January 5th, 2010
New Year’s Resolutions: Will Power or simply a Decision?
At this time of year, resolutions, best intentions and goals for the year ahead are not far from anyone’s awareness. But how do we set and more importantly stick to the goals that we set? We can all understand that logically it doesn’t make sense to smoke, drink to excess or eat an entire selection box, yet many of us persist! So it easy to see that the logical part of our brain is not the only part of us that we need to recruit to help us achieve goals.
What many people don’t understand is that our brain can be split into distinct parts and one of those parts is the primitive area of the brain. This is the area that doesn’t necessarily see the harm in smoking and other unhealthy habits (it is not an intellect). Unless we recruit the assistance of this area of the brain too, giving up a habit or sticking to a new regime can be incredibly difficult. A little bit like trying to drive your car forward when it is in reverse gear!
Many of my clients have said to me that they lack willpower and it is a common misconception that willpower is what is required to overcome challenges. In fact, willpower is what we require when we are working without the agreement of our primitive brain; we can achieve things this way but it is often difficult and a constant challenge, leading in most cases to failure!
A more effective way of achieving any goal is to get your entire brain on board, get yourself into first gear! One key way to do this is to work on our intent; to put it simply we need to decide 100% that we are going to “go for it”. When we get ourselves into this mindset where there are no get out clauses our conscious and subconscious work together to help us achieve our goal. Both the logical and primitive parts of our brain help us to succeed. Several things happen when we truly make a decision to make a change, one of these is that our brain helps us to come up with not only the motivation to succeed but also solutions to potential pitfalls and problems. We have far greater ability to overcome challenges than we often give ourselves credit for, but to access our greatest creativity we need to have the right mindset. This is the mindset of 100% intent.
If you are struggling to achieve any goal then take a step back and get your mindset right. Once you have recruited the help of all of your brain, achieving your goals becomes much easier and willpower will be obsolete. As the saying goes: “get the mindset right and the rest is easy”.
There are many examples of individuals employing this way of approaching challenges, for example many ladies give up smoking easily when they find out they are pregnant, although they might have struggled in the past. For those who believe it is simply unacceptable to smoke when pregnant it creates the mindset of 100% intent- smoking is simply not an option! I have worked with numerous clients who have recounted examples of the power of mindset.
Whatever your goals are for 2010, good luck and remember to congratulate yourself for your successes and be kind if you experience any setbacks- this too will help to ensure your ultimate success.
For information on how hypnosis can help you to achieve your goals and align your conscious and subconscious, please get in touch.
Tags: clinical hypnotherapist, Clinical Hypnotherapy, smoking, willpower
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December 30th, 2009
Here’s Ben’s latest sports massage poster:
Sports Massage Therapy – Dec 09
Hope you like it
Tags: sports massage therapists
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December 8th, 2009
Pillow protocol
We have loads of patients asking about the right number and size of pillow to use, and rightly so. If you spend 8 hours every day with your head at a strange angle then you’re going to know about it – how many of you have woken up with a ‘cricked neck’ as a result of this?
Now, your neck can bend forward and backwards further that it can bend side to side and it is this side bending that compresses the delicate joints at the back of the neck and can cause them to really hurt. So, the key thing is to make sure that your spine is not bent sideways when you are sleeping. To prevent this you need to adequately fill the gap between the side of your head and the mattress. The best way to work this out how large a pillow you’ll need is to lean against a wall with your shoulder rolled forward, as you do whilst sleeping in your bed, and feel how large the gap between your head and the wall you need to fill – usually about a hand’s width. Or, better yet, get someone else to check whilst you are lying in bed.
So, the answer is we don’t know how many pillows you should have as it all depends on you but we know how to find that number out.
Finally, if you are a front sleeper you are in a world of hurt. If you get a decent pillow then front sleeping does become difficult and you may break the habit – give it a go and good luck.
Tags: chiropractic, Pillow, sleep
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December 2nd, 2009
Posted by Rupert Clements of C1 Chiropractic Health Centre.
I’ve had my application to become a BUPA Registered practitioner accepted. So, I’m now seen by the system to be a competent and capable practitioner and able to treat anyone with BUPA cover. Took a while but I am glad as it will make a difference.
Tags: BUPA chiropractor
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November 25th, 2009
We’ve had a hell of a week seeing patients with anterior head carriage and we’ve been working hard to explain it all to them and then get them back on the right track.
Correcting any anterior head carriage is never going to be accomplished overnight. It takes a long time for the body to adapt to a new posture (I think it’s thousands of repetitions to learn a new motion pattern) and correcting your own posture is next to impossible as it involves conscious thought which is really difficult to maintain for any length of time and do some work at the same time.
But how is it mended?
Firstly get in and see your chiropractor to get your neck working well as there is no point of learning new posture with a rotated neck – why? as this will then become the default posture for your neck and you’ll try to revert to it. A visit will also reduce some symptoms (if you have any) but this will only be temporary because without a change in posture, the body will go right back to its previous position creating the problem again. So we must tackle the ‘why’ bit of the problem.
Anterior head carriage affects those that sit all day, usually in front of a computer or at a desk. Most people in these cases find themselves leaning over a desk to read or are hunched at a computer typing all day. Take a look around you; you’ll see them out there, like this cracking example of it in Drew barrymore – no less.
If your posture is correct then the red Centre of Gravity (CoG) line should pass through your ear hole. What happens in AHC is that the head comes forward of the CoG and starts to slow-fall to the keyboard. The only thing stopping this fall are the muscles of the neck and shoulders, such as the traps and the lev scaps.
However, once the neck is working well and the shoulder and neck muscles are functioning again it is time to start the anterior head carriage stretches to combat the damage done by peering into the computer for years.
I’ll add this on the blog once I get some decent photos of the stretch so hold your horses, get it working right by seeing your chiro and by the time it is I’ll have the stretch ready.
RMSC
Tags: anterior head carriage, C1 Chiropractic Health Centre
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