Releasing Addictions with the Body Code

I had a client that was addicted to pot, drank too much alcohol and played too much chess.

He would smoke 10-15 bowls (Pipes) per day, drink 2-4 alcoholic drinks per day, and had to play chess every day for 1-1.5 hrs.

He had tried to quit smoking pot before, and had successfully before, but it made him angry and resentful that he had to give up something he felt he needed. So to distract himself from his addiction to pot, he played chess 3-5 hrs a day!   After a couple of years of this, he went back to smoking again.

So he asked me to release his addiction to pot, and we worked on all the triggers that made him want to smoke.   Most of those triggers were around his difficulties getting along with people.

By the next session,

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5 New Year’s Resolutions for your Mind & Brain:

As 2017 approaches, are you thinking about your annual New Year’s Resolutions?  

Most people think of New Year’s Resolutions to start dieting or exercising, but there are plenty of other options as well.   A friend of mine who had not been very good at staying at touch, recently apologized and told me that his New Year’s resolution was to be a better friend.   I was deeply touched.   So in honor of his creative New Year’s resolution, I present his, and a few more ideas that that you may not have considered.

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3 Tips to Find the Courage to Change

For most of my life, I ran away from opportunities because I lived in fear.   I had no courage to change. When I was a child, I wanted to be an actress. I remember one of my earliest performance experiences. I was playing a young Chinese little sister who had to bring out a Chinese dust broom to the girl playing my mother.   When my teacher cued me out on stage, I handed the broom to ‘my mother’, and we dropped it. We picked it up again, and in my nervousness, we dropped it again.   By then the audience was laughing, and I couldn’t get off that stage fast enough!

I remember in High school, my school put on really fun musicals that I would have loved to be a part of. By then I was playing the French horn, and I felt safer in the theater orchestra with people I knew. I was afraid to be associated with the acting crowd, and resisted, even though acting and dancing seemed like so much fun!

In college, there were opportunities to live abroad.   I would have loved to travel, and explore other cultures, but I passed those up, because my experience living in Hong Kong as a child was so traumatic for me.

I’ve missed out on so much that would have made my life more fun and more meaningful.   But thank goodness, I now have tools to release my fears!  

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5 New Year’s Resolutions to Consider for Personal Growth

People often use New Year’s Resolutions as an opportunity to try to break a bad habit.   Some of the most common ones are to lose weight, exercise more, or stop smoking. But have you considered setting goals that will help you personally and interpersonally?   Here are a few to consider:

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9 Hidden Reasons Why We Can’t Focus

Are you struggling to focus?

Are you having trouble getting things done?

Is it getting in the way of your career or ability to earn money?

Are you worried that you might lose clients, or get fired from your job?

I used to have the hardest time concentrating on my work!   I would do everything I could to tune out external distractions, I’d get exercise and enough sleep, and still my work was slow moving, and I’d need frequent breaks.   Because I wasn’t very productive during my work days, I’d try to work longer hours to make up for it.   I was caught in an endless cycle of workaholism, and it led to burnout and fatigue and depression.

These days, my mind is usually clear, and on the few days when I’m having trouble focusing, I address the underlying problems and that is enough to get my brain working at its best.

How have I gotten this far?  

I found 9 underlying reasons that were getting in the way:

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Not Reaching Your Dreams? Ask This:

I have a client who kept sabotaging herself. She needed to lose weight. She had high cholesterol, sleep apnea, and shortness of breath that were all largely due to her weight.   In addition, she had extraordinary knee pain that was so bad that she could barely walk. She was mostly homebound, and relied mostly on her daughters to help her get to appointments.   The doctors had no solutions for her, and would not operate on her knees until she lost weight.

She knew what that she needed to healthy vegetables and was working with a nutritionist to optimize her diet for weight loss.  But she’d regularly find herself making excuses and going back to her old habits and her old diet.   Her weight was not changing.

When she came to me, I asked her what she thought was getting in her way.  

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