From losing my mind to getting a Beautiful Mind

This is the story of how I went from losing my mind by experiencing a nervous breakdown in my Thirties to creating a beautiful mind...my beautiful mind by taking certain steps.

These steps which I learned in my journey in becoming an NLP Trainer and Clinical Hypnotherapist, literally saved my life and now I teach them to my clients at my Hypnotherapy, Edinburgh, practice based in Scotland. Funnily, I call it "Beautiful Mind" because your mind and mine are beautiful.

Over the next few blogs, I am going to list and explain the steps and actions I took from being on Suicide watch, chemically sedated with heavy medication to getting my life back, stopping drinking alcohol, and retraining to become a Hypnotherapist specialising in treating trauma and addictions, something I love.

I breathed...

The first thing I did and now teach to every new client in their first session with me is to breathe correctly. If they are not breathing correctly, i.e., Diaphramatically or to put it simply, how we used to breathe when we were a baby. Not breathing naturally can cause panic attacks and massive anxiety and just re-training yourself to breathe like a baby can help massively in stopping panic attacks and anxiety. Here is how to re-train your breathing...

Firstly, lie on the floor with a heavy book on your stomach. Now breathe in through your nose and make sure your stomach pushes out as it inflates, moving the book up.As you breathe out, push the book down, collapsing your stomach until all the air is expelled, and then repeat. This is what is called 7/11 breathing, breathe in for seven seconds and then breathe out for a count of eleven seconds.

Why? Because when we breathe out we activate our para-sympathetic nervous system, which is the opposite of our fight or flight nervous system, or Sympathetic, the one that puts us on high alert and can cause anxiety and panic attacks if we don't do something about it.

By practicing 7/11 breathing we can reactivate the parasympathetic nervous system which occurs naturally when we are resting, especially after sex or having eaten a good meal. By focusing on the out-breath, we can automatically achieve a feeling of calm and safety. This is why the out-breath is longer than the in-breath in 7/11 breathing.

Think about it, when we are stressed we sigh as this is the subconscious mind's way of getting us to breathe and relax, we get a fright we take a big breath in as it's the subconscious activating the sympathetic nervous system response to get us ready to fight or flight or even freeze.

Piece of trivia. The reason why Possums play dead and "freeze" is that predators only hunt living prey and will not eat carrion unless extremely hungry.

so, next time you are feeling anxious or stressed and want a beautiful mind...breathe deeply and focus on the out-breath.