Useful tips to go through the ‘Winter Blues’ and how Hypnotherapy can help.

Authored by Carolina Veranen

Winter is quickly approaching, days are getting shorter and you can notice changes in your mood. You might feel lazy, lethargic or less inclined to exercise regularly. You might just want to stay at home and ‘hibernate’ through the winter.

Lack of Sunlight:
A lack of sunlight in your life has proven to affect your mood, your feelings and your thought processes. For most people, the lack of daylight’s affect is mild: it is often called the ‘Winter Blues’. It makes you feel less energetic, less active and more tired. However, a minority of the population gets affected by a form of depression due to this lack of sunlight called SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder. SAD affects you in various ways: you may find you are easily irritated, you want to sleep more, you are gaining weight, and you feel less energetic, you find it more difficult to concentrate and to exercise.

There are ways to minimise the effect of lack of sunshine through the winter. Change your routine: find outdoors activities, go for a 10min walk outside at lunchtime or meet your friends for lunch outside. It will help you brighten your day. If you can’t go outside as much as you wish, another way is to imagine yourself in a sunny place. Find a comfortable place at home where you will not be disturbed and spend a few moments visualising yourself at the beach or any other sunny place and let yourself enjoy the sunshine.

Stress over the Christmas period:
Also with the Christmas period approaching, you might feel more stressed than usual and you may find that you don’t have enough time for you.

A good way to prevent stress is to pamper yourself, spend more “quality time” with yourself and treat yourself to quiet and relaxing time in the evening or on the weekend.

A very powerful tool to face stress is to become aware of the sensations in your body telling you that you are stressed, acknowledge them and find alternatives to release this stress. It may include taking a couple of good deep breaths, laugh at yourself or the situation or simply stop for a few minutes before carrying on with the task.

Short visualisation to help you get over stress and winter blues:
Please find below a simple visualisation that you can use any time you need to re-energise your body and mind. Including it in your daily routine will have great positive impacts:

‘Remember a sunny place where you’ve been before and where you felt at ease. It could be a place you spent your last holiday or a place that you enjoyed going to as a child. Find yourself going back there. If you don’t have a favourite sunny place in mind, simply create one in your mind and allow your imagination to take you to a nice and wonderful place.

Notice where you are. Notice the atmosphere of the place. Notice the temperature of the place. The sun is shining and you can feel the sun’s rays on your skin.
It is not too hot. It is not too cold. The temperature is perfect.
Notice how comfortable you feel.
Notice what you are wearing.
What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel?
Are there people around? Are you on your own?

This is your magic place, spend some time there to relax and rest.
When you are there nothing else matters. You have left behind all the stress of your daily routine and worries of your day.
You feel your body relax and all the tension drift away. This is your time… your ‘quality time’. Let your mind wander and if any thoughts come, acknowledge them and let them go.

Enjoy those relaxing moments that you have for yourself in this magic place and let your body fully re-energize.

When you feel more refreshed, just let yourself come back to the room and gently open your eyes.’

Hypnotherapy:
Hypnotherapy (or self-hypnosis) is also a good tool to help you learn easily techniques of relaxation and visualisation that will allow you to feel alive again and more energised.

"Hypnosis is an altered state of awareness where the gates to your unconsciousness are open." You are the only person in charge of allowing these doors open or close. Hypnosis contributes to provoke a change due to the fact that it allows you to quickly and easily access your inner potential and activate this inner wealth, knowledge and potential which you may have not realized that it existed.

A couple of sessions of hypnotherapy will boost your energy and relax you at the same time.