First is Reading.  When we read and think about the words we are reading we are in the process of altering our thoughts, if just for a moment when we are reading.  If we continue to read the words they begin to imprint on our mind, having in some cases a lasting effect.  Some even belief that when we actually read something that we are what we are reading, that the language and words that we are contemplating is who we are at the moment.

Second is Prayer.  Praying is a way for us to practice an internal dialogue with ourselves.  Praying will alter our thinking especially if we do it repeatedly, every day for example.  Again, when we pray, when we say what ever it is that we say in prayer, we are the words or language that we create.  When our words are about getting connected to our Spirit or Source it is at that moment that we are getting connected.

Conversation is third.  Having conversations are either a way of reinforcing the beliefs and thoughts that we have already or a way of starting to create and generate a new thinking process.  This is especially powerful when you are having a conversation about some topic that you are in the process of learning, say, something spiritual in nature, some conversation that has to do with transformation.  When you discuss the topic with another human being you have the possibility of imprinting the thoughts and beliefs from the conversation even more.   

Positive Affirmations is the fourth way.  Using positive affirmations is one of the most powerful ways to change your thinking.  When you use positive affirmations daily you begin to alter the very beliefs and thoughts you have about yourself, that which forms the context of who we think we are, our self image.  When who we think we are alters or transform then our entire life starts to shift in a very powerful way.  What we have been sourcing into our life will then start to be different when our self image transforms.    

Gratitude List is the fifth way.  Having a gratitude list and repeating it daily, especially in the morning upon rising, is a way of causing or generating that which you want to have in your life.  When we say what we are grateful for we are continuing to source those things and people into our life.  Like the above mentioned five ways to transform your thinking, having an attitude of gratitude will cause you to create positive language and words for you to live from.     

Putting all five ways of transforming your thinking into a daily practice will have an extraordinary impact on your life.  Done repeatedly as part of your daily practice will transform your life and let  you begin to live the life that you say you want.  

More on this later.

Dr. Harry Henshaw

Enhanced Healing through Relaxation Music

Using positive affirmations can change and transform your life.

Dr. Harry Henshaw

Confidence – Positive Affirmations and Relaxation Music for Self Esteem

Enhanced Healing through Relaxation Music

Positive Affirmation Recordings from Enhanced Healing

Many times we are so eager to change our lives that we lose sight of many of the important things in our life.  Wanting to change so badly we sometimes get caught up in the process, almost as if it carries us away without us even knowing it, only to end up somewhere where we did not want to be.  The process of change, of transforming our lives, can be very exciting and generate a great deal of energy.  While such energy can be healthy and productive, we have to be able to disconnect from that energy at some point during the process and regain our balance.

This balance can be obtained through the practice of relaxation and meditation.  It is also my believe that music can play a vital role in this process, in helping a person to regain his balance and sense of relaxation.  The relaxation music that I create can, in my opinion, help to restore the balance back to an individual’s life.  When used repeatedly the relaxation music can be a very healthy component of a person’s life, of helping him or her to experience a deep state of relaxation and ease, even helping to limit the negative consequences of the stress that we have a tendency to experience.

I hope to write to the use of relaxation music for transforming your life and also for reducing stress.

Dr Harry Henshaw

Enhanced Healing through Relaxation Music

While I have invested a lot of time and energy in the mechanics of my dream, I am now taking a closer look at the fundamental nature of the magnet, of that which draws or sources people, places and things into my life.  If my dream is to come to be a reality, this part of the work has to be done as it is the most important part.  It is from me that the entire dream evolves.  It is from me and my thoughts and thinking that the dream was born and it is from me that it will live on.

Recently I have been watching and editing the movie, The Secret.  One of the important things about this move is that it constantly reminds me that things are possible and that my thoughts and thinking are the key to getting what I want from life.  Watching the movie over and over as I have been helps to keep me in the conversation of true change, of transformation.  It reminds me that watching my word is important and that what I think and say is crucial to the realization of the dream.

Fantasia – Enhanced Healing through Relaxation Music 

I want to create health and prosperity for myself and my life.  Once the possibility is generated then it is important and necessary to develop an action plan, a plan to make the possibility able to be fulfilled upon.  The action plan is about doing.

My action plan will involve having an exercise plan and diet that will support my health and well being.  My action plan for prosperity will be to have a detailed plan for generating more income through my website.

Both plans will require that I be responsible for my word and actions, doing what I said I would do.  My plan is only as good as my follow through on it.  What is always at stake throughout the new year is my integrity.

Enhanced Healing through Relaxation Music   

While this type of attitude can be beneficial, it could turn into a problem.  If the dream becomes an addiction or compulsion then there will be no balance.  Even though it is important to stay focused on making the dream real it is also important to understand that there is more to life than just the dream.  I have a tendency to get lost in the dream, thinking that there is nothing other than the dream.

However, there is a balance that needs to be paid attention to.  The balance of life is essential.  Being committed to ones dream is part of the balance.  The other part of the balance is staying in touch with our Source, with Spirit.  Sometimes we get caught in thinking that life is about the dream, that our life is the dream.  Life is much more than the dream.

The dream is about us, about our efforts and desires create.  The other side of the balance is not about us, not about our particular thoughts, feelings or actions but more about the whole, about the unity of all that there is.  While both sides of the balance are important and necessary, not having the connection to Source or Spirit will eventually result in me not being able to create the dream.  Our true power comes from the balance but more particularly from our being connected to Source or Spirit.

I must admit that I have a tendency to get attached to the dream and lose sight or connection to my Source.

Enhanced Healing through Relaxation Music  

1.  I am perfect, whole and complete.

2.  I love and accept everything about myself.

3.  I love and accept myself exactly as I am now.

4.  My body restores itself now to its natural state of good health.

5.  I am healthy and filled with energy.

6.  I live life in and from the present moment, in the Now.

7.  I always take good care of myself.

8.  My body is strong and healthy.  I am strong and healthy.

9.  I am grateful for my life and good health.

10.  I joyously forgive others and myself and I set myself free from the past.  I am at peace.

Positive Affirmation Recording for General Health

Enhanced Healing through Relaxation Music 

2. My body restores itself now to its natural state of good health. I am perfect, whole and complete.

3. My income is constantly increasing.

4. I breathe slowly and deeply.

5. With each breathe that I take I become more relaxed.

6. I love everything about myself.

7. I love and accept myself exactly as I am now.

8. I forgive myself and I set myself free from the past.

9. I love and approve of myself.

10. I am relaxed, calm and peaceful.

11. I accept and enjoy the moment, I live in the present.

12. I trust the process of life.

13. I am one with all that is and with the power that created me, with Source, with Spirit, with God.

14. I love who I am. I love my life.

15. I am grateful for everyone and everything that I have in my life.

16. My body is strong and healthy. I am strong and healthy.

17. My life and future is abundant and prosperous.

18. I am intelligent, talented and creative.

19. I always do my very best.

20. I am the divine expression of God. Who I am is Spirit, Source, God.

21. I am willing to change.

22. I am responsible for everything that I think say, feel and do.

23. I trust and allow others to help me.

24. I accept the things I can not change. I accept things the way they are and the way they are not.

25. I have the courage to change the things I can change. I can change myself.

Enhanced Healing through Relaxation Music

HEALING WITH MUSIC RELAXATION THERAPY

by  RICHARD ZWOLINSKI, LMHC, CASAC

We first got in touch with Harry Henshaw, a mental health and addiction counselor and musician, because C.R. is making some guided visualization MP3s and needed some relaxing background music. After searching quite a few weeks for music that was pleasant to listen to and effective but subtle enough not to dominate the spoken word, she found Enhanced Healing, Harry Henshaw’s web site.

Originally, Harry was a philosophy student. After a part time job working in a half-way house for people with mental illness, his life plans underwent a dramatic change. He decided to commit to helping others.

After he received his doctorate in Human Development and Counseling, he began working in a rehab program. As he began learning about drug and alcohol addiction, he developed his own insights into treatment and began to incorporate tools such as NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), hypnosis, and music in his work with clients.

We don’t really have experience with NLP (and very little with traditional hypnosis) but we enjoy creating and listening to guided visualizations and we often use a variety of relaxation techniques, especially progressive relaxation and breath work. We frequently use relaxing music. We tried one of Harry’s sleep recordings—it was definitely effective! 

Welcome, Harry. Tell us how a bit how you began using music in therapy.

I discovered years ago that using relaxation music made therapy and some of the techniques I use, including NLP (neuro linguistic programming) and hypnosis, even more powerful. After using different types of relaxation music recordings I eventually became dissatisfied with all of them. I’m also a musician with an intense love of music, so I started to experiment with different kinds of compositions. I soon discovered a type of relaxation music that helped people to experience a very deep state of relaxation, go into trance quicker and also achieve much more beneficial and powerful results from their hypnotic work.

While my relaxation music was initially developed for my hypnotic practice I also use it in my individual and group counseling sessions. During these sessions I will play the music at an ambient level so that the music creates a relaxed background but isn’t distracting. People soon lose conscious awareness of the music and focus on the work that they came there to do. It has been my experience that until they try it, most counselors and therapists do not yet understand how powerful relaxing music can be when used as a therapy tool.

After years of working with music in counseling, I believe that it is the design of my music that causes the beneficial effect for the listener. First, there is the actual structure of the musical composition. It seems that having long, sustained chords or voices, approximately 12 to 15 seconds in duration, with slow transitions between the chords works best. This causes the body to slow down and begin to relax and as and eventually attain a deeper state of relaxation. The music is initially a physical experience.

The second component of my music is the binaural audio tones that have been mixed into the music. The binaural tones, through a process referred to as “entrainment” or “frequency following”, gently directs the body to make more of the brain wave frequencies necessary for either deep relaxation or sleep. The recordings for deep relaxation contain binaural audio tones within the theta range while the recordings for sleep contains binaural audio tones within the delta range.

Our brains emit certain frequencies during the day, 24 hours a day.  While we are awake, alert and working, our brain emits more energy in the beta range, at approximately 14 cycles per second.  When we start to relax and even meditate our brains starts to produce more alpha frequencies, from 7 to 14 cycles per second.  As we start to drift off to sleep our brain moves into the theta range, generating more 4 to 7 cycles per second.  When we eventually go to sleep our brains is producing more delta frequencies than any other, between 1 to 4 cycles per second.  I mix the music with theta frequencies, 5 cycles per second, for helping a person to relax and delta frequencies, 1 cycle per second, for helping them to sleep.

It’s amazing that although we can sense some of the changes in frequencies, many are quite subtle, yet the effects are very real. Tell us about the benefits of using/listening to music in a therapeutic manner.

My clients tend to be mostly on the resistant and defensive side.  I have found that a person is more open to a suggestion after using the relaxation music.  When an individual is able to experience a state of deep relaxation he is much less defensive and much more open to considering and accepting suggestions for change.

Can you describe a successful outcome you’ve had using your music?

One particular client comes to mind.  He was extremely resistant to treatment, even defiant. I decided to go with the resistance.  What I did first was to just work on making rapport with him, small talk, talking about anything.  While we were having our conversations I had the music playing at an ambient level.  It was apparent that he was becoming more relaxed and less defensive as we talked.  At some point I told him I would be leaving the room for a while and asked him if he wanted to listen to the music.  He agreed, so I gave him headphones. After our session resumed, he said, without prompting, that he liked the music, felt very relaxed and wanted to know if he could listen to it later, after the session.  I gave him a copy of the music.

Upon returning for his next session he reported that he liked the music and listened to it often, especially in the evenings.  I next made the suggestion that I had another recording, same music but with positive affirmations for confidence and that I would like for him to listen to it and give me his opinion. He agreed.

After about 20 minutes I stopped the recording to check in with him. The client reported though he found the positive affirmations a bit difficult to listen to, he enjoyed them. I gave him a copy of the recording to take home and asked him to evaluate the recording for me.  After a few days he reported that after listening to the recording he felt more comfortable in his own skin and felt that he had a more positive outlook about his life. Over the next few weeks he appeared to have a brighter affect and was more positive and less defensive especially with the recovery coaches at the center where I work.  After he was discharged he continued to use the recording and began to use positive affirmations in general to help him work on his self esteem. I followed up with him and found that over time his motivation continued to increase and eventually he decided to work in a treatment program himself.

You really seem to use an interesting variety of tools and techniques. How do you use NLP and hypnosis in your work with clients?

I use it to help people change what they think, especially about themselves.  Poor self esteem is the core issue for most people with addictions. It is always about feeling not good enough or feeling like a failure. Like many in the field, I believe that the basis of a person’s poor self esteem is rooted in their past, or more precisely, in their memory or story of the past.

What NLP and hypnosis helps people do is quite simple—it helps people reframe and transform their experiences. After time, they are able to let go of the past (and all of the damage that it has done and continues to do) as well as let go of their own guilt and shame. This isn’t about forgetting but rather an opportunity to create a new and healthier perspective on their past.  Eventually the client stops being stuck.

Once the process of letting go and letting God begins, NLP and hypnosis also helps a person start creating a new future, a future that they truly want, that they have been unable to achieve. One technique that works well is called Future Self. In Future Self a person creates through imagery what they want their life to be like, say in one year.  By helping them to create a picture of what they want and then by helping them to step into their new future in trance, they find they are able to create a positive future. For addicts, this future will also be devoid of drugs and alcohol.  The beauty of using NLP and hypnosis is that the counselor does not have to know or deal with the content of a client’s problems to help them change. Such techniques reduce the resistance and defensive nature of many clients.

Thanks so much Harry Henshaw for talking with us.  You can listen to some of his relaxing music online, at Enhanced Healing.

Psych Central

Enhanced Healing

Creating Possibility in your Life