Relaxation: This is great introduction to relaxation through hypnosis. If you’ve never had a hypnotic experience before, start with this. Give yourself about 25 minutes of quiet time. Sit or lay in a comfortable position with your favorite ear buds or headphones. Just listen and relax. Even if you happen to fall asleep or forget to pay attention, it’s okay. Your subconscious mind hears everything and you will automatically remember how to relax the next time you listen.

Let’s start by taking a very deep breath. Inhale. Now exhale.

Did you notice if your chest and shoulders stiffened up and rose up towards your ears?

Did you notice maybe you were biting down and clenching your jaw? Maybe your neck stiffened up?
Now, just simply push your tummy out and notice how you automatically suck air into your lungs. The reason for this is the negative pressure created when you push your belly out. Your diaphragm drops down creating a negative pressure in your chest, which automatically expands the lungs, sucking in air.
The lungs have five lobes and when you take a very deep breath, you actually only bring air into the two upper lobes of the lungs. The reason is because you’re pulling you tummy in rather than pushing it out. The two lower lobes of the lungs have more blood vessels; therefore more oxygen can get into the tissues.

Oxygen is relaxing and healing and allows a major decrease in stress.

So now, when you take a deep breath in, imagine your belly getting bigger. We’ll call this the Buddha Belly. And now, when you let all that air out of your lungs, feel your belly button move towards your spine, hollowing out your belly.

The Vagus nerve runs through your diaphragm and when your diaphragm is hyper stretched, as in Buddha Belly, it activates the Vagus nerve, which stimulates anti-stress hormones. The Vagus nerve is the primary nerve in the Parasympathetic Nervous System, which is the Rest and Digest part of the Autonomic Nervous System. This is the automatic part of the nervous system.

By taking the abdominal breath, as taught here, at least once per hour, will create significant changes in your stress level. The best way to do this is to breathe in for a count of three, hold the breath three counts and breathe out for six counts, and do this hourly. Also, find some time in the day when you can take ten breaths just like this. This type of breathing is a major component of your success.

We have a primitive reflex that activates to protect ourselves from danger. This is normal and natural, but sometimes our bodies and our minds think we are constantly in danger and we can’t shift out of that fight or flight or freeze mechanism.  That energy, let’s just call it what it is: anxiety… gets stored inside our body and shows up as muscle tension, shallow breathing, panic attacks and even as headaches.  Learn to relax yourself into hypnosis and finally release that anxiety, allowing your body to soothe in to peaceful comfort.

Let’s start by taking a very deep breath. Inhale. Now exhale.

Did you notice if your chest and shoulders stiffened up and rose up towards your ears?

Did you notice maybe you were biting down and clenching your jaw? Maybe your neck stiffened up?
Now, just simply push your tummy out and notice how you automatically suck air into your lungs. The reason for this is the negative pressure created when you push your belly out. Your diaphragm drops down creating a negative pressure in your chest, which automatically expands the lungs, sucking in air.
The lungs have five lobes and when you take a very deep breath, you actually only bring air into the two upper lobes of the lungs. The reason is because you’re pulling you tummy in rather than pushing it out. The two lower lobes of the lungs have more blood vessels; therefore more oxygen can get into the tissues.

Oxygen is relaxing and healing and allows a major decrease in stress.

So now, when you take a deep breath in, imagine your belly getting bigger. We’ll call this the Buddha Belly. And now, when you let all that air out of your lungs, feel your belly button move towards your spine, hollowing out your belly.

The Vagus nerve runs through your diaphragm and when your diaphragm is hyper stretched, as in Buddha Belly, it activates the Vagus nerve, which stimulates anti-stress hormones. The Vagus nerve is the primary nerve in the Parasympathetic Nervous System, which is the Rest and Digest part of the Autonomic Nervous System. This is the automatic part of the nervous system.

By taking the abdominal breath, as taught here, at least once per hour, will create significant changes in your stress level. The best way to do this is to breathe in for a count of three, hold the breath three counts and breathe out for six counts, and do this hourly. Also, find some time in the day when you can take ten breaths just like this. This type of breathing is a major component of your success.

According to the American Medical Association, approximately 80% of the patients who visit an internal medicine doctor are there due to the long-term effects of stress. Long term chronic stress or a person’s perception of the stress causes a great deal of physical damage and is underlying almost all disease. Symptoms like headaches, back pain, stomach problems, rapid heart rate, fatigue, nervous habits, cognitive problems, and the list goes on and on.
Stress is a normal physiological response to an event or problem that makes you feel threatened or overwhelmed. Our nervous system is sensitive to danger in order to keep us safe. But the same system that helps us avoid physical danger can be the system that creates long-term chronic stress and damages our mind and body.

When the fight or flight response kicks in, we are sent into a focused, energetic and alert state. This state can help you to meet challenges, make you sharp when doing presentations, help you to react quickly in an accident, or other dangerous situations. However, the problems arise when we stay in this state too much or when every little thing that goes wrong sends us into hyper drive. When adrenaline and cortisol are released constantly, the damage it does to the body is extreme. Over time, it will damage and inflame every system of our body and this includes the brain. Things like memory problems, the inability to concentrate, seeing only the negative and constant poor judgement are directly related to chronic or high level of stress.

To break this pattern, it is important to take back some control. Using hypnosis to calm the central nervous system is the first step I take with my clients. Then, we work to change their thinking regarding the stressors in their life. Alleviating negative habits like procrastination, too much alcohol, improving sleep and connecting more with others will make a big impact on the perception of stress. Also, to be able to self-soothe is incredibly important to the reduction of stress. Studies show that 8 minutes in hypnosis is equivalent to 3 hours of sleep.

You have more control than you might think. The simple realization that you are in control of your life is the foundation of stress management. So, do something that makes you feel in control and you will feel your sense of well-being grow.