I’ve been practicing hypnotherapy and NLP for over 6years now and during many of my sessions, an interesting thing was happening. Clients who were seeing me for stress, anxiety and/or confidence issues were reporting an improvement in their blood pressure levels. This even included clients who were quite young, fit and healthy already. It wasn’t ever an issue that we were discussing at great length as the focus was more on strategies to alleviate stress and improve their outlook on life, but here it was popping up nonetheless. For many years, I was just seeing this as a welcome side effect to feeling more positive and balanced; it wasn’t something that I was strictly seeing people for. Until recently that is.
When I first heard of the Hypnotension™ programme, my first thought was “of course!” It made so much sense to me to have a programme based on hypnotherapy and cognitive approaches to help people suffering from high blood pressure. If the clients I was already working with were reporting an improvement in this area, why not tackle it head on? It also made me think of the people I already knew who were taking medications for hypertension: my mother and father; my mother-in-law, an ex-colleague who is now running his own business, my friend’s 17year old daughter. The list was seemingly endless, and it didn’t take much convincing to get me to begin training in this area.
During the training, I learned some quite disturbing facts:
- Hypertension affects 1 in every 3 people
- It causes 62% of all strokes and 49% of heart disease
- In 50% of cases, people were unaware they had it
- For over 90%of people diagnosed with Primary Hypertension, the cause is unknown by doctors (I.e. there is no medical reason for it)
Of course, many people diagnosed do have a clear idea about how it came about. Perhaps it was due to being overweight, high alcohol consumption, smoking, excess salt in the diet, lack of exercise, etc. While these “aggravating” factors may be known, It can still be useful to get some help from a Hypnotension practitioner to help you to curb some of your unhealthy behaviours by motivating you at an unconscious level to move your body more, stop smoking or to eat more healthily.
There are, however, some known relatively unknown factors that contribute to hypertension (Hypnotension™ calls them X-factors). And unfortunately, when it comes to these factors, GPs have neither the time nor resources to help patients address them (nor do they have time to really address the aggravating factors mentioned earlier). Some of these X-factors (no relation to Simon Cowell & Co by the way) might even surprise you:
“X-Factors” that may be contributing to hypertension:
- A feeling of a loss of control in one’s life. This could be down to a job, relationship or family responsibilities.
- Feeling overburdened or responsible for others
- Holding onto unresolved anger from the past
- An inner conflict that causes a stress response (e.g. I know I shouldn’t do this, but I am compelled to do it anyway)
- Holding onto guilt or shame from a past issue
- Feeling impatient or being under strict time pressures or deadlines
- Believing that you’re more prone to having it (family history, ethnic group identification)
- Having a fear of illness (health anxieties) or fear of death
- Environmental sensitivities (smells, noise, pollution, light)
- White coat syndrome (higher levels of anxiety at the GPs office or in hospital)
If any of those sound like you, I would urge you to have your blood pressure checked as soon as possible. You can even buy a cheap ‘at home’ kit and check yourself and your family periodically. A high reading would be consistently over 140/90mmHg. Even if it isn’t high, if you fit any of the profiles above, you might want to meet with a Hypotension practitioner as a means of early prevention because having to constantly monitor yourself and take medications for life is no fun. They can help you to better manage the stress; assist you in overcoming conflicts or negativity; alleviate any fears, phobias or negative emotions that you might be carrying around; and assist you in making any lifestyle changes that will lead to you living a healthier and more fulfilling life.
What is the Hypnotension™ programme?
The Hypnotension™ programme aims to help anyone with primary/essential hypertension to lower their blood pressure naturally. Lowering blood pressure can cut the risk of stroke in half. The programme is a one-to-one therapy delivered by a qualified hypnotherapist. They have the skills needed to help people make the behavioural, motivational and emotional changes needed to tackle the common high blood pressure causes.
The Hypnotension Practitioner looks at a variety of lifestyle factors to establish which is likely to be causing or maintaining high blood pressure (Hypertension). These lifestyle factors are then targeted using specific cognitive and hypnotherapeutic techniques to help reduce the clients blood pressure towards more normal levels.
Certified Hypnotension Practitioners are all fully qualified and insured hypnotherapy or NLP professionals, who meet the occupational standards for their country. Please visit http://www.hypnotension.com for more details.
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