Monday, November 16, 2015

Handwriting Analysis to Help The Forgotten Angels Cat Rescue, 2015

Photo by Sara Fogan


     For the third year in a row, I spent a wonderful autumn afternoon doing handwriting analyses at The Cat Doctor & Friends  veterinary clinic in Santa Clarita, California.  In addition to honoring all things “cat” and introduce residents to Dr. Tracy McFarland and the other wonderful veterinarians and technicians who work at her clinic, the open-house event was also a fundraiser for the Forgotten Angels Cat Rescue. My family adopted our kitty from this rescue a couple of years ago, so I donated all proceeds from the analyses I did today to help support this organization’s rescue efforts. Following is a description of how I use the information I learn about you from your writing to facilitate your hypnotherapy session with me so you can achieve your vocational and avocational self-improvement goals.
    Handwriting is a manifestation of what you consciously think, but it is motivated by a subconscious ideomotor (automatic physical) response. The way you write—the shape and size of each letter, whether you connect the letters and even the speed of your writing—are literally a reflection of your behavior and personality traits. Your handwriting does not reveal your age or gender; nor will it enable me (or anyone else) to determine whether you are right- or left-handed or to predict your future. However, your handwriting will reveal your mood, personality traits, suggestibility and subconscious motivations at the time of writing this sample. Following is a list of some of the characteristics I analyze in every writing sample. I do not focus on the content of what you have written; however, the form and characteristics of each letter will help me identify, confirm or negate your specific personality traits and how those traits may be affecting behavior.
·         Baseline slant: This handwriting characteristic indicates the mood of the person at the time the handwriting sample is done. An upward slant would suggest that you tend to be optimistic. A downward slant suggests a more pessimistic attitude or possible depression, which would necessitate a referral to a licensed medical or psychological professional for further evaluation and/or treatment. A baseline that undulates like waves indicates moodiness, which could be associated with low blood sugar/hunger.
·       Connecting strokes: Writing samples whose letters are connected and flow together indicate someone who has a very methodical and systematic way of thinking. Writing samples that feature little or no connection between the letters could indicate someone who is very analytical and can intuit information or results from just a few pieces of information.
·         Margins: Do you start and/or finish writing at the edge of the page? The more room you leave on the right-hand margin of the page indicates that you tend to be generous with the amount of time and space you leave for other people. If you have wider margins on the left-hand margin of the page, you are more generous with yourself.
·         Pressure of the writing: I can tell by feeling the grooves on the reverse side of the page how much pressure (intent or emotion) the writer invested in writing this sample. Someone who is very passionate or emotional about the topic would tend to exert more pressure when writing. Conversely, areas of lighter pressure (no groove) could indicate less emotion, indifference or even physical weakness.
·         Signature: A person’s signature indicates how he or she would like to be seen by others. It is not necessarily indicative of who the person really is/what the person is really like. Someone whose signature matches or is most like the body of the writing tends to be very no-nonsense; “what you see is what you get.” The opposite would be true of an individual whose signature is very different from the rest of the writing.
·         Slant of letters: The degree of angle or slant of your letters indicates whether you tend to repress or express your emotions. Someone whose writing has a left-hand slant tends to hold in emotions whereas a person whose writing that slants to the right will express how he or she is feeling. The greater the degree of the slant indicates the degree to which emotions are repressed or expressed.
·         Zones: Each “zone” of writing indicates where the person puts the greatest emphasis or priority in his or her life. The upper zone is where thought/fantasy/analysis occurs. The middle zone concerns daily life, communication and responsibility. The lower zone is dedicated to fulfilling physical or materialistic needs: sex, clothes, shelter and money.

       These are just a few of the indicators I look at when I analyze handwriting in my hypnotherapy practice. For more information about handwriting analysis, or if you would like to request an in-depth analysis of your own writing, please contact me via my website at www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com.





Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2015





Friday, November 13, 2015

Fire Hydrants




(This blog was originally posted on July 14, 2014)
 


Photo courtesy of Microsoft




Have you ever seen something so often that it fades into the landscape—until you notice it again? That just happened to me. I must admit this experience took me by surprise, even though the mechanism behind it completely made sense.When I was returning home from an errand this morning, I saw several large trucks around the neighborhood testing fire hydrants. Since Southern California is in the midst of a serious drought, it made sense that the city would want to ensure that water was available to fight fires and test the equipment that would do this. What surprised me was how many fire hydrants there were, and where they were. I have driven down these streets for twenty years and I can’t remember ever noticing, let alone seeing, one of them!
     However, the presence of groups of people huddled around several fire hydrants in the neighborhood, testing that the devices had and were capable of providing water to fire hoses, was definitely unfamiliar (unknown) and deserved my notice. And, yes: I was curious about, if not (yet) alarmed by, what I saw. Within a few seconds, my conscious mind identified who these people probably were by their uniforms and the presence of utility trucks bearing a city label. (The presence of city workers checking over the neighborhood is also familiar, a known, in my mind.) I was able to quickly figure out what they were doing. The critical area of my mind accepted this information and sent it directly to my subconscious mind so I could go about my day. Once again, an otherwise mundane-turned-unusual experience perfectly illustrated the daily relevance of John Kappas, Ph.D.’s Theory of Mind.
But where did all of those fire hydrants come from when I wasn’t paying attention to them? And when did they show up, anyway?
     Of course, this phenomenon makes perfect sense. Actively noticing and responding to everything we perceive in our environment would completely overwhelm us; we would all be in a state of hypnosis every waking moment. Instead, once we determine that these objects or sensations are not jeopardizing our well-being or survival, our bodies tune out those stimuli so we can be more alert to new threats. Furthermore, unless something about the object suddenly changes—such as its color, smell or behavior—our conscious mind barely registers that the thing exists. After repeated exposure to that stimulus, it becomes a known in the subconscious mind: comfortable and even “safe” in its familiarity. There is no reason for the critical awareness part of our mind to reject this information and raise a metaphoric red flag that something new and unknown is nearby.




Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

 



Thursday, November 12, 2015

Progress



(This blog was originally posted on April 6, 2014)


Photo courtesy of Sara Fogan


 

Recently, I finally had a few hours free so I could watch my dressage trainer, Laurel van der Linde, school my horse, Galahad. While I do spend time with him every day, now that my hypnotherapy practice is growing, I don’t get as many opportunities to watch him work as often as I used to. My horse’s training is much further along than my own, so it is a real treat for me to be able to see Galahad’s progress for myself. And he has progressed a lot since the last time I watched him work.
When I watched him work yesterday, I suddenly understood what my grandparents meant when they told me how grown up I seemed since the last time they saw me. The Santa Ana winds were blowing hard during his schooling session, but Galahad remained calm, relaxed and focused the whole time he was in the arena. Even from my seat outside the arena, I could see that his back was up and stretched all the way through his topline; I think I got a virtual back stretch just watching him move. The length of his trot strides was longer, and the movement of his hindquarters reminded me of pumping pistons as my horse pushed his body forward. When Laurel asked for canter transitions, my horse easily picked up a comfortable, rhythmic canter that seemed both slower and more contained than I remembered him doing last time I watched them train. Galahad has always been a very balanced horse in that he carries his weight pretty equally (self-carriage) at each gait—walk, trot and canter—while tracking both to the right and to the left. Yesterday, he seemed even freer in the shoulder and through the back while cantering on the right lead, which has always been a little stiffer for him in the past. Also, he has had a tendency to rush a bit in some of his canter-trot transitions—especially when on the right lead—but yesterday Galahad’s body moved in that even, flowing cadence of a true rocking-horse canter.
 I was most impressed by the way he was able to maintain an almost-vertical flexion in his poll and the lift in his back throughout Laurel’s ride. It has taken a lot of time, training and conditioning to get him to this point, but Galahad seems to understand that his work is easier to do the more collected he is. How do I know this? Well, at the risk of seeming to anthropomorphize my horse’s interpretation of collection, whenever he received praise after he completed a movement, he needed very little aid to transition back into what he had just done.
He suddenly seemed like a much more mature and “together” version of himself than I had ever seen. I couldn't take my eyes off him: Is this really my horse? I kept thinking. Laurel has been fine-tuning his flying lead changes, and Galahad did some gorgeous ones yesterday. He looked like a real dressage horse. I have already started visualizing, imagining, picturing and pretending how he will look doing—and how it will feel to ride—his single tempi lead changes, one day.
 I am so lucky to have this wonderful horse in my life. Now, I have to work hard to keep up with him!




Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2015


Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Data Management



(This blog was originally posted on February 24, 2014)


Image courtesy of Microsoft

  

No matter what you do, even if you don’t try, you learn something new every day. The question is: What will you do with this new information that you have just learned?

For example, imagine that your car’s gas gauge is almost on empty, so you pull into a gas station to fill up your tank. You notice that the cost of unleaded gas is up four cents from last week’s listed price, which triggers a familiar (known) emotional response of anger/frustration and even anxiety about the cost of fuel. What you do about or with this information will depend on how badly you need the fuel right now and whether it is/will be available when you are ready to make the purchase. Your actions will also be influenced on how you have handled similar situations in the past: Just fill up the tank and resolve this inconvenience, buy just enough gasoline to keep you on the road for a few more days, or drive around to look for a better price at a different station.

Your subconscious mind likely knew exactly what you would do before you made the conscious decision to just fill up the tank. Even though your first instinct would normally be to look around for a better (cheaper) price, you decide to just buy the gas right now. A big storm is coming, and you don’t want to risk getting stuck on the road in bad weather. Also, if a lot of other nervous drivers have the same idea, you might have to drive around forever looking for a station that has a better price, but it could already be sold out of gas before you get there. Even though you are still annoyed that you had to spend so much more money to buy the fuel than if you had shopped around a bit more, you are relieved that the tank is full, and you no longer have to worry about getting stuck in bad weather.

Remember: Every sensation you perceive provides a catalog of information about your environment and how/where/why you fit into that situation. The conscious mind identifies this data (stimuli) as a “known” or “unknown” message unit; the subconscious mind is more likely to accept or reject the information/behavior if it is already in your repertoire of knowns—and you will act accordingly. Furthermore, no matter what you do, you will be creating a new and/or reinforcing a previous known behavior in your repertoire.




Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2015