Posts Tagged ‘Hypnosis’

Do You Déjà Vu ?

Jul 11th, 10 / 2 Comments

Just the other day, I was chatting with someone and they talked about a ‘Déjà Vu moment’ they had had earlier in the week. As I listened, their experience of the Déjà Vu moment expanded into what they considered to be some psychic phenomenon. Wow, do we all have such psychic abilities!

Because Déjà Vu kind of rolls off the tongue, it is a term that is often used when the reality of the situation would be easier to explain.

The internet has page upon page of information about this phenomenon but very little of the research has been carried out under scientific conditions. It appears that true Déjà Vu can only be experienced if the situation in which it happens is a completely new or alien environment. I’m not suggesting that little green men from Mars need to be present, just that you can not experience Déjà Vu somewhere you have been before or with those you have previously spent time with.

The Human mind is like a massive hard drive that stores all our experiences and memories, however, if it had to index every single moment in our lives to make them readily available, our thought process would be extremely slow and probably stall completely at times. We therefore have to accept that our mind, only makes readily available certain snippets of information from our past.

We have probably all been in that situation where we start to watch a film that sounds good, and part way through we have that realisation that “I’ve already seen this”. Now we don’t consider that to be Déjà Vu – do we?

A similar thing happens when we visit a familiar place or are talking with friends and then we get that feeling that ‘I’ve seen this before’ or ‘I’ve already done this’. You probably have! It could well be a mix of situations, perhaps someone is telling you something in a certain room, it might be insignificant, but you get that feeling you have been here listening to this before. You ask them about it and they say it’s the first time they have told you. Well you probably heard something similar from someone else in the same room or a room just like it, and our memories are stirred enough to let us believe it is an example of Déjà Vu.

Another offering is this. You may have been sitting down with a friend talking, and then that same feeling comes over you ‘we’ve had this conversation before’. When we are familiar and comfortable with people, we kind of tune into the way they respond both physically and verbally. This is not always on a conscious level but on an unconscious one, where our recognition of the others responses are not so obvious. As you continue discussing or chatting on a more relaxed level, your unconscious mind already has a pattern of predictable responses in place, especially as you are generating one half of the conversation. Consequently, what you hear may be deemed to be Déjà Vu but it is actually a form of precognition, as you have previously experienced similar responses, you just haven’t logged them so well.

For Déjà Vu to be considered real, you would have no prior knowledge of the situation or those involved, and have no expectation to experience something familiar. Perhaps you are travelling somewhere and stop in a place you have never been before. Everything appears quite normal until you step into a shop to buy a drink and find the shop assistant has started to play the piano, and you get that feeling for a moment that you have experienced this before. Now this store does not sell pianos, only food and drinks so you would not have expected to see such a thing. They were not playing as you approached so you could not have predicted what greeted you. This is true Déjà Vu.

I am no expert in the field of Déjà Vu, and much more can be read about the subject on sites like this, but it is important to recognise the potential we have shut away in our minds, ready to bring us benefits.

Our minds are truly amazing, and so often hold the keys to the solutions we seek. It is this wealth of knowledge we store, that is accessed during hypnotherapy allowing us to make incredible changes in our lives.

Alan Herbert – Hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner | acehypnosis.co.uk | follow me on twitter
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Hypnotherapy

How Dreams Can Demonstrate What Goes On Inside

Jun 22nd, 10 / 0 Comments

When I woke up this morning, it was one of those rare occasions when I actually remembered the body of what I had been dreaming about.

I know that some people like to analyse dreams and delve into the content, whereas I imagine my mind being a huge store room of filling cabinets. When I rest, little mini me’s run around like headless chickens filing away all the things I had pulled out earlier and finding homes for all the new learnings and experiences generated during that day. The only way the mini me’s can know where to file things, is to read them to get an idea of the best place to put them. I believe that It is these ‘snippets’ of information, that form our dreams.

Last night saw the release of Apples ios4 – the latest software for the iPhone and iPod touch – and this in turn required an update to the latest version of iTunes. Our internet was taking a severe bashing as we are a household of mac users, and we do love our technology. We had several computers all hitting Apple’s servers, greedily demanding the latest version of their software and as time went on, the download speed was getting slower and slower. Eventually, in the small hours of the morning, everything in the House of Herberts – an unfortunate phrase but it makes me laugh – was up and running again with the coolest gadgets to leave Cupertino [ The Home of the Mac ] . Relieved and ready for bed, I retired for the night.

This brings me nicely back to that dream I talked about earlier. Hopefully, at least some of you will have seen that great film Zulu, with Michael Caine. Now I hasten to add that this film was made back in 1964, I while before i sprang to life, but never the less I have enjoyed watching it on several occasions. The key point about this is the stand that Michael made with his few remaining soldiers at the end of the film, against the Zulu Warriors. They were clearly out numbered but reluctantly stood their ground until the bitter end.

In my dream, I could see Michael Caine in his bright red uniform, walking up and down a line of troops instructing them on how they were to stand guard over the information being given out from those massive servers at Apple. “Give them just enough to keep them happy lads” Is what I was hearing. It seemed really major and very vivid. When I woke up, I remember thinking that was probably a tough night for them.

The thing about all this, is how when we don’t have much else to occupy our minds, we allow other ‘stuff’ to amplify and fill all that unused space in our heads. You know how sometimes we wake in the early hours, thinking about something that appears to be a big issue to us at the time, and yet in the morning, it’s much less of a concern. We have filled our minds with many different things by this stage, so each of them can only occupy an appropriate amount of space, putting things back into perspective for us.

A similar thing happens when we dwell on problems. If we focus on the negative aspect of a problem, omitting anything useful from our thought process, there is room for anxiety about that problem to grow, until eventually the problem can seem overwhelming.

It is always sensible to keep sight of the good things that we have in life, and give those just as much, if not more attention than things that bother us.

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Living & Learning, Technology

The Hypnotic Effect of the Progress Bar – Really!

May 12th, 10 / 0 Comments

A few of days ago, my son had decided to upgrade one of his computers to enable him to make use of all the benefits of the latest version of the operating system. Now I not only love, but I embrace whole heartedly, the idea that children should take on adventures and challenges of their own, just as us ‘grown ups’ should continually encourage ourselves by try something different. I don’t mind telling you though that I had some reservations.

I should mention at this point that my son is now a teenager, a mighty 13 years old and probably one of the more cautious members of our household. With that in mind I trust his judgement and hoped that he has not left any little golden nugget of data behind, before he wipes his hard drive and begins the process. I kept my crossed fingers out of site the entire time.

He didn’t actually need me to be with him, but he was so excited about what he was going to be able to do, that I pulled up a chair and made myself comfortable for the next hour to share his experience. After a few clicks, a bit of frantic keyboard action and a quick disc swap, the screen went decidedly black and then grey…. followed by a deathly silence. I could feel my heart pounding, wondering if this was it! The final curtain for the old computer, until I managed to pull my gaze away from the screen and looked at my son, who had this amazing carefree look on his face as he tapped his fingers on the desk.

“Is that right” I said. He just looked at me, smiled and turned back to look at the screen with almost perfect timing – I was sure there was a director hiding somewhere who had just shouted action – as it sprang into life and we were presented with a bright new window. A few more clicks and high speed typing, swapped this options screen for the now visible progress bar. I have seen these many times before, as they appear whenever you instal a new application or perform some sort of update, but I have never paid much heed to them before, until now.

I was feeling better, my heart rate had returned to it’s normal rate and I was feeling very relaxed. The progress bar was doing it’s whirly thing and I settled back in my chair and just listened. I listened for the next 45 minutes to my son telling me about all the new features, all the things he was going to be able to do, how fantastic this upgrade would be. And as I listened, I was transfixed by the progress bar.

So many of the things we do in life, we have a good idea about the outcome. We know what is required from us, what we will need to do and what shows us we have done that. It could be something as simple as cutting the grass. We know how the lawn will look when it’s cut, which is how we know it needs cutting in the first place – right! Or it could be something like running a race. A  friend of mine recently entered into and completed I hasten to add, the London Marathon. Now he knew what was required of him, he knew how much he needed to put into this to finish the race – even if he did lower our expectations by telling us he was older and heavier than on previous occasions – and he would see the finish line which would give him something very special. With all those things, we have a level of control.

By contrast, we have no control with the progress of the software installation, and so we get the progress bar. This was the only sign we had of just how well things were going. and as I continued to listen, with the progress bar getting closer and closer to the end, I could feel the anticipation building inside of me. There was nothing I could do to push that bar those last couple of millimetres, which seemed to take an eternity. No last minute burst of energy or second wind was going to help here. I just had to wait and let the anticipation do it’s thing.

Finally, the computer sprang into life and we were greeted with a host of welcomes in almost all languages. I think by that time, I would have been happy with almost anything, which made this fantastic display of graphical genius even more tantalising. Having been staring at the building progress bar and listening to my sons positive statements about all the wonderful new benefits this would bring, I was already conditioned for great things. And I have to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

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Hypnotherapy