Mind to Body Connection
South Africa, fighting for a gold Medal and about to lift a rather large amount of weight. When I pulled that bar I miraculously blew 3 discs in back which was in fact the beginning of a complete revelation.
Coming form a competitive background and having had a wise old Yoda type coach I had learnt a number of techniques which vastly enhanced my competitive capabilities and had sent me soaring past anything I had ever expected to do. The strange thing is that until I studied NLP, everyone thought I was loony and I was considered “off the wall” in my sports rehabilitation practice.
Little did I realize that over those years I was learning the mind body connection.
In NLP we learn about the connection but I would like to show you to immense cavern of possibilities this actually presents us with.
As you know, we have our trusty neuro transmitters who are the runners and message carriers to the various parts of the body which we wish to use on a conscious and unconscious level. For the conscious, all the decisions we make to perform any tasks and on A funny thing happened to me in 1996. I was on a platform at World championships in an unconscious level, all the necessary functions our body needs to continually perform for us to live and that we are very rarely ever aware of.
So, if we could tap into our unconscious that controls the automatic functions like heart rate and blood flow, breathing etc we could in fact optimize our bodies and therefore create better results on an everyday basis. The only real barriers that we have are those enforced on us by our perception of our reality and what we believe to be our limitations.
Like a man who would believe he could not long jump over 17 meters or another man who believed that his back pain would never go away.
I remember sitting on the floor of the warm up room at my first European Powerlifting Championships in Italy. Shaking and feeling sick I was terrified. Mr. Yoda Coach came over and told me stand up, close my eyes, breath deeply and see in my mind through my own eyes the complete lift I was about to perform. Except this time, play it from the start, as I breathe in feel the strength streaming into all the tissues of my body and do the lift so strong that I amaze myself and act it out if I have to.
This was the first time I tapped into my unconscious controls and the first into visualization techniques, oh, and I won my first European Championships.
I now have the pleasure of teaching others how to use their unconscious to change physical processes like speeding up metabolism, increasing heart rate to produce adrenaline and then step into what is commonly called “the Zone” – that hallowed place of ultimate focus and many other ways to assist us in our normal or competitive lives.
Another technique I didn’t realize I was doing was the pain control. This is where I relate to the back injury I had in 1996 and then developed a rather rudimentary process for my sports rehabilitation clients until I became an NLP practitioner and hypnotherapist and completely understood what I was doing and perfected it.
The pain that occurred with that back injury was so bad I couldn’t sleep for weeks. Eventually one night I used the visualization technique my old coach had taught me but this time I pictured my vertebrae, the popped discs in-between them and the tissue damage plus all the inflammation around it. The picture was crystal clear.
Then I saw the picture of how I wanted it to look, imagined the inflammation draining away through the tissues, the split discs hardening, all the tissues that had been damaged healing and the pain fading. The image was so clear I can still see it to this day. Then I fell asleep for the first time in weeks. In the morning the pain was reduced and I actually more motion.
This technique I started to use with sports therapy clients and I was getting results. Finally when I qualified as an NLP practitioner I used what we call “sub modality shifts” to do this which is a far more effective technique, another technique called a fast phobia model to reduce trauma from the affected area and also from the incident when it occurred and then finally the visualization techniques within a hypnosis session to get the body to physically change what it was doing and to heal faster.
From these results then it was possible to implement new strategies into producing better results for athletes by optimizing the bodies performance and also altering the way the athlete perceived the training and event they were about the compete in.
Each step of the actual event is carefully broken down and the automatic thought processes that occurs at each step is then changed or optimized to produced a better result or a better part of the chain to produce an optimum result.
For instance – a boxer who will always drop his left guard after or during a certain shot or move we can then break down the sequence and perform a strategy technique to change the bodies reaction so he no longer does that.
A powerlifter, who at competition, always feels that the bar is very heavy when he takes it out of the racks and is about to perform his lift we can take that process apart up the point when he is about to take the bar and change the though process so that he feels so strong the bar feels light.
The runner who perceives he has chronic lactic acid buildup that always hits him at the 10 mile mark we can use hypnosis to alter the mechanisms of the lactic acid so they dissipate through the tissue and don’t build up.
The bodybuilder who has been dieting for competition for so long that his metabolism has slowed down and he can’t lose any more body fat. He can use hypnosis and sub modality shifts to get him to unconsciously speed up his metabolism and burn the fat again faster.
The amazing possibilities of our bodies capabilities are endless and the further we progress in our understanding of the connection between mind and body the better results we will get and relieve so many problems we perceive we have.
Body Image - the she devil within
Body image isn’t just the domain of those who want to be seen as perfection.
We all crave the feeling that we are the person who everyone is staring at as you enter the room, the one who stands out the most in a crowd – don’t we?
Well, no. There are so many people for whom their body image is the one thing holding them back from the ability to be the person they want to be, dream to be and that absolute belief that they are not as good as anyone else in that room, being judged by others and have a total and clear picture of the person they think the others are seeing.
Body image not only stretches from what we see in the mirror ourselves, it’s a 3 angle view.
Body image revolves around the 3 aspects of our “self”.
- The person you see in the mirror
- The person you think your family and friends and those whom you feel comfortable with see
- The person you think others see who have never met you before.
If one or 1 or all 3 of those parts of you is negative then this can in fact filter through to your self esteem, self belief, ability to interact with others, the way you read situations and how you believe others are responding to you.
Body image goes far past the skin depth – it goes into the very core of our belief systems and if you interfere with those then your perception of the world can change dramatically.
The way body image is dealt with in main stream medical intervention is often with direct psychiatric treatment, some of which can be effective but for others it is dealt with in the manner of a “disorder” on its own.
Frequently there is a misconception that this is the presenting problem – the distorted view of one’s self which then leads to paranoia and depression, eating disorders etc. However, in order to deal with body image issues you need to look at the root cause of the problem, the one aspect of which, if you deal with that then the entire system and pattern of negative imagery and thoughts will collapse.
For a number of clients over the years, the initial problem started as a minor doubt. The same thing that most of us encounter at some time in that when we are in a specific state of mind, then our own internal image of ourselves will reflect the way we are feeling at that time. We then project that when interacting with others and in turn we get a less favorable response which then convinces us that our sudden negative view of ourselves must be correct.
From that one occurrence, an entirely new behavior is born. A filter of self doubt based on a image we held in our mind for a fleeting moment of time which is then confirmed by the reaction of others to us.
If I give you a simple example.
A teenager wakes up in a low frame of mind. The day before had been awful for her, her friends didn’t have time for her, her boyfriend seemed to be more interested in someone else and her parents have other worries going on so no one seems interested in her. At that age, this is enough to be the world falling apart.
Her own self doubts begin to formulate putting her into a negative frame of mind. When she looks in the mirror, those insecurities change the perceived view of herself and she sees a less than perfect image. She concentrates on the parts of her she does not like which is in fact what she has been thinking about for the last hour anyway about her own personality.
When she concentrates on the negative aspects this then magnifies them and she focuses on what she doesn’t want and doesn’t like about her entire self.
She could feel unsure about many aspects and elements of herself and then also has a negative internal image. IE the picture she holds in her mind of herself which may be different from the one she saw in the mirror.
She then gets ready to go out – nothing looks right, nothing feels right so she then covers up to hide the imperfections she believes she has. When she does meet her friends, the image she believes they are seeing then cause her to be more withdrawn than usual.
Due to her change in her behavior and the way the girl is conducting herself with others, the reactions she gets from her friends is different, possibly distant or reserved.
So, she then has it confirmed to her that the negative image she believes they are seeing must be right due to the change in their attitude towards her and the spiral goes on.
There are so many ways this can go – eating disorders, social anxiety, aggressive behavior, low self esteem resulting in never achieving goals and so on.
So what has to change and what is the answer.
Well for each individual it is different. Frequently body dysmorphic disorder is not from a major traumatic event as so often stated. Normally there is no known “first event” and the client will state that it just started. Even with techniques designed to find the first event, there is nothing significant.
Also, each person has their own specific times and way that it occurs and almost always there will be situations where in fact it does not occur at all. It is purely individual and there is no fast and hard rule of thumb on how to treat body image issues except that it is the root cause, the self esteem issue which has to be addressed before any real effect can be made of the perception of the self.
If more time was spent on the evolution of therapy and work with the individual rather than various “authorities” looking to disprove the theories and treatment of others maybe more would and could be done in the main stream of body dysmorphia and related eating disorder patients in the UK and throughout the rest of the world .
We seem to forget about the individual and looking for the root cause, which when disconnected and dealt with will enable the rest of the chain to resolve, instead of following or disproving strict methods of others.
Only when the various main stream treatments become more flexible client orientated will our battle with the growing number of patients and clients begin to slow down. The amount of clients approaching me, having been through the normal medical system without success is rising. In the USA they have enlisted the assistance of other therapists from varying disciplines for input and treatment and we, in the UK are still stuck in the negative framework which in fact are moving us no further forward.
