The Body and Brain- Working Together

Hello and Welcome to the Body & The Brain
That work together

My name is Kathy Welter-Nichols, and I live in Vancouver and am a Licensed NLP Trainer and Clinical Hypnotherapist. I have an office in Yaletown & also in Burnaby.  I began my work with hypnosis many years ago at BC Cancer Agency working with Liz Smith and creating Relaxation Circles for patients recovering from Life-Threatening Illnesses like cancer. People need support during these times in their lives, and helping them & their families relax is the core of the work.

I then set about creating many more relaxation circles in medical facilities both teaching and helping to set these up in different communities. The whole program is outlined in the Graduate Meditation Facilitator Certification program, along with the guidance in the ADEPT.

Utilizing Hypnosis to help children recovering from severe burns. A young boy had 60% of his body with third-degree burns, and they doubted he would survive it. During these client sessions, I saw so many things that helped me understand how we formulate belief - how difficult it is to overcome a belief once we have established it, and how that belief gives credibility to our experiences. A burn victim is in so much pain, and if we can move them below the sensory gate in the pre-frontal cortex, we have the capacity to help re-direct the pain management functions of the brain towards healing.

(This is the powerful utilization of hypnosis for women in labour too, more about that to follow)  

For example, injury will heal much quicker than illness. Injury happens in a second to a healthy system. Illness manifests over time and is often associated with information and belief models of others. When we are “ill” we seek out and source information to help us understand what has happened and perhaps even why it’s not going away. Clients often end up feeling “blamed”  or tend to blame themselves when the information they find doesn’t seem to help them.

Working with clients we often don’t get access to that internal dialogue, and so the client leaves with a lower energy state than when they arrived. There is unlimited potential in supportive dialogue – hopeful and encouraging dialogue, which redirects the internal mindset to positive and possible – no matter the setbacks this helps the whole system function better 

When a child is injured, their body only knows a healthy pattern, they can’t know what they haven’t experienced… so the system endeavours quickly to return and resume normal.

Using NLP we are helping people use their own brains to make the changes they want. To release the old habits and patterns that are no longer working for them – no longer useful. We don’t forget, or lose a memory, what we do with hypnosis & NLP is allow the brain to re-write the experience in a way that allows the emotional content of the experience to lesson…and it does both quickly and then continues over time to become a powerful new resource for the individual.

Simpler things like nail biting,  fears of spiders and snakes, fears of flying and fear of public speaking – might seem “simple” on the ticket of health and well-being, however, if you have a debilitating habit and you just can’t seem to interrupt it, this is like “gold” and we use your own brain, for the change! 

Birth preparation: Assisting women having babies to go into deep into relaxation using hypnotic trance states so they don’t need to use drugs or have surgery is also another application of this powerful work.

In my early career, I found myself in front of clients -  young women who have eating disorders and especially bulimia; with their help utilizing the tools of NLP, I was able to help them unpack the “strategies” they used to create this behaviour, disassociate from the behaviour, recognize it’s triggers, and take new steps to create better outcomes for themselves. They shared this deeper awareness and strategies as things they never had considered before and the structure of the debilitating and life-threatening behaviour. We began to achieve some incredible results, so much so, that it seemed “unbelievable” to many who had struggled with clients in this field for years.

Pioneering a Discovery: What we discovered in a three-day breakthrough program (Bulimia Breakthrough Method®) they were generally free of the symptoms of Bulimia and were on their way to recovery! This was life-changing for them, so much so many asked me to put everything into a program and a book, which I did. Chasing Hunger and the Bulimia Breakthrough Method® were the evolution. I’m so delighted clients can use the material themselves and have done so, letting me know they have left bulimia behind for good.

Anxiety & Panic: At the very core of my work, in virtually every client session, we are dealing with levels of anxiety, panic attacks and Post Traumatic Stress. Clients with patterns of OCD, challenges with perfection, inability to reconcile relationships… at the very core, an underlying frequency of anxiety exists.

We can help people make a wide variety of changes quite quickly when we use Hypnosis & NLP. With the advancing evidence-based neuroscience we can now see just how powerful this truly is…  

Contact me here for more information

The Two Brain System

Using our five senses we review the constant pageant outside of us, and then absorbing that information we now take it inside and let our brain make sense of it, anchoring it to old memories, sensations, internal representations we’ve
created to help us retrieve what is going to be pleasurable and what might bring us pain

Just what does the brain do with this informati

The trance state is experienced by all of us at different times, watching a movie, driving long trips, listening to a boring presentation…

“ Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
Arthur C. Clarke 

Advancing Neuroscience

Synaptic connections do not actually touch, but instead, send off electrical currents which trigger the release of chemicals in the Limbic Brain. The middle Brain, or as it is sometimes called, “the old mammalian brain”. These chemicals release and send messages along the neuro hi-ways of the body reaching their destinations in the receptors of the cells. The cells then translate the “message” as a good feeling or a bad one!

The flood of dopamine through the system will happen even with a belief that something wonderful is about to happen. Like hearing our lover’s voice on the phone. A delightful release of Dopamine floods the system and we smile, and anticipate pleasure!

If we don’t have a lot of pleasure in our lives, then obsessions can develop around items like sex, food and drinks or drugs…partially because the anticipatory consideration of these things is enough to flood the system.
That’s right we don’t even need the items, all we need to do is vividly review them, think about them, hear what we were hearing, create images of the smiles, the touches flood through our body and we are right there, enjoying that delicious chocolate!

These are the “feel good” chemicals our brain releases when we are feeling good about ourselves:

•       Serotonin, Tryptophan, Endorphins, and dopamine

•       These chemicals do not release when we are in states of frustration, anger, hatred, fear, or panic. We have a second arsenal of chemicals that trigger the “other system” in our brain.

I like to call this our internal Pharmacy.  We all have one, and it is always working perfectly, the way we anchored the first experience with the chemistry that was released and it will fire off in different ways giving us different results than we anticipated

 What are your thoughts? Positive or Negative?

Anger, Jealousy, Rage, Vengeance, Fear, control

–      What happens to our body when we think these thoughts and have these feelings?

–      We know what happens to water when it’s exposed to these kinds of emotions, and we are 93% water. What do you suppose is happening to your body when you think these thoughts?

Our internal pharmacy can and does produce a chemical reaction for every emotion!  Catecholamine and nor-epinephrine are just as easy to release

These come from another part of the body, the adrenal glands and they flood through the system to alert us to fight or be ready to run. It’s our safety net, in The Ancient or Reptilian Brain! Every infant child exhibits this reptilian stage as it first learns to move on its belly, eating everything in its view, until it learns to pull itself upright. Then parents get excited about their child walking…taking the first steps. This is the brain changes that parents are witness to and these chemicals are now flooding the system as the child continues to pull itself upright and take first steps! We are witnessing the brain In Change!

These chemicals, however, are part of the ancient brain and are always with us, there to protect us, help us become aware of the danger, and get out of the way, by running, or turning and fighting with all our might!  When enough of these chemicals are released during a high time of stress, fear or panic, it can enable an average man to have enough strength to lift a car off a child! He will be pretty shaky afterwards, but during the peak moments, these chemicals are powerful.

•       The brain creates a synaptic connection and releases a chemical with every connection it processes.

•       That chemical travels through the neuro-net and creates feelings and emotions in the body. The body sends the signals back to the brain, and confirm… “yes, either I’m feeling very good or not very good”.

•       Now, additional chemicals are released, and those chemicals circle back to the body and confirm again…

•       The circle never ends. We are a system of circling intelligence. Understanding what’s real, and what’s not real is the focus of our work. It all happens instantaneously in the moment of NOW.

What Creates a Fear Response?

What creates fear? Is it the event or is it the chemicals released in the body and brain that send messages along the neuro highways and tell us to prepare for similar experiences, only maybe worse?

Fear of Flying works like this and is almost never associated with flying. Usually, it’s a feeling or a sound from our earlier childhood memories that gets activated and then we believe that childhood feeling is coming up because flying is so unsafe.  And there is no amount of statistics or rational thinking that will stop a terrifying thought! Why is that?

Because the Old Mammalian Brain is the brain paramount, bypassing all logical thinking! And so it should because it holds the keys to our survival! Unfortunately, we’re often panicking over the images and memories of a terrifying event, and not the event itself!  Like the snakes, what’s real? What’s not real?

How do we get rid of these? Easy! Easier than you think!

 Sign up for the Overcome Anxiety and Stress and learn how you can help yourself remove these old patterns and live a much freer life.

How Programming Works

How do I get you to believe me?

If I show you images, and give you lots of details, if I wait to be sure you are not only seeing the images yourself, now add colour, sounds and maybe some smells..

If I show you, all these internal images, share my internal dialogue with you, and create kinesthetic responses in your body, what would you expect your outcome will be?

What do you think the news is doing to you every time you watch it?

It’s happening in marketing, sales, governments, education, financial…everywhere you look. A good salesman knows just how to motivate or manipulate the clients into doing just what they want

Often in our culture, we move faster and make quicker decisions when we are negatively motivated. Fear is a caustic and yet reliable motivator.

The USA has now adopted its Codes for Terror. When these anchors are announced the Allostatic load on the public’s nervous system is palpable. In the rest of the world, however, where populations have not been negatively primed with such rhetoric people are just living in absolute ignorance of the potential that grips the US and its population.  

Fear Tension and pain are actually a Syndrome!

The FTP acronym also stands for  Failure to Progress

The FTP Acronym also stands for File Transfer Protocol…a computer acronym used when transferring files between computers out over the net.

Have you transferred any fear packets lately?

 We often prime our kids with these fear packets, unintentionally we can install this kind of negative priming without really meaning to. It just works so well, and quickly - when we are in a hurry to get them to respond!

–      Fear and tension redirect the blood of the system out to the big muscles in the body, the legs and arms, and the fight or flight system has been activated!

–      Now there is more pain because the big muscles still working are stressed to do all the work without the help of necessary blood and oxygen.

–      It also redirects oxygenated blood away from internal organs and everything goes to the muscles of the legs and arms

When the tension takes over, activating the inner catecholamine and releasing epinephrine into the blood system, triggering the adrenal glands, it’s time for Fight or Flight!  The hormones are now delivered directly through the Vegas nerve into the heart, and the heart now directs the brain to pay attention, we’re moving into fight or flight. The brain wants to make sense of this action!  And it searches for the causes and the matches it has on file to alert & translate the messages!

It can take about 40-45 minutes for these chemicals to reabsorb into the body and all the while, heightened anxiety, pain and stressors are activated in the body.

Now we need these systems, but what if we don’t need them all the time, and they are still getting activated ALL the Time. ?

•       Synchronicity is the reflection of who we are based on the experiences we are having, and the creations

we are creating.

•       Coincidence: Do you believe in Coincidence? Does it really exist?

•       How long have you been doing it your way, based on what you believe to be true?

What we believe to be true and what is really true are very often different things. The Brain has a way of taking information and deleting, distorting and generalizing details into one powerful ICON!  Trip the ICON and you fire off the chemistry that gives us the feeling associated with the belief.  That feeling relay is our affirmation it’s true!

All aeroplanes will crash! It’s a sign that I was not supposed to be on that plane, and it crashed! After that, the brain observes all responses to the crash, and what the terrors were, and these kinds of simulations can stimulate a high response to the images even if we weren’t on the plane at all, even if it’s a movie!

Even if it is someone else having a baby, even if it’s someone else crashing in an elevator, even if it is someone else in a Tsunami, or even if it’s an earthquake somewhere else….the brain logs the stimulus and makes decisions about how to control the outcomes, keeping us safe, keep us away from others, keep us out of planes, keep us out of earthquake zones etc.

Nor-epinephrine & Catecholamine

Nor epinephrine is a catecholamine with dual roles as a hormone and a neurotransmitter. The Stress hormones.

Affects parts of the brain where attention and responding actions are controlled.

Released with anxiety, fright, hunger, and cold.

Underlies the “fight or flight” response.

Increases blood flow to skeletal muscles and away from the larger muscles & organs of the body.

As a stress hormone, norepinephrine affects parts of the brain where attention and responding actions are controlled. Along with epinephrine, norepinephrine also underlies the fight-or-flight response, directly increasing heart rate, triggering the release of glucose from energy stores, and increasing blood flow to skeletal muscles and away from the larger muscles of the abdomen.

However, when norepinephrine acts as a drug it will increase blood pressure, triggering a compensatory reflex that overcomes its direct stimulatory effects on the heart. The reflex, called the bar receptor reflex, results in a drop in heart rate called reflex bradycardia.

Norepinephrine is synthesized from dopamine by dopamine β-hydroxylase It is released from the adrenal medulla into the blood as a hormone and is also a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system and sympathetic nervous system where it is released from noradrenergic neurons. (the adrenal glands) The actions of norepinephrine are carried out by binding to adrenergic (adrenal)  receptors.

In essence, it’s a powerful partner if and when released in the right amounts at the right times.

During birth, the mother’s brain and the infant’s brain, connected through the mirror neurons during the pregnancy have a greater exchange. She has the ability to connect and trigger similar responses in her baby as she’s experiencing. So when she feels stressed, that the birth isn’t going to go well, she’s tied down, on her back,  or fearful, the brain releases epinephrine or catecholamine into her body. The Adrenal uptake distributes these fight or flight hormones and the baby and her own body put the breaks on the birthing process. Further, as we see here, the flooding of this hormone through the body will increase the mother’s BP and direct stimulus on the heart, thereby creating a drop in the heart rate of the baby, creating those “baby in stress” moments, called bradycardia!

In the wilds, a birthing wolf will be able to delay her birth for long periods of time, while she finds herself a safer place to birth the pups. It’s the same with all animals, and this same mechanism exists within the human mother as well.  So if mothers know to relax, breathe in deeply and return their internal chemistry to the release of oxytocin, dopamine, & endorphins these side effects of the stress hormones are diminished very quickly.

As epinephrine is released in smaller quantities as the mother nears completion during the birthing phase, this creates the impetus to bring her baby forth into the world. A labouring mother needs never fear she will not have the energy at the end to move the infant out of her physical body. During the last stages of labour, while the uterus “catches up” to the baby, there are often longer periods between the surges as she can rest before the last surge of energy to bring her infant forth. The massive releases of Oxytocin at the time of birth creating the mirroring patterns between mother and infant are also high adrenaline moments which allow mother and baby to connect and bond deeply.

Our bodies and every aspect within and without, are incredible, and designed to give us maximum awareness throughout our lives.  

If you are experiencing symptoms of stress and anxiety it can feel really overwhelming, however, it need not become an anchor that you continue to reference for the rest of your life. Instead, NLP and hypnosis can help you make this a thing of the past. Contact us:

•       Are you still struggling?

•       Are you still attracting the same experiences over and over again?

To change the mind, change the feeling and that will change the choices & the outcome.

Recommended MP3’s for Stress and Anxiety

The Internal Narrator

Keep Your Thoughts Positive by Harry Nichols a Masterful Recording to help you..download it from the Shop here today.

Get to know your internal narrator…

If you're ready to lay down the pattern of being harsh or critical with yourself to motivate yourself or as a response to life, start by keeping a note in your phone titled, "Harsh, Judgmental, Critical, and Unkind Thoughts."

Your conscious awareness and attention to inner harshness need to be cultivated before you can really become kind and gentle with yourself at a deep and sustained level.

This pattern runs deep and must be seen and accepted before it can be truly shifted.

When you notice a harsh thought, write:

The date it occurred.

The time of day it occurred.

The thought, as it occurred.

How the thought arose. Was it in reaction to something or out of the blue? Or was it for some other reason?

Any more awareness around this kind of thought that comes up?

Look at your thoughts through the eyes of awareness, dispassionately, like, "Oh, there's another negative thought about myself."

Use this practice as an opportunity to pay greater attention to yourself for having these thoughts and notice them coming up again.

They're there. You're training yourself to notice them and what tends to make them happen.

Once you see and accept this pattern, then you can begin to practice choosing differently without suppressing or driving it into the shadows (where it will mess with you from behind the scenes).

Process:

First, when you hear your inner critic chime in, PAUSE.

This is your cue to pay attention because it's been activated.

When you hear others criticize themselves. Pause the conversation and bring their attention to that critical voice.

Second, ASK your critic what it wants for you.

Or ask the other if they're willing to connect more deeply with that critical voice, so they can learn what it wants for them.  (Really avoid pretending you know what another person wants for themselves…we can’t know, we are not them - this is especially powerful for children - deep respect)

Third, start having a CHAT with your inner critic.

Once you're connected and have permission from your inner critic to proceed, start chatting with it, either in a journal or in your head.

Ask it about its perspective on the situation. Treat it like someone you want to get to know.

Depending on how resistant you've been to it before, it may take a while for it to trust you enough to open up to you.

If that's the case, patiently stick with it until a conversation begins to flow or come back to it at another time 

When you start with the perspective that your inner critic loves you and wants the best from you, the conversation can unfold in a useful and enlightening way.

Fourth, make a REQUEST

If there's something you want your inner critic to do differently, once you're connected and the conversation is flowing, then you can make your request.

At the end of these four steps, remember to THANK yourself for taking care of yourself and being willing to look deeper into yourself.

Notice and appreciate the inner critic, it’s just trying to give you what it believes you want!

By talking with your inner critic, and your other inner voices, you'll get to know yourself at a deeper level and discover how to truly be on your own team instead of resisting the parts you find inconvenient or have shame about.