Adrenal Health Questionnaire

How to Dehypnotize Yourself: 

Being in hypnosis during waking hours is probably the biggest cause of a negative state of mind or low emotional tone there is. People rarely if ever get overloaded or stressed-out by having too many positive message units! There may be exceptions to this I suppose, like teenagers who may be in-love. And no, you don’t have to be a teenager to be in-love but — when we are bombarded with information on a daily basis that is coming from the environment, other people, situations and activities — if we don’t plan ahead — we can easily go into hypnosis.  

Looking back now I realize that, for the most part — during times of great stress — I was in a state of hypnosis — in the fight or flight response. So, if you haven’t guessed it by now, you are probably running around, for the most part, in a state of hypnosis yourself — and so is nearly everyone you know. I know you probably don’t want to hear that but “fact is fact”! As most of my colleagues in hypnotherapy can tell you, our clients are already in hypnosis when they come to see us the first time — and we have to dehypnotize them before we can hypnotize them. So, you need to accept that you are probably in a state of hypnosis most of the time and — it is pointless to put up an argument to the contrary because — it does not serve us to argue this point. With as much as we are exposed to on a daily basis, not even to mention all the information coming into our conscious awareness from our so-called thoughts — how often do you think you are not hypnotized? That is to say — how much of what you experience is real reality?  Probably not much because neuropsychologists estimate that at best it’s only about maybe five percent. So, in order to experience more real reality, it would be desirable — to be awake!

So, how can we dehypnotize ourselves?

There are several ways that I outline in my book but we need to know how to recognize when we are in hypnosis. Our emotional state of mind is the only reliable indicator. In my book I go into great detail about our emotional tones. Anytime we are feeling less than HOPEFUL emotionally, we are most likely in trance and are suggestible to anything negative going on in our environment like other people, circumstances, the news and even our own negative thoughts which will create, through the law of attraction, even more negative people and circumstances in our lives.

Healthy Habits to Stay Out of Hypnosis:

I outline the mechanism of fight or flight and — how our Conscious mind escapes into hypnosis — a simulated sleep or trance state from — an overload of message units (too many mind) in Chapter 3: The MIND GATE in The Mind Gate Process of Empowerment. When we were cave-people, sitting around our cave-fire and cooking woolly mammoth steaks on a spit — when suddenly a saber-toothed tiger decided to join us for dinner — we had to be able to fight or run away… really fast! We still have those reactions and, in fact, we experience them quite often — some days numerous times. It is known as the fight or flight response. Our heart beats faster and our breathing rate increases as adrenaline is pumped into our blood stream. Because of our fast-paced and information overloaded society we rarely get time to recover from the fight/ flight response and are hardly ever in a normal beta state of alert awareness.

Move Your Body

Let’s wake-up a moment — shall we? Reach your hands up toward the sky (or ceiling) and stretch… then move your stretched arms to one side and then the other. Do this three to five times so you can feel a really good stretch. If you’d like, at the same time — you can think about anything that feels good. Thoughts like — how great it is that I am learning this or — perhaps something you are excited about or grateful for are all really good thoughts. They could be something that really turns you on — or just feel your body for a few moments — whatever feels good to you is okay — just as long as you move. It doesn’t really matter. You can stretch and make goofy faces in the mirror (my personal favorite). Moving your body (changing your physiology) and thinking a better-feeling thought is the fastest and easiest way to dehypnotize yourself — if — you are not in too deep. If you are really tranced then you’ll probably forget to do this. It’s all just vigilance — just being aware. You cannot afford to be tranced when you may be exposed to negative elements and this is fairly easy to do. If you are in the car and in commuter traffic, instead of listening to the radio or music — when you are stopped — make funny faces in your rear-view mirror or shrug your shoulders or both at the same time for a minute or so. If you notice other drivers looking at you — just smile. Who cares what they think? You will be awake.

Count Yourself Out

Another way is to wake up and come out of the tranced state is to count yourself out of hypnosis — like I do, when finishing up a hypnotherapy session with a client. Any time you are feeling overwhelmed or confused, say to yourself or out loud, “ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, and FIVE… EYES OPEN AND WIDE AWAKE… ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE… EYES OPEN AND WIDE AWAKE!” Remember to say this TWO TIMES! Then, breathe in very deeply and hold it for a moment — then breathe out a little more slowly than you breathed in for five or six times.

 A Breath of Fresh Air

When we are stressed, we often forget to breathe in deeply. Instead we do faster shallow breathing to get ready for fight or flight. When we are babies we naturally breathe into our stomachs and sometime along the way we quit breathing that way. We learn how to breathe shallow. Taking five minutes — three times per day to lie down or even stand up — breathe in deeply into your lower stomach as if you are inflating a balloon — you will activate your parasympathetic nerve system — which will then activate your relaxation response. It will feel strange to you at first but — it works beautifully to restore your body — and your mind to a more relaxed state and at the same time — pulling you effectively — out of hypnosis.  

Eat to Prevent Anxiety and Hypnosis

We cannot function as a fully-awake human being if our brain is in panic-mode much of the time. Now, you may not know this, but our brains use a lot of energy and this energy comes from glucose or blood sugar. Blood sugar comes from the food we eat. The best food to maintain a steady supply of blood sugar to the brain and — for the longest period of time is — protein. When we go too long without a steady supply of blood sugar (over 3-4 hours) from protein, our brain will begin to panic and send messages to the pancreas to slow down metabolism to conserve the energy needs of the body so we begin to feel tired or release insulin thereby giving us hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Our adrenal glands then react by releasing adrenaline to boost our energy and to tell us to get up and find some food. This triggers a fight or flight response in the parasympathetic nervous system. We may get a little nervous and jittery as if we’ve had too much caffeine and our blood pressure rises. The adrenal glands signal the pancreas to raise the blood sugar but if there’s no fuel available our blood sugar continues to drop and we go into a sort of insulin shock. We become confused and look for any source of blood sugar we can. We can get cranky and become zoned-out. In other words, we escape into hypnosis to deal with the bio-chemical stress to the brain. The bottom line here, if you eat some protein — four ounces or about one half cup — or more if you do heavy physical work — you will be giving your brain what it needs and it is less likely to go into  panic-mode. It is important to understand that you must feed your brain regularly with quality food to help it function optimally. I highly recommend “The Paleo Diet” by Dr. Loren Cordain. His book has been highly researched and puts it all together for you. But if you would like a quick-start guide to get you started, you can download our Food Guide Here.

If you did nothing else but eat some protein (four to six ounces) every three hours it would probably be enough to keep you out of hypnosis all day. In addition, your overall stress reactions to negative life situations would diminish greatly and — your emotional tone would climb naturally up the Emotional Tone Scale. Your state of mind would also improve. Have you ever noticed how grouchy people can get when they’ve gone too long without eating — especially men? One of the greatest problems with today’s teenagers, and I’m not picking on them, is their diet. Younger children, for the most part have serious attention deficit problems and — most would be helped easily by — making sure they get regular protein and — NOT sugar — for God’s sake! Giving candy to children to shut them up or — as a reward is asking for big trouble later because children under eight or nine years of age are already in the hypnotic state and — you will program their Subconscious mind to go for sweets when they feel cranky or stressed in the future. Give them a protein snack instead.

 A Word about Water

I know, I know, you’ve heard it a million times, “you need to drink more good water”. So, let me just say this — about that; Coffee and other caffeinated beverages do not substitute for water, in fact, they are diuretics so — if you indulge in a lot of coffee because, it wakes you up (I’m sorry if I burst your bubble) you need to know that coffee stimulates the adrenal glands — which trigger the sympathetic nervous system and cause the fight or flight response so — instead of a triple-shot café mocha (oh my God) try a fruit smoothie with protein. There are several juice bars around now that cater to healthy-minded individuals and — they even have coffee-flavored protein meal replacement smoothies! Beer is not a good substitute for water — even though it is mostly water. The alcohol will dehydrate you and it can make you very relaxed. Two beers will lower your brain waves down into alpha or even the theta state (hello, hypnosis).  If you absolutely cannot drink plain water or bottled water then I suggest you go to a health food store or go online and get “Sweet Leaf” flavored liquid Stevia drops. They come in a variety of flavors: Apricot Nectar, Grape, Root Beer, Chocolate, Cinnamon, English Toffee, Hazelnut, Peppermint, Lemon drop, Valencia Orange, Vanilla Crème, etc. These can also be substituted for sugar in the kitchen since — you are getting so healthy now. They are 100% natural, low calories, no carbohydrate and carry no glycemic reaction. These can be used in smoothies, coffee, yogurt, whipped cream and anything else that you would like to sweeten. It’s great for dieting and getting in more water but not as a substitute for protein!

I had written earlier that I believe many attention deficit diagnoses are simply a matter of the individual being in hypnosis much of the day. Attention deficit disorder responds very well to the three hour protein food plan. If you want to take this to the next higher level then switch to organic foods whenever possible. There is a plethora of information and research available on the Internet about protein and organic foods and their positive effect on attention deficit disorder in children and adults. Attention deficit is a matter of being unable to focus on a task and is, in my opinion the result, in most cases of disorganization of the critical area or Mind Gate, i.e. waking-hypnosis or trance state. Once again, I cannot stress enough how important it is to stay out of hypnosis during our so-called waking hours unless you are doing the process. Allowing yourself to go into hypnosis without controlling it is tantamount to a Boeing 747 on autopilot. Eventually it will crash and when it does — it will take all of its passengers down with it. At the very least, it’s “like giving a hammer to a four-year-old”.