sought the help of a hypnotherapist when he having trouble sleeping in college, but without success. I wasn't willing to say I was hypnotized when I wasn't, he said.
For his part, Weir points out that hypnosis is a viable therapeutic option approved by the American Medical Association.
It lets a person take greater control of their behavior, he said. Hypnosis can help people activate themselves to get to their goals.
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Be a rebel in life and refuse to give into negative thinking. Decide to be a rebel and fight against the tendencies of the world to be negative and pessimistic. Refuse to sell out your mind to negative thinking and make the powerful decision to be an eternal optimist. Do the unexpected and show the world that you are happy. Show the world that it's ok to smile and to do nice things for people. Be a rebel by performing random acts of kindness. Encourage others to success and be quick to compliment. Be a good finder, even if you have to be a detective to uncover something positive. Rebel against the negative ways of the world and be a positive influence. Be the ultimate rebel and have the courage to set the right example. Dare to break the mold, dare to rebel against the norm, dare to be positive even when things look dim. You can do all the things you dream about so rebel against negative thinking by removing the limits to the possibilities of your life. Be rebellious. Rebellious enough to believe you can positively change the world. Refuse to follow the crowd. Be a rebel, a positive thinker, and free your mind of all limiting beliefs. Never give in and keep persisting towards your goals even if others are doubtful. Be a rebel and believe in yourself. Believe you are capable of anything and everything you desire. Live your life with a heart full of passion and a smile on your face. Be a rebel!
Rebel against negative thinking right now and achieve your goals starting now. Go to www.hypnosisaudiomall.com now and discover how hypnosis can help you succeed.
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John Weir, right, president and chief executive officer of the Hypnosis Center for Motivation and Habit Management, in his session with Lenny Bilski, 22, of Pleasant Hills, on Friday.
Now, I want you to make yourself comfortable. Relax and just focus on the story in front of you. Just read my words. And I'd like you to take a nice, deep breath, and as you slowly exhale, just keep reading my words.
And when you're ready, you're going to learn all about today, which is World Hypnotism Day.
That's ... right. You're doing great.
World Hypnotism Day is the brainchild of Tom Nicoli, a certified hypnotist in Woburn, Mass., who said he was looking for a way to promote his profession as a therapeutic tool while erasing the myths and misconceptions.
"It's unfortunate, because there are people like me on hospital staffs all over the world, but it's not widely known," said Mr. Nicoli, 49, who has been practicing for 10 years. "The word 'hypnosis' really freaks some people out."
Patterned after the Great American Smokeout -- during which many people are galvanized to quit smoking -- World Hypnotism Day is Jan. 4, just in time for people who might be struggling to keep their New Year's resolutions.
"It's strategically placed at the start of the new year, when people are more motivated," said John Weir, a hypnotist who practices in West Mifflin. "And we can give them a tool to help them succeed at their resolutions."
Mr. Weir, 27, said he has hypnotized thousands of people since joining the profession in 2001. He has helped subjects with weight loss, smoking addictions, fears of public speaking, driving phobias, sleeping problems and pain management. He has assisted athletes with achieving peak performances and even shaved a dozen strokes off hackers' golf scores.
The costs vary. A three-session stop-smoking program, for example, costs $500, but group rates are more affordable.
The goal, Mr. Weir said, is to reinforce positive motivations for change within the patients. A big part of that involves teaching them how to help themselves so they can leave the nest, so to speak.
"The majority of my clients will stop after the first session," Mr. Weir said. "But additional sessions teach self-hypnosis, so [patients] can reinforce their behavioral changes all on their own. I don't want my clients to be dependent. I want to empower them so they can move forward."
Despite the fictional images attached to hypnosis, Mr. Weir said, it is a naturally occurring state of mind that people frequently experience without realizing it.
"People in auto accidents, athletes in the zone, being lost in a great movie or a wonderful book," he said. "It's not necessarily a relaxed state, but more of an alternative state."
You're enjoying this story, because you're learning about World Hypnotism Day and you're in control. You could stop reading if you want to, but you want to keep reading. Keep reading my words.
Lenny Bilski, 22, of Pleasant Hills, turned to Mr. Weir for help in kicking his smoking habit. After almost four years of smoking, he was up to nearly two packs a day.
Friday morning, he savored what he hoped would be his last cigarette.
Citing health, finances and the wishes of his girlfriend, Mr. Bilski said he was properly motivated.
Sitting back in a deep leather chair, he closed his eyes and listened to Mr. Weir talk him through a 30-minute session.
While ambient music played softly in the background, the hypnotist spoke in a smooth, steady tone and manner, telling the subject to recall a memory of when he was strong, healthy and at his happiest. That feeling is key because Mr. Bilski will want to summon it to mind when he feels weak.
He chose a key word -- "lacrosse" -- as his trigger.
Other mental tools included the selection of a role model -- his grandmother, who did not smoke -- and the sound and image of cool, pouring water. Mr. Bilski was told to turn to water when he feels the urge for a cigarette. And, from now on, the color red will jump out at him through the course of his daily routine, reminding him subconsciously of his strength.
"This is what we do naturally. We create associations," said Mr. Weir, who travels the country giving seminars and teaching others. "We want to create a behavioral change. A lot of people try to quit cold-turkey, and they substitute food. We're creating the connection to water. It's a commodity we can find anywhere you go, and it washes away the desire for cigarettes."
"It felt awesome. Incredible," Mr. Bilski said after the session. "I never felt better in my entire life. I felt heavy, yet felt like I was floating. It was weird."
Whether he will be able to quit smoking remains to be seen. But Mr. Weir expressed confidence.
"It isn't stage shows," he said of his profession. "It's a clear, distinct and separate profession. We're fighting the good fight, kind of like the chiropractors did back in the 1980s. We have educational standards, our own codes of ethics, our own set practices."
World Hypnotism Day, which is being marked in 28 countries and has been recognized by the city of Pittsburgh, is a step toward that perceived legitimacy. People can go to the Web site -- worldhypnotismday.com -- and learn about events and local professionals.
Now, you're ready to proceed. I'm going to count you down and you'll sit up and be able to proceed to the Sports section. That's five ... and four ... and three ... and two ...
Dan Majors can be reached at
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Hoping to add credit to a profession that can always use more of it, the Pittsburgh chapter of the Hypnotism Society of Pennsylvania has scored a trifecta. Proclamations will be issued by Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, Greensburg Mayor Karl Eisaman and West Homestead Mayor John Dindak declaring Jan. 4 "World Hypnotism Day."
"The main objective of World Hypnotism Day is to inform the public of the benefits that hypnotism offers," said John Weir, a Spokesman for the organization. "With this year's mayoral proclamation, it further helps to solidify the creditability of Pittsburgh-area clinical hypnotists."
Weir says many people still possess misconceptions about hypnosis based on weird movies and strange fiction books.
Most folks, for example, don't realize that the American Medical Association has approved the use of therapeutic hypnotism since 1958 or that hypnotism can help you quit smoking, have a painless childbirth, sleep better, reduce stress and -- as Mayor Luke may already know -- improve your golf game.
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Throughout the years, I have heard the greats in the game talk about how they would will the ball to their target. For example, the great Byron Nelson said, "You can sometimes "WILL" something to happen with your body, with your mind. The mind is that strong. You can say 'I want to get this close to the hole.' That's where the mind comes in. The mind has to produce positive thinking. All the great players do that." This ability of the great golfers has always fascinated me and I know it is a skill that the majority of golfers would like to learn how to tap into. The greats knew how to use the power of their subconscious minds through visualization, imagination, and creativity before their shots. What you are about to learn is a simple yet extremely powerful process that you can incorporate into your pre-shot routine that can increase execution and your ability to will the ball to the target more. This mental pre-shot routine process is called Affirm, Visualize, and Commit.
Step 1 Affirm Your Outcome:
After your selected your club and your standing behind the ball, mentally affirm to yourself what you want to achieve with your shot. The subconscious mind always moves in the direction of your most dominate thought so it is important to deliberately get it moving in a positive direction with your self talk.
When affirming your outcome in your mind be sure to state it in a positive way. For example, if you were teeing off on a long par 3 and had to hit over a large body of water you would want to affirm to yourself something like, “This shot is going right near the flag.” Even though this seems simplistic and obvious, I find the vast majority of average golfers doing the exact opposite. I hear them say things like, “I better get out my water ball” or “Don’t hit this one in the water.” While it may seem like a very minor thing, statements or thoughts like these will not only hinder performance, they greatly increase the likelihood of the negative event actually happening. The subconscious mind doesn’t understand negative connotations in speech. If I tell you “Don’t think of a pink elephant,” your mind immediately thinks of a pink elephant. Most golfers are unaware of this fact about the subconscious mind and making this simple shift in your self-talk can sometimes make all the difference in producing better results on the golf course.
Here are some examples of negative thoughts to eliminate during a round and before a shot:“Don’t hook this drive.” “Don’t hit this in the trap.” “Don’t lag this putt.” “Don’t put this one in the trees.”
Shift these thoughts into empowered self-talk:“Hit a solid straight drive.” “This is going right to my target.” “This putt is going in.” “Put this down the fairway.”
To recap, step 1 is to affirm your outcome before every shot in a positive way. You are the boss of your mind so set that powerful force in motion by telling it exactly what you want to achieve in positive terms.
Step 2 Visualize Your Shot and Outcome:
The second step is to visualize your shot and create positive pictures about your shot in your mind. Golfing great, Nick Faldo, said, “Visualization’s the most powerful thing we have.” Even though all the greats stress the importance of visualization, many golfers don’t take the time to visualize before their shot or quickly abandon it if they start struggling. Visualization needs to be a priority in your golf game.
The researchers at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado put visualization to the test with 30 college aged golfers. The 30 golfers were divided into 3 groups and were asked to practice their putting each day for a week. One group was instructed to practice physically putting the ball but without any visualization. The second group was instructed to visualize sinking each putt just before putting. This visualization process included mentally rehearsing the entire putt. They visualized the backswing, the stroke through the ball, and the ball rolling in the center of the cup. The third group was instructed to visualize before each shot, but instead of visualizing the ball going in the cup they were told to imagine the ball going left, right, and stopping before the hole. The results after the week were incredible. The physical practice group improved by 11%. The visualization group that imagined the ball going in to the cup improved accuracy by 30%. And for the group that visualized the ball coming up short, their accuracy declined 21%.
An important thing to know about the subconscious mind is that it doesn’t discern the difference between something real and something vividly imagined. In other words, the more vivid your visualization the better the results you will produce. After you affirmed your outcome, take a moment before every shot to visualize yourself as real and as vividly as you can executing your outcome perfectly. Visualize yourself swinging flawlessly. Experience in your mind’s eye, a smooth, rhythmic backswing and as you release your swing it stays right on plane making perfect contact with the ball. Imagine your ball traveling with the perfect trajectory and right on path to your target. Finally, visualize your ball landing right on your target and set up perfectly for your next shot. Always visualize your shot being executed flawlessly every time. The more real you can make the experience the more your subconscious mind will cause your body to execute in a way to produce the desired result. Think of this as success programming for your mind.
Step 3 Commit and Execute:
After you have programmed your subconscious mind by affirming your outcome and visualizing your success, you no longer need to think about anything. It is now time to fully commit to your shot, step up with confidence, and make it happen. When I use the word commit what I am really talking about is having faith and trust in your ability to execute. One way to achieve this is by releasing all thoughts except your outcome when addressing the ball.
On the golf course we produce our best results when we perform without conscious effort. When a golfer is in the zone what that means is they have stopped the vast majority of conscious thoughts and are simply allowing their body to execute. Bobby Jones said, “You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.”
By following the first two steps, you have already done all the necessary thinking to produce the actions of the swing. So as you address the ball, hold in mind the simple thought, “Commit” or an image of your outcome, and just let it rip. The more you commit the better the results. Put this to the test you just might amaze yourself with the results.
Some of the most historic golfers have learned how to will the ball to their target and you now know a way to do it too. All that is left is to consistently apply this simple process to each shot and reap the rewards of better execution on the course. I will end this article with some words of wisdom from the famous golf psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella, “The correlation between thinking well and making successful shots is not 100 percent. But the correlation between bad thinking and unsuccessful shots is much higher.” Make the commitment to taking active control of your mind on the course I know you will impress yourself with the difference it makes in your game.
John Weir is a peak performance coach who uses hypnosis, NLP, and other motivational tools to help golfers maximize their talents through the power of their minds. He is the creator of the Mental Caddie - Golf Enhancement System http://www.mentalcaddie.com which powerfully conditions golfers subconscious minds for success on the course. This proven system puts golfers on the fast track to reducing their score, increasing focus and concentration, and consistently golfing at a high level. John is an author, speaker, and a self-help product developer. Connect with John Weir on Facebook at the Mental Caddie fan page http://www.facebook.com/mentalcaddie
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With the popularity of hypnosis on the rise and with more people succeeding in life through this powerful process of communication, the most common question that I get from potential clients is “how do I select the right hypnotist to work with?” This short article will provide some simple guidelines to follow when choosing a hypnotist that will best help you succeed at achieving your goals.
The very first thing that should be examined when selecting a hypnotist to work with is to be sure that they have completed professional training courses and have professional credentials. When prospecting a potential hypnotist, take some to time to review their background in regards to their training. Make sure that they went through a qualified professional certification program from a reputable organization.
In my opinion, a hypnotist’s level of education plays a pivotal role in their ability to help you elicit your desired changes. If they just went through a weekend training course, chances are slim that they will have the necessary skill set to effectively help you change. Formal education in the fields of psychology, counseling, or psychotherapy are a plus, but not necessarily a requirement. There are many skilled hypnotists out there without this background in academia, but who have undergone rigorous certification programs that are more than qualified to do the job. Just make sure to do some homework to ensure they have solid credentials in the field.
Second, make sure the hypnotist has a track record of success. It is perfectly acceptable to ask the hypnotist about their experience in relation to the issue you are looking to overcome. Do they have real testimonials on their website? Are there previous clients who you can call or talk to? Have they worked with reputable organizations? These are all valid questions when selecting a hypnotist to help you succeed. Success breeds success and you want to seek out the best in the particular area you are looking to succeed in.
Next, when selecting a hypnotist make sure it is a person you feel comfortable with. Rapport and trust go a long way when working with anybody in this regard or any self-help situation. Without trust and rapport you will have a hard time entering a state of hypnosis and opening up in a way that will help you to make the changes. A golden rule to follow is if you don’t feel comfortable with the person you are working with then they are not the right hypnotist for you.
Finally, it is important that you do not select your hypnotist based on price. There are many people that will find a directory of local hypnotists or go through the yellow pages, and call around to find the hypnotist with the cheapest prices. This is not in your best interest. If you were going in for heart surgery would you seek out the cheapest heart surgeon? Obviously not. You would want to go to the person who was the most skilled for the job. If they were the cheapest that would only be a bonus.
Selecting a hypnotist is the same thing. If you are serious about improving the quality of your life be sure to select the one who can get the job done right rather than wasting time and money with a person who is the cheapest around. It will actually cost you more money and time if you pick your hypnotist based on price. Be willing to invest a little more in the hypnotist who does the best work. You will be happier and more successful in the long run.
If you follow these simple guidelines when seeking out a hypnotist then you will find the one that is a perfect match for you. For more background information on hypnosis, if you have a specific question that you want answered, or to set up a session please contact our office at www.johnweirhypnosis.com. To experience hypnosis right from your home go to www.hypnosisaudiomall.com and download a hypnosis session right now. Remember, everything starts with a thought so make sure your thoughts are positive and move down the path to success.
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