When I was the size of the little girl in the photo, my dad tried to get me to hand over my chewing gum before I went to sleep.

I refused.

His argument that I was going to wake up with gum in my hair was reasonable.

I swallowed MY GUM.

I feel the same about my food. Don’t even try to tell me I can’t have a candy bar.

So what about you?  Who is running your food show?  Is your inner rebel  a stubborn two year old? a snarky teen?

As long as you and your rebel are happy, stop reading.

If you would like to change, and could use some help, keep reading!

You have probably heard that the most lasting change is from the inside out.

That may seem like a lot of work. And EVERYONE wants a magic pill.

There is no magic pill.

Science now backs up what hypnotist, healers, and shamans have accepted for years.

Think of your brain as malleable plastic. You could create neurology for twenty years by reacting the same way every time you see a dog, a spider, or a candy bar.  You may believe that your brain is hardwired and that you cannot change it, but you can.   Your thoughts actually change your brain.

By negotiating with that little girl in the picture, I can have a candy bar any time I want, but now I only  occasionally want one.

Check out this Seattle Class:

Join Me: Make Peace with You and Food

This has been under the radar for awhile, but there it was in the daily paper, followed by pictures of people in Detroit replacing pavement with gardens.

What? Running without shoes and planting paradise over pavement?

Fifteen years ago, the belief to “Stop dieting, it will only make you fat!” was a little outrageous.

Now, we all know this is true, right?

Some people stopped wearing running shoes because they hurt.

Detroit is planting gardens because they are in a world of hurt.

If you hurt and weigh too much, I suggest you stop dieting.

I know the idea may be upside down thinking to you.

I work with extremely savvy people who recognize that change is an inside job.

You are not your body. (More thinking turned Upside Down!)

You are a spiritual being, and making peace with your bodysuit is PEACEFUL!

Any change in your behavior is a direct result of changing your mind!

My calling is to help you change your mind!

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If you live in Seattle, and feel the desire to renew your feminine self, and get a FUN workout, you want to go experience Franchesska Berry's West African Dance class at the Belltown Dance Studio. Class begins Thursday the 20th, 7:15-8:15. You can drop in and try it for $17.

If you have any questions, Call 206.992.6106.

A client came back in, because after successfully losing bothersome middle-age weight, she was again struggling to stay out of the cookie jar.  With a little probing, I discovered that her young adult-child had been in a serious car accident. Delving into the cookies often happened when he was out.

We flattened the traumatic memory from the accident, and her fear of what could happen when he wasn’t home. Her inner cookie monster disappeared.

Another woman came in because she was afraid of elevators and flying. She could force herself to do both, but not without extreme anxiety.

I discovered that once upon a time she received a phone call that changed everything about her life, and THEN she boarded a plane for a two hour flight. We flattened (in one session) every emotional aspect of this memory. She was pleasantly surprised that she was immediately able to ride in an elevator, and fly, without fear.

A young man came in looking for relief from anxiety headaches. All medical reasons had been ruled out. As a small child he and his brother and mother escaped their country. We spent a whole session on a train trip he had little conscious memory of, and his headaches immediately decreased.

Last year I got a call from a young woman who was driving her distraught roommate, who had just found out her boyfriend had committed suicide, home to be with her family. I did not know the girl and I did not know any of the circumstances.

In crises we are in an altered state and words take on increased meaning. I talked her through some EFT tapping points while saying these words, “Even though something horribly confusing has just happened, I will recover and feel better than I do right now very soon.” Over the phone I heard deep sighs (always a good sign in this kind of work!).

The woman driving called me later to say that the difference between her roommate before and after the call was remarkable.

We are taught to suck it up, and just get over it. That can be useful, but our bodies, our minds, our cells, do remember, and sucking it up can suck!

I love to help you get to the bottom of it!  Be well. Take care of yourself!

Thank you to www.freeartisticphotos.com for the photo

Choose love over fear. We have all heard that, but how do we accomplish the shift from fear to love?

Many times I throw it out into the room out while working with clients, and  often the head nods and we follow the stream.

Love sounds, feels, and is, way more inspiring than fear.

In my experience, we humans are quite adept at creating a blinding state of fear.

To quiet the fear, try this simple statement.  Instead of these fearful thoughts, I choose love.

Try it. Love over fear.

I had to call him two times to get this information. When we finally talked I said, "Don't tell anyone you saw me. I think it was a coincidence."

A woman came in because she was sure that buried somewhere in her mind was abuse. She felt that she had so many of the symptoms and was just tired of living with them. We were able to shift some of her thoughts; she sent me an encouraging report on how she is feeling as she processes. There is still more to do.

Someone bothered with fibromyalgia came in for pain reduction. I think she was shocked by what a difference EFT made for her. Within twenty minutes her range of motion increased dramatically. While her pain subsided, we did not manage to get her to zero pain. I taught her some things to do and made her a hypnosis recording. I am hoping for her to be free of pain. OK.

This one is from July, but it is fun. I got a text from a beautiful and talented Goddess. She said, "I have been saying no so much this week- and it is delicious and bubbly like champagne! Thanks, you changed my life."

A few people came in for help with processing some painful family relationships. I think of these emotional clearings and picking up the arm on an old record player, and moving it to a new tune.

Some times changing your mind is just that easy!

And then there was the handsome baseball player, who came in with his wife to improve what he called "his head game." His game is on. There's more. She came in for weight loss. Now she is going to Rumba Class and has sent her friend to me.

Another client came in and gave me the high five, " Twenty-five pounds freer!" I love what I do! 

What would changing your mind do for you?

Six months ago I said to Sandy Jones-Kaminski, the Miss Manners of networking and early Twitter fan, "I mentioned Twitter to my kids and they asked, What is that?"

Now my recent college graduate tweets every day….all day! As I write, I hear the tweet of her TweetDeck. I showed her the possibilities and then I had the delicious pleasure of hearing tell a friend, "My Mom knows more about Tweeting than I do."

That girl used to call me techno-babe and roll her eyes. OK. End of my mid-life bloviation.

What is so fascinating about Twitter? and TweetDeck? Well, TweetDeck is the mother lode of eavesdropping. Do you want to know what is the word on the street for iPhones? a book? a movie, traffic, the Tour de France, the MJ special you weren't watching. You can find out in real time. And it keeps at it while you are off doing other things.

Search anything: At&T, organic cherries, Wii Fit and find out what people are really saying.

Do you have any idea how many people put Wii Fit back in the box after it calls them obese?

You can easily make twitter a personalized news feed. Your own international and local associated press feed without interference. Whatever eclectic interest you have, that you want someone, anyone, to talk to about, you can find that someone on Twitter.

Facebook is a virtual neighborhood. You create a community and you put on your Mr. Rogers sweater and check in to see what your friends are doing. You are at your neighbor's kitchen table, or on the front porch in a small town and you learn a lot about what is going on, but your virtual neighborhood can span the globe.

Twitter has the potential to open your world a few more big notches. What will it become? Will it last? Who knows?

If the internet is the Wild West, then Twitter could be San Francisco.

You might want to check it out. I am off to check my Tweet Deck searches. I hope I find you there.

Sometimes, the goal is to walk in the heat of the summer without chafing your legs. After my first pregnancy, my goal was to walk up the steps without my legs touching my belly.

Maybe you want to feel at ease in group of people or during intimacy. Maybe you want to stop being afraid of what is next. Whatever it is you want to feel differently about: you also most certainly want it to happen instantly. And yet, our most delicious victories come with a little more effort.

I have noticed there is an alchemy to changing your mind. I am more relaxed about the how, and the more at ease I am, the better practitioner I become. The first step to changing your mind is for you to be honest about how you want to feel differently.

The second step is to neutralize the negative emotions.  This second step can take a month, a few minutes, or a few years. It is the most important step and it is actually a series of steps. It is like playing a game.

You progress and then something else comes up and you get past the something else, until you get closer to the red bra, or whatever it is you seek.

What is missing for so many of us, is the acknowledgment that we are emotional beings. We love logic and the "just do it" mentality. We beat ourselves up for procrastinating, not being all we can be, and so on and so on. Relying on logic without acknowledging and clearing our emotions keeps us stuck.

We carry around emotional patterns and keep acting the same screen play until we change our emotional being.

Trying to change without clearing emotions  is like planting lettuce seeds over grass. It is like trying to grow blueberries in the wrong kind of soil. It is like trying to make good pesto from bitter- old basil. It is like driving without enough air in your tires.

Once you get the soil right. Once you are open to letting go of old emotional patterns, your experience changes.

Your mind takes a positive affirmation because it can.

The blueberries are sweeter and more prolific.  Picking lettuce is easy;  you can enjoy the best pesto, and your car rolls efficiently.

I hope you can join me in Changing Your Mind.

Weight Loss Program

At the beginning of February, I decided  to counter all the gloom and doom reports by perceiving every present I received, as a symbol of good things to come.

Boy, did I get tested. It took three service calls to convince my furnace that it wasn't an air conditioner. With that out of the way, I discovered that my name and some Chinese characters clicked through to some pretty disgusting pornography. Wow. Do I have to call that a present?

Got that out of the way, and my laptop crashed. I immediately carried my little baby out the door, to the local Tech guy, who immediately recognized me. Two hundred dollars later, I was back in the saddle.

Three days later, on a Sunday afternoon, someone broke into my home and stole my laptop off of my dining room table. Keep on playing.

So, let's get to the presents. I got so many in February, it is crazy….wonderfully crazy. My dear friend of many years brought me a beautiful box from Vietnam.  We have years of shared memories, but presents…..

I returned from lunch and outside my door was a beautiful bouquet from a colleague, left as a thank you, and a complete surprise.

A client sent me a text: I have presents for you: she brought me a beautiful, pashmina scarf, and earrings.  Really, my birthday is not in February.

Next came the unexpected money.

Then I received a case of red grapefruit mixed with honey tangerines and blood oranges. Now this is how to make the juicer in me happy!

An old friend called, out of the blue, and offered right on buying advice for a new laptop.

My nineteen year old daughter slipped into my car and handed me a paper Valentine she had made for me with the kindergartners in her life.  She reported they asked her incredulously, "YOU have a MOM?".

There is more, there is always more……………………… My life is just like yours.  Stuff is happening all of the time.

Now that it has been proven, yes proven, that your thoughts change your brain, you, we, all of us have no reason not to get busy training our thoughts.

I know I just said a MINDFUL, and I am bursting to share everything I have learned in the last few days, but it is going to have to wait.

For now I am passing on a recipe for getting excited about food that is  carotene rich, really good for your brain, and so delicious. Moroccan Stew

What do you do like to do best? weight loss? anxiety? stop smoking? Do you identify more with being a hypnotherapist or an EFT practitioner? I like to help people change their minds.

 Once we change our mind, we feel differently, and when our feelings change,our behaviors change. This is true whether one wants to lose weight, exercise, eat more vegetables, stop thinking about someone, or quit any kind of a bad habit.

This friend is a good example. I knew her when she weighed quite a bit more; I knew her and worked with her through years of focusing on her body and the focus was not pleasant. Yet, today she sat across from me, feeling pretty darn happy in her body, and in love to boot.

She got misty eyed when I said, "Look at you, you have changed your mind."

Our bodies take a lot of blame. It is a trick.

The easiest thing in the world is to believe that you are your body. Mountains of insecurities are rooted in a history of "I am too small…too big….not good enough".

As long as the mind is focused on what is wrong, you are a victim of fear, and not free to explore a new belief system.

My experience is that once you let go of the emotional belief that is in your way, change happens almost effortlessly. This means you must dig a little deeper.  Not everyone is willing to do this–but the benefits are enormous. Weight Loss Program

If you are old enough to read this, you have some image in your mind of what that might mean. I think of my own Mom being sent to the neighborhood grocery store as a little girl because she would not be denied credit, where others in her family might have been.

My friend's mom told of the Italian women cleverly gathering dandelion greens underneath their skirts, so as to not be seen.

I know that my great-grandfather, a well respected merchant, lost his store in the depression.

The word depression conjures up fear. Recession doesn't bring up joyful thoughts either.

We do not know what is going to happen and all the peanut butter in the world is not going to take away the fear of the unknown. The fear is only as real as you make it, because really, fear is the playground for the imagination.

There is a strong connection between distress and sticking something into our mouths.

Imagine a baby screaming: in the top three things of what to do, sticking something into the mouth is on the list. I am sure you have witnessed the desperate ensuing sucks that may, or may not have to do with hunger.

Of course, as adults, we know better. Yes, we do, and when we act against our better judgment, the guilt is enormously heavy. The connection between food and fear is not something we talk about too much. It creeps into my office.

Last week I heard these words from a young mom healing her own relationship with food, "I notice my Mom feeding my baby in a kind of frenzy. He hasn't finished what is in his mouth and more is coming. He can't talk. You can see it in his eyes that he can't keep up."

I noticed it in myself when I was a college kid responsible for a friend's farm. Something had gone wrong and I found myself putting a cookie in my mouth as I headed out the door to see what could be done.

I once had a client with severe test anxiety, who during a test break downed a whole pitcher of beer.In the Middle Ages, beer was valued for its nutrition.

Was he thirsty?   Was I hungry?    Does the little baby have much choice?

Many of us have complex relationships with food and eating that often have nothing to do with being hungry or being sated.

Of course, if you are putting food into your mouth faster than a model changes, you would like to be gently hit in the side of the head with a soft two-by-four, so you will never do it again.

With a little time and dedication, you can change your mind and your behavior.   Find out more..