Frequently Asked Questions

It’s fine to use more than one  session in a day. If you are drawn to repeating a session that’s fine too, in hypnotherapy we call that compounding ie. reinforcing. It is also ok to use two different sessions in a day. Just be aware of your emotional state and go with what feels right for you. We would recommend 2-3 sessions maximum in a day as you need a little time in between to assess how you’re feeling and what to focus on next. 

Transcript:

So I’ve been asked the question “Does hypnosis actually work?” Well one of the best definitions I’ve heard of hypnosis and hypnotherapy is that it is a single pointed focus of attention. So does meditation, focusing your mind single pointedly, single mindedly on a task, does that work? Does that have an effect? And the answer of course is yes.

So for example if you were preparing for a presentation or a speech of some kind and as you imagined it as you prepared for it you could imagine it going really badly, you’re stumbling over your words, you’re stumbling over the content. Does that work, does that have an effect? Yes it does, it would perhaps make you feel more anxious, more worried about the speech or presentation, you would actually perhaps stumble over your words and maybe make a bit of a mess of it and maybe the night before because you were so worried about it you might not sleep so well.

Of course this works the other way round as well. So if you’re imagining your speech your presentation going really well, everyone coming up to you afterwards, they’re patting you on the back saying what a fantastic job you’ve done, how inspiring you were. Wouldn’t that make you feel really good, you’d feel excited, you’d be really looking forward to it and you’d sleep well the night before.

So the job of a hypnotherapist is to help you to use this natural ability to imagine things to focus your mind, but to do it in such a way that it’s to your benefit, to help you to achieve the goals that you want to achieve.

Now usually in the therapeutic setting that’s started with a relaxation process, you calm your mind and then you focus your mind and that’s it in a nutshell. So what I’d recommend is that you download our free Harmony Hypnosis Meditation App and just check it out. Watch the videos which explain in more depth what hypnosis is and how it works so that you can feel really comfortable about it, because it will only be effective if you feel very comfortable and then listen to the free sessions to do with relaxation and focusing your mind. If you can relate to the style, the approach, then you can take it further.

Hope that answers the question, if you’d lie to know anything else, feel free to ask, I’m happy to help.

Darren Marks

Some of you may have come across my recordings within the Harmony App to do with releasing negative thoughts and feelings, anger, sadness, fear and so on and releasing limiting beliefs and decisions, things like, “I’m not good enough, I can’t do it” and so on.

In fact, that’s the type of work I do most of when clients come to see me at my practice, helping people to work through these difficult thoughts and feelings. Sometimes it can be very hard, how is it possible to get something positive out of the negative experience? Especially if that experience includes for example, deep feelings of sadness because you have lost somebody that you love, or extreme feelings of fear because you have experienced abuse, hurt and pain.

Yet this is the question, this is the task. What are the positive learning’s that you can gain from that experience? When I sometimes feel a little bit stuck or my clients feel a little bit stuck, I draw on the words in the writings of Viktor Frankl.

Viktor Frankl was a Psychotherapist, he was also an inmate at Auschwitz concentration camp and he wrote a book which I recommend to all of you called “Mans Search For Meaning”. It’s a slim, but very profound volume. Within the pages of this book are a number of very inspiring stories.

One of them is where he describes being forcefully marched in the middle of a Polish winter, virtually starving to death to dig a railway track and people are dying at the side of the street. Whilst this is happening he is imagining himself at the Vienna University after the war, lecturing on the psychology of the concentration camp victim. Now to me this is an incredible example of someone who’s obviously a victim but he is choosing not to think like one.

Of course, that is what he did at the end of the war, he managed to survive and he went to the university in Vienna and lectured on that subject whereas, most of those people who survived left those countries; who could blame them? Viktor Frankl stayed and he took his experience and turned it to the good, in fact his book has been read by millions of people around the world and has inspired many people including myself.

There’s another story within that volume which I found very inspiring, it’s where he describes being stripped naked, thrown into a cell. He believes he is going to die and at that moment he decides to think about all of the amazing and wonderful things that have happened to him in his life. He has this epiphany, he realizes that it doesn’t matter what they do to him, and they cannot take away his ability to choose what he thinks.
For me, that thought is the bedrock of all of the work that I do; it’s all about moving from a place of feeling like a victim of something to recognizing that you’re in control. No matter how difficult, how challenging the experiences that you have had in the past; it is possible to come back from that and to live a good and positive, uplifting life.

So, if there’s one thing that you take from using our recordings, from working with either myself or someone like myself; it is recognizing that the language that you use, even silently in your own mind makes a difference to how you feel. It helps you to shift your perspective and when you shift your perspective, it’s possible to transform anything and to move from that place of being like a victim, to having power and control in your life.

I wish you all the health, harmony, happiness and every success that the world has to offer.

My name’s Darren Marks, I’m the founder of Harmony Hypnosis and I’d like to talk to you today about Anchoring. Anchoring is a process, a technique which we use in many of the recordings within the Harmony Collection.

Our lives are full of anchors, triggers which; when we experience them create feelings within us. So, for example: You can smell a smell, taste a taste, hear a piece of music and it can trigger off, remind you of an experience that you’d had previously, and all the feelings associated with that experience which could be good or bad.

Within the hypnotherapy process we consciously create these triggers to engender good feelings, confident feelings, and maybe feelings of relaxation. For example: If you were telling somebody about an experience you had where you really succeeded, where you’d done extremely well and as you were telling your friend about that experience and how good you felt during that experience, those feelings would come back up. You would start to experience them again.

If you imagine it a little bit like it’s on a graph, and a graph goes up and then down. As you are telling your stories you’re remembering, recounting that experience, the feeling gets stronger and stronger and stronger, then at some point you can’t keep it going forever and it starts to drop off again.

The idea of an anchor within the therapeutic process is that it’s triggered off as the feeling’s getting strong and it’s still getting stronger, as opposed to strong and dropping off again. So, usually in this type of setting, and this is what we encourage within the recordings; an anchor is created by bring a thumb and finger together like this (okay sign). It doesn’t have to be this, it could be anything. It could be the way you touch your hair, a touch on the shoulder or a tap of the foot, it could be a word, a thought, or it could be something you imagine.

I’ve used for example, an anchor of imagining a hand on my shoulder, someone’s hand on my shoulder helping me to feel calm and relaxed in a stressful situation. The thumb and finger (okay sign) is great because it’s very subtle, no one need know that you are doing it. I would recommend that but it doesn’t have to be that.

So, the way it works and we are going to have a little practice now if you like; we are going to think of a time when you felt very confident, perhaps an experience where you did very well at something. I want you to remember that experience. So close your eyes if it helps and really take yourself back into that experience, where you were very successful, where you felt very confident. See what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt inside, see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt inside. As you remember that experience and how good you felt at that time, I want you to bring that thumb and finger together. On your right or your left hand bring it together in the form of a circle. As see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt inside. Then you can release that thumb and finger. Just allow yourself to relax. I want you to know that from now on, whenever you bring that thumb and finger together, automatically, subconsciously, all of those wonderful positive feelings will rise back up top of the surface each and every time you bring that thumb and finger together.

So, you can watch this video as many times as you like, listen out for that technique within the recordings, it usually comes somewhere near the beginning, just after the relaxation part. We often use an anchoring technique in many of the sessions and now you know what it’s all about and what it’s for. You can practice it, you can reinforce it, and you can have different anchors for different experiences. For example: one finger could be for confidence, and then another finger could be for relaxation and another for motivation. You can stack the anchors up so that you can trigger off different experiences, different feelings according to the situation you want to work with.

So, it’s a tool, it doesn’t resolve the underlying problems as to why you’re be struggling with something in the first place, but it is an excellent tool for you to bring out the best in yourself, to remind you of times where you felt really positive, very relaxed, very successful and to bring them into the present.