Article "Mindpower" Daily Mail January 12 2004

Lake Chiemsee, Bavaria, March 2004

"Mindpower" - Stress .... insomnia .... depression .... illness. Modern living takes its toll on our health and happiness. Now, in this amazing four-part series, the worldīs leading hypnotherapist tells how the astonishing power of your mind can be harnessed to transform you life utterly in a matter of days. by Paul McKenna

Mindgames: The Power Nap

Do this once or twice a day to give yourself recovery time and improve your well-being.

1. Sitting or lying quietly, move your attention to your feet. Notice how they feel, their relative warmth or coolness, and their weight.
2. Take a deep breath, then let it out, and as you do so, imagine a pleasant, warm and relaxing feeling developing in your feet.
3. Now take another deep, gentle breath and imagine that warm and relaxing feeling travelling up the legs to your knees.
4. Allow that warm and relaxing feeling to penetrate your muscles and bones, gently spreading and soothing as it moves.
5. When you are ready, take another gentle deep breath and imagine that warm relaxing feeling rising up to your waist.
6. Breathing in, pull the feeling of ease and relaxation up to your shoulders.
7. Let the relaxation flow up to your shoulders, and then down along your arms to your hands.
8. Breathing in, let the feeling go all the way, right to the top of your head. Spread those good, relaxing feelings all over your body.
9. Now imagine that relaxing feeling doubling, as if a new, fresh flow of relaxation was descending from above your head and joining the warm relaxing feelings already going on inside you.
10. And as you imagine this flow of relaxation spreading down your body, imagine any tension being washed down along with it, draining out of your body through the bottom of your feet, making room for you to be refilled in each breath with new, relaxing, refreshing energy. Make sure you take a few moments to really enjoy those feelings of relaxation.
11.Pause for a while to notice the feeling and then, if you wish, repeat the sequence. The more you practise the technique the more effective it becomes. Stay with this feeling as long as you wish. If at this point your attention wanders or you would like to close your eyes, thatīs o.k. - you will arise refreshed and alert in a few minutes.

Case study: Believing yourself well

Dermot OīConnor, 34, is an acupuncturist. He lives in Dublin with his wife Fiona and their two children, Faye, four and Alison, two. Dermot was helped by Paul McKennaīs guided imagery techniques to cope with his multiple sclerosis and to believe himself well. He says:

Five years ago I was given terrible news after complaining to my GP of bouts of dizziness, numbness, facial paralysis and slurring. Iīd even been struck dumb mid-sentence during a work presentation. After extensive tests, a neurologist diagnosed MS, the incurable and degenerative nerve disease. Two incidents in the space of two months indicated that it was very active and likely to bring about a swift decline.

The best doctors could offer was, with careful management, 12 months of relatively normal living before the MS started to rot my nerves. As the final blow, they said my reproductive organs would probably fail, so I should consider wether I wanted children. Even though weīd not planned on having any yet, Fiona and I decided to go ahead, and she fell pregnant with Faye.

At first, I accepted my prognosis, with fatalism, futility and utter despair. I read everything I could to educate myself, but it was distressing; as MS travelled through my body I felt worse with each passing day. I enrolled in my local branch of the MS Society and was sent information on wheelchairs and walking aids. However, after six months, my attitude changed when I listened to a Paul McKenna tape called Supreme Self-Confidence. From somewhere within me, a new hope surged. In my imagination I "created" a positive vibrant self-image, which I moved towards with increasing confidence. I transformed my way of life, starting with a radical change of diet and my philosophical and spiritual attitudes.

One year after diagnosis, I was back to my optimum weight. Following laser eye surgery I had 20/20 vision for the first time and I was playing rugby again. I fact, regardless of the MS, I was healthier and happier than Iīd ever been. Amazingly, from the moment I listened to the tape, Iīve been symptom free. I have absolute faith that I have believed myself well from my illness.

Mindgames: Immune System Booster

Your immune system is strong and intelligent enough to control and coordinate its actions so that you effortlessly maintain a state of healthy vitality. But you can boost its healing powers through the application of this simple visualisation. This technique is not intended as a substitute for medical treatment, although it may be used in conjunction with treatments prescribed by your doctor.

1. Close your eyes and imagine your immune system in a way that appeals to you. My preference is to think of it as lots of light-coloured jellyfish-type creatures, which is similiar to how the protective cells actually look. Make sure there are plenty of them and see them as strong and purposeful.
2. Next, imagine travelling inside your body to the area that needs healing, and notice how you imagine the problem being manifested. You might see the infection or diseased cells as lots of tiny black jelly globules.
3. In your mind, see the big light-coloured jellyfish enfolding and devouring the little black globules.
4. When the little black globules are gone, itīs very important to then imagine the light jellyfish happily swimming and patrolling your bloodstream. This is to ensure that you do not overstimulate your immune system.
5. Now imagine a healthier you standing or sitting in front of you. See how the healthier you looks, breathes, smiles etc.
6. Finally, step into the healthier you, see through the eyes of the healthier you, hear through the ears, and experience how much better you feel.

Case study: Beating stress

Dawn Flockhart, 36, is a yoga instructor and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) therapist. She is single and lives in Edinburgh. Dawn found Paul McKennaīs NLP course invaluable in helping her find mental, emotional, spiritual and physical balance in her life. She says:

Before I enrolled on the NLP course in September, I was suffering from many of the stresses that come with being self-employed. But within a week, my old, limiting beliefs, such as worrying about what the future held, disappeared. I was able to turn them into powerful, positive, life-changing goals - pursuing exactly what I wanted from life.

I was "re-programmed". I felt suddenly happy and full of confidence. I was practising "positive thinking", one of the cornerstones of Paulīs philosophy, and discovering how it opens the door to wisdom and inner peace. After the course, I started to incorporate the NLP techniques into my yoga classes to help clients do the position mentally then copy it physically, with fantastic results. This has multiple benefits, such as detoxifying the body, de-stressing, improving the immune system and stretching muscles further than ever before.

The deep relaxation and meditation techniques Paul taught me are stress-busters which are invaluable for overall mental and physical health. On another level, NLP cured me of two disabling fears - snakes and heights. On a trip to Australia, Iīd been trekking in the rainforest when someone shouted at me to stop because there was a snake in the grass beside me. I had to stand there for what seemed like an eternity until the snake moved off. That made my fear escalate.

But during the NLP course, a snake was brought into the room for us to touch. At first, I wasnīt able to. I was terrified and started having palpitations. But when I tried again, it was totally different; the snake felt dry and not slimy as Iīd imagined. I saw it as just a creature. My fear had gone.

I tried to cure my fear of heights by bungee jumping in New Zealand. At the edge, I just closed my eyes and made myself step off, ignoring my terror. After the jump I was physically sick and frightened, even when I was back on solid ground. Iīd naively expected the experience to make my fear better, but it only exacerbated it. The course helped me overcome this, and when it came to riding in the London Eye, my fear had vanished. Doing this course has changed my life and inspired me to set up the "Brain-Train" company, at Brain-Train to help others overcome their anxieties and find their ultimate happiness too.

Mindgames: The inner smile

1. Sit comfortably - ultimately, you can practise the inner smile anywhere, in any position.
2. Allow a smile to dance into your eyes. If you like, raise the corners of your mouth ever so slightly, like someone who knows a really great secret but doesnīt need to tell it.
3. Smile into any part of your body that feels tight, or uncomfortable, until it begins to ease or relax.
4. Smile into any part of your body that feels especially good. You can increase the smile by expressing gratitude to that part of your body for helping to keep you healthy and strong.
5. Allow the inner smile to reach every corner of your body.

Here are some specific suggestions:

1.Smile into the organs of your body - your heart, liver, pancreas, kidneys, sex and adrenal glands. If you donīt know where these organs are, itīs ok to pretend - your body will redirect the energy for you.
2. Smile down through your oesophagus and into your stomach.
3. Smile up into your brain, then down through the base of your skull and all the way down to the bottom of your spine.
4. You can smile into your life as well as your body. Try smiling and expressing gratitude into a relationship, an environment or a project you are working on, and notice how the energy around that situation begins to shift.

At this point I might say, that these meditations include what I have learned about visualisation and parts of it are also used in Still Qi Gong (like the inner smile e.g.). Iīm sure that it works if done regularly, patiently and loving! In Germany we also have the hypnotherapist Erhard Freitag who works with the power of mind and healed himself from cancer. I had an experience with hypnosis in fall 2003: after having one session I was able to hold a talk in the cure-clinic I go to every year without any fear and I have been afraid to do it for three years! But now the article itself in which the above things were in seperate boxes:

What you read today, and over the next four days (which I will not write down in here as I took only this particular Daily Mail with me from London last week), has the power to change your life for ever. Does that seem like an outlandish claim? So many of the people Iīve guided to achieving their desires started out wondering how it could be possible, yet ended up astounded.

Now itīs your turn. Donīt underestimate the power of your mind - or the power of my system. I promise it will change your life. Using the techniques you read about here each day, you will make tiny changes that may be imperceptible to you at first. But when you have been following my advice and doing my mind exercises for a while, you will realise just how much you have changed.

For centuries, people thought that it was impossible to run a four-minute mile. Some noted scientists believed the body would explode if pushed to go faster than that. Then on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister made the impossible happen. Recently I met Dr. Bannister and we talked about how amazing it was that within a year of him breaking the four-minute mile, 37 other people round the world had done so as well.

In the following year, an incredible 300 runners broke through that previously impenetrable barrier. It took only one counter-example - one person proving that what they had thought could not be done was, in fact, possible - for everyone else to tap into that possibility within themselves. The human mind generalises as learning principle. For example, as a child you learn how a door - the door to your bedroom, for example - opens and closes. Your mind then generalises that to apply to all doors everywhere. This works equally well with all sorts of situations, wether they are useful or painful.

Over the four days, we are going to dismantle many of the negative generalisations you have made about the world, and build positive new ones. No single technique is a magic pill for success, but when your practise them again and again, they will become second nature. Together, we ware going to programme your mind to make you a happier, healthier, more powerful person. Just relax and read on.../P> Most doctors agree, that the mind has a profound effect upon a personīs sense of well-being - nearly everyone knows you can think yourself into being ill. When I was a child, it never ceased to amaze me how many of my classmates would get sick on exam day. Research has shown that optimists generelly live longer, happier, healthier lives. They basically think themselves well - they have stronger immune systems because of the way they approach life.

So, if all we need for good health is a positive perspective, why is there so much illness and disease? The answer is that it is caused by stress. Studies have shown that the major threat to modern living is being caused by our own defence system being triggered too often - by our response to stress. This is where NLP can be so effective with sufferers. Described as the new science of personal achievement, it is a highly effective methodology based on the belief that all behaviour has a structure that can be modelled, learned and changed. As you study NLP, you will learn about your own patterns and programmes, how you can change them and have more flexibility in your life.

The human response to stress has been programmed over thousands of years. Our anchestors needed extreme physical reactions and a burst of energy to enable them to fight a wild animal or run away. And in modern life, we still need those physical reactions - if we need to get out of the way of an oncoming vehicle, or even to add energy to a presentation or workout, for instance. Our bodies release adrenaline to respond appropriately to the situation. When this happens, your heartbeat quickens, your pupils dilate and muscles tighten. The digestive process halts, your blood pressure rises and the immune system is suppressed. This is known as the "fight or flight" response. The things we worry about day to day - such as traffic jams, arguments, financial worries, family issues, work problems - are just as much a real threat to your body as the physical threats of the past.

Yet, most of these worries are either about things that never happen, or about things from the past that canīt be changed. And when we are continually preparing for emergencies that never happen it puts an unnecessary strain on our immune systems, ultimately "burning out" our adrenal glands and spreading nasty toxins in the body, causing ill health. By bringing a positive perspective to our lives and interpreting our experiences differently, we can begin to respond beneficially to the events in our life, rather than chaotically.

Any study into the effects of stress on well-being and human performance can be broken down into three areas - stress exposure, stress response and stress capacity. Most programmes dealing with stress management focus on a combination of the first two factors - reducing stress exposure ("downshifting"), and developing a more efficient stress response (relaxation training, meditation etc.). Yet of the three factors, stress capacity is the most significant in predicting long-term wellness and success.

The greater our capacity to handle stress, the more often we will perform at the peak of our abilities, particularly in high-pressure situations. So, how do we develop our stress capacity? Simple - we systematically increase our stress exposure, while balancing our efforts with "quality recovery time". The formula looks like this:

Increased stress exposure +
quality recovery time =
greater stress capacity

Letīs take a common example. When you work out in a gym, you are deliberately putting your body under stress. To maximise the effectiveness of your work-outs, you need to allow your body time to recover. Every time your muscles are put under stress and then allowed time to recover, they grow stronger. Thatīs why marathon runners and triathletes put such a heavy emphasis on interval training. They alternate between periods of intense activity, such as sprinting or racing (stress exposure), and gentle activity, such as walking or coasting (recovery time), systematically developing their strength and stamina (stress capacity).

Here are some simple techniques that you can use to diminish stress and increase your stress hardiness:

1. Power Napping

Recent research has shown that the mind and body have their own pattern of rest and alertness with one predominant cycle that occurs approximately every 90 minutes. This is when the body relaxes its state of readiness and takes about 15 minutes to calm down and replenish its energy. This has become known as the ultradian rhythm - those moments when you find yourself daydreaming and a gentle, sweet, soft feeling is present in your body. It is quite simply the bodyīs own natural stress-control mechanism. Unfortunately, many people ignore this message from their body that it is time to relax, and instead have another cup of coffee or try even harder to concentrate. After a while they establish a pattern of overriding the ultradian rhythm. In future, whenever you find yourself daydreaming and a feeling of comfort starting in your body, go with it and allow yourself to relax for ten to relax for 10 to 15 minutes. You will then "awaken" feeling refreshed and with better concentration. You can deepen this experience even further by practising self-hypnosis or meditation. The great thing about recharging your batteries with power naps is that you can do it anywhere - after a bit of practice, no one will notice. The exercise on the prevision page (see power nap box) is the version of power napping I use most days - it doesnīt take long and it is a good habit to establish which will reinforce all your other stress-reducing efforts.

2. Essential exercise

As we have already seen, the body does not distinguish between an emotional threat and a physical one. So, regardless of what happens, it prepares to protect itself by fighting or running away - but often there is no one to fight and nowhere to run. Fortunately, just as the mind influences the body, so the body can influence the mind. When you find a way to help your body release the tension of the stress response, it feels calmer, safer and healthier. That, in turn, affects your mood, making you emotionally clearer and more able to function well - to concentrate, to relax and to sleep soundly. The simplest way to help the body release the excess tension of the stress response is to use up the energy and alertness for action that it has prepared - in other words, to get some exercise. If you are not used to exercise, even a brisk walk will be helpful. The point is to use up the excess tension and energy flowing through your body and to trigger the bodyīs natural impulse towards rest, relaxation and recuperation, also known as the parasympathetic response. This is the sweet, soft feeling you get in your muscles when you have finished some heavy work or vigorous movement. You also feel a natural high caused by the release of endorphins, the bodyīs natural opiates. (Weīll talk more about these later in the week.) While much has been made in the past 20 years about the value of aerobic exercise in increasing our generel fitness levels, studies have shown that it is equally important in controlling stress. Swimming, running or any exercise that oxygenates the blood makes controlling stress easier. So, give yourself an easy, positive boost, simply by having 15 minutes of brisk exercise every day.

3. Energetic Eating

Thousands of books have been written on what constitutes a healthy diet, many of which directly contradict one another. In order to navigate more easily the volumes of information and misinformation that fill bookshops, libraries and the internet, I suggest following one simple rule: Learn to listen to your body. The fact is that some foods increase your vitality and well-being; others diminish it. Author and researcher Dr. Gay Hendricks recommends the following exercise to determine which foods are your personal high-energy foods:

STEP ONE: Eat a food you like.
STEP TWO: Notice your body sensations 45 to 60 minutes later. If you feel clear and energetic, you ate a high-energy food for you. If you donīt, you didnīt!

In Dr. Hendrickīs research, he discovered that when people felt energised an hour after eating, that feeling tended to stay with them for several hours, usually until the next time they needed to eat. By practising this simple exercise for as little as a week, you can custom-design a perfect diet for your own unique body.

4. Medicinal Laughter

Recent research has shown that healthy people are usually happy people. Thatīs why a good sense of humour is so important - not just to amuse yourself at parties but as an essential psychological resource. When you are "light-hearted", your body manufactures different chemicals to when you are unhappy. Research has shown that when we smile we release serotonin, otherwise known as "happy chemicals", in the brain. So while "laughing yourself healthy" is still seen as radical therapy in the West, consider the fact that the Taoists have been using the power of the "inner smile" (see box) as a healing tool for more than 2.500 years.

5. Believe yourself well

We are only beginning to understand the incredible power of hypnosis and its possible role in medicine and therapy in the future. Some doctors have recently proved how just using the imagination can affect your health. Other research has shown that people who believe they can control their immune system find that they can easily do so by using hypnotic techniques. Many people could actually increase the number of protective blood cells in their bodies almost at will, instantly improving their resistance to illness. My inspiration for the immune system booster (see box) came from an experiment carried out at the Rainbow Babies and Childrenīs Hospital in Cleveland. It involved a group of children being shown a video featuring puppets. One puppet represented a virus; another, which looked like a policeman, represented the immune system. When the video finished, the children were told to close their eyes, relax and imagine lots of policemen puppets running around their bodies. Saliva samples were then taken from each child and the results showed that their immunoglobulin levels had substantially increased. Immunoglobin is a type of protein which is released by the body when it is under attack from an infection. So the fact that the levels went up in the childrenīs salvia shows that their bodies were responding as if the virus was actually there, even though they were only imagining it. In other words, their immune systems had begun working as though they were fighting off real infections.

I began wading through the clinical research in a relatively new area known as psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI. There, I found masses of irrefutable evidents confirming that it is possible to boost your immune system just by thinking about it in certain ways. The idea behind PNI is that our body knows how to repair itself and maintain perfect holistic health.

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