I am a certified practitioner of NLP and hypnotherapy.
NLP stands for neuro-linguistic programming, it is a methodology which allows rapid personal, positive change within your life. Throughout your life you are programmed by the events that you experience and the people that surround you. This flow of information from the outside world is distorted, generalised and partially deleted by your internal filters (beliefs, values etc), which then give you your own, completely unique internal representation of reality. This view of reality dictates your state and therefore your behaviour and therefore the results you produce.
NLP will allow you to effectively re-programme the way you think and react. To learn new more effective ways of ordering your thoughts and emotions. One of the central tenets or ‘pre-suppositions’ of NLP is that everyone already has all the resources they need to be the best version of themselves that they can be. Using powerful techniques such as anchoring, conversational change, and a host of extraordinarily swift and effective visualisation exercises. NLP literally puts you in charge of your own mind so you are running it rather than it running you.
Hypnosis is one of the most misunderstood medical/therapeutic practices in existence and also one of the most effective. A great deal of this misunderstanding is down to ‘stage hypnosis’ which, after all is a show, intended to entertain. Hypnosis doesn’t entail handing over control to someone else. Rather it is a focussing of your own attention inwards in a trance state. How many times have you been driving home with other things on your mind when suddenly you realised, you’d arrived, but couldn’t remember the drive? That was a trance state; your unconscious mind did the driving. Most if not all of our decision making is affected or dictated by our unconscious mind. This is why it often seems impossible to change an unconscious behaviour (smoking for instance) with conscious thought (willpower). Hypnosis allows you to go into trance with the hypnotist there to communicate and make suggestions to your unconscious mind. As long as these suggestions are acceptable, make sense and don’t contradict your values, your unconscious mind will accept them. For example ‘you are a non smoker, and it is easy and effortless for you to remain so’ is acceptable. If I were to say ‘go in the corner and stand on your head’ this would not make sense or be acceptable, and so the trance would break. You will always have control. Hypnosis literally opens up a dialogue with your subconscious, allowing positive change within the parameters of your own value system.