All Posts By

Jill Stephens

May 16
1

Real Weight Loss

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On social media recently that there are several weight loss supplements being marketed. Many of my friends have been posting before and after pictures of people who have supposedly lost weight using these supplements. Most of these pictures are of people that I have never seen before, but in all fairness there have been a few shots of my friends. I had to give them credit because this stuff really seems to be working for them. I don’t know exactly what it is they are marketing this time because it is veiled in secrecy. Apparently I have to PM private message them (PM) if I want any real information on these miraculous products. I did PM one of my friends to see what this was all about and found that the said product is being sold through the use of Multi-level marketing. Multi-level marketing always makes my critical factor (a part of your brain that determines what you will accept and what you won’t accept) rear its head. Let me apologize to all of you successful Multi-level marketers out there a head of time, but it seems to me that someone is always on the bottom of these schemes paying a higher price than what the product is worth in order to support all the people who are higher up. If you have a great product just sell it outright at a descent price. Enough of my rant already. Multi-level marketing isn’t what I want to talk about here. What I want to address is weight loss. The problem I am having with all these pictures on my news feed is this: I have a history of buying every Miracle product that has come on the market. I have bought hundreds of items that tout themselves as the last “Diet” you will ever need. I have a whole closet full of these said products. And through the years of using them do you know what I found? I found that many did work…for a minute. I would lose weight by taking the product or supplement. Then when I got to my desired weight guess what? I thought I could stop taking the supplement. Do you know what happened every single time? I gained back the weight that I had lost plus some. The product flooding my social media is upwards of 500.00 dollars the first month and around 150.00 to 300.00 every month after that (if you are a good salesman it will supposedly be free because the guy on the bottom will then pay for yours. My problem is that I was always the one on the bottom). What happens when you have a hard month and can’t afford to spend this much money on supplements? Or you lose weight to your desired goal and get the crazy idea that you can now maintain your weight loss on your own? I can’t say for sure but I have a sneaking hunch that there is a reason that weight loss is a billion dollar industry.

What I want to talk about is how do we loss the weight and keep it off? There really isn’t a miracle cure…or is there? There is but I will save that for a bit later.

One of the areas I want to address is the fact…yes, it is a fact, If you want to lose weight and keep it off you must lose weight from the inside out. I have heard it said that you will never look better than the best mental picture you have of yourself. Wow, think about that for a minute. What is your mental picture of yourself? Another point to ponder is this…many times your physical weight equals that of your mental weight. So if you are carrying around a lot of mental stress, anguish, trauma etc. You may very well be carrying around a lot of extra lbs. because of that.

I saw a video on Facebook that showed a person holding a glass. They filled the glass so it was about a third full. They talked about how the weight of the glass was really irrelevant to begin with. The person was able to hold it with ease, but the longer the person held the glass the heavier it became. The point they were making is this. It isn’t always the weight of something that matters, but rather how long you hold it. So the question is how do we begin to rid ourselves of these issues inside that have become heavy to hold? Through the use of hypnotherapy! Hypnotherapy is successful with the release of these heavy issues because it allows us to access your subconscious mind. Your subconscious makes up 90 percent of your brain. This is where all your memories are stored. The subconscious is where your emotions about the events of your life are stored. Emotions cause behaviors. Through the use of hypnotherapy we are able to discover what memories and emotions have become heavy for you to hold on to, and we are able to help you gain a new perspective of these events. This new perspective will change the emotions you feel about the event and release the weight you are carrying mentally.

I want to share with you an example of losing weight from the inside out. There is someone near and dear to me that struggled with her weight during high school. She was never obese, but was a little chunkier than she wanted to be. She was a cheerleader and would do the early morning practices where they would run laps, do weight training etc. She actually had a very active life style. She would do a few of the fad diets like eat nothing put cabbage soup, but she had little change in her physical weight. On paper she was doing everything she should be doing to lose weight. Calories in equal calories out, muscle burns more calories than fat, etc. The problem was that she had very negative self-talk. She would mentally beat herself up every time she ate. She had a mental picture of herself as being even heavier than she actually was. One day she decided to change all of that. She decided that she was going to stop feeling guilty about everything that she ate. She was going to start feeling appreciation for it instead. She was going to speak kinder and gentler to herself when she looked in the mirror. She was going to start loving herself. She quit dieting and started loving and guess what all the extra weight dropped off. Now she is super skinny. She eats only those foods that she knows her body will appreciate and use. She no longer feels anxiety or stress over her weight and her body let go of the excess physical weight.

Through the power of suggestion hypnotherapy can help change the way you view yourself. I have witnessed some beautiful examples of increased self-love. It never ceases to amaze me what love can do.

I must impress upon you that weight loss hypnosis is not a crash diet. You will not lose 10 lbs. in one week. Weight loss hypnosis is not a diet at all. It is a mental change. A life change. People using the technique of hypnosis can expect to lose ½ a pound to a pound a week, but when you look at the big picture that could equal 52 lbs. a year. 52 lbs. that you lose and never gain back. There are no supplements to by and no special meals to fix. This is a safe and natural way to lose weight. It helps you change from the inside out, and let’s face it if you don’t change inside you will never maintain the outside.

So “YES” there is a miracle cure for obesity. It is self-love. And the letting go of those heavy emotions that you are carrying around. Hypnotherapy can truly free you. It can help you begin to live the life you were meant to live.

May 16
1

Binaural Beats and Their Purpose

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Binaural beats are a hearing illusion. Much like an optical illusion, the person listening to the binaural beat hears sounds that do not exist in reality.

An auditory illusion occurs when two different sine waves, both with frequencies less than 1500 Hz and with less than 40 Hz difference between them, are played to a listener. As one tone is played in one ear and another tone in the other ear the listener will have an illusion of a third tone. The third tone is a binaural beat.

These tones can be used to induce a level of trance in an individual. It is important to know that all humans display five types of electrical patterns in their brains known as brain waves.

Our brains must be flexible and transition through various brain wave frequencies. This plays a major role in how we manage stress, focus on tasks, and get a good night’s sleep.

The five brain wave levels are as follows:

Gamma, 30 to 40 Hz Gamma waves are important for learning, memory and information processing.

Beta, 14 to 30 Hz Beta waves involve conscious thought. Logical thinking. The right amount of Beta helps us to focus and complete tasks such as school work.

Alpha, 8 to 14 Hz Alpha bridges the gap between our conscious mind and our subconscious mind. It promotes feelings of deep relaxation.

Theta, 4 to 8 Hz This frequency is involve daydreaming and sleep. Theta helps us experience deep and raw emotion. This state improves creativity it also involves restorative sleep.

Delta, 0.1 to 4 Hz these are the slowest recorded brain waves in human beings. They involve with the deepest levels of relaxation, and they are also involved in unconscious body functions such as heart beat and digestion.

Binaural beats are able to help a person achieve a desired brain wave state. They also make it easier to maintain that state.

Binaural beats have been found to help with the following: Pain management, relaxation, meditation, stress reduction. They also help with improved sleep quality, super learning, enhanced creativity, and intuition.

When combined with hypnotic suggestion binaural beats are a powerful tool for change. They allow a person to reach and maintain the proper trance level necessary to facilitate that change.

Binaural beats are combined with white noise, pink noise or other sounds to make listening to the beat more enjoyable.

Binaural beats have been found to increase certain chemicals in the brain such as dopamine.

Because of these benefits binaural beats are an excellent addition to hypnosis. Helping to produce positive and lasting change.

 

 

May 16
2

Getting to Know Me Better

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My Name is Jill Stephens, and I am a certified clinical hypnotherapist.  Let me take a minute and tell you a little about myself.

I managed a convenience store in one capacity or another for 20 years. During the time I was a manager I found that many of the people I worked with were struggling in their lives. Many were single mothers, some suffered from low self-esteem, and several had suffered abuse in one form or another.  Most struggled daily to make ends meet.

I never thought when taking the job as manager that I would have an opportunity to impact people’s lives like I did. I realized that without a good manager to appreciate them and treated them fair they would find themselves victims of a system that didn’t care about their day-to-day struggles.

As I got to know these employees better I wondered what I could do to help them. Many of them came to me seeking advice on a regular basis, and I had the uncanny feeling that there was something that could help these people. I felt something waiting just beyond the peripheral of what I could see with my everyday eyes. I wondered how I could help these people who were suffering from fears both real and imagined.

During this time I listened to many motivational CD’s and read several motivational books. I talked often to my employees about the skills I had been learning. I began to send several hundred people a positive thought every day. I lived by the motto, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” I wanted to break through the self-limiting beliefs that I had so that I could in turn help my employees.

During this time of self-discovery I learned about Hypnotherapy. I learned about the way hypnotherapy works, and that through the use of it you could get to the root of problems. I learned that one could change the emotions that surround the problem, and as a result change behaviors caused by the emotions.

I signed up for schooling that would certify me as a hypnotherapist. Week after week I watched as people’s lives changed right before my eyes. Many instantly. During hypnotherapy the client is placed in a trance. In this trance state the part of the brain known as the critical factor relaxes and the subconscious mind is accessed. The subconscious mind is where our memories, emotions, and imagination live. The subconscious needs to be accessed to change how a person sees their past. It is our perception of past events and our emotions surrounding those events that dictate our behavior.  Feelings of worthlessness, self-doubt, limiting beliefs, etc. all are tied to our perception of past events.

During a hypnotherapy session, past events are re-framed. This causes emotions surrounding the event to collapse. New emotions are established, and because the old emotions surrounding the event no longer exist the persons behavior changes.

I have actually learned techniques that do not go after the past events, but instead I target the emotions surrounding an event. This brings about the same kind of change as going after the event, but without re-traumatizing the client. I believe that there is a reason that people forget certain events. It is a survival skill. I certainly don’t want to cause someone to remember something they have spent years trying to forget, and I find this new technique much gentler on the client. It has been marked by outstanding results.

I have been able to take these skills and help many of the people I used to work with. When you take away the self-doubt, fear, and the limiting beliefs a person has it is amazing to see what that person can accomplish.

I am so thankful that I was led to hypnotherapy. Though motivational CD’s and Books can help… it is not enough. A person needs to feel that they are enough deep inside themselves, and they must believe in who they are and their abilities.

I still believe in being positive. I believe that it has a huge impact on our lives. It effects how we see everything around us, and I believe that my positive desire to help those around me is what led me to become a hypnotherapist. It is what drives my mission now of making people aware that there is hope. It is possible to make their lives better.

 

Apr 27
1

Why?…Why Not?!

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The moment that you wake up in the morning the WHYs start flowing. “Why do I have to get up?” ”Why, do I have to go to a job I hate?”…  “Why can’t I stay home with the kids?”,” or hang out with the grandkids?” Why, Why, Why? 

So often it is easy to get locked into the negative aspect of WHY. It feels like a noose around our neck.  But let’s look at WHY from a different perspective. You’re WHY is often equal to your level of motivation.  For example,  you go to a job you hate so you can provide for your loved ones.  It’s fair to say that our WHY is equal our REASON.

Our reason or motivation is key. Without motivation we become stagnant, and we fail to progress. The changes we need to make in order for our lives to be happy can seem difficult, but to regain motivation it is important to reassess your WHY. 

Suppose you are a smoker who would like to stop smoking. You must ask yourself WHY you want to quit. What are your reasons?  Is the WHY big enough in your mind to provide the required motivation?  You must figure out WHY quitting is important to you. Is it for health reasons? Perhaps it is for financial reasons?  Maybe you want to be around to see your kids grow up? Only you know your reason WHY.

When you developed a big enough WHY you will also have sufficient motivation to be successful. Whether it is smoking cessation or a different change you wish to make in your life.

The general rule of change is that you must continue a new habit for 21 days. After 21 days the new habit will be easy and natural. However, through the use of hypnosis it is possible to achieve instantaneous change. You must still be highly motivated, but you will not have to “tough-out” the change for 21 days. 

As you begin to see and feel the success of making changes in your life, you will begin to think, “WHY NOT?” When it comes to making more positive changes.

And as your self-confidence increases the possibilities for change become endless.

Apr 27
2

Patterns

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Everything in life seems to follow a pattern. First we are born, and then we die. We crawl before we walk. We toddle before run. We eat baby food before we eat a steak dinner…etc. You get the idea.

Did you know that your thoughts also have patterns? We call them neuro pathways, and for better or worse we repeat, and repeat, the patterns of these pathways. For better or worse these pathways become stronger and stronger the more we use them.

According to Albert Einstein the definition of insanity is,  “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  Henry Ford said, “If you always do what you have always done, you’ll always get what you have always got.” Perhaps you have noticed this pattern in your life. So, whether you see the glass as half empty or you see the glass as half full you can thank your neuro pathways. 

In other words your mind keeps processing information in the same old ways. It seems like a rotten trick of nature does it not? 

I remember when the book “The Secret” came out it resonated with me. I remember trying to think positive thoughts, but to be honest it was difficult for me. I remember driving along in the car singing the happiest most positive songs I could find. I would sing them at the top of my lungs just to keep the negative thoughts away. It was interesting…the more I tried to get rid of my negative thoughts the stronger they became. It is true “What you think about you bring about” or  “what you think about expands.”

Lucky for us our patterns are learned behaviors. Though breaking patterns with the conscious mind is difficult, it is not impossible. The subconscious mind has a guard at the gate known as the critical factor. The critical factor checks pieces of information coming into the conscious mind. It determines whether the information will pass through to the subconscious mind or bounce out. The critical factor is a pretty tough character. The good news is that through the use of hypnosis the critical factor can be set aside. Hypnosis allows us to easily access the subconscious mind, and through this process we are able to redefine pathways. We are able to create new patterns which are healthier than their old counterparts.

What we all need to realize is that everything is a pattern. Whether it is chronic pain, smoking, insomnia, or overeating. They are all patterns, and we can break patterns or interrupt them. We can change the neurological pathway our brainwaves travels.

I am going to give you a little gem… called a “Pattern Interrupt.” Take your cellphone, a water bottle, or a small ball, toss it back and forth from one hand to the other hand. Back and forth, back and forth. The negative feeling you are fixating on originates on one side of your brain. Tossing something back and forth between hands interrupts your brains usual pattern, eliminating the fixation. The more you interrupt a pathway the weaker the pathway will become and your brain will make a new, more desirable pathway.

I have a friend who is coming in for weight loss hypnotherapy in a few weeks. I gave him the above pattern interrupt at a birthday party we were both attending. I told him that anytime he felt the need to eat out of boredom or habit he should try it. Last night I saw him in the grocery store. He told me that every time he has the urge to eat out of boredom he uses this pattern interrupt, and guess what? It works!

Give it try.

Apr 27
1

Freedom To and Freedom From

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We all have freedoms in our lives. We have the freedom to choose for ourselves many different things. Who we will marry, where we will live, what job we will work at, whether we will go to college, what clothes we wear, how we will style our hair, or whether or not we will grow a beard. Some choices seem to have no lasting effect while others have deep long lasting consequences.

There are things that are within your control like whether or not you will smoke that first cigarette, or eat that extra piece of cheesecake. We have the freedom to make those choices. What we don’t have is the freedom “from” the consequences of our choices. Even with the puff of that first cigarette we damage our lungs and, if you keep choosing to smoke, we may become addicted to smoking causing us to lose our freedom from this habit. The same goes with any choice we make. We have freedom to eat the cheesecake, but not freedom from the weight we will gain by doing so.

Once our freedoms “to” become freedoms “from” what can we do? Is it possible to unchain ourselves from some the consequences of our actions? The answer is Yes! We can break the chains we have forged link by link in our lives. We can gain freedom “from”  Smoking, pornography, anger, jealousy, obesity, etc. Through the use of Hypnotherapy, NLP (Neuro-linguistic programing), CBT (Cognitive Brain Therapy) and the relatively new science of Neuroplasticity and pattern interrupts, (just to name a few) this becomes possible.

These treatments work by unlocking the power of our subconscious mind. The subconscious is 95 percent more powerful than the conscious mind, and it processes differently than the conscious mind. Our brains are like computers. The habits which we have formed which take away our freedom or like little viruses. Hypnotherapy is a delivery system for the anti-virus. Without a mode of delivery for the Anti-virus, or an effective way of penetrating the computer it would be useless. Imagine giving an injection without a needle. If not impossible it would be difficult at best.

Imagine no more cigarettes, no more self-disgust when you are walking past a mirror or a store front because of your weight. Imagine healthy relationships where you are in control of your emotions and behaviors. The choice to restore your freedom is yours. The opportunity is there if you exercise your freedom “to” use it.

Apr 27
0

The Truth About Hypnosis

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“Look into my eyes….you are getting sleepy…very sleepy.” (Spoken in a thick Romanian accent.)  We have all seen movies (my favorite is “White Zombie.”) that depict hypnosis as a form of mind control.  The villain places an unsuspecting person under their power by the use of hypnosis. The person is then required to do things that is completely out of character for them. Such as hurting someone they love, or serving the villain as some sort of zombie slave. 

Most of us have seen a hypnotist show. The hypnotist gets people from the audience to come up and preform on stage. The hypnotized, hop around like rabbits, flap their arms like a chicken, or sing a songs.  It’s entertaining because, what the participants are doing, seems out of character for them. But is it?

The truth about hypnosis is, it’s not mind control. Sorry folks…you will never rule, or control hundreds of unsuspecting minions with it.  The hypnotized person must be willing to accept the suggestions given by the hypnotist. The important word here is “Accept”. It is only through accepting and agreeing with the suggestion that the person will act upon it.

The idea so many people have that hypnosis is a deep state of unconsciousness, is a false one. Hypnosis is actually a heightened state of awareness. A sort of hyper awareness if you will. Because clients have watched movies etc. They believe that they will not remember what has taken place. And that the hypnotist will take control of their mind. They believe that all the desired changes will occur without any effort on their part. This is not true. People doing change work with hypnosis need motivation. They must be willing to follow through with the changes suggested by the hypnotherapist.

Because of the false idea of unconsciousness. Many people during a hypnosis session question whether they are even hypnotized. Because they are aware of a car driving by, or voices of people talking in the hallway. And the fact that they hear and remember everything that the hypnotherapist says etc. The truth is that all this awareness is normal. Remember hypnosis is a heightened state of awareness.

Most good hypnotherapist include a convincer with their trance work. Such as telling the client that their leg is too heavy to lift, or suggesting that you can’t open your eyes. When the client tries to do these things and can’t, or feels like it would take too much effort. They become convinced that they are in a state of hypnosis.

Why Hypnosis is successful is the fact that it allows access to the subconscious mind. The subconscious is where emotions and imagination originate. Emotions drive behavior. The subconscious is difficult to access without hypnosis. Because of the difficulty of accessing the subconscious it is difficult to change. If is not impossible, but difficult. For Example in your conscious mind you know what must take place to lose weight. You know that you must eat less. Exercise more etc. You tell yourself consciously that you are going to diet and make these changes. You are good for a couple of days, but as time goes on you revert back to eating the wrong foods, and skipping exercise. Why, you ask? The reason is that you do not have the subconscious mind on board. And for whatever reason the subconscious feels that it is in your best interest to eat and not exercise. Weight loss is only one example. This holds true to any change in behavior a person wants to make. There are people who “white knuckle” change.  Sticking with their intentions long enough to get the subconscious involved. This is applaud able but it doesn’t need to be that difficult. Hypnosis can help the person change instantaneous, and with ease.

In conclusion. Hypnosis is a trance state which allows access to the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is the place where Emotions and thus behaviors originate. In Trance these emotions are changeable. Changed emotions equal changed behaviors. Hypnosis is not a state of unconsciousness, but a state of heightened consciousness. The client is always in control of what suggestions they accept. They are also in control of what suggestions they will reject. And last, but not least hypnosis allows for instant change.