NLP is the study of subjective experience. It is a method used to understand "How people think and do the things they do" The founders of NLP, Grinder and Bandler, initially focused on the results of systematic studies of, why people achieved excellence, as opposed, to those being merely competent.

In an NLP session the practitioner works with you in helping you unravel your experiences in a systematic way. High priority is focused on what you want. How will you know when you've got it? Where are you along the way? Is this change safe for your well-being? You will be asked to begin using all your senses in completely different ways. The purpose of this is in that to change behaviours we need to understand and believe that we have the ability to transform and be different. We also need to try different approaches so we can recode our experiences in other ways. We in effect have to become our own personal coaches.

The only way that things change is when we do something differently. When we've been successful in the past we often don't ask ourselves what we did to succeed, and so we don't necessarily learn. Knowing what we do is the secret to success!

Most people have an in-built way of processing traumatic events in a resourceful way. For some people this does not happen. These people re-enter those disturbing or traumatic events repeatedly in their minds, and are re-traumatised again and again.

It is believed that a traumatic event causes over-stimulation in certain areas of the brain. This interrupts the natural processing of trauma. Instead the memory of that trauma seems to be "frozen" in its original anxiety form, complete with a combination of the original and fantasy images, the negative self-assessment and the affect thereof. This leaves people to have very negative beliefs about themselves and their ability to get better.

EMDR seems to "free up" the nervous system and allows the brain to process the experience in a natural way. The EMDR technique seems to resemble the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep or dream sleep, which is thought to be the way in which unconscious material of daily events are processed during sleep time.

The therapy is a very structured process. The aim is to help people desensitise the emotional trauma and to bring healing cognition into the emotion. It focuses on what people want to believe now that would be useful to them. A lot of the time people just need to realise they are not to blame, that the trauma is over or that they are okay now.

Somehow the mind connects with the body and it makes sense to the person. It is important to remember that your brain is doing all the healing and that you are always in control.

Up to 50% of all cases of functional gut disorders referred to gastroenterologists are without an organic cause. The diagnosis is usually I.B.S. Research has shown that OPSIM (gut specific) hypnotherapy treatment is very useful in helping people suffering from I.B.S manage their symptoms better. The purpose is that the gut needs to be adequately retrained for the new habit to be permanent.

This treatment constitutes 6 sessions over a period of 3 months. Each session is taped and the client is instructed to follow a protocol of listening to the tapes at home.

sherine@hypnological.com tel. 020 8444 2249 mob. 07961154711