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When people come to see me they often experience rapid change – hence the name Rapid Transformation Therapy! Hypnotherapy has a profound effect, and fast. That’s why so many people choose it.

After a session I give everyone a recording to listen to over the next few weeks. This recording reinforces the messages that the person wants to become part of their lives. It reiterates the core values that they want to embody. It helps create a state of hypnosis, even when they are not in the room with me.

Whilst listening to the recording at any time can be valuable, there are certain ways to make the process have a more profound effect.

Find a relaxing room

It’s easier to make yourself receptive to the messages if you are in a relaxing place that lets you switch off. Find a room with pillows and softness, and make yourself comfortable. Keep the lighting low, and close the door so that you are not distracted.

Turn your phone off

Keep your phone off, or if you are listening to the recording on it, turn it on to airplane mode. No one needs to get hold of you for fifteen minutes. This is your time.

Use your senses

Try lighting a candle to focus on, or use a nice smelling oil or essence to enhance your experience. Making this a multi sensory experience helps your whole body to get into the mood for the hypnotherapy, and ensures it has an effect on all of you.

Calming music

Try listening to some calming music to help you switch off and relax. This can be of any genre – just not too boisterous or heavy. Enjoy the sound and let it take you over. Hypnotherapy works best when you are open to it, and music can help with this.

A good bath

There are lots of benefits of a nice bath, one being that it helps your muscles relax. If your body is relaxed you are more likely to be responsive to the hypnosis. It also just feels really good!

It’s worth taking the time to do these things, because you’re worth taking the time for. If nothing else, it’s important to remember how valuable self care is. By carrying out these little activities, you can help make hypnosis work for you.

I’m often asked about hypnotherapy for sleep. When it comes to our health we often think about diet and exercise, but neglect to consider sleep. Sleep is crucial for our bodies and brains to function properly. It plays an important role in controlling your metabolism, keeping your immune system working, boosting your memory, repairing tissues and stimulating growth. We all need different amounts of sleep, but as we spend roughly a third of our lives in bed, it’s worth getting it right.

Here are some top tips for a better night’s sleep.

Write it down

Keep a notebook or journal by your bed and write down anything going around your mind before you go to bed. That way you can offload all the to do lists and things going on, clearing your mind of thoughts ready for a good night’s sleep. If you wake up worrying in the night, write that down too.

Switch it off

Try to keep the hour before bed a screen free time. The blue light emitted from phones, televisions and laptops can interfere with our sleep and throw your body clock out of sync. Use a traditional alarm clock and keep devices out of the bedroom.

Make it routine

Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day and try to keep the same sleep schedule on weeknights and weekends. Burning the candle at both ends in the week and then trying to catch up at the weekend isn’t great for getting into a regular and stable sleep routine.

Have a snack

We’re often told not to eat before bed, but actually having something small can really help. The tryptophan found foods such as oats, milk, bananas, chicken and wholemeal bread is brilliant for inducing sleep. Wash it down with camomile tea and you’ve got the perfect bed time snack.

Try meditation

Listening to a relaxing meditation or guided imagery can help you to nod off. I provide all my clients with a hypnotherapy recording for them to listen to as they fall asleep. It helps to relax them and embed ideas.

Even the most successful people need some support sometimes. Getting support isn’t a sign of weakness, or failure. In fact it’s a positive step and shows commitment to personal development and self growth. A coach is someone who can offer that support, and help you to flourish.

A good coach can help you get into the mind set and routines that will help you create the life you want to live. They can help you figure out what you want to do and, more importantly, how to do it. In my work I support people in all areas, including health, relationships, family, business and self care.

You might have some self doubt and a sense of being lost, and need support finding clarity. Or maybe you know where you want to be, but just have no idea of the steps you need to take to get there. You might be stuck in a routine and need to break out of it, or need help in setting up healthy habits.

If you need someone to help keep you accountable, a coach is a good person to have at your side, and on your side. Regular check ins can keep you on track, helping you to get things done and stick to a plan. It’s easy to let self progression fall by the wayside when daily life gets in the way, and a coach can help you prioritise and keep committed to the bigger goals.

Success is as much about attitude as action. A coach can reveal the inner blocks and self limiting beliefs are working against us and stopping us progressing. I help people with self confidence and assertion, helping them to realise that they can achieve their goals and dreams.

If there’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be, having some coaching can help you. If you want to know more, get in touch.

Carolina lives in Texas, having moved there from Argentina twenty ago. What was unique about her sessions with Javier was that they happened over WhatsApp voice calls. As Javier explains, ‘I always have a visual contact to calibrate the impact of the session as we go. In this case I only had her voice which was tremendously moving and empowering.’

Carolina’s struggles were born out of a difficult relationship. Her marriage to a narcissist saw her ‘go through hell. In the process I lost my self worth, my dignity and my self respect.’

Carolina reached out for help because she didn’t want to go through something like that again. It was her first time trying hypnotherapy and she wasn’t sure what to expect – especially as they would be working remotely.

In her session she confided in Javier and worked through her issues. They spoke on the phone, going through the usual hypnotherapy process of working with the subconscious and challenging underlying beliefs.

It wasn’t easy, explains Carolina, but she does believe that it had huge benefits, and would recommend Javier to anyone.

‘It was a painful experience but worth it. He is kind, understanding, and very professional. He helped me to start loving myself again and believe that I didn’t do anything wrong. I will always be grateful to him… and I think he has the ability to help many more!’

We all want to be the best we can be. Indeed, my work is all about helping people to do exactly that. But sometimes this striving for best can actually stall progress. We’re so obsessed with trying to reach a perfect place that we fail to notice the very good situation we find ourselves in.

There’s no such thing as perfect, and a drive to achieve it just stops us from noticing the great. We measure things against impossible standards, meaning that we fail to realise how good things are. This means that even the good stuff ends up being viewed with a negative lens. We’re always dissatisfied. It becomes something of a trap, as we can’t achieve our high standards and then feel frustrated. This causes us to get angry and beat ourselves up, which is not going to bring us towards happiness.

Having high standards is not the same thing as demanding perfection. You can want to do well without holding yourself to unrealistic and rigid rules that can never be achieved. Having goals that are so high that you can never reach them isn’t helpful, but harmful.

It often comes from a desire to impress others, and a need to show them how good you are. Yet not only are most people less severe judges than we are, but if we stop and assess things by moderate  standards that reflect what we actually want,  we may find that we’re doing just fine.

Instead, we have to recognise when good enough is good enough. When reaching a place of 90% is enough, instead of chasing the elusive 100%. It doesn’t mean that you’re underachieving. In fact you might do more – reaching 90% in a number of areas of your life is better than 100% in just one.

Voltaire once said ‘Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.’

He’s right.

Whilst sometimes not being satisfied can spur us on to do more and achieve better things, when it’s an all pervasive feeling that takes over your life, it’s dangerous and has a negative impact. Rather than moving us to a happy and positive place, it holds us back and stops us from recognising our successes. It makes us view our lives through a dark lens, failing to see the good.

Celebrating our wins is important. It fuels us on to achieve more because we’re buoyed by excitement and joy. It gives us the opportunity to acknowledge what has gone well, learn from it, and see how we can apply those lessons for the future. By working towards good standards rather than perfect, we can achieve brilliant things and enjoy the fruits of them.

If you’re anything like me you’re probably confused about alcohol. You read so much about its health benefits and its dangers, often in the same newspaper on the same day. I’m a big fan of whiskey, and red wine, and like my Spanish family, enjoy letting my hair down.

But what happens when it becomes too much?

We’ve all had a hangover. Hangovers happen after the overconsumption of alcohol, making us dehydrated and resulting in headaches, dizziness or even nausea. Avoiding hangovers requires drinking in moderation and being more conscious of our tolerance to alcohol.

More detrimental and long-term effects of alcohol include increased blood pressure, organ damage and several types of cancer; as well as social implications such as violence or financial problems. Avoiding these long-term effects requires a conscious relationship with alcohol, its effects and the options available to us to help cut down on alcohol consumption and live a healthier lifestyle.

A healthy relationship with alcohol is the ability to enjoy a safe number of drinks without feeling dependent. The recommended alcohol limit for both men and women is 14 units per week, which equates to just over one and a half bottles of wine

or six pints of lager. This recommended consumption easily allows for the occasional social, after work or evening meal drink. Such a recommendation encourages that if we do drink, we should drink in moderation, understanding our limits and reducing physical and mental health risks that arise as a result of an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

Simply being conscious of how quickly we are drinking is an effect way to become more mindful of our alcohol consumption. Whilst alcohol has a reputation as being a social lubricant, consider enjoying your drink at a slower pace and ensuring you are fully present when you want a drink. Be engaged in conversations with friends, family or co-workers, and savor your drink in order to avoid over-consuming alcohol and risking damage to our physical and mental health. Reducing our consumption doesn’t have to be painful and appreciating the flavours of a drink or the company you are with is a small but effective way to make drinking something special to be enjoyed, encouraging your mindset to positively attribute alcohol with an occasion or as a treat to be shared.

Hypnotherapy can help you understand more about your relationship with alcohol by addressing the underlying needs and issues that might be causing you to drink too much. Hypnosis encourages the conscious mind to switch off – the part that always says yes to another round – and allows access to the deeper parts of your mind. It helps you get in control – rather than have alcohol control you.

Self care refers to any act that we deliberately do in order to better protect and preserve our mental, physical and emotional health. Self care is a vital component in helping us to lead happy and healthy lives, yet often we do not appreciate it’s value as a preventative strategy in safeguarding all aspects of our health.

A misconception of self care is that it is selfish to put ourselves first. Or that it’s all about face masks and massages/. In reality, the act of practising self care is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and others. It ensures we build and maintain a healthy relationship with ourselves, helping to evoke feelings of positivity and allowing us to better understand the importance of our worth and our needs. This allows us to be the best version of ourselves and do all the things we wish to do, in the best way possible.

In the recent decade, there has been a marked push in bringing the importance of self care to the forefront; reminding ourselves that we deserve to take time to look after our emotional, mental and physical needs.

Hypnotherapy or Neuro-Linguistic Programming can be an effective way of practicing self care as it helps us access a relaxed state of mind, process our thoughts and subconsciously problem solve. Particularly beneficial for our mental health, but also our emotional and physical, hypnotherapy/NLP gives us the opportunity to access our emotions and thoughts in a calm environment, soothing our worries and stresses.

It also helps us to speak to ourselves in the right way. Often we are self critical, and speak to ourselves in a way we would never consider with someone else. NLP in particular is a helpful way of reframing the language we use and the outlook we have of ourselves. It’s an attitude, as well as action.

The benefits of self care are limitless, but crucially, it enables us to live more meaningful lives in which we properly care for our bodies and minds life.

Come the spring and summertime, parents and students start to worry about exams. It’s no wonder, with so much pressure and outcomes riding on results. But a lot of that pressure can be alleviated if we start planning ahead.

Rather than panicking in May, it makes sense to think about developing the skills and attitudes needed for good performance a few months ahead of time. This will enable the young person to build up their habits and approach for exam success.

A lot of exam performance comes from confidence. The confidence that they know the content, the confidence that they can answer the questions, and the confidence that they can do their best. Being assured that they have the ability to do well will help them in the revision period and the exam room.

Having a mantra or phrase that they repeat to themselves can help remind them of their ability. It can be something as simple as ‘I can do this’ or ‘I am capable.’ This can help keep them calm and focused. If they find themselves becoming distressed, they can come back to the phrase.

Practice makes perfect, so having some sample tests or doing homework under exam conditions is a good way to enable children to get a sense of what they will be doing, and help them feel more comfortable with the situation. When circumstances are familiar, they produce less stress, which will help with performance.

Breaking down workload into manageable chunks stops it from being overwhelming. The earlier you are able to make this a habit, the better your child will be prepared. Rather than rushing to cram at the end of the year before the exam, they will have been adding to their knowledge bit by bit throughout the year.

Starting early is key to performing well. It is all about instilling the right approach and mindset before the exam period starts. That way lies success.

If you want to know more about my work with children and teenagers head to the Helping Kids UK website.

At the end of every Rapid Transformational Therapy session I devote some time to creating a recording of the key words and phrases that have been explored in the previous hour. Usually, the focus will be on a sentence or two that represents the positive place that the client wishes to get to. For someone with self esteem issues, the phrase might be ‘I am enough.’ An individual struggling with eating good food and moving their body might focus on the phrase ‘I am healthy.’ This, combined with a guided narrative to bring the client to a state of REM and take them to their subconscious, forms a short recording to be listened to every day for the next three weeks.

This is an important part of the process, and not to be missed. Life happens; there are jobs to be done, family to look after, and tasks to take care of. But if you really want to see transformation in your life, you have to put in the work.

In Rapid Transformational Therapy the bulk of the work takes place in the main session. But this does not mean that it is an instant cure. You have to remind yourself of where you want to go, and keep taking the steps to get there. The recording acts as that reminder, sparking off the connections in the brain repeatedly, and reinforcing the message that you want and need to hear.

Changing your life, or an aspect of it, requires effort and practice. RTT kicks off that process, but there’s still work to be done. The message that you want to become part of your life needs to be reinforced and reheard, slowly infiltrating your mind until it becomes the norm. It’s like flexing a muscle or stretching the limbs – the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

You need to hear the words that will help you, and you need to hear them often enough that they become part of your everyday experience. Little reminders keep you focused and keep you en route to where you want to get to.

Keep listening. Keep hearing. Keep going.

When our children start behaving differently, it can cause concern. They might be snappier, be spending more time in their bedroom, or have trouble sleeping. Children who are usually well behaved might start being naughty, or school grades begin to slip. As parents, we worry about these things. The child we know and the behaviour we are familiar with is changing, and we don’t know why.

Well meaning friends and family might attempt to ease your fears, saying things like ‘it’s just a phase’ or ‘he will grow out of it.’ Often they are right, and whilst most young people can overcome difficulties, sometimes they spiral into something bigger and more worrying.

So how do you know if it is just a phase, or if it’s time to take action? And what should you do about it?

Notice what’s normal

It’s really important to be familiar with what is normal for the child or young person in question. Unless you know what is usual, you can’t be aware of what is unusual. So noticing your child and paying attention to them, even when there’s nothing to worry about, is crucial to be able to address situations that do require worrying.

Pick up patterns

If something happens once or twice, it’s probably not a big issue. Problems come when a negative behaviour or action becomes a recurring pattern. Not only is it more damaging to every day life, the more we do something, the more ingrained it becomes, and so the habit is harder to get out of. If you notice something becoming more regular than irregular, and it’s having a detrimental effect on your child’s or family’s life, it’s time to take action.

Talk together

Speak to your young person. If you’re worried about your child or teenager, it’s important to connect and communicate with them. This isn’t about nagging or shouting, but engaging in a proper conversation, listening and speaking equally. How much you say and what you talk about obviously depends on the age and maturity of your child. What’s important is that you speak in a caring way, let them know that they can trust you, and listen to their answers.

Intervene gently

If you are worried about your child or teenager, it’s your job as a parent to do something about it. However, it’s important that you don’t inflame the situation any more by causing arguments or creating drama unnecessarily. Choose a time when you won’t be interrupted, sit down with them, and state your worries. Let them know that your worry comes from a place of love and concern, and that you are there to help them.

Have a plan

Even if you don’t know what to do or how to solve a situation, you have to instil confidence in your young person. Have some kind of plan, even if it’s just a case of sitting down each week together to have a chat about how things are going.

I support families by working with children, young people, and parents to develop the skills and tools to thrive in family life. If you would like to know more, please get in touch.