Nail Your Next Audition Using Hypnosis & NLP

People have strategies for everything they do: boredom, love, depression, happiness, even audition anxiety.  A strategy is a specific order and sequence of internal and external representations.  It’s just like a recipe for baking a cake. If you add the right ingredients in a certain order, you end up with a delicious result! The same is true for your states of mind.  Most people think of anxiety as something that happens to them.  If that were the case, no one would ever be able to get past it.  Anxiety is something you do, not something that happens to you.  If you can figure out the sequence and order of representations that produces your anxiety, you can interrupt the pattern and get a different result!

So, how do you elicit your strategy?

Most people are not aware of their strategies.  They typically run in your head in a matter of seconds and are usually pretty automated. The idea is to become more conscious of your strategy by asking yourself how you got there in the first place.  In terms of the ingredients of your strategies, you could have visual (internal/external), auditory (internal/external) or kinesthetic (internal/external) cues. When eliciting someone’s recipe for audition anxiety, the best way to do it is to get the chef back in the kitchen.

Think of a specific time when you experienced audition anxiety.  Rewind the movie to the very beginning. What was the first thing that happened that let you know it was time to do anxiety?  Was it something you saw?  Something you heard? Something you said to yourself?  For some actors, the anxiety begins as soon as they get a call from their agent.  (External auditory).  For others, it starts when they walk into the audition room.  (External visual).  Once you determine the first ingredient, move on to the second and third, and so forth.  It’s important to run through the entire sequence of representations.

Once you’ve elicited the strategy, it’s time to scramble it.  In other words, throw in a wrench to the normal order and sequence, and you end up with a different result! For instance, if you find that you always get nervous as soon as you see other actors in the audition room, you could interrupt the pattern by imagining everyone in their underwear.  If you find that your anxiety always begins while you’re driving to the audition, you could interrupt the pattern by imagining that you’re cruising around Gotham in your Batmobile.  The sillier your pattern interrupt, the more likely you are to override the old pattern.

And, if you scramble it enough times, you simply won’t be able to play the old record anymore! Can you imagine going into every audition feeling confident and secure?  It’s entirely possible and it’s all up to you!

Hypnosis Cures Late Night Eating

I can’t tell you how many clients come into my office complaining about the “late night munchies.”  Take Ms. S for example.  She insists that daytimes are a “piece of cake.”  “I’m good all day long,” she proclaims, “but when night time rolls around, it’s like the tiger has come out of its cage and there’s nothing to stop me from eating everything I can find in the cupboard.”

Ms. S is a single mom. She works hard all day long and doesn’t take breaks. When she gets home, she goes into mommy mode and doesn’t take any time for herself.  Only after her daughter goes to sleep, does she finally settle down.  She’s been so wound up all day long, that her body is screaming for nurture.  When she finally settles down, she chooses to numb out by plopping down in front of the television and snacking on empty carbohydrates.  This is typical behavior for a late night eater.

If you’re a late night eater, it’s probably because your body and/or mind is being deprived of some crucial ingredient during the day.  It’s like a jack-in-the box toy; if you keep twisting the crank, eventually the lid will pop open and the clown will pop out of the box.  Same thing with your body.  If you don’t feed it properly during the day and if you neglect to take periodic breaks for your mind, you’re bound to pop!

When working with late night eaters, I’ll often suggest that they take periodic breaks throughout the day, feed themselves properly in order to prevent blood sugar drops and practice self hypnosis or meditation.

Its perfectly fine to watch TV as a way to unwind, but eating in front of the television is a no-no! Eating should be done in a peaceful setting where you can be conscious of each bite (without any distractions)!

For questions about late night eating or to schedule a free consultation, please contact melany@hypnoswitch.com

Insomnia and What You Can Do About It

The Importance of Sleep

Sleep is vital to our health and well being. Yet millions of us, especially those of us in high-stress jobs, are not getting enough. Surveys conducted by the National Sleep Foundation reveal that 60 % of adults report having sleep problems a few nights a week or more.

Poor sleep has a price. Not only does it affect your mood, energy level and ability to concentrate, it can also take a serious toll on your health.  Research shows chronic sleep deprivation contributes to significant health problems such as obesity and heart disease.

For most insomniacs, hypnosis is probably the last option that comes to mind. Insomniacs will try everything from sleeping pills to home remedies. The problem with sleeping pills is that they do not offer a permanent solution.  Most insomniacs suffer from circular thinking.  Instead of clearing her mind at bedtime, the insomniac uses bedtime as an opportunity to process unresolved issues that may have arisen during the day. After repeatedly engaging in this type of circular thinking, her mind becomes conditioned to viewing bedtime as “processing time.”

The only way to break the pattern of sleeplessness is by reprogramming the mind so that the insomniac begins to associate bedtime with rest and relaxation. That’s where hypnosis comes in.

Using Self Hypnosis To Get To Sleep

If you have difficulty falling asleep, you can start reversing this condition by using self hypnosis.  First, make sure that your body is completely relaxed. Release all tension from each part of the body, starting with your feet and working your way up to your head.  Take a really deep breath, hold it for a moment, then slowly exhale. Next, roll your eyes up (eyelids closed, looking up into the forehead). This causes the eyelids to “flutter,” replicating the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) of sleep.

Next, visualize or imagine being in a very comfortable, relaxing spot (it could be a garden, beach, any type of relaxing setting). Use all of your senses to get in touch with the relaxing place that you have created in your mind. If unrelated thoughts enter your mind, allow them to keep on moving, like leaves falling off a tree. Increase the feelings of relaxation in your mind and body until you finally doze off into a nice, natural sleep.