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Running For Macmillan Cancer Support

by Dan Regan | Feb 20, 2024 | Dan's Blog, Sports Improvement

Running For Macmillan Cancer Support

I’ve been busy with my running training and I’m delighted to confirm that I’m going to be raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support when I take part in my next event in April.

For those of you who have been following me for a long time, you may just about remember that I’ve run to help Macmillan before. Way back in about 2013, while my Dad was very poorly with cancer but still with us, I headed back to my home town of Cardiff to take part in the half marathon there. The whole event was outstanding, especially the start where I got to hang around inside the castle for a while before heading to the start line and heading off. A crazy, enjoyable, busy event that helped me to raise a few hundred pounds for such a great cause.

And so Macmillan are a cause close to my heart. They were there when my Dad had cancer to provide advice, information and support. More recently, they have provided help while my father in law has been going through his battle with cancer and his treatment.

Last time it was a half marathon and this time I’m making it more of a challenge for myself. I’ll be heading to Huntingdon in April to do as many laps as I can of a looped course within the six hour time limit. Fingers crossed, I’ll get beyond a marathon and somewhere around the 50k mark. Based on my return to long distance running last year, I’m expecting it to be pretty tough. Yet every penny for Macmillan matters so if you can spare some change then I’d be massively grateful, it’ll help me to persist on the day and it will help Macmillan to help more people who are going through the tough challenge of facing cancer.

Random Acts of Kindness – Hypnotherapy Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Feb 17, 2024 | Hypnotherapy Hypnosis and NLP

Random Acts of Kindness – Hypnotherapy Ely and Newmarket

Today, as I write this, is Random Acts of Kindness Day, a day created with the aim of encouraging more positive interactions and kindness between people. These can be big things or little things yet the aim is to do something nice for someone else or something that brightens the day of another person.

Now, of course, this is a lovely idea. And it’s even more lovely when it becomes your general mindset in your actions and interactions with the people you come into contact with in your community. Recently here in Ely there was Pay It Forward Day (promoted by Spotted in Ely) which has a similar ethos and just yesterday, on my walk into the office I saw a colouring book that had been left for someone lucky to find. As there is a child care centre near my office I’m sure the book found a good home.

And so Random Acts of Kindness Day is all about positively and purposefully sharing positive acts and doing some nice things for others. These acts of kindness don’t need to cost anything, it can be as simple as saying please and thank you, holding a door for someone or just smiling and offering a compliment to someone else. You get the chance to make someone’s else’s day that much brighter. And let’s be honest, although this should be how we all set out to interact with others, sometimes a reminder and a recharge is helpful.

And so you get the opportunity to give someone else a bit of a lift and positive energy. Yet, even better, the research suggests that doing kind acts for others actually makes you happier. In fact, if you want to feel happier in your life then kindness is certainly something that you should be actively and purposefully making part of your outlook, intention and actions.

Storm of Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Feb 15, 2024 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Storm Of Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

Sometimes anxiety can seem to come crashing in upon you like a storm. One moment you may feel calm and ok. And then in no time at all, the wave after wave of anxiety comes crashing in upon you and you find yourself struggling with all those anxious thoughts and feelings that bombard you. In the midst of the anxiety storm it can seem hard to remain grounded and present and to stay strong and resilient enough not to get carried along by the forceful tide of your anxiety.

Anxious thoughts and feelings can come at you seemingly out of nowhere. Sometimes it builds up slowly and at other times it falls upon you fast. And when the anxiety takes over, the thoughts and feelings are like an emotional storm that you try your best to just battle through until it passes. Anxiety can seem very powerful and it’s easy to get caught up and carried along in the swirl, waves and force of the storm. You can feel overwhelmed and start to engage in worst case and catastrophic thinking that only serves to amplify your uncomfortable feelings.

Anxiety storms can vary in their severity and duration. Sometimes things pass on quickly and at other times it seems like the storm is never ending and that you will never feel better. The process I’m sharing with you here today (and I’ll have a hypnosis download version for you soon too) is designed to help you to stay present and grounded when the anxiety storm falls upon you. It sits nicely alongside many of the other cognitive behavioural strategies for anxiety that I’ve covered in these articles on my website.

This storm of anxiety process is designed to help you to stay present and grounded as you handle whatever challenges may come your way. You imagine being out on sea on a boat in the calm waters before a storm falls upon you. You drop your anchor to hold you steady. And then, like you are also anchored in to the present moment, you find that rather than getting swept away by anxious thoughts and feelings you can think clearly, handle things well and come out the other side even more resilient.

Anxious Intrusive Thoughts – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Feb 15, 2024 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Intrusive Thoughts – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

One of the most characteristic features of anxiety is intrusive thoughts. These are the thoughts that just come into your head and that can take over your thinking. They are filled with words, images and ideas that can be distressing and fear provoking.

Sometimes, especially when you are busy and preoccupied during the day, you may be able to distract yourself and sideline these unwanted thoughts. Yet often, because they are associated with so much emotion and anxiety, in your quieter moments they come back with seemingly renewed force and distress. It’s quite common to struggle with these anxious intrusive thoughts when driving or last thing at night (or during the night when you wake). And these distressing and anxiety filled thoughts lead to anxious feelings, which in turn then accelerates and strengthens those catastrophic, unpleasant patterns of thinking.

Now, the key thing to keep in mind here is that everyone experiences these unwanted intrusive type thoughts. Sometimes the things that just arrive in our awareness are pleasant, and sometimes they are less so. Our minds are funny things and you can find yourself thinking about all sorts of things which may or may not be based upon the present reality and how things actually are.

Anxious intrusive thoughts become problematic when they provoke anxious and fearful feelings. You think something, or it just comes to mind, and because it is unpleasant or distressing it scares you. That fear then adds to how intensely and persistently you think similar types of things. You start to become afraid of your own thoughts and what they mean. You start to worry that you might act upon the things you are imagining and so cause harm to yourself or others.

Someone without anxiety could contemplate the same thing as you and could then decide to move onto thinking about something else and forget all about what they were just imagining. With anxiety, you find yourself absorbed and engaged in whatever intrusive thought has taken over your thinking. You start to feel worried and anxious about thinking it and you then start to feel tense and hypervigilant to your own negative thinking patterns.

Health Anxiety Disorder Risks – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Feb 12, 2024 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Health Anxiety Disorder Risks – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Health anxiety disorder is one of the common forms of anxiety and can have a massive detrimental impact upon your life. You struggle with your persistent preoccupation that there is something seriously wrong with you. You pay close attention to bodily signs and symptoms and you become convinced that something catastrophic is occurring with you.

You can overthink and ceaseless worry that there is something seriously wrong with you. The fear of how awful that would be continues to drive your imagination as you think of how your life will catastrophically unfold before you into the future. And those health anxiety thoughts drive your anxious feelings. You feel tense, restless, low, agitated and doomed.

Sometimes when I work with health anxiety clients, their anxiety has taken hold to such an extent that they struggle to concentrate upon anything else for any period of time. All that consumes them is their health and the feeling that there is something wrong. The tendency then can be to start looking things up online, and that only leads to more fuel being added to the never ending cycle of anxiety.

Some people find that any mention of an illness by others or in the media starts them on a frenzy of checking and seeing whether how they feel matches that illness. You can easily convince yourself your symptoms match and that you have an undiagnosed serious health condition.

And so after endless checking of your symptoms and how your body feels, you may go and see your doctor. For some with health anxiety disorder the reassurance from a medical professional puts their mind at ease for a time. Yet for others, even after all the tests have been comprehensively done, that feeling of dread and of something being wrong lurks on. You start to think that clearly they’ve missed something and that your serious health issue just hasn’t been found yet.

With all the media channels, campaigns and adverts these days it’s almost impossible to avoid health related content. And each time, you can start to notice how the symptoms described seem similar to those that you are experiencing (especially online where symptoms are described in such vague terms).

You may find yourself fixating on one specific part of your body. You feel anxious, fearful and full of fear and dread. You catastrophise, think the worst and become convinced there is something unknown and bad happening to you. Even if you are able to reassure yourself that you don’t have one thing, any period of calm can easily become unsettled as the focus of your anxiety just moves onto something else health related.

Recording Hypnosis Downloads

by Dan Regan | Feb 9, 2024 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Recording Hypnosis Downloads

I love recording hypnosis downloads because of all the positive feedback I get about how helpful they are. Whether it’s anxiety, confidence, self-esteem, weight loss or something else, I’ve probably got a download to help you!

I always give some downloads to my clients to support them in achieving their goals. The feedback is invariably positive. And there are many people who find, buy and download tracks and who message me to let me know how much it has helped them. It really does inspire me to get busy creating more titles for you!

I headed into the recording studio again today to record the latest batch of tracks. These will be available for you very soon. There are new hypnosis downloads to help with positivity, calmness, anxiety, self-esteem and about maximising your strength training.

Hypnotherapy For Vaping

by Dan Regan | Feb 5, 2024 | Quit Smoking Hypnosis

Hypnotherapy For Vaping

Vaping has enjoyed a boom in recent years. It has been recommended as a better alternative to smoking cigarettes, is easily obtainable and comes in a wide variety of strengths and flavours. More than that, it is not regarded as negatively as cigarettes and you can vape in far more places, circumstances and situations than you can smoke.

However, it’s possible that there are now signs that attitudes are changing and that vaping is going down a path where it is regarded less and less favourably. Disposable vapes are being banned, more people are getting fed up of being controlled by their vaping habit and there are growing concerns over the largely vague and still unknown long term health impacts. Vaping may be considered less bad than cigarettes yet that doesn’t mean there are no risks or health costs involved.

There are many overlaps between smoking cigarettes and vaping. Both involve a sense of habit where you smoke or vape in the same sort of places and situations each time. Your habits and nicotine fix gets linked to these environments and you find yourself doing the same old thing in the same old way. Nicotine has an impact yet more often it is the psychological habitual expectations and factors that lead you to reach for your vape (which explains why you can still feel a need to vape even when it is nicotine free). There are potential health impacts, a financial cost, an ongoing need to vape and that knowledge that you are not the master of your own behaviours. Your vaping habit still controls you.

Yet, as with quitting smoking, hypnotherapy for vaping can help you to take back control so that you don’t need your vape in order to get through the day.

Time To Talk Day – Hypnotherapy Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Feb 1, 2024 | Hypnotherapy Hypnosis and NLP

Time To Talk Day – Hypnotherapy Ely and Newmarket

Time To Talk Day takes place this year on 1st February. It’s a time when we can all join in and have conversations about mental health.

If you are struggling with your mental health, such as anxiety and depression symptoms, then this is your opportunity to talk to someone about how you feel. Rather than trying to hide things and struggle alone, you can find hope and courage from talking about things. It may seem daunting to take a tentative step towards opening up, yet finding the courage to do so can be the first step towards feeling better.

Others may not realise how bad you are feeling and friends and family can be a great source of support. Alternatively, speak to a mental health professional and start moving things forward rather than silently struggling.

When I struggled with mental health years ago, I was too afraid to talk about how I felt. When I opened up a bit, I discovered other people hadn’t even realised because I had hidden it so well. I also then found out how supportive and encouraging other people can be and what a difference it can make to just start with a chat with someone you trust.

For us all, even if your mental health is good right now, this is a time to openly talk about mental health issues, to break down barriers to sharing how we feel. When we talk about mental health, we all benefit. So do check in on your close ones, especially if you haven’t heard from someone for a while. They may be fine or you may find that small act of contact is just what they need right now.

Reducing Wine Drinking – Alcohol Habits Hypnotherapy

by Dan Regan | Jan 28, 2024 | Excessive Drinking and Binge Drinking

Reducing Wine Drinking – Alcohol Habits Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

Have you been struggling with reducing your wine drinking? What may have started as the odd drink to relax in the evening may have become a habit that has taken over. Rather than just the glass or two on the weekend or on the occasional evening after work, it becomes something that you feel you need and that you struggle to do without.

Instead of something pleasurable, relaxing and enjoyable, you may find yourself reaching for the wine almost as soon as you walk through the door. You can find yourself thinking about the wine during the day, looking forward to that first glass and, despite your best intentions, stopping off at the shop to get a bottle in. The thought of going without a drink may make you feel a bit anxious and you can find yourself easily getting through a bottle a night (or perhaps even more than that).

Your habit may have started during a stressful period where it was a way of seeking to unwind and relax, or it may have just crept up to the point where your wine drinking has taken over. Your evenings can start to be all about the wine. You want to cut down or stop but even the thought of it seems overwhelming.

Your sleep can be impacted, you may feel foggy headed in the morning, you have less energy that you’d like and you know that your wine drinking is not good for your health. You get little from it except a way of letting time pass by yet, despite any positive intentions as you start your day, there you are again struggling with reducing wine drinking by the evening.

As creatures of habit, pattern and repetition it can be tough to try and change any habit simply with willpower. There’s a certain psychological expectation that means the harder you try to reduce wine drinking, the more you crave it and think about it. At some point you give up the struggle and reach for the bottle again.

Successfully reducing wine drinking and taking back control (or stopping completely) involves addressing the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that have been repeating and going on for too long. And hypnotherapy is the perfect way that you can take back control and start feeling healthier and happier again.

Why You Should Get Dancing For Weight Loss

by Dan Regan | Jan 25, 2024 | Weight Loss

Why You Should Get Dancing For Weight Loss – Hypnotherapy Ely and Newmarket

You should be dancing, yeah! Dancing, yeah! So sang the Bee Gees, whose songs, alongside those from Showaddywaddy, are guaranteed to get me up on the dance floor at any party. I’ve still got all the moves! You’ll just have to trust me on that one!

And who doesn’t love a good dance to a good song at a party. My moves are nothing like those rehearsed, synchronised things you see on TikTok or the copy and paste my kids sometimes do to a just dance video on You Tube. I know a lot of people love the dancing on Strictly but I’m more of a freestyle type guy!! Or ‘no style’ if you ask my kids!

There’s no doubt that exercise and movement are good for you. Being active supports both your physical and mental health, and there are a whole load of health risks associated with being too sedentary. I’ve written before about the mental health benefits of exercise and how it can help with things such as anxiety, depression and stress. And, as you’ll already know, burning some calories through moving also helps with weight loss. Sure, you need to be eating the right amount and in control over your eating habits (which my hypnotherapy sessions can very much help you with) and exercise certainly helps with weight loss too.

Regardless of the science, I’ve always subscribed to the view that the best form of exercise for weight loss (and your mental health), is to do something you enjoy. If it is fun and enjoyable then you’ll stick with it and get more from it instead of trying to make yourself do something when you heart isn’t in it (and any excuse to not do it starts to seem like a good one). As long as you are moving and your heart rate increases a bit then all is good.

And whilst we already have evidence for the benefits of strength work and cardio, there is now the evidence around whether you can get dancing for weight loss. Now, before we get onto the evidence, of course I think we can all guess the outcome of moving and being active if you want to get fitter and healthier. Yet if you’ve been thinking that to lose weight you have to force yourself to the gym or run a marathon even though you hate running, then this may be the inspiration you need to get dancing more.

And so, is dancing an effective intervention for weight loss?

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