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Battling the bulge with hypnotherapy


WITH the festive season fast approaching, ladies will be striving to look their very best. Christmas is a time for plenty of parties, giving fashionable ladies the perfect excuse to don that special outfit.

The run-up to Christmas is also a time when many decide to start watching their weight to ensure they look fabulous for the many functions ahead.
Renowned hypnotherapist Patrick Fox will be coming to Ennis later this month and he promises to help those battling with the bulge.
“I had a woman come to one of my sessions in the West County Hotel three years ago and she has lost 17 stone. After the session in the West County, we did a lot of phone sessions, which we would call home therapy. She was 26 stone and now she is nine stone and she’s a new woman. She’s got her confidence and she has a new job. Before losing the weight she was sitting at home and she didn’t want to go anywhere. Weight can have an enormous knock-on effect on a person,” he said.
He explained many people come to him in the run-up to Christmas for help with weight loss.
“Of course, the time people want to look well for is for Christmas and New Year. Christmas is the time when we show off. We have been treating people that maybe are only 5lbs overweight. But that 5lbs can make an enormous difference to some people. You could have a woman who is usually a size 10 and when she walks into a store for Christmas now she’s a size 12. That can deflate her completely.”
Patrick is one of the most successful hypnotherapists in the world, hitting the headlines a number of years ago when he hypnotised his wife Catherine to achieve a pain-free labour and birth of their daughter. A professionally accredited hypnotherapist, he has featured on the Ryan Tubridy Show, RTÉ’s Health Squad, Nationwide and Ireland AM.
Weight loss is the most common thing people come to Patrick for help with.
“There is an old saying that when we can find something that we can do that doesn’t work, we keep on doing it. There are people out there who try lots of different things to lose weight for years and they’re still overweight.
“I was looking at an article recently where it said that 98% of diets fail because they ask you to deprive yourself of certain foods. As well as damaging your health and looks, diets can seriously cripple your bank balance. Research revealed that the average Irish woman starts three new diet regimes a year and spends a staggering €28,000 on diets in her lifetime. Think of that amount of money to lose weight that you didn’t even want in the first place.”
He has been visiting Ennis for sessions every month since 1992, giving a variety of people one-on-one sessions.
“We find that it works well that way because people will tell us things that they wouldn’t tell us in a group situation. They’re a lot more open. If you were in a group situation they might not tell you the cause of their weight gain; it could be a whole lot of different things, like maybe a marriage breakdown. But they would tell you about it in a one-to-one.
“We’re always booked with appointments when we come to Ennis. I suppose we could spend a week there if we had the time but we don’t because we have to do so many clinics around the country,” he explained.
Patrick takes a few rooms in the West County Hotel to work with clients privately.
“When I meet with them I talk to them a little bit about hypnosis, to get them in a nice state of relaxation. It’s a bit like opening a door. We open the door to the subconscious and hypnosis opens that door quite quickly.”
He explained the process of hypnotherapy for weight loss.
“What I do is ask the subconscious mind to convey [suggestions] to the conscious mind. Let’s say, if mushrooms are bad for you, then the person would start not liking mushrooms or have no great interest in them. We put in suggestions, that we know are tried and tested over the years, that will help that person become their ideal size. And that’s put in a time frame, so that lady in Clare, we would have had it locked in that she would have gone down to nine stone within a certain amount of time.”
According to Patrick, “If they [the clients] follow what we are telling them to do, it will always work. I’m a teacher, I can teach them what to do but I can’t do it for them, of course.”
Patrick has worked with 130,000 people from all over the world with weight loss, along with helping 110,000 people give up smoking.
And while people may want to lose weight to fit into that special dress, the long-term health benefits are even more important.
“I was in hospital in 1990 and I was there for a month and I was only given 5% chance of living for the first two weeks I was there. I remember talking to the nurses about some of the others on the ward and they would tell me, we can nurse them but we can’t make them well. I asked what’s the cause and most of the time it was their diet or their smoking. Their way of life had caused the problem maybe 30 years previously.
“People are putting in food that is going to cause them irreparable damage in 20 or 30 years time, so whatever they invest in themselves now to get themselves well will be there for them in the future. There are certain things that are out of our control but it is within our control to give up alcohol, to get rid of cigarette smoking. If every person stopped smoking in Ireland here today and got to their ideal weight, we’d empty the hospitals.”
While Patrick will be visiting Ennis, he also carries out phone sessions and creates personalised CDs for hypnotherapy at home.
“That’s the way the business is going these days. We like to meet with clients for the first time but after that it can be done over the phone. People can sit back in their own homes and relax, just letting it sink into the mind. We record everything, so after the first session we can personally design CDs, so each night they can be played before you go to sleep or even when you’re asleep because the subconscious never sleeps. That way you can listen to it everyday, make sure you don’t put on weight, feel good and get lots more confident.”
Patrick Fox will be holding private sessions in the West County Hotel on November 24. Contact 086 2542316 or 1890 300 007 for details.

 

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