Free From Stress and Anxiety – Part 2

Written by Lynn Roberts – Regain Psy-Tap & Clinical Hypnotherapy

In the last issue, I started sharing with you some amazing psycho-sensory techniques, which were created by eminent scientists, psychologists and wellbeing coaches, that I use with my clients and in my anxiety workshops. These techniques build on each other to create new habits of thinking and feeling, and if practiced, they will have you feeling more positive and calm in your day-to-day life.

Last issue’s technique was a visualisation technique created by the Institute of HeartMath, called Freeze Frame. If you tried it, you should have felt immediate positive changes. If you missed it, you can find it in the online Autumn issue of About The Town magazine.

This issue’s technique is a Havening technique. This is probably one of the best techniques for treating trauma that exists today. It can reverse the biological changes that were put in place from a past traumatic event and neutralise the emotions.

I suggest you familiarise yourself with the technique by reading through and practicing the movements and eye movements several times so that you know it off by heart and can use it whenever you need to.

1. First, pay attention to how you are feeling and rate it on a scale of 1-10
2. Clear your mind, or imagine something different.
3. Put your hands on your face and gently stroke your forehead and cheeks side to side repeatedly for about 20 seconds.
4. While doing the exercise, stroke your hands down your arms from shoulders to elbows (at a speed of approximately 3 seconds).
5. As you continue stroking, close your eyes and imagine you’re on a beautiful beach. Count each footstep you take in the sand for 20 footsteps.
6. Continue stroking, open your eyes and, keep your head still, look down to the left and right; repeat 5-6 times before closing your eyes again.
7. Imagine next that you’re walking outside on a lawn, again counting 20 steps out loud as you walk across the lawn.
8. Now open your eyes and see how you feel now. Has your number gone down? You can repeat this until your number is 1.

Chronic anxiety and stress, or feeling good, feeling calm and happy, are all habits and ones that can be learned or unlearned. It just takes practice. You can get good at anxiety, or you can get good at calm; you will most easily slip into the state that you practice most. I hope to help you to get better at feeling calm and happy more of the time.