A Healthy Mind

by Brighton-based hypnotherapist Jason Evans

Everybody has mental health, but for most people mental health isn't a problem. It isn't unusual to take your mental health for granted, especially post-covid and with the demands of a 24/7 connected culture. In this section we will look at some of the ways you can maintain a healthy mind.

It is sometimes useful to distinguish mental health from mental wellbeing. Mental wellbeing comes from a lifestyle made up of a good balance of healthy activities such as exercise, socialising and sleeping well, which provide a good, natural preventative effect to avoid developing mental health problems.

As any responsible therapist or doctor should tell you, the first step in maintaining a healthy mind is to ensure you have good physical health. Make sure you have a healthy diet, providing your physical body with all the necessary fuel and nutrition it needs, and making sure you get regular exercise and sleep.

Brain Health

The next step after looking after your general physical health is to look after your brain: the physical component of your thinking self, the powerful supercomputer residing in your skull.

Once you have taken steps to ensure you have a physically healthy brain, fully nourished with all the essential nutrients, you can begin to look at factors that are more in the realm of psychology. In this article we are going to look at three practices you might find useful: mindfulness, hypnotherapy and Focusing.

Focusing

Another beneficial form of psychotherapy is Focusing. Focusing with a capital 'F' is much more than we understand by 'focusing' on things in a general sense.

Discovered by Eugene Gendlin in the 1960s, Focusing is the name for a specific therapeutic technique that involves listening to your body for what Gendlin called a 'felt sense', and then using that physical feeling to gain insights by attaching a 'handle' or 'label' to that physical feeling.

Focusing is not counselling or therapy as generally understood, you don't have to cry a lot or divulge your whole life story. Rather it is a therapeutic technique that can complement therapy of more conventional kinds.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnosis is subject to many misapprehensions and myths, not helped by dramatic but not always accurate portrayals in the mass media such as TV and films, stage shows, and even books.

The truth is that hypnosis is really nothing more than a focused state of awareness, in which your unconscious mind is more open to suggestion. This is where hypnotherapy comes in.

Hypnotherapy is a form of psychotherapy or complementary therapy that uses hypnosis in a positive way to enable you to make changes to the way you think by means of hypnotic suggestion. It also has the benefit of helping you to access deep relaxation, which is beneficial in all sorts of ways.

Mindfulness

In recent years, mindfulness has really captured the public imagination. 'Everyone' is doing it and seeing the benefits in all sorts of areas of their lives. Did you know that even a short regular meditation session every day can help considerably with your mental wellbeing?

Conclusion

As we can see, there are many ways of maintaining a healthy mind. The best place to start is with physical health, both general and specific to the healthy functioning of the brain.

People with poor mental health often underestimate the benefits of regular exercise which can be effective in lifting depression, for example (especially in its early stages).

Once that is well attended to, you might find a regular meditation practice promoting mindfulness useful.

Finally, some form of psychotherapy, perhaps including hypnotherapy and/or Focusing might enable you to address specific problems not covered (or perhaps uncovered) by a regular meditation practice.

There are of course many other ways to maintain a healthy mind. We have discussed just a few of them here. Did you know there are over 400 different forms of psychotherapy out there? Take the time to find out what works for you.