“”Research comparing many different studies of hypnotherapy has shown that on average smokers are over five times more likely to break the habit with hypnosis than by willpower alone. Hypnotherapy in general is also proven to be more than twice as effective as nicotine gum.

If you really want to stop smoking, then one session of hypnotherapy could be all you need.”

SLEEP’S effect on fat is becoming clearer. Having too much or too little piles on the worst kind of fat.

Kristen Hairston and colleagues at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, monitored 1100 African and Hispanic Americans for five years. Both groups are at a high risk of obesity-related disorders.

People under 40 gained 1.8 kilograms more on average if they got less than 5 hours of sleep per night than if they slept for 6 or 7 hours. Those regularly sleeping for more than 8 hours gained 0.8 kilograms more than the medium-sleep group (Sleep, vol 33, p 289).

CAT scans revealed increases in visceral fat, which accumulates around the internal organs and is particularly dangerous to health.

Essentially, it was set in the not too distant future and explored the trials of living with someone in the family with Alzheimers. Although the writer describes it as a dark comedy, I really felt the drama quite rightly overshadowed this.

It wasn’t hard to leave the theatre really thinking about what people have to go through. Interestingly, the play also depicted a National Health Service which was so obsessed with drugs and placebos…that it was encouraging people to be locked into a hospital called “The Ark” for tests. At one point someone suggested that maybe sleep, proper food and water would be enough help for the elderly to live a better quality of life and the scientist proclaimed- “But there has to be side effects!” Will anyone ever in the history of playwriting ever make a play about a good male scientist? Why are they always so manical?

Anyway, probably not the lightest of entertainments in dealing with euthanasia and mental illness but definitely worth checking out.

It’s also left me fascinated with the possibilities of hypnotherapy in working with mental illness in it’s early onset stages and what possibilities there are to improve someones existence. I was particularly interested in the scientific explanations that i’ve since researched about what exactly is taking place in the Hippocampus.

If anyone reading this, is particularly knowledgeable about this subject- i’d please ask them to contact me at 1 Harley Street, London or info@zackpolanski.com because it’s something i’d be particularly interested in helping to work with in the future.

• 80% of workers feel stress in their job.
• 50% say they need help in learning how to manage stress.

• 14% have felt like striking a co-worker in the past year, but didn’t.
• 29% have yelled at co-workers because of workplace stress,
• 19% of workers have quit a previous position because of job stress.
• 62% routinely fi nd that they end the day with work-related neck pain.
• 34% reported difficulty in sleeping because they were too stressed-out.

Facts about Stress that probably will
• Stress is a sign your body is working perfectly.
• The difference between a stressful situation and a challenging situation is our perception of: Our ability
to manage it; the level of control we feel we have over it, and the meaning, signifi cance and consequence it
has for us. You can change your perception of all of these things.
• There are techniques available that are simple to use that can radically change your experience of stress
and quickly put you back in control.

Reprinted with Kind Permission from The Quest Institute.

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist working from Harley St, London.

Something that’s really struck me about the work I do with people is their bravery. There are very few universals in the clients that I see- and everyone is very unique and different- but there’s something deeply touching about people’s wants, needs and desires to change. Often when people have come to see me, they’ve given up in the past and that’s how they’ve let their problem(s)/issue(s) get to a level where they really desire to make a change or they’re so keen to improve their lives from the state they feel they’re already in- that they go at it with full force.

I was reflecting on this when I read a passage last night from Irvin Yalom’s “The Gift Of Therapy” and there was a short passage which really struck a chord;

“Heddeger spoke of two modes of existence; the everyday mode and the ontological mode. In the everyday mode we are consumed with and distracted by material surroundings- we are filled with wonderment about how things are in the world. In the ontological mode we are focused on being per se- that is , we are filled with wonderment that things are in the world. When we exist in the ontological mode- the realm beyond everyday concerns- we are in a state of particular readiness for personal change.”

The key phrase I believe is the latter. Clients don’t usually get through my door until they’re already ready to begin to make that personal change- and being ready to make a difference in any aspect of your life often requires bravery.

The Catch 22 is that i’m not wholly sure if it’s the bravery that creates readiness or vice versa or if actually they’re both just fueling along. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter- the important part is the decision. Are you ready, and indeed brave enough, to make changes in your life?

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist at 1 Harley Street, London. W1G 9QD

The Lewis Clinic is a clinic of hypnotherapists working from the centre of London at Harley St, but also includes many clients from North, South, East and West.

In 1979 psychologist Ellen Langer carried out an experiment to find if changing thought patterns could slow ageing. But the full story of the extraordinary experiment has been hidden until now.

How much control do you have over how you will age?

Many people would laugh at the idea that people could influence the state of their health in old age by positive thinking. A way of mitigating ageing is a holy grail for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry, but an experiment by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer three decades ago could hold significant clues.

Prof Langer has spent her entire career investigating the power our mind has over our health. Conventional medicine is frequently accused of treating them as separate entities.

FIND OUT MORE Horizon: Don’t Grow Old is available via iPlayer and will be repeated at 0250GMT on BBC One on Tuesday 9 February

“Everybody knows in some way that our minds affect our physical being, but I don’t think people are aware of just how profound the effect actually is,” she says.

In 1979, Prof Langer conducted a ground-breaking experiment – the results of which are only now being fully revealed.

Prof Langer recruited a group of elderly men all in their late 70s or 80s for what she described as a “week of reminiscence”. They were not told they were taking part in a study into ageing, an experiment that would transport them 20 years back in time.

The psychologist wanted to know if she could put the mind back 20 years would the body show any changes.

The men were split into two groups. They would both be spending a week at a retreat outside of Boston.

Ellen Langer in 1979 and today

But while the first group, the control, really would be reminiscing about life in the 50s, the other half would be in a timewarp. Surrounded by props from the 50s the experimental group would be asked to act as if it was actually 1959.

They watched films, listened to music from the time and had discussions about Castro marching on Havana and the latest Nasa satellite launch – all in the present tense.

Dr Langer believed she could reconnect their minds with their younger and more vigorous selves by placing them in an environment connected with their own past lives.

And she was determined to remove any prompt for them to behave as anything but healthy individuals. The retreat was not equipped with rails or any gadgets that would help older people. Right from the off she was determined to ensure they looked after themselves.

One man discarded his walking stick

When they got off the bus at the retreat, Prof Langer did not help the men carry their suitcases in. “I told them they could move them an inch at a time, they could unpack them right at the bus and take up a shirt at a time.”

The men were entirely immersed in an era when they were 20 years younger.

Understandably, Prof Langer herself had doubts. “You have to understand, when these people came to see if they could be in the study and they were walking down the hall to get to my office, they looked like they were on their last legs, so much so that I said to my students ‘why are we doing this? It’s too risky’.”

But soon the men were making their own meals. They were making their own choices. They weren’t being treated as incompetent or sick.

Pretty soon she could see a difference. Over the days, Prof Langer began to notice that they were walking faster and their confidence had improved. By the final morning one man had even decided he could do without his walking stick.

As they waited for the bus to return them to Boston, Prof Langer asked one of the men if he would like to play a game of catch, within a few minutes it had turned into an impromptu game of “touch” American football.

Obviously this kind of anecdotal evidence does not count for much in a study.

But Prof Langer took physiological measurements both before and after the week and found the men improved across the board. Their gait, dexterity, arthritis, speed of movement, cognitive abilities and their memory was all measurably improved.

Their blood pressure dropped and, even more surprisingly, their eyesight and hearing got better. Both groups showed improvements, but the experimental group improved the most.

Think younger, feel younger?

Prof Langer believes that by encouraging the men’s minds to think younger their bodies followed and actually became “younger”.

She first published the scientific data in 1981 but she left out many of the more colourful stories. As a young academic, she feared this might taint the experiment and affect the acceptance of the results.

Now after over 30 years of research into the connection between the mind and the body and with the confidence and conviction of a Harvard professor, she feels she has a fuller story to tell.

“My own view of ageing is that one can, not the rare person but the average person, live a very full life, without infirmity, without loss of memory that is debilitating, without many of the things we fear.”

Richard Wiseman, professor of public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, thinks the results of Prof Langer’s experiments are fascinating but the big question is what’s causing them. “I think there could be multiple things going on here and the question is which explanations really hold water.

Why some people age faster than others is mysterious

“Part of it could be self perception, for example if you get people to smile they feel happier. The same could be going on here, by getting people to act younger they feel younger.”

Prof Weisman believes another factor could be motivational, the men are simply trying harder by the end of the week, or it could be similar to hypnotism, where people do better on memory tests because they are told they have a better memory.

Whatever the cause he believes there is a place for the type of positive thinking shown in the study.

“If you take something like heart disease positive thinking can have a role, because while it won’t heal your heart on its own, positive thinking will feed into positive actions like healthy eating or exercise which will help.”

In any event there is likely to be more interest in the 1979 experiment. The retelling of the study has been snapped up by Jennifer Aniston’s new production company, with Aniston tipped to play Prof Langer.

Their trainings are always excellent and i’d thoroughly reccomend it to anyone who’s interested in learning more about the world of Cognitive Hypnotherapy.

Among the skills that were being developed were Dilt’s sleight of mouth patterns (A personal favourite), Eye Movement Integration (Particularly useful in working with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and various uses of working with Inner space in Outer Space.

NLP New Code often does the latter in various guises and forms, and it was interesting to see it put in a different context.

I love going on trainings; as much as I enjoy working with various clients and all the different issues and ideas that people bring into the room with them at Harley Street- I really enjoy the odd weekend in London around other therapists sharing ideas and progressing the advancement of the field.

I also think it’s really important to keep training. I attend at least five days further training every month to make sure that I’m keeping up to date with the latest advancements in new technologies and ideas around the therapeutic relationship.

Some of the things that were really interesting to me in January were phobias, anxiety, lack of confidence, canabis and stop smoking cessation arenas.

This coming weekend i’m assisting coaching on a New Code Neurolinguistic Programming Course in Regent’s Park with Peter Salisbury and Associates which is in a run up to an Advanced New Code training I’m participating in with Dr John Grinder in February in France.

I’ll keep the blog updated as we go!

Particularly struck me as I have an interesting mix of different clients who come to see me.

A lot come because they are trying to get away from something- like a phobia for example, or anxiety. They don’t like something in their life which they’d much rather be rid of.

On the other hand though, I see a lot of people who just want to be ‘better at something.’ Whether it be performance enhancement of their confidence levels, a sports performance or an actor- they just want an improvement.

Isn’t it interesting how we often find human beings who have certain skills already and didn’t realise it was a skill until someone went out of their way to write an article about it?

Following is the article; If you’d like to see Zack Polanski, please contact The Lewis Clinic, 1 Harley Street, London.

Other clinics also available in the Camden area,  Westminster and Bayswater.

Many of us struggle sometimes to put a name to a face, but what if you could recognise someone many years after seeing them for a moment?

You know the woman crossing the street. But where from?

Ah, she was one of the volunteers staffing the polling station where you voted several years before. You probably saw her for a couple of minutes. Several years ago.

Sound like the kind of face you would place immediately?

It is for Jennifer. She is a “super recogniser”, someone with a significantly above average ability to place a face.

In fact, she can almost never forget a face. She first noticed something might be unusual on holiday with her family when she spotted a very minor actor on a plane. Her family were disbelieving but she was proved right.

But it really hit home at college that she was different from those around her.

“I’d meet so many people in the first few weeks and I’d remember everyone no matter how brief the encounter. I’d then meet them at a party and they wouldn’t remember me. I’d think: ‘That person is SO fake, I can’t believe they’re pretending they don’t remember me when we met for 30 seconds in the cafeteria three weeks ago.’”

Chance meeting

It doesn’t matter if years have lapsed since seeing them.

She describes seeing someone she saw a few times as child, on the subway, now over 20 years older with greying hair and dreadlocks and knowing exactly who she was.

“People can get older but their faces look the same to me,” says Jennifer. “They don’t look different to me whether they’re children or adults. I don’t know why my mind is able to make the leap.”

It sounds like a neat party trick, or perhaps something useful in business, but it may mean more than that to scientists.

Jennifer’s ability may help scientists who are investigating people in the opposite position, those who suffer from the condition prosopagnosia, popularly known as face blindness.

Claire, a 49-year-old mother of four, has the condition.

She contracted viral encephalitis in May 2004 and as well as severe memory loss she has struggled to recognise faces.

“I was discharged home to a family I couldn’t recognise, I had to believe they were my family. I had to believe Ed was my husband and tell myself he was the man I loved and that the children were my children.”

Claire continues to have problems with faces. She still can’t pick out which are her children if they’re with their friends. But she describes a recent triumph – picking out her husband Ed in a crowd. Yet she still has to use different strategies to recognise friends and family by.

Even her own reflection can catch her out if it takes her by surprise.

Challenging condition

Learning to live with the condition and work around it takes effort, and life remains difficult for Claire.

“It’s not easy trying to re-find myself in what feels like someone else’s life and the more sociable I’m becoming, the more challenging the prosopagnosia is. We take all the knowledge and information you get from someone’s face for granted.

“You don’t think about it how you’d feel if all that information was whipped off you. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody’

It may not be the case that there are only three groups of face recognisers, those with prosopagnosia, those who are “normal” and then the super recognisers.

Instead, there may be a spectrum of face recognition, says Brad Duchaine, of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience and University College London’s prosopagnosia research centre.

People like Claire have acquired prosopagnosia from damage to the brain. But there is another kind often less severe is called “developmental” prosopagnosia where someone has had the condition all their life.

And the condition is surprisingly common. As many as one in 50 people will be prosopagnosic but often they won’t know.

And at the other end of the spectrum scientists are beginning to study super recognisers, often establishing contact because of publicity about prosopagnosia.

They are just starting to understand the brains of the super recognisers by scanning their neural networks and working out what might be structurally or functionally different about their grey matter.

On standard tests of facial recognition, the super recognisers usually get full marks, but even if the faces are severely blurred they still get near to full marks, says recognition expert Prof Richard Russell, of Gettysburg College.

“One of the most exciting implications of this work is that while we assume we all see the same things, this work suggests that at least in terms of looking at faces we don’t see the same things.

“Super recognisers are looking at the world in a different way than other people and it could be that this isn’t limited to looking at faces but other aspects of seeing the world. And we think it’s going to be a very helpful tool in helping understanding of how the mind and the brain work.”

While not suffering difficulties, like those with prosopagnosia, the super recognisers sometimes still choose to modify their behaviour.

Jennifer admits lying when asked whether she has met people before. Some would find it unsettling that someone remembers their face and name after a momentary encounter many years before.

Just walking around in the city can produce a tissue of recognition.

“It’s not necessarily every single person who’s walking by me in a rush of people on the street but if I notice someone then I will remember them

“I really don’t have to have an important interaction with people.”

Significantly, even if the faces have changed considerably they are still recognisable

“People can get older – for some reason their faces still look the same to me. My mind is able to make the leap.”

And certain sectors of society should try to avoid the super recognisers.

“I do always tell people that I think I would be the perfect witness for a crime,” Jennifer says.

Psychologist Cliff Arnall pinpointed the third Monday of January as the gloomiest day but is urging us not to give in to the blues.

He said: “I would encourage people to use the day as a springboard, to challenge the notion, for people to focus on the high quality things in their life.

“What is important are emotions, who you love and your friends. Look at the things you have, that money can’t buy, have some fun on the day.”

But it isn’t so materially based for everyone.

For other’s, it can be several factors all combined together: weather, debt, time since Christmas, time since failing our New Year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and the feeling of a need to take action.

Others blame the recession, for the idea of uncertainty.

As Tony Robbins says, everyone loves a surprise, right? Untrue. We love a surprise when we enjoy the result.
In life, we often enjoy certainty and the unpredictable.

So, what can you actually do?

I don’t necessarily subscribe to the school of thought called “Positive Thinking.” If there’s serious aspects of your life that aren’t working for you- then how about taking a different tag, that of authentic happiness?

Changing the things in our life that don’t work for us and having more of the stuff that does.

So, here’s my question; What can you do today, so that when you look back on January 18th 2011 and beyond- you can know that you really set your life on track in a direction that you want to go in?

—

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist for The Lewis Clinic at 1 Harley Street.

Working with a wide range of issues, he can be contacted on 07738088632 or by filling out the enquiry form at www.zackpolanski.com

A really common theme in everything that i’ve heard both with clients and the public around me is the idea of resolutions.

Some of them have been the obvious stuff like ‘i want to lose weight,’ or ‘i don’t want to smoke anymore’ and some have been more unusual. I saw a father for his final (5th) session who’s final aim was to be more understanding with his children. And then interestingly, there was one lady who’d experienced a form of trauma and wanted to start 2010 by leaving it behind.

As always in my blogs, I checked that she didn’t mind me talking about it as long as I left her anonymous.

The abuse aside, looking forward to the future was a real moment for her. She’d never taken that time to really think about what she wanted. And the actual content of it, in the end, turned out not to matter- much more important and profound for her was the process of how she was going to get it and how she was going to divert around not getting what she’s not wanting.

We spoke on the phone, just an hour ago which prompted the blog entry- and she just said that she felt the hour together had really made an impact on her life.

The idea of “What makes us tick?”

Tony Robbins would suggest that there are several factors;

1) Certainty – Do you like surprises? Ha. Only the ones that you wanted. Everything else we label as a problem.

2) Uncertainty- What happens if you only had certainty in your life? You’d be bored, right?

3) Significance- We’re all striving for this in some way. Some do it through financial means, others by striving for intellectual precidence and others by meaning something to their partner. We often see it in youth through violence; if there’s no other way out, they can strive to cause damage to others.

4) Love/Connection- Everyone wants the first, but sometimes when we get scared; maybe we can just settle for the second. This is what Robbins suggests in his most recent book.

Whilst I think these are useful models, I think it’s important to take them for what they are- models. Ultimately, it has to be about what does the individual want?

So here’s the question?

What do you want for 2010? Do you want to be free of that phobia? Not feel anxiety any more? Not to suffer from lack of confidence or insecurity?

And if any of those, what is it that you actually want?

Do you need to feel ok? Or how about maybe, just maybe, you want to feel great?

Whatever it is, intentionally setting a conscious target can only point you in the right direction.

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist and NLP New Code Practitioner. For information prior to booking an appointment, call on 07738088632 or alternatively e-mail at info@zackpolanski.com