Pre-Christmas Sale IBS Treatment Programmes now £20 until 24 December 2011

IBS is a strange syndrome, I have just been reminded of why I shouldn’t have red kidney beans in a chilli – but that is enough information!

I have decided to have a much longer Sale of Treatment Programmes from the time of posting this blog until Christmas Eve 2011. I am becoming increasingly aware of the financial pressures being put on people through inflation, high fuel prices and increasing food costs. I can’t do much about that, but I can reduce the price of my IBS Treatment Programmes.

The programmes still contain all the original elements 3 Gut Directed recordings of guided imagery specific for each sub-type of IBS and the E-book along with a bonus recording of ‘Ego-Strengthening’ – I suppose you could call it ‘Vitamins for the Mind’. All of them link together to form a cohesive treatment programme for IBS that looks at all the elements to promote a healthy Mind-Body link for a healthy Gut and Bowel habit.

Please remember that you cannot get stuck in hypnosis, and with guided imagery the level of hypnosis is very light but it is the story and how you interpret it that is important.

So here’s to a new start, a present for yourselves or others and a healthy gut!

60% off 48hr Sale IBStreatment Online Programmes

Here I am sitting in rural ‘Dampshire’ (that is to say Hampshire, but it is raining) working on a conservation project that is forcing me to go to my ‘special place’, my garden and clear out my stream on a regular basis – one of the first times I am having to do this for a long time – as the stress plays havoc with my gut (given half a chance – remember my post about the IBS/Stress Cycle?).

My problem is that as Chair of our Civic Society I am trying to stop 3,000 to 3,500 houses being built (I feel granting any planning permission would be unlawful) with road exits and houses within 400m of a Special Protection Area; this is an area that is set aside under European Law for the protection of  birds that are afforded Special Protection Status/Measures. This goes against the Planning Inspectorate’s Assessment for Thames Basin Heaths of 2007 which is an area of 13 SPAs with ground nesting birds – our SPA has ground nesting birds in Annex 1 and a greater protection as a Wetland Site of International Importance.

It is particularly set aside for migrating waders etc as it is at the upper reaches of the Hamble river…please see www.curbridgepreservationsociety.org.uk  for further details and information on what is proposed.

Send in a copy of the letter to Winchester City Council if you are interested in conservation/a bird lover…or live in the Winchester Council area. We are in the final consultation phase before this goes into their pre-submission planning framework for the next 20 years…and then goes for examination in public – the planning application is also expected towards the end of the year…so I have a lot of research work to do…

This really limits the amount of work I can do with IBS sufferers helping them to reduce their symptoms – and it increases my symptoms so I have to remember to do maintenance myself…

What I am going to do, to help fund my conservation efforts for this SPA (it also has 2 further levels of European protection as an SAC and a Ramsar site – as it is a Wetland site of International Importance)…sorry going off track a bit…What I am going to do is…

A worldwide special offer (only an English version available) for 48 hours starting at 1300hrs BST 8th July 2011 finishing 1300hrs BST Sunday 10th July 2011 – the links are on the website and it is through PayPal and instantly downloadable treatment programmes! Reduced from £50.00 to only £20.00 available at  www.the-ibs-treatment.com

IBS Treatment Using ‘Vitamins for the Mind’

One important area of work is in providing individuals with greater coping skills with the curve balls that life throws at us all. The metaphor is a superb tool in this respect because the use of the story enables our mind to interpret the message. The new coping skills maybe talked about in terms of clearing out streams, doing weeding, picking up twigs – it doesn’t matter what the message says we do to cope, it is how the subconscious mind interprets it and brings it into our ‘Truth’, our own model of the world we live in – that is where the magic of metaphor truly is.

There is a lot to be said for including Ego Strengthening into almost every single therapeutic approach – almost as if you look at it as being an approach similar to them taking ‘vitamins for the mind’ whether the client has been having anxiety issues related to the expressed reason for the consultation or not. Most people do not just come to a hypnotherapist as their first port of call, their first option, many have come to the point of exasperation/desperation and a good dose of something to mentally perk them up is always of some benefit; this is important in IBS treatment.

In the clinical research behind the treatment of  IBS by hypnotherapy the concept of the metaphor of a tree was introduced ( Zimmerman and also Whorwell), where the client could sit under it and be aware of its properties.

Then the client’s mind was drawn to thinking about the tree and the roots, the trunk, the branches and the canopy of leaves about the strength and elasticity of the branches, being flexible in the wind yet supporting the leaves and flowers; the strength of the trunk how it supported the whole structure of the tree, the bark protecting the wood below and the way the trunk transported the water and minerals from the roots up to the leaves for the proves of photosynthesis to take place so that the tree itself might grow and thrive. The roots that spread out at least as far as the canopy of leaves and deeply too, providing the anchorage for the stability of the tree and through its network of hair roots in the soil absorbing vital water and minerals for the whole tree’s needs; and then the leaves, that also breathe for the tree through their spiracles, and contain chlorophyll the required catalyst for photosynthesis to occur.

If you think about it the passage above is very similar to a basic ego strengthening session that would be delivered to someone with low self-esteem, but it also has one significant advantage…metaphor and therefore being indirect.

IBS Treatment and Experience

IBS usually expresses its symptoms in the area of the colon, although the sufferer can experience effects along the whole of the gastro-intestinal tract, from the oesophagus and stomach with symptoms including reflux, belching and nausea (which is functional dyspepsia and of a similar nature and treatment approach). The colon is the large intestine that rises from the small intestine on the right hand side of the body and descends on the left hand side to the rectum and then anus. The bowel’s habit is in terms of the volume of material it can accommodate before sending signals denoting a need to empty is also affected. It is in the colon that the majority of the water from digested food is absorbed back into the body.

The complications of functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract are relatively limited. Since symptoms are most often provoked by eating, sufferers who alter their diets and reduce their intake of calories may lose weight. Symptoms that awaken patients from sleep also are more likely to be due to organic than functional disorders.

Most commonly, functional disorders interfere with the sufferers’ comfort and their daily activities. For example, sufferers who have morning diarrhoea may not leave the house until the diarrhoea stops. If it is constant, they may go only to places where they know that a toilet is readily available. Sufferers of IBS who develop pain after eating may avoid lunch. Very commonly, sufferers associate symptoms with specific foods, such as milk, fat, vegetables, etc. Whether or not these associations are physiological in origin, these sufferers will restrict their diets accordingly. Milk is commonly eliminated, often unnecessarily and to the obvious detriment of calcium intake with significant health risks resulting. The interference with daily activities also can lead to problems with interpersonal relationships, including pain with intercourse (females) and a lack of sex drive. However, most sufferers with functional disorders tend to just live with their symptoms and infrequently visit clinicians for diagnosis and treatment.

The sufferer’s symptoms of IBS are defined by subjective symptoms, such as abdominal pain or improvement in abdominal pain, by the very nature of subjective experience. These are the sufferer’s perceptions and not particularly reliable scales. Traditional Western medical treatment is usually directed at the symptoms, which are primarily constipation, diarrhoea, abdominal distension and abdominal pain (which is often caused by excess gas). Sufferers can experience any or all of the symptoms of IBS.

Both Whorwell (2002) and Zimmerman (2003) are specific in their use of metaphor to obtain symptomatic improvements. The IBS Treatment programme follows in their proven approach. Whorwell particularly utilises the experience of warmth as well as the stream, the warmth to increase the feeling of comfort and ease and the stream (or river) with its clarity and smooth flow increasing the perceived the health of the gut.

IBS and the Stress Cycle

Pelletier in his book ‘Mind as a Healer, Mind as a Slayer’ (2002) clearly made the point that negative feelings such as despair, depression and fear have a significant effect on the brain and thus the body. That, in fact, they can bring about significant changes in the body’s chemistry.

Stress, of itself, is not a bad thing when controlled or when faced by an individual with the coping and cognitive skills; it can be a catalyst that creates beneficial change. However it is when stress is rampant, unmanaged, disproportionate and chronic that it causes problems and can exacerbate IBS.

The ability of hypnotherapy techniques, in particular IBS treatment, as a natural and learned state, to alleviate stress is something can not be underestimated.

The benefits of relaxation in the mind-body or stress/disease cycle are clearly supported by the research of Wisneski & Anderson (2005) and Jacobs (2001) amongst others. It is in imparting that knowledge to a client, in rapport building and answering their questions about the therapy being offered that reinforcement about coping strategies and increasing coping/cognitive skills needs to be shared with the client. Lorentz (2006) in her paper’s conclusion states the following:-

“The growing number of individuals and healthcare professionals using mind-body medicine attest to its positive impact on the wellbeing of individuals. It is conceivable that mind-body medicine may soon be recognised as conventional medical therapy.”

It is when the individual doesn’t have the realisation of their own ability to control their IBS, and/or experience of stress, that the stress causes harm both mentally and physically.

This is where the approach of gut directed metaphor in IBS treatment has the advantage because it is through metaphor and its indirect message(s) that changework can begin without resistance (or at minimum significantly reduced resistance). The learning experiences are gentle and empowering and if the client is taught their stream and garden protocol as self-hypnosis then you can truly give them empowerment through new cognitive and coping skills and a life-long resource/skill to back that up.

IBS Treatment: the role of guided imagery

As a sufferer from IBS your gut has basically been expressing the stress and anxiety present in your life. There is a very significant amount of scientific/medical research that supports the positive impacts of hypnotherapy as an intervention for the treatment of IBS.

There is also significant information that supports the critical role of the nervous system in IBS, and that IBS has many factors to its presentation. Guided imagery and the use of metaphor as a treatment approach is supported by the work of Whorwell and his team, amongst others, and this evidence helped NICE to include hypnotherapy in their guidance as a treatment option for IBS.

The treatment of IBS with guided imagery also has a major advantage – it is a simple protocol and can be easily learned by the sufferer to empower them in having a life-long management system for their own symptoms of IBS. It also has the advantage that metaphor bypasses critical analysis it has been described as ‘disturbing the bed of the lake, before causing a ripple on the surface’.

Once you have learned how to remove that build up of stress/anxiety and felt the benefits from being free from the symptoms of IBS, taking 20-30 minutes out of your week to maintain your stream’s health and therefore the health of your gut is a tiny thing to do.

Being kind to yourself and having a happy bowel – seems a win-win situation to me.

The Content of the Gut Directed Therapy Approach

The IBS treatment programme has been specifically designed to be highly effective as a self/auto-hypnosis IBS treatment package. The e-book and simple IBS symptom severity measuring tools underpin a robust sequence of professional recordings for you to listen to and let your imagination take you to a beautiful place.

The actual IBS treatment recordings in this treatment programme consist of a story being told of a beautiful walled garden, this is guided imagery within a lightly induced hypnotic state. The story unfolds in the first recording and is built-on for greater therapeutic gains in the second MP3.

Although the garden has structure and detail you can interpret it in any way that makes most sense to you. If you prefer a more naturalistic garden the walls can be interpreted as being trees and the garden more of a woodland glade, the interpretations is up to your imagination.

The reason the IBS treatment programme is one of guided imagery is that it is a pleasant, and cohesive, story for your conscious and therefore critical mind to listen to. It makes sense when examined. However there are a set of very clearly IBS directed messages in it, messages and learning opportunities that are within the metaphors used.

The first metaphor is of the flow of the stream running the length of the garden, representing your gut and its health and how you actively have a positive impact on the flow and the clarity of the water, the health of your gut.

A second metaphor is a tree that represents strength and increasing wellbeing, undoing the effects of the stress and anxiety that could be underpinning your IBS; and a third metaphor is used of the sun naturally warming your gut and all of its organs, giving a wonderful sense of comfort and ease reducing and removing the pain associated with IBS.

The IBS treatment programme is kept simple, there are 3 separate recordings to be listened to in order:-

• an initial guided imagery session (for the first week),
• an IBS symptom specific guided imagery session (for about a month) , and
• a maintenance guided imagery session, to keep you on track, maintaining a happy gut once your IBS symptoms have significantly reduced or gone (once or twice a week thereafter or when required).

The IBS treatment programme is about you achieving a gut that you are happy with, achieving a level of IBS symptoms that have such a minimal level of impact on your day-to-day life that it is as-if you felt you no longer had IBS.

The maintenance recording (third one) is important as along with self-hypnosis it will help you cope better with the curve-balls that life does throw at us.

The reduction in symptoms of IBS does have to be worked on and maintained, to use the metaphor; the stream does have to be kept free of new debris (twigs etc) that will continue to fall into it after you have cleared it out. If you have a stressful period in the future and some of your IBS symptoms return then all you need to do is listen to the second (main) recording again until your gut feels happier and your symptoms reduce.

Metaphor(ical) Magic

“Metaphor….the right brain’s unique contribution to the left brain’s language capability”
Leonard Shlain: The Alphabet versus the Goddess

A metaphor is when you use a symbol, a figure of speech, a simile, an image or an allegory (parable/fable or story) as an explanation or learning opportunity. Many religious texts use metaphors (parables) to disseminate their intended message, or Aesop’s fables for children to help them learn about their expected role in society and the behaviour that is expected from them. The long tradition of fairy tales across cultures is also an example of the use of metaphor to give learning opportunities to children, learning opportunities that are disguised to make them more accessible and actually encourage the use of imagination and processing skills.

So in the context of therapeutic interventions the metaphor is using a carefully structured story to help the mind accept new learning to change perceptions and behaviour from old unwanted ones to new and more desirable behaviours and perceptions.

If you allow yourself to think about it for a moment you will probably recall that very few memories are actually  factual, that predominantly they are only the individual’s perception of what happened, all tainted with our beliefs and the model of the world we believe we live in; the model of the world that we have created for ourselves through our own interaction with our environment.

The metaphor has a long history of being the gentle learning experience that gets the point across in a way that makes the individual process it, with minimal resistance; importantly having long-term effects on the individual’s perceptions and expectations.

In the treatment of IBS the metaphors are of a garden with a stream and beautiful strong tree

My Gut is Like a Stream

“…And you will find that the increasing smoothness of flow and the clarity of the water in your stream reflect the increasing health of your gut…”

If I said that to you out of the blue, as an IBS sufferer, you would probably suggest (politely or otherwise) that I underwent some urgent psychological or psychiatric testing; however it is true, and medically proven, as you will discover as this blog progresses.

I do also apologise as throughout this blog I am going to be, necessarily, talking about that most unfortunate subject – bowels and their movements. However as a former sufferer of IBS (diarrhoea based) of about 17 years I can actually say that hypnotherapy, and particularly Gut Directed Hypnotherapy or Gut Orientated Metaphor, really does work in its control/management. If I suffer slightly from the symptoms about once a month or so it is probably because I have ‘pigged-out’ on too many vegetables (such as sweetcorn) or had a very hot chilli with red kidney beans in it. My fault and I should know better.

But why specialise in IBS? Well my GPs had basically told me that I should put up with it and just learn to live with it, make some dietary adjustments and take Imodium to control the diarrhoea. I had had the symptoms of IBS for 10 years or so before I had a proper diagnosis made. This ‘learning to live with it’ I felt wasn’t actually good enough and I had recently decided to re-qualify and had started to study Hypnotherapy. Amazingly I began to notice that my IBS was getting better every time I had been for a days’ training in London; after being dropped in and out of hypnosis several times during the practical sessions every study day.

I changed from rushing to the loo up to 15 times a day and needing the loo within 30 seconds of waking up in the morning to something that was getting more towards ‘normal’. A fellow student, who had co-authored a published paper with his father (a Hypnotherapist and Consultant Psychiatrist) on IBS talked to me about the basis of the ‘Manchester Model’ and I started practicing it. The effects were truly amazing and quick as my bowel habit changed, the diarrhoea disappeared, my stools normalised and that has remained the case for a few years now.

IBS Treatment : Background Information

It is estimated that up to 20% of UK adults suffer from IBS at some point in their lives. IBS is a social and personal nightmare causing (or exacerbating) anxieties and making sufferers avoid social situations, exercise and other activities that they used to enjoy in the days before IBS.

IBS is a functional disorder: that is a disorder showing symptoms for which no physiological or anatomical cause can be identified. It is not a disease. A disease is a health condition in which there is an observable and measurable disease process, e.g. inflammation or tissue damage.

As IBS is a functional disorder, not a disease, there is actually no “IBS CURE” (a cure is defined as removing all the signs and symptoms of a disease) rather the individual with IBS receives a suitable treatment for IBS to help reset the functioning of the gut.

IBS is in fact what is described as ‘multi-factorial’ (has many factors to it) in its causes and symptoms. It does run in families, diet can have an influence on some and we know from research that the sensitivity of the bowel is altered. Every sufferer also has a very individual experience of IBS.

However the detailed research on the use of hypnotherapy (particularly Gut Directed Hypnotherapy) as a treatment approach is significant, and so are the results of treatment with an 80% success rate demonstrated (Whorwell et al, 2002).

This IBS Treatment programme is based on the use of Gut Orientated Therapy with hypnotherapy and uses a gentle story of learning that the conscious mind will find enjoyable and the subconscious mind will interpret and consequently alter the functioning of the gut.

It is suitable for anyone that has a diagnosis of IBS and particularly those who have tried every diet, tablet, pre- and pro-biotic etc and nothing has worked yet.

Author/Hypnotherapist Information

The programme author and professional hypnotherapist is Duncan Murray DCHyp, ACertCSHyp, GQHP. He was trained by the BST Foundation in London and gained a his Practitioners’ Diploma in Spring 2008 being awarded a Distinction with Merit. He has since completed (2009) the Advanced Practitioners’ Certificate in Clinical and Strategic Hypnosis.

Duncan founded IBSHelp.org.uk in 2009 and launched his GHR valid CPD distance learning course on The Treatment of IBS through Gut Orientated Metaphor in April 2010 (International IBS Awareness Month).

He is passionate about getting the right help, treatment and advice to people with IBS.