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Thursday, March 4, 2021

Protective Posturing

To minimize risk of exposure to and spread of the COVID-19 virus, I am temporarily suspending in-person hypnotherapy sessions with me in my office. However, phone, Skype and Zoom consultations ARE and WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE!

(This blog was originally posted on December 8, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

A few years ago, as I was switching channels on the television, I happened to catch a couple minutes of a rodeo competition on RFDTV. As I recall, a rider was climbing onto a very large bull, waiting for the chute to open and begin his round. The television announcer started providing a bit of background about the man, including a very interesting detail. Apparently, the rider had recently recovered from a broken scapula (collar bone). However, his posture on the animal indicated that he was subconsciously “protecting” the previously injured area, which could undermine his success during the round, the announcer warned. A doctor had cleared the rider to compete, so the man was obviously healthy, fit and strong enough to ride a bucking bull again. However, the rider’s subconscious mind didn’t completely believe this prognosis, which could undermine his self-confidence and actual ability to ride well and stay safe.

Most of us can probably identify with this phenomenon. Whether we are coming back from a long illness or get hurt participating in a sport or performing a task at work, it’s natural to favor other areas of the body to protect the injured area. Sometimes this means that we assume very strange postures or physical contortions, which ultimately puts undue extra strain on the healthy/intact body part.

We also do this metaphorically to protect ourselves from emotional pain or discomfort, such as following the end of a relationship or loss through bereavement or geographic relocation. We build metaphoric walls around our feelings (hearts), and use sarcasm and even cruel comments to discourage anyone from trying to break through and establish a bond. Have you ever sworn to “never fall in love again” when your true love breaks your heart, or to never buy or adopt another pet after a beloved companion animal has died? These behaviors serve the same purpose: to protect that vulnerable or injured part of ourselves from future pain by blocking off or using defensive behaviors to guard that area from further injury.

In fact, the desire to avoid emotional pain is so ingrained that the subconscious mind has specific strategies to protect us from these risks. According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., an Emotional Sexual individual uses rationality and intellect to distance (separate) him- or herself from a potentially contentious (romantic) situation to protect these vulnerable emotions. The Emotional Sexual person always wants to maintain control, and the best way to do this is to literally “turn off” the feelings or, at very least, to segregate sexual desire from emotional entanglement.

While a Physical Sexual individual uses his or her body (sex) to protect the person from emotional vulnerability, sex and love are often indistinguishable in this person’s mind. If and when this person feels threatened emotionally—in other words, fears rejection by the partner—he or she tends to become very clingy and needy, trying to keep the lover close by and thus “under control.” Of course, these behaviors only push the other person further away and open fresh emotional wounds.

When it comes to recovering from a broken bone or a broken heart, many times the best course for complete recovery is to step back for a little (or long) while and let that real or metaphoric fracture to heal. Loosen the reins or hold you have on that volatile situation; let it run its course without so much intervention but enough confidence in your ability to either stay the course or safely separate from it to ride or love again another day.

Special Offer! Free, 30-minute Phone/Zoom Consultation

This month, I am extending my offer for a FREE, 30-minute phone or Zoom consultation. This is a great opportunity to learn about hypnosis and how and WHY it is such an effective modality to help achieve your vocational and avocational self-improvement goal(s). Call/text me at (661) 433-9430 or send an email to calminsensehypnosis@yahoo.com to set up your free consultation!

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. In July 2019 and in September 2020 she was voted the Best Hypnotherapist in Santa Clarita, California. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Do You Know What You're Inhaling?

(This blog was originally posted on May 26, 2016)

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

When people contact me to help them stop smoking with hypnotherapy, one of the most common reasons to quit is to improve/preserve their health. Perhaps they have a persistent cough (emphysema), chest pain (angina), lower stamina, etc. They know that tobacco and smoking cigarettes is bad for them, but they don’t always know why. Following is a list of six toxic ingredients contained in filtered cigarette smoke:

Ammonia. This chemical is in toilet-bowl disinfectant.
Carbon Monoxide. This chemical is in your car’s exhaust.
Formaldehyde. Undertakers use this to embalm bodies before burial.
Hydrocyanic Acid. This chemical is the poison used to execute prisoners in the gas chamber. It is also used in combination with Nitric Acid (below) to melt gold.
Nitric Acid. Miners use this chemical to test gold.
Tars. Researchers use this product to create cancer in laboratory animals when testing the toxicity of cigarette smoke.

For more information about how quitting smoking will improve your health, I invite you to check out my blog titled Physiological Benefits to Quit Smoking.

Special Offer! Free, 30-minute Phone/Zoom Consultation

Monday, March 1, 2021

Intuition and the Law of Attraction

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

Photo by Rick Hustead

How do you explain it when something happens that you just knew would occur without possessing substantive evidence to support this feeling? Perhaps this incident is proof of your powers of intuition. Or, is it an example of the way the Law of Attraction and John Kappas, Ph.D.’s Mental Bank Concept works? You might even call it evidence of a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby you thought so hard about something that your subconscious mind somehow “made” that event happen. Then again, maybe it’s just a huge coincidence that something you thought about for maybe two seconds manifested itself in the physical world an hour, day or week later. All of these explanations are reasonable, possible and even likely depending on your belief system.

Have you ever thought about a friend or relative that you haven’t seen in a very long time and then, out of the blue, receive an e-mail or a phone call from that person? Have you ever turned on the television and discovered that a favorite movie from your childhood is on, and you and some friends were seriously, literally just talking about how much you love it? I have had many experiences like these. Last week, I reconnected with a friend I hadn’t seen or heard from in years. True story: I read an article in the paper that reminded me of her, and the very next day she reached out to me on Facebook. This afternoon, I was thinking about a scene from The Man From Snowy River. Kirk Douglas is one of the stars of that movie; a documentary about him is playing on TCM as I write this blog. I had absolutely no idea that this program would air when I was thinking about the movie. These kinds of things happen to me a lot.

My favorite personal example of this is from high school. I fell asleep listening to the radio; I had been waiting all night for the DJ to play my favorite song at that time, and I woke up two seconds before it came on. Of course, I was very excited when I realized that I woke up just in time to hear my favorite song a second before it played. I was sure this was an example of extra-sensory perception: I mean, how else could I explain this happy coincidence? A few years later, I even wrote an extra-credit essay about this experience for a psychology course about perception. This time I had a more measured explanation about how and why this experience occurred. Even during sleep, the brain continues to work and perceive all sorts of sensory stimuli such as smell, touch, sound and taste. (If you have ever incorporated the sound of your dog barking outside or the smell of fresh-brewed coffee in your dreams, you know this is true.) Similarly, I had likely heard someone on the radio announce that the song would be played next, and that is how and why I woke up when I did.

What is really going on? I explained the Mental Bank Concept and how the Law of Attraction can facilitate, impede or even prevent us from achieving our goals in my blog titled Introduction to the Mental Bank Concept. I also explored the relationship between the human brain’s ability to perceive various stimuli and organize, interpret and communicate this information in the context of Dr. Kappas’s Theory of Mind in my blog titled, Intuition. And tonight I came across the following quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson that both simplified and complicated this issue for me: “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”

Maybe that is the answer to my question after all. My hypnotherapy training at the Hypnosis Motivation Institute and my experiences putting these theories about the Law of Attraction into practice has taught me that the power of our mind can make just about anything and everything possible. We just need to know how and what to ask for, and where to look for the evidence that what we want already exists and is waiting for us to find it.

Special Offer! Free, 30-minute Phone/Zoom Consultation