Thursday, May 14, 2009

I'm co-presenting a seminar on Sat. May 30: Fitness motivation using hypnosis and aromatherapy


Jenny and I had such a great time yesterday with our presentation at the YMCA. The topic was finding motivation to work out by using a fun combination of aromatherapy with hypnosis. We have decided to give this presentation on a regular basis but move the venue to the conference room in my office building.

Aromatherapy uses essential oils to treat many disorders of the mind and body. One of the areas of particular interest to me as a hypnotherapist is the affects of the aromas on the emotions. Scent is highly tied to emotion. When we encounter a scent, a message about that scent travels through our olfactory nerve into the nerve center of our brain, where it gets stored as an emotional memory. In the hypnotic state, our senses are heightened, and it is easy to create new, positive emotional memories using essential oils.

I often use essential oils in my practice with my clients who want to quit smoking. So many of them have associated smoking with feelings of relaxation. What we want to do is create a new emotional memory of relaxed, calm, peaceful feelings. In the hypnotic state we recreate those feelings, then anchor them with the scent of an essential oil. I give my clients a small vial of the oil to take with them. Later, whenever they want to relax, the scent of that essential oil will trigger those same feelings that they experienced during hypnosis. Some clients prefer for personal reasons not to use the essential oils and for those clients we use an alternative technique of deep breathing exercises. However, since scent has such a powerful effect on our emotions, many clients find that using the scent helps them recall those feelings of relaxation much more quickly.

In this seminar I do a group hypnosis exercise using essential oils to anchor feelings of energy, vitality, power, confidence, and motivation to exercise. It's a fun way for people to learn about the wonderful uses of essential oils for aromatherapy, and for them to experience hypnosis.

Our next seminar is Saturday, May 30, 2009 from 1:00 to 2:30.

The address is 14960 Woodcarver Road, Colorado Springs, CO, 80921. This is my office building, and you can get directions from my website.

If you or anyone you know is interested in attending, please let me know.