Thinking Slimmer – Police to use Hypnotherapy to lose weight
article-23916883-you-are-feeling-very-slim-scotland-yard-hiring-hypnotist-to-ensure-thinner-police.doTrevor Silverster founder of Cognitive Hypnotherapy and The Quest Institute is working with Scotland Yard to help officers lose weight.
Superintendent Raj Kohli is in talks with a “cognitive hypnotherapist”, who describes himself as “Derren Brown without the jazz hands”, about a pilot scheme for 20 fat officers in Camden.
Trevor Silvester, 51, helps people lose weight by lulling them into a trance at his surgery in Harley Street or through recordings that can be listened to on MP3 players as patients fall asleep.
In one part of Mr Silvester’s “Thinking Slimmer” programme, called Lose Those Love Handles, he talks in comforting tones to relax the patient before persuading their “unconscious mind” to stop eating.
The move is the latest by police chiefs to tackle obesity. About five per cent of Scotland Yard police staff are thought to be overweight, nearly 2,000 officers.
Mr Silvester was a sergeant in the Met for 18 years before retraining as a “cognitive hypnotherapist”. He told the Standard: “There is a concern within the Met about obesity. It’s very difficult to stay fit when you work shift patterns in that kind of environment. They struggle to eat well and take regular exercise.
“Supt Kholi wants to do the hypnotherapy programme. He was blown away by the idea as the Met are on a big health drive at the moment. My methods play on the psychological principle of ‘priming’ which helps people to make better food choices.”
In November 2009, it emerged that 16,000 Scotland Yard officers were offered “fat club” memberships and advised to sign up for a strict fitness regime to get them into shape.
The Odyssey Partnership can assist you too to lose weight using techniques developed by Trevor and the Quest Insitute. We provide 1-1 coaching and therapy and can also work corporately i.e. delivering workshops and training programmes or working 1-1 with workers organisations.
The hardest part of losing weight is often finding and keeping the motivation and staying focused on the goals. If this article has relevance for you why not give us a call; after all, what have you got to lose?
Action for Happiness
why-happiness-mattersAction for Happiness is a new movement. It recognises that:
Happiness is good for you. It is also what people want. Everyone wants to be happy, yet many are not. This has been the human condition for as long as anyone can remember – Samuel Beckett said that the tears of the world are a constant quantity. But what if the tears of the world are not so constant? What if it really is possible for individuals and whole societies to shape and boost their happiness?
This simple but extraordinarily powerful idea lies behind Action for Happiness, a movement for social change which will be formally launched early in 2011. We know that, as our society has become richer, our happiness has not risen in step. Despite ever greater affluence, our lives are increasingly stressful.
This paradox requires a radical rethink of our lifestyle and our goals. The rat race is not helping, because one person’s success is simply another person’s failure. We need a more cooperative society where people expect more satisfaction from what they give than from what they get. This means a profound change of culture. So we are launching Action for Happiness as the focal point for a fundamental shift in cultural values
Why not check out the website? We often become absorbed in our own worlds and consequently our own problems … adopting some of the ideas from the site can help us all to look outside of ourselves and find more enjoyment and more pleasure – we can create the world we choose to live in.
Our Bodies Know When We Make A Mistake
In a recent paper published in Science, psychologists Gordon Logan and Matthew Crump investigated skilled typists’ ability to detect errors in their own typing. Typing is an interesting activity to study because, like so many familiar things we do everyday from making coffee to walking, it runs off on autopilot. People’s fingers zoom across the keyboard without them needing to think about the particular keys being pressed.
The researchers had people type words that appeared on a computer screen and then report whether they had made any errors. Unbeknownst to the typists, while they typed, a computer program corrected errors that they had actually made and inserted new errors when the typists had – in reality – pressed the correct key. The question was, did people notice what was going on?
Typists generally took the blame for the errors the program had inserted and took the credit for mistakes the computer had corrected. Surprisingly, however, the typists’ fingers knew the truth. Their fingers slowed down when a typing error was made – even if the computer program corrected it on the screen – and their fingers didn’t slow down if an inserted error (one that the typists had not made) appeared on the screen. Our autopilot, it turns out, is very smart. Even when the mind doesn’t consciously detect that you have made an error, your fingers do.
These findings suggest that there are multiple ways we control our performance and detect errors in what we do. Well-learned activities like typing, hitting a 3-foot putt, and even playing a musical instrument seem to involve multiple processes: One process takes care of the details (typing specific keys and coordinating all your muscles to hit a perfect shot). Logan talks about this as the “inner loop.” Another process, or “outer loop,” ensures that our desired outcome occurs (the song is performed and the ball is sunk). Interestingly, these processes don’t necessarily communicate with each other. That’s why, when typists don’t see an error on the screen, their fingers slow anyway after a mistake.
This idea of multiple control processes helps to explain why paying too much attention to your practiced golf swing, musical solo, or memorized speech can lead to a flubbed performance. Given that Logan’s study shows that our outer loop really has no idea what our inner loop is doing, it’s no surprise that trying to consciously thinking about those activities that are best run-off on autopilot disrupts them. This work also suggests why prompting the outer loop to focus on the outcome (e.g.. the hole you are trying to hit or a smooth follow-through) aids performance. In a nutshell, focusing the outer loop on the goal keeps it from muddling in the details and disrupting performance. So, the next time you want to impress your friends or family with your athletic prowess, keep the outer loop out of it and, as Nike says, “just do it.”
For more on preventing flubbed performances and ensuring you do your best – especially under pressure – check out my new book Choke.
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Logan, G. D., & Crump, M. J. C. (2010). Cognitive Illusions of Authorship Reveal Hierarchical Error Detection in Skilled Typists, 330, 683-686.
This article was published in Psychology Today – follow Link from Links section of our web-site to find this and many more useful articles
Sometimes things are not what the seem …
Opera Company of Philadelphia \”Flash Brindisi\” at Reading Terminal Market (April 24, 2010)
Even if you hate opera this seemingly spontaneous rendition cannot fail to bring a smile!
