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It is October. Also now known as Stoptober.

Throughout the month of October, you can get my Stop Smoking Now audio for you or a loved one at a reduced price. 

Go on! Stop smoking is so good for you! 

Next week, I'll be showcasing our new college website and advising details of our new London based Hypnotherapy Practitioner Diploma course and our plans to run our diploma course in other locations around the UK and Europe. 

Onto today... 

In recent times, I have spoken about, taught on the subject and written about mindfulness a great deal. It has a wonderful evidence base across a wide number of applications. 

I am asked on numerous occasions how to incorporate mindfulness into day-to-day existence and not having to spend many hours engaged in mindfulness protocols, like the body scan approach, for example. 

One way to learn how to be more mindful is to simply think in terms of being present. 

Then I want to talk about your tummy... Uh? (You'll see what I mean shortly) 

Being present means that you are really connected with your experience and can be aware of the moment you are in without it being distorted
- just accepting it as it really is...
I know it sounds easy and is a well used idea these days...
Yet so few people actually do it properly, or even do it at all.  

It means noticing what is actually going on for you, right now, this moment, rather than judging, perceiving it through a set of filters, it or dismissing it. 

Being present can involve both processing detail and appreciating how this is part of something larger: you're taking in every colour and form in a fabulous sunset and feeling at one with nature, or feeling exquisitely yourself and at the same time lost in the other as you're making love... 

Nice thought, eh? 

Yet it can also be about realising that if you are happy in a single moment, then the world is right for you at that moment. It can also be about more seemingly mundane things too - being present can give great insight while working, sat at a computer and so on, but it is not the insight that we actively seek. Just being present is all we are required to do here, insight may come after. 

Being present is something that can happen much more easily when you stop trying... 

Trying can take you out of your immediate experience in a number of ways. 

• It may dissociate you from it - you become an observer, and often a critical one, of yourself. 
• It can add other voices to your internal dialogue... 
• it can also be symptomatic of internal conflicts and arguments between different parts of yourself...

Being present is what naturally happens if you don't get in the way. That's why today I am listing some of the most common ways in which you can not be present so that you can notice which you tend to do most. 

Things you can do to help you get better at being present and maybe find it easier (and be more patient) to take the time to engage in fuller mindfulness processes. 

Continued below...

Have a think about yourself... Do you do any of the following?

- Get distracted from what you are experiencing by imposing norms on your experience. You might tell yourself you should be enjoying something even though your heart really isn't in it.

- Leave the present and get waylaid by anticipating the future - either by being anxious about what you fear or by fantasising about what you'd like to happen. 

When you imagine something bad happening, your mind engages with the scenario you're creating, and since 'reality', as far as the mind is concerned, is what it's experiencing, you're likely to create the effects of a real disaster in your physiology and emotions by having that thought. So stop that now!

Fantasising about good futures can be one way of helping bring them about, but only when you connect those dreams to what needs to happen now, today and next week.

- Leave the present and rerun what happened in the past: go over old grudges or failures or replay again and again situations where you're unsure about the wisdom of what you did.

- Keep reminding yourself how people have taken advantage of you, or put you down. At its worse this reinforces the effects of the experience each time it is rerun, and can rapidly lead you to make distorting generalisations like: 'You can't trust anyone', 'People are all thoughtless and self-serving', etc.

- When things seem to be going well, ask yourself what the catch is or what might go wrong. While there can be a self-protective intent behind this, it's another way of undermining your trust and involvement in your present experience. Done enough, this can make you doubt the evidence of your own senses, and undermine both your confidence and your self-esteem.

You are familiar with one or more of those notions listed above, aren't you? 

Knowing which of these is most applicable to you gives you the next step if you want to be more present. Today, get curious about exactly how you get in your own way, and then stop doing it and do something different. 

Being present involves becoming open to your experience. Sometimes your experience - illness, doubt, uncertainty, lack of progress, frustration - will be uncomfortable. Attempting to hide or deny unpleasant experiences involves us in another form of trying, and creates another degree of removal from our experience: we run the risk of becoming less aware of our experience as a whole. 

When people are asked about their peak experiences, they don't just pick happy ones. Peak experiences can involve sadness, pain and death. What happens if you allow yourself to experience unpleasant things as fully as pleasant ones? Usually, allowing yourself to pay attention to the experience and the feelings means that you actually feel more congruent with yourself, and are able all the sooner to seek remedies or make changes to improve the situation.

I have written on my blog in recent months that too much positivity can lead us to ignorance and problems if we are not careful... Pessimism and cynicism are actually ways of attempting to avoid hurt or disappointment. They are attempts at self-protection - but when you acknowledge hurt and disappointment for what they are, you can in fact deal with them more easily.

If you are open to your experience, and develop your awareness of your own sensory processing, you will enhance your trust in yourself. You will also build your credibility with others.

Being able to relate your experience to a larger perspective or dimension makes being present even richer. 

One wonderful way to get engaged in the present is to use self-hypnosis. Today, I want to share with you a technique that I was first taught in a meditation class many, many years ago and have adapted to use with self-hypnosis... 

It involves your tummy...  

Many people I encounter wander hard and lost through their lives until they awaken with a deep sigh of letting go.
How many sighs do you hear?
How many have you heard recently?
When we sigh, it often comes from your tummy. Yes indeed, your tummy. 

When the tummy is hard, there is holding.... By that I mean, some degree of fighting or posturing is resisting and hardening to the moment, attempting to control...

Your tummy is an extraordinary sensory instrument. Many believe that the deeper our relationship to the tummy, the sooner we discover if we are holding in the mind too... Trying tightens the tummy. 
Trying stimulates judgment.
Even trying to understand this idea here now, your tummy may have tightened.

When you focus on having a "Soft Tummy" simply allow understanding to arise, all by itself, from your true nature.... And connect with the present. Imagine going beyond the mind.. We are often programmed to hold on to our pain, to turn it into suffering. We are taught to harden the tummy, to hide its fullness, its roundness, its spaciousness. Women in particular are programmed to be "attractive" and encouraged to wear undergarments that compress the tummy and decrease the sense of spaciousness. 

Men, too, can often be noticed "holding in the tummy" to be acceptable. We are implored to be hard-bellied by a culture which confuses hardness with beauty. It is a dangerous way to live if one wishes to be fully alive and present from time to time... 

Five Steps To Get Present With Your Tummy:  

Joke of the week:

Old Tam, who had lost all his teeth, had a visit from the minister who noted that Tam had a bowl of almonds. "My brother gave me those, but I don't want them, you can have them" said Old Tam. The minister tucked into them and then said "That was a funny present to give a man with no teeth." To which Old Tam replied "Not really, they had chocolate on them..."  

Boom, boom! Hahaha... Love that one... Thank you everyone who sends me the jokes each week and the members who keep posting them in the members area, they are all well received 

Here are a selection of topical articles that I enjoyed reading this week, often related to the fields of hypnosis, hypnotherapy, psychotherapy and other forms of personal development. Some may have just amused me or made me smile. If you ever come across any related articles that you think may feature well, then get in touch with me and we can share them here: 

- The latest series of the Apprentice is about to start and there is a hypnotherapist in the line up:

A hypnotherapist, social worker and pub quiz director...Meet Lord Sugar's latest batch of Apprentice hopefuls

- A couple of articles about Greg Wallace, who used hypnotherapy to help overcome his nerves caused by his appearance on Strictly Come Dancing:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/strictly-come-dancing/11137287/Gregg-Wallaces-Strictly-Come-Dancing-Diary-part-two.html

and

https://uk.tv.yahoo.com/wallaces-crippling-strictly-nerves-132330190.html

- Good article about stopping smoking using hypnotherapy from a client's point of view It is Stoptober after all! 

If you want to train to be a hypnotherapist, there has never been a better time, we are thriving in this economic climate! 

If you'd like to train, check out here for a course prospectus, dates and application form for this year's diploma, fully approved and accredited in several countries... 

The spaces are going at some pace right now though... 

My training school is one of a few in the UK to currently offer the externally verified HPD (Hypnotherapy Practitioner Diploma) which matches government occupational standards and is the equivalent of National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) level 4