Professional Stress Reduction
Your body always prefers to be in a state of balance and health. We have a natural reaction of anxiety to get us out of danger. Many of us have a habit of anxiety not because of any real danger that is physically present, such as the building being on fire, but instead because our attention being directed to thoughts of problems. Guided visualization and progressive relaxation can direct the body and mind to recover its natural design of balance and harmony.
If there is one feature of the rational mind in Western culture it is that each of us builds a mental model of reality and gets stuck in it. Our minds become freewheeling machines spitting out thoughts that occupy more of our attention than the real world around us. When our daydreams are pleasant, this is considered benign. But when they are filled with thoughts of the past (either longing for a happier time or grieving over some unpleasantness) or worry about the future, our daydreams become our personal hell.
So people go to the doctor and say that they feel bad, and the doctor gives them drugs to make them feel differently. Or they medicate themselves with alcohol. The real problem is that people don't know that they can't tell the difference between reality and their own thoughts about it, nor do they know how to turn their minds off, or to put their attention somewhere other than their minds.
In the state of hypnosis, you can be trained to control your attention behind the habitual function of the rational mind. You can learn to separate your consciousness from the habitual thoughts that cause you anxiety. You can relax, and while in that state of relation you can control the direction of your attention, and control your thoughts.
You may want to reconstruct the mental model of your world.
You can choose to be optimistic or pessimistic. You can choose to see the world as a friendly place in which you are participating in the overall scheme of things or a place in which you are the victim of circumstances that you have no control over. You can see the world as filled with problems or opportunities. Your life is generated from the inside out, and you can choose what you generate.
Whether you believe that your situation in life is hopeless or hopeful, you are right. Our lives are the self-fulfilled prophesies of our thoughts. The techniques offered by Mind Advantage can help you control your attention and transform your thoughts, putting you in control of them.
Or you may want to drop out of thought completely, experiencing the moment fully, as a child does, needing no thought as an intermediary between yourself and reality as found in the present moment. Patrick Plaskett is experienced in the art of present moment consciousness (as taught by Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now) and can help you practice a state of awareness in which you are using your mind instead of your mind using you. Hypnosis is one of the most useful tools ever found to turn off the mind and tune in to the body's natural ability to relax, rejeuvenate, and rebalance.
These techniques of relaxation and directing one's attention are not to be used as a substitute for those requiring the service of a doctor or similar mental health care practitioner.
