You know that maintaining intimacy is important for your relationship with your partner. But did you know that it’s also good for your health?

Psychologists and researchers have discovered a number of benefits for people who experience intimacy in their committed relationships. In fact, closeness in relationships has been found to influence social, emotional, and physical health.

People in intimate relationships…

* Are better at successful navigating various developmental stages
* Are more likely to maintain solid, lasting friendships
* Are less likely to be in car accidents
* Are more resistant to diseases and mental illness

On the other hand, individuals involved in committed relationships that lack intimacy and closeness are more vulnerable to a whole handful of ailments: stress, depression, psychosomatic disorders, and mental illness in general. (To read more about this research, see: “Marriage and Romantic Relationships: Defining Intimacy in Romantic Relationships,” by Barry F. Moss and Andrew I. Schwebel, in Family Relations, vol. 42, no. 1, January 1993, pp. 31-37.)

If you’re in a committed relationship, take the opportunity to work on intimacy with your partner today. Small gestures can go a long way toward creating a closer relationship. Not only will you be investing in the strength of your future relationship, you’ll be protecting your future health and happiness.

Shared Couple’s Trance, a hypnosis program developed by Dr. Michele Ritterman, is a fun and easy way to explore your relationship with your partner and build intimacy. Together, you can recreate positive feelings, while discovering your own sense of safety and closeness in the relationship.

Click here to learn more about Dr. Ritterman’s program.

© 2007 The Hypnosis Network. All rights reserved.

Although I sprayed them every year they’d just come back stronger. They had become resilient.

There is a spot in our backyard garden where the same weeds pop up every spring – and which I spray each spring. Over time, the spray seems to be lessening its effect on them and now, the weeds simply cannot be killed using those sprays I’ve used before – they have survived and learned to be resilient.

For years I’ve believed that victimhood is the key to therapeutic inaction and failure. Clients who believe they are the victim of abuse feel powerless and helpless against the intense feelings that boil within them. “I can’t help it – I was beaten as a child. It’s DADDY’S fault I’m fat!”

What if you were to look at yourself instead as a survivor imbued with a strength called resilience? Rather than feeling helpless and hopeless, might you feel more empowered? And what if you were to learn that by putting your strength to work for you, you might actually make your life work better? What if you considered resilience an evolutionary gift rather than a problem needing correction?

Read the rest of this entry »

According to the January issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter, research shows that guided imagery helps patients use the full range of the body’s healing capacity. Guided imagery is more than listening to relaxing sounds – it’s a learning process to listen to someone’s voice, relax the breathing and consciously direct the ability to imagine. The effect of guided vivid imagery sends a message to the emotional control center of the brain. From there, the message is passed along to the body’s endocrine, immune and autonomic nervous systems. These systems influence a wide range of bodily functions, including heart and breathing rates and blood pressure.

Guided imagery has been shown to benefit patients by:

– Reducing side effects from cancer treatment

– Reducing fear and anxiety prior to surgery. Mayo Clinic studies have shown that surgery patients who participated in two to four guided imagery sessions required less pain medication and left the hospital more quickly than those who hadn’t used imagery.

– Managing stress

– Managing headaches. Studies at the Mayo Clinic have shown that guided imagery may aid in reducing the frequency of migraine headaches as effectively as taking preventive medications.

On the Internet, www.hypnosis-oregon.com and www.rapideyetechnology.com offer information on providers experienced in this technique.

Mayo Clinic
200 First St. SW
Rochester, MN 55902
United States
www.mayoclinic.com

The best resolution to guilt is ACTION – some kind of action that mitigates or helps redeem us from our transgression.

I have always felt that guilt, far from being the “bad guy” of the new age, plays a vital role in the regulation of social behavior. That feeling in your gut often serves as the impetus for a stab at redemption.

Psychologists have trouble agreeing on the function of this complex emotion. On one hand, the punitive feeling of guilt may keep you from repeating the same transgressive behavior in the future, which psychologists call “withdrawal motivation.” Conversely, some researchers view the function of guilt in a societal context, in that it keeps people’s behavior in line with the moral standards of their community. This view emphasizes a more positive emotional experience and is associated with “approach motivation.”

In a study appearing in Psychological Science, published by the Association for Psychological Science, New York University psychologist, David M. Amodio, and his colleagues, Patricia G. Devine, and Eddie Harmon-Jones, sought to bring some understanding to this complex issue. The researchers believe that guilt is initially associated with withdrawal motivation, which then transforms into approach-motivated behavior when an opportunity for reparation presents itself. Furthermore, the researchers sought to test these questions about the functions guilt plays in the context of reducing racial prejudice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fearful memories can be rewritten.

Researchers at New York University have demonstrated scientifically that a specific fearful memory can be rewritten in the brain without the use of drugs – purely behaviorally. Of course, alternative practitioners like hypnotherapists and Rapid Eye Technicians have seen this over and over and are sold on the fact that fearful memories can be rewritten (in NLP it’s called “Reframing”).

Basing their theories on mouse and rat subjects, the researchers, led by Elizabeth Phelps, Ph.D., and Joseph LeDoux, Ph.D., of NYU, grantees of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), have demonstrated their training process on human subjects with positive results. The hope is to replace drug therapies with behavioral ones for anxiety and PTSD specifically – and perhaps others after some trials.

The research shows that there is a critical window of opportunity for change – within 6 hours of the recall of a traumatic memory. Once the “file” is open, specific behavioral techniques can be used to rewrite the memory back into the brain without the fear portion – with long-lasting results. The researchers also found that it was not necessary to recall specifics within a memory – just the emotional elements and the “gist” of the traumatic memory – in order to rewrite it. That’s the phenomenological findings of thousands of Rapid Eye Technicians, who basically tell their clients, “It’s not necessary to relive the events in order to release their energy and reframe [rewrite] those memories…”

Read the rest of this entry »