There was a car park just outside a textile gallery, and instead of heading off to the shops I decided to stop and have a look and the next thing I knew I was standing in front of a table with brightly coloured wool around me making my own wisdom cloak.

I was amazed, given all the choices that I had, at the colours I chose.  Lime green, blue, red, orange , purple and gold.   Fluffy long strands of soft, soft marino wool.   I didn’t have much time so I just picked them quickly off the shelf, feeling into the colours, and whether the colours liked each other and got started.

I am not really what most people would call an artist in the truest sence,   Although hypnotherapy, from my perspective, is really about using words in the most positive sense to help others paint a new picture of who they choose to be.   To leave the old them behind and claim who they really are.

So here I was standing there with all this coloured wool in front of me, and believe it or not, it just seemed to find its own pattern.   Its own wisdom as I let it unfold into the pattern it wanted to be, and I love it.

So it left me thinking, I wonder whether there are others out there who would like to make their own wisdom cloak and if so perhaps we can find a way to make it happen.

What I do know though, is that burying them does not help.   It is like swallowing them down and when we do this too often our body does not like it and it certainly does not promote wellness.  

I have been blogging lately about opposites, but this time I would like to use another modality to share another aspect of opposites.

Jin Shin Jyutsu works with the energy lines in your body to bring about balance and harmony.   It is a little like acupuncture but rather than using needles uses hands.  For each attitude there is an opposite, and for sadness the opposite is happiness and joy.  

So when I put my Jin Shin Jyutsu hat on to talk about sadness and grief, I would like to suggest that when the tears flow, please honour yourself, in the expression of the feeling that you are having at that moment in time.   And if you want to do something, you might like to, just for a little while, hold your ring finger, on whatever hand you choose, and know that are allowing healing to occur on the level of the feeling that you are experiencing now.

Someone, once said to me, that tears where when there was so much love inside that your skin can’t hold it any more.   So next time you find yourself crying, or someone you love, unable to stop crying, I ask you, to think about just how much love must be inside for those many tears to be coming to the surface now.

I was being challenged on many levels, in terms of who I was, and what I believed in.   But the amazing thing was that the bigger the challenge and the more fearful I felt, the more I started to believe in who it is that I am.   What it is that I believe in, and what it is that I am passionate about.

And it reminded me about what I had said in my last blog about embracing the opposite.    When you are trapped by fear, look to the opposite or the other side of that fear, that aspect of yourself that wants a chance just to be who it is that you truly are.   Warts pimples and the lot.   To reclaim your magnificence, and to celebrate who it is that you truly are.   And you know what, when you do this you also allow others to do it to.  

And then what happens to fear.   Well it opens the doors to the opposite if you only let yourself embrace those positive aspects of yourself that you have hidden for far too long.   And you begin to celebrate who it is that you really are.

I have become increasingly aware over the last 12 months, how important reflections are in the healing process.   Not the negative reflections that trip us up, but those that bring new insights, new dimensions, and new ways of thinking.

“As above, so below” was the phrase that started me on the journey of looking at reflections, especially in relation to my hypnotherapy practise.    I found myself questioning whether it was the opposite that held the answer to many of life’s challenges that people bought to my clinic.   The positive reflections that they were not owning.   That part of them that was truly who they were and had much to show them.

I would go so far as to state that for most of us, fear plays quite a considerable role in our life, and on some levels quite rightly as it keeps us safe.   But it also keeps us trapped in old ways of being.  

From a Jin Shin Jyutsu perspective, which deals with attitudes and how they effect our health, the opposite of fear is trust.   So for me walking from fear through to trust, seemed sensible.

So I started doing just this in my hypnotherapy practise.   Walking people from fear through to trust and what happened was that new insights appeared.   The wonderful thing was, and is, is that no two people so far have had the same insights.   Each one is tailored individually to suit them.

So, I suggest, that next time you find you are defaulting to the negative, and owning all the negative things that everyone has ever said about you,  think about its opposite and what it might feel like if you were to change you default system from negative to positive and begin to claim who you really are.

The Love Heart Birds

 I wanted to draw a parrot standing on a log but I didn’t know how to draw it’s legs so I drew it flying.

 I thought of other things and drew hearts and then drew black around them and they became love-heart birds.

 Mummy parrot had a baby and the baby really liked the love-heart birds and thought they were funny because they had love-hearts on their tummies, and one of the love-heart birds started to think “why did we have hearts on our tummies.”

 The ones that didn’t have love hearts on their tummies were not very nice to the love-heart birds but the mummy parrot was the boss of all the birds and what she did was make every bird special.

 When she saw one love-heart bird unhappy she did a little ”birdy”  dance for him and she made him happy.

 He asked her “why do you have so many pretty colours” and the mummy bird said “I was born this way”.   You were born to be loving and kind.

 The love-heart bird said “but why do I love things when I am upset” and the mummy bird said “that if you can’t love things when you are sad you will be like every other bird and you would not be as special as every other bird because every bird has a special thing deep down inside of them”.

 “But I don’t know what my special thing is” said the love-heart bird.

 The mummy bird said “you will find it out at the right time.”   But when is the right time”.   “Any time is the right time.   “When you are sad and feeling upset you can be happy by thinking about anything.   About things that other birdies think you are awful at, or other birdies think you are silly about.   You just do what you want to do and think what you are and be VERY SPECIAL.”

 My Christmas wish for you is that you will notice how very special you are today and allow this specialness to touch another and another and another and watch it spread and grow throughout the day.

I noticed when reading a magazine the other day that the editor commented on how her father had introduced her to the thesaurus early in her life and how fascinated she had become with words as a result.   Given that my spelling leaves a lot to be desired and that words are part of my livelihood, I decided that perhaps this was something that may be worthwhile investigating.

I found it fascinating the variety of words listed under a simple word like  NOTHINGNESS.  They listed emptiness, immateriality, intangibility, pointlessness, sparseness, triviality, unimportance, vacancy, void, worthlessness and zero.   Is it any wonder therefore that sometimes communication goes a little bit astray when we focus so heavily on the words that people use and the meaning we give them.  

From my perspective NOTHINGNESS can be defined as either a positive or negative state, but I am not so sure about pointlessness, or worthlessness.   Can they be defined as a positive state?          

So I would like to suggest perhaps that you also become fascinated with the words that you use and choose words that make a difference in your life.   Words that empower rather than negate you.   Notice how such a simple thing can make such a big difference in your life

So for me, rather than LET GO, I am choosing to LET IN, and I am surprised that changing one simple word can make such a difference in my life.

I guess for me it is all about taking up the challenge of promoting practicing positive emotions.   I am not at all sure that I know how to encourage others to join me in a group situation, or simply how to encourage others to actively remember positive experiences even if just for a moment.   But I do know that by practicing positive emotions on a regular basis the joy that I used to have seems to have returned and I have more energy.   And it’s funny really because I didn’t even know that I had lost that “joy” until I got it back.

It seems to me that to practice positive emotions effectively you need to adopt some of the same techniques I use when I teach my clients about micro pauses.   Where they learn to use self hypnosis on a regular basis to recharge their ” batteries”.   And all it takes, once awareness is achieved is 5 deep breaths to bring about a wonderful state of  deep relaxation.

So just imagine what might happen if you chose on a regular basis to utilize that micropause just like a coffee break,  but just before you opened your eyes, when you were in that deep state of relaxation,  you took a moment to remember something, no matter how small, that bought a smile to your face.  And you took the time to notice that positive feeling, maybe even to smell what it smelt like and taste what it tastes like, and for some even to hear what it heard like, and then “suck” it in.   I wonder what would change if you began to do this on a regular basis.

I wonder if you would begin to notice over time that you couldn’t quite put your finger on it, and maybe you weren’t exactly sure, but perhaps, perhaps you would notice that you smiled a little more frequently.    That you began to notice other people smiling and believe it or not it felt good.

So once again I would encourage you to become a Quantum Activist.  Practice positive emotions.  Change yourself and allow the world to change simultaneously as you begin to allow a smile to become so much more a part of who you are now.

You might choose to do this individually on a regular basis, just like you would sit down and have a cup of coffee.   Savour a positive experience, “suck” it in allow it to expand and spread and begin to notice a difference in the quality of the life you live.

Or if you choose to join me on a Friday morning and allow that group positive energy to expand even more you can subscribe to my newsletter or contact me on robin@mindmagic.co.nz.

I liked the way he referred to me as a person.   A person who creates the world along with every other person, as long as I take responsibility for what I create.   I like the thought of a community and that you and I are all in this together and together we can make a difference.  

I like the fact that there is something that I can DO about it, as well as the way that I can BE with it.  

Do you know that most of the positive experiences that we have are not held within the storage facilities of our mind – our neural network?     That these positive emotions are not available in the same way that negative emotions are when it comes to making a decision about something.    Negative emotions quickly form part of the subconscious aspect of our mind and we respond accordingly when we are faced with a decision on how to react.  

No doubt you will agree with me that for most of us fear is that aspect of us that stops us from reaching the goals that we set.   The dreams that we have.   Or from making the changes that would impact so positively on our life, and on some level rightly so.     In some cases our survival depends upon the emotion that arises in terms of danger that may be presenting itself.    But in many cases, fear is an illusion that stops us from achieving our ambitions and goals in life.   

So just imagine what could or would happen if we were to actively focus on bringing in positive emotions, or what I call “sucking them in” – drawing them down into our neural networks, how things could change.

And just imagine what could happen or would happen if we got together in groups and started doing this together and the group energy added another dimension to the creation of neural networks, not just individually but collectively and globally what difference we could make.

So if you are interested becoming a Quantum Activist and in joining a group specifically set up to practice “sucking in” or bringing in positive emotions you might like to let me know by emailing me on robin@mindmagic.co.nz  or subscribing to my newsletter and I will keep you posted with dates and times. 

Sometimes we know exactly where it comes from, and that fear is relevant and necessary to keep us safe, but at other times it is simply something that develops over time and we are not always sure where it comes from.     Sometimes we fear not being good enough, or even that we might be better than we think.   That fear of both failure and success.

I think fear is the one common denominator that most of us share at some time in our life.   We get used to the patterns of behaviour that we adopt whether they work for us or work against us.  

Sometimes of course fear is necessary.   It is the primitive response to keep us safe – to stop us being eaten by the tiger.    But it is when we see only tigers or danger out there that fear works against us.      

I have become fascinated in my clinic recently how much benefit clients are receiving from walking through that fear to the other side, or what I call trust.   And guess what, it seems to me that on the other side of the dark, or fear, there is always light.    It just takes trust.   And when we trust the process then miracles can happen.

So I suggest that you might like to find a place where you can take a moment and dream for a little while of what might be on the other side of that fear.    Of how your life might change if you simply walked through.   To open that door that has been shut for too long.   To step through that fear into trust and notice what it on the other side     A glimpse, a thought, a feeling, an image or maybe even a colour,  or whatever.   Simply allow yourself to feel how good that feeling is and suck it in.  Right down to the core of who it is that you are.  Dream a little, or a lot, of how this feels and when you have spent as much time as seems right for you enjoying this feeling open your eyes and bring yourself back to full awareness, alert and aware of your surroundings.   

And I wonder what would happen if you took this feeling and thought of it frequently over the next few days just for a few moments at a time.   Sucked it in.   Savoured the moment and then let time and space connect with exactly what is right for you now. 

I will be speaking on The Power of Intention.

It has opened up for me a host of questions that are both fascinating and open ended  in their possibilities.

I am intrigued by questions that arise such as:  

What happens in the space between thought or intention and the outcome?    Is it top down or bottom up as is so elequently described by Amit Goswami in his DVD Quantum Activist.

Could hypnotherapy be seen as a space between the thought and the outcome?     A space between imagination and reality.   And if this is the case at what point does imagination and reality cross over and become one and the same?

Is the therapist the mirror or the reflection and if this is the case what part does the reality of the therapist have to play in the outcome of the session?

How do we quantify the space between the intention, the thought, and the reality of the outcome?   Or by quantifying the space do we simply loose the magic of the moment and unlimited potential.

I first became interested in the Power of Intention when I read Lynne McTaggart’s books the Field, and “The Intention Experiment”.  It changed my way of working with clients as I began to understand that the stories we tell, are simply the stories that we live by and that we can rewrite those stories and reclaim our life.   

And if you are interested in these two books I am sure you will be interested in her latest book ”The Bond” – connecting through the space between us, which you might also like to check out.

Simple really in its belief.   The power of Intention.    So I ask you to imagine what it would feel like if you could walk through your fear to the other side of that fear and allowed yourself to experience feel how wonderful it would feel.   Enjoy the magic of the moment, suck it in, saturate your memory banks with the joy of it and then I ask?   Would it make a difference in your life if you took a moment, just one moment, to do this whenever you thought about it, to saturate your memory with the joy of it?    I wonder how the story that you tell now would be different from the story you used to tell?

So dream a little.     Allow the space between the dream that you dream as you drift off to sleep and the reality that you create to begin to merge into a new story, and a new way of being.   And so be it.