I’m not a great one for sitting about; relaxing for me is usually some kind of activity like running or martial arts. However this year I have been working on adjusting the balance between ‘doing’ and ‘being’, and I’ve found that giving myself more time and space to watch the world has opened up my […]

It has long been a basic proposition of rapport building within Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) that people unconsciously trust those who are most like them. This has led to the idea of matching or mirroring other people’s physiology or modes of speech in order to build an unconscious positive connection. Done well, I’ve found that […]

A new study by evolutionary psychologists at the University of California have discovered a link between male strength, female beauty, and anger levels. Apparently the greater your upper body strength (if male) or your level of attractiveness (if female) the more likely it is that you anger easily. The authors suggest that anger evolved as […]

It seems that neuroscience is adding to the evidence everyday that our memories are not only being adjusted according to our current experiences, but that just the act of remembering them can change them. It’s a difficult idea to like, but the evidence is pointing to the fact that when we remember our past, it […]

A study by Kansas University has shown that childrens perception of a peers ability to control an undesirable characteristic – such as obesity – will affect their attitude toward them. One of the researchers, Jennifer Livengood said “This study provides some evidence that if a child feels that an undesirable characteristic is under some sort […]

On our Cognitive Hypnotherapy Diploma course we spend time looking at a range of differences in people that guide their preferences. One of these is a preference for sameness and difference. Think of it as a continuum; some people will be strongly sameness, some strongly difference, and many a mixture of both (often dependent on […]

In a recent study published by the University of Helsinki, using information gathered from men and women in the US who were subjects of a 40 year investigation, researchers concluded that beautiful women had 16% more children than plainer ones. From a Darwinian point of view, if beauty is getting selected for, then women will […]

A new report about to be published in the Journal of Neuroscience by scientists working at the Institute for Brain Research at MIT has established that our brains can alter in a matter of seconds. “Our study shows the stunning ability of the brain to adapt to moment-to-moment changes in experience even in adulthood.” states […]

I’ve a particular interest in developing the ways in which the mind can be harnessed to improve sports performance, so I’m delighted to be working with a young professional boxer called Pat McAleese, who extended his unbeaten record to six last weekend. What made his win even more remarkable was that he was cut in […]

In Cognitive Hypnotherapy we teach that the brain uses what we call The Algorithms of the Mind (TAOTM) to deduce meaning from information our senses harvest from the environment. It sounds fancy but actually it’s very straightforward. Our brain is constantly looking for patterns, trying to figure out what things mean – we recognise a […]