POWER TOOLS FOR CHALLENGING TIMES
with  Gary Schwantes, MFA, CCH, CHt, Clinical Hypnotherapist
Power Tools for Challenging Times is a series of video excerpts from an online workshop sponsored by SF Hypnosis & NLP Practice Group. The workshop was recorded in April 2020 in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and San Francisco's shelter-in-place order. Participants in the online workshop reported many positive effects after each exercise, including a reduction in physical and emotional discomforts as well as a sense of empowerment with regard to the future.
If you find value in these videos please Like, Comment and Subscribe to the channel!
Power Tools for Challenging Times: Emerge Renewed with a Fresh Sense of Purpose (Pt. 1 of 4)
Power Tools for Challenging Times is a series of three videos that offers some simple techniques to help you navigate your way through a challenging period. Clinical Hypnotherapist Gary Schwantes also shows you how to emerge renewed with a fresh sense of purpose. This is the first video in the series and it includes an overview of the Power Tools as well as some thoughts about the coronavirus pandemic and how it might affect our state of mind even if we're lucky enough to remain physically healthy. But there are also some surprising opportunities for personal growth and community evolution emerging.
Meeting the Present Moment: Free Your Powerful Brain to Create a Better Path Forward (Pt. 2 of 4)
By putting your attention in the present, you can free your powerful brain to create a better path forward without your conscious interference. Most of the time when we experience anxieties, worries, or physical discomforts we're fantasizing about what might happen in the future or obsessing about what happened in the past. When we focus on what's actually happening in the present moment, good things can happen. Most of the time, we find that everything's pretty OK in the present. That stuff you're worrying about in the future almost never happens, and the past has no power to define us unless we give it that power. ​
Control Lever: Turn Down the Pain Signal (Pt. 3 of 4)
Consider this idea: Pain (physical or emotional) is a signal that something needs to be dealt with. But if it's serving no useful purpose, and if you are doing everything that needs to be done and that can be be done to take care of it, then its OK to let it go. Like the "check engine light" in your car, sometimes it does indicate a real problem, but sometimes it's simply a faulty signal. And you can reset the signal when that's appropriate. Imagine the part of your brain that's sending this signal of discomfort to your conscious awareness. It's saying, "check this out!" The communication involves a physical, tangible collection of neurons, brain tissue and neural activity. It's sending a direct signal to your conscious awareness. We'll use the same line of communication to communicate back to that part of your brain that it's OK to let the discomfort signal go down to the lowest possible safe level. Or to let it go away completely.
Designer State: What Do You Want? (Pt. 4 of 4)
What do you want? Amazingly most people don't really consider this question. They are more concerned with what they don't want. There is real power in focusing your thoughts on what you want while creating a very vivid, visceral, internal experience of having it. It's even more powerful when the process becomes a routine, conditioned in with anchoring. With this tool you'll be programming a destination into your internal GPS. Your powerful brain will come up with routes and options you hadn't considered before. You can have fun with this and develop it over time. Whenever you have a powerful positive experience, you can reinforce the anchors and use that energy to propel you towards your goal.