#18 Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety & Panic Attacks (Jason newland)

Hello, welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason. This is a daily relaxation session for stress, for anxiety and for panic attacks. And for just general day to day reduction of anxiety and stress.

So that every day that you watch or listen to this session, you can gradually discover and notice that your stress levels are somewhat reduced. And it can be surprising sometimes to see how it gradually transforms how you feel and think and experience the world. And you can be listening to these or watching these sessions every day for, let's say, a couple of weeks and then you realize that actually your level of stress maybe was very high and now it's a lot less.

And that can be a nice thing, a nice thing to notice. And please let me know, you know, if you have these situations arising and, you know, post a comment on the video. But these sessions are varied and different.

And I was going to take a little break from doing sessions. So I've got a bit of a cold. But I'm going to try and get through this without coughing or sneezing.

Now that I'm thinking of coughing and sneezing, I might end up coughing and sneezing. So I've got my water. I'm going to drink if I need to.

So if for any reason you don't like seeing people drinking water, then maybe turn off now because I might end up having to drink some water just to soothe my little throat. I can't suck anything when I'm talking to you. You know, like a lozenger or something for like cough medicine thing.

So let's start by doing a body scan. It's always good to start with that, I think, because you can get to, I don't know, if you're anything like me, sometimes I'm not actually aware of how I feel until I get in touch with how I feel. It's kind of strange.

I think more so, this is just an idea, it might not be true, but I feel it might be more so with people like myself who live alone and don't have any regular contact with people when I'm at home. So I'll wake up and I'll get ready for going out or whatever. Sometimes I'm not aware of really kind of what mood I'm in until I meet with another human.

And then I realise, let's say if I get to work, so I'd arrive at work and realise that actually I'm not in a very good mood at all. I wasn't aware of it before. Had I been living with somebody, which I had done in the past, only with friends and stuff, but I've lived and waking up and seeing somebody, instantly I kind of get a gauge of what level of mood I'm in.

Because I see that person and if I have a reaction to them or to what they've said or to what they've done, or maybe not even to them, just at them for how I'm feeling. So by doing the body scan, by doing the mindfulness exercises, I don't like the word exercises because it reminds me too much of school and I just don't want to do it. But they're not real, they're not hard.

It's actually pleasurable. It's fun. And just before, oh great, I don't normally yawn when I do videos.

Earlier on, I was laying on my bed and I was just being mindful. I was listening to the birds singing or whatever, making their sounds. I love the sound of birds.

Pigeons, not so much. But the nice sounds. The pigeons seem to kind of overtake everything.

But it's still nature. I like hearing the nature. I like hearing the wind, the tree blowing.

And yesterday it was raining, especially in the evening. It was raining quite, not heavy, but like regular. And it was nice just to hear the rain.

And for me, that's like a mindfulness process where I'm not particularly focusing on my body. I'm not particularly focusing on how I'm feeling, but I am also not focusing on problems and worries, things I'm concerned about, things that I'm upset about. I'm not thinking about relationship issues or financial problems.

At that moment, I'm focusing on the sound. And at the same time as focusing on the sound, I'm also focusing on my body, the bed supporting my back, my hips, my lower back, and my legs and my feet and my arms as well, if my arms are at the side of me, my hands. And it feels quite nice to just get in touch with how I physically feel, as well as listening to the sounds around me, whatever those sounds may be, even if it's cars in the distance, or a helicopter going past, you know, whatever it is, I can just, it's happening.

I'm in the moment. And I generally close my eyes during that time. Because I don't find that I get any kind of mindfulness with my eyes open, when I'm perhaps at home.

But I do when I'm out, let's say if I'm walking somewhere in nature, the visual side of it is just as powerful in some ways as why here, why smell and why feel you know, if the feeling, let's say I'm walking on the grass, the feeling of the grass underneath my feet, the smell of the grass, the smell of the mud, maybe the smell of the farms because I live in a countryside, the sounds of the traffic, but also maybe the sounds of the children playing, or the sounds of the cars going past, sounds of the wind, sounds of the birds and trees, all that stuff kind of is soaking in.

But then the visual side, seeing the results of the wind, you know, the trees blowing, maybe plants and flowers blowing in the wind. Maybe there'll be people being blown around by the wind, you know.

I've got to wait for the camera to come back. Oh, the camera went all foggy there when I was talking. And the sometimes by absorbing that in to my eyes, just noticing, but without making any judgments or criticizing it or or doing some kind of internal commentary on what's happening.

Unless, of course, something out of the ordinary happens. And, of course, I'm going to come into awareness and like, oh, I need to do something about this situation. But generally, when I'm outside, I like to walk.

It's called like walking meditation. I'm a slow walker by my very nature. I'm a slow walker.

I'm a slow talker. I'm a slow walker. I can talk fast sometimes and I can walk fast sometimes.

But my general status, you know, my general kind of normal, my normal kind of mode, if you want to call it that, would be fairly slow. Fairly slow kind of with what I do. I'm not like a rusher.

I don't rush generally. So mindfulness, walking meditation, you know, walking meditation, I find is really useful and something that I've been doing since I was a child. I just didn't realize I was doing it.

So I'd be walking home from school age, let's say 10. Long, long walk. Everyone, it's probably a half an hour walk, really.

I'd take maybe an hour, hour and a half to walk it. I just walk one foot in front of the other, but really noticing how my feet felt on the ground. Noticing the wind, noticing the temperature of the air on my face and on my hands, and maybe on my head, blow my hair.

Being aware of whatever smells are around, whatever I could hear. Because I'd be walking past people's houses, sometimes I could hear television. Maybe they're watching television.

Other times, there's the other place, there was a, you had an aviary and there was these little parakeets or budgies tweeting. Another house further up would have little bells, you know, that blow in the wind and probably annoy the hell out of their neighbors at night. Then there's the smells.

The smells of people cooking their dinner. Because I don't, I left school at half three, but I didn't get home till, you know, nearly dinnertime. So I could smell the different smells of people cooking the food.

Maybe some people were having big cooked dinners. Maybe I could smell toast burning. Or maybe I could walk past and smell the smells of the drain being washed out by the council, you know, washing the drain out and all the sewage.

You could smell that. Or further up, there'd be a road being tarmac'd and I could smell the freshness of that tarmac that's being laid. I always liked that smell.

And being aware of walking on the different types of pavement. Some parts of the pavement would wobble, you know, so I'd have to be careful not to trip. Maybe if it's winter and it's icy, certain parts would be with snow.

Some parts would be, have salt on or sand, you know, so it would be safe to walk on it without slipping. Maybe I'd have to walk in the bit of the road just to avoid it. Maybe there'd be flooding, be flooded pavements or flooded part of the road.

I'd have to walk around. So I'd have to watch physically how I was maneuvering myself, being really careful with my feet, how I treaded. But also being aware of how it felt on my feet as I walked.

And I already did this when I was a child. And it was my way, I suppose, of, I wasn't purposely being mindful or purposely trying to be meditative, because I didn't know anything about that stuff at that age. I think what I was trying to do is just have an opportunity to be myself, to be with myself, to be with the only person that actually got me, which is me, the only person that's ever got me.

And maybe we're all the same. Maybe we're all the only person that ever gets ourselves, maybe. But that was like a special time.

I could walk. Sometimes I'd sing. Sometimes, I guess it's the opposite to being mindfulness, mindful.

I'd have a good old sing song. Maybe sing some of the songs from Greece, or Adam and the Ant song, because that was around that time, early 80s. So that's something that can be incorporated in your life.

And it really helps. It can help you to just get in touch with how you feel, to get in touch with just that sensation of being alert, of being yourself. You know, I'm not trying to be anyone else.

I'm not trying to adapt or fit into other people's ideas of what you should be, or your idea of what their idea is of what you should be, or how you should act, or behave, or feel. Instead, you can feel how you feel. Be how you are.

Be in touch with how you actually feel in this moment, without any excuses, without any apologies, without permission from other people. Because you don't need that. It's just something you can do yourself.

And being able to take that power back. Because it just reminds me, when I was yeah, even late teens. Yeah, my late teens.

Even my 20s even, but especially my late teens, I didn't feel as if my opinion was valid at all. Not even a percent, one percent. I very much felt kind of dismissed.

Didn't feel that I had the right to hold an opinion and I should just regurgitate other people's belief systems and just copy what I'd learned from other people. The problem with that is, I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't relate to other people in a way to be able to copy them.

Didn't admire anyone to want to be like them. Not in reality. I mean, of course, you know, as movie stars, Bruce Lee, for example, you know, I wanted to be like him when I was doing martial arts and various like boxers and different people over the years, but comedians and stuff.

But actual people, the idea of just fitting in and getting excited over the same things as the people that I went to school were getting excited over. And I just didn't have that self-belief that I was valid. And it's taken many years to get to the point, get to the realization that everybody's opinions are just as valid as anybody else's.

A lot of the time, opinions are just that, just opinions, meaningless, pointless, prejudice, homophobic, sometimes maybe racist, maybe sexist, maybe full of hate, maybe full of love, maybe naive, maybe just limited because of our own life experiences are limited. Everyone's got a limited outlook because it's shaped by our lives. But everybody does have a right to have an opinion and to have their own mind.

I think the thing with things like homophobia, racism, some of these hate, hateful kind of thoughts, they're not people's original thought patterns. They're not that person's not being themselves. They're copying what they've learned and they're just doing what's comfortable because sometimes it's easier to be comfortable than and fit in, I guess, than to be original and to not fit in at all and feel like an outcast.

Luckily, I never fitted in, never felt like I fitted in anyway, never have. So I guess I'm lucky in that way. Couldn't even fit in with the Buddhists, could you believe it? That's a funny laugh, isn't it? Hmm.

So my point is with mindfulness, with being in touch with who you are, gives yourself self-validation, gives yourself time to actually maybe get to know who you are, get a bit more aware of how you feel about certain things in your life. I mean, there was recently, George Michael, the singer George Michael died. And I was a big fan of his right from, I was a kid since I was a kid with when he was in WAM.

And also as a solo artist, I loved his music and I was a big fan. And so when he died, it was awful to hear that. And I saw somebody posted on Facebook, something really quite nasty with a homophobic slur towards him as well.

And the point they were trying to make, I got what the point there was, is they didn't want to jump on the bandwagon of pretending to be upset for someone that they didn't even like. This is what their idea was, I think. But there was some very strong reaction in me towards what I saw.

I became very defensive towards George Michael, very defensive, not about him dying, but about his sexuality, never cared about his sexuality. I've got no interest in anybody's sexuality, not even my own. Things like that don't interest me.

But when I heard that hatred towards him, it really affected me. I really kind of just felt very agitated and angry by that. And I had to take some time off.

I had to step back, turn the computer off and just kind of move away from the internet for a while, just a few hours. So that's people, you know, who have opinions. Some people like to have opinions to to get pleasure out of upsetting people.

And you may say, what's this got to do with relaxing? Well, in order to feel less stress and more able to deal with anxiety and panic and all that stuff is being able to deal with those types of people or instead of using that wording, people who enjoy causing or try to cause others to be upset. Try to word it in a way instead of saying those people, those types of people, because that same person that's being cruel could also at the same time be one of the most loveliest people in the world, be a wonderful parent, maybe as for a living, they may save people's lives.

So nothing's quite as simple as we would like it to be.

And that's the thing is life would be easier if we could just say that person's bad and that person's nice and that person's evil, but it's not quite as simple as that. Life doesn't work that way. And that's I think a lot of people do like to buy into the stereotypical image of how they feel they should be.

So maybe being homophobic, racist, sexist, maybe it's easier to be like that than to have their own original thoughts, because then that's more work. It takes energy. You know, I guess, in a sense, a lot of the wording, I don't know what it's like in other countries, but in England, there's a lot of phrases that are used because people can't be bothered to think up another version of that.

You know, as an example, I was watching a TV show and they were talking about buildings, property and how small the rooms were. And this lady said the room's not even big enough to swing a cat. And that's an old saying, you know, the room's not big enough to swing a cat.

Apart from the fact that that's a quite horrible thing to be doing, swinging a cat. But I kind of switch off a little bit when I hear the same old sayings being used. And off the top of my head, I haven't got an alternative for that.

Not probably useful, but it's just to tap into that part of our creativity, to come up with a new terminology, a new example, meaning the same thing. That takes effort and it means moving away from safety, from familiarity. So I can understand how some people stick with that because it's comfortable.

It's safe. Well, it's not safe, but it feels safe. It's familiar.

But imagine what it'd be like if you did just decide to use different terminology, how much fun that would be. So I think it's useful maybe to think of it in a sense of, ah, so that's why they're being like that. Maybe that's why they're being like that.

It's not because they're perhaps horrible people or, you know, maybe it's because they're scared, scared of change, scared of what would happen if they break away from that group of friends. Because ultimately, when you change your mind and decide to actually be authentic to yourself, you may lose friends. You know, your whole life may change.

But when you do that, you'll have less stress, less anxiety, and much less opportunity for anything like panic attacks to happen because you're being yourself. You're not pretending. You're not ignoring those feelings inside you.

You're recognizing them and you're dealing with them. So I didn't go through this. This isn't quite the session I was looking to do.

It's a little bit different from what I was expecting. I could go on for quite a while with this. I hope it was useful.

I hope that, you know, this all adds together with the result of relaxation. This is connected to yesterday's session. It'll be connected to tomorrow's session.

It's also connected to the very first session, day one of this series. It's all connected. It's also connected to the sleep hypnosis sessions I do on Thursdays.

It's all connected in a way that it's not just about me saying, you will feel this way when I count to ten. You will not think this anymore. You will think this from now on.

I could do that. Sometimes I do do a bit of that. But this is something more.

This is options. This is giving you some ideas. And when someone gives you an idea, even if you don't actually, for whatever reason, take it on board at that particular moment in time, you're walking away with a gift.

And it's a gift that you can just look at, you know, it's not costing you anything. It's just a gift. It's like a coat that you can try on, a jacket, a scarf, a hat, some shoes, whatever, something that you can try on to see how it feels.

Maybe something to eat. Just test it. It's just a gift.

Every session is a gift. I think that's the name of one of my sessions. That was the present is a present.

That's one of my sessions from years ago. So, that's the end of this one. My name is Jason.

Thank you for subscribing and watching and all that stuff. And I'll see you next time. See ya.