The Treasure Box is for everyone. When you find your Treasure box it is filled with all sorts of things you may have used successfully in the past, and new and wonderful things to move you forward. Each time you listen you will find what you need. All it takes is a quiet spot, 23 minutes, and a desire to be better. This is perfect for all ages and a good gift.

Full details and a short listen can be found…right here.

Now, if you were to drill straight down through the earth from here in Herts, you would probably come out in Dunedin or Christchurch in New Zealand, and while it would be exactly half way around the world, summer time, and12 hours further into the day, you wouldn’t be standing upside down. Isn’t it amazing how wonderful gravity is and how the whole universe works.

So, yes, it is summer time over there now. The school year is coming to a close with exams, parent interviews, end of year reports, school plays, and all the hustle and bustle of planning summer holidays, christmas presents and everything all at once. Schools finish mid December and the next school year begins early February.

One of the first holiday jobs was to go off with Dad into the countryside to find a tree branch that could become a Christmas tree.  The lovely fir trees you have for Christmas trees here do not grow in those warmer climates. All we got were plain, often scraggy, pine trees, but we knew no better because everyone had similar, if they didn’t have a fake ‘shop’ one. The pine smell was nice though and the tall branch was secured in an old bucket and decorated. We had no concept of a white Christmas, we had never ever even seen or touched snow!

Naturally the Christmas presents we liked were bikes and outdoor stuff for the summer holidays, fun things to do in the swimming pool or at the beach, kites, model planes that you made and went out and used, remote control stuff that you took out onto the front lawn and driveway, or down onto the sand at the beach. Of course books, movies and computer games are really popular, too, and because school is out for 6 whole weeks presents can be fully enjoyed all of the holidays

We didn’t stand on ceremony on Christmas day. It went like this… wake up, open a present left by your pillow, usually a book. (left to keep you entertained while Mum and Dad got to stay asleep until at least 6am) Then, all up and off to the Christmas tree to open the presents with breakfast somewhere in amongst that. It’s likely grandparents had stayed the night to allow them to join the fun, but if not then we all had to wait around for them to front up before we started. It was far better when they stayed over.

After breakfast, depending on your point of view it was off to church or the beach. If the latter it was a good opportunity to try out some of the new pressies and have some fun in the warm water. Often anyone coming for Christmas lunch might come along, too.

In Queensland preparations for lunch were minimal; everyone brought something. We usually had cold meat, and interesting salads laid out on the breakfast bar and we helped ourselves, most often still in our swimwear, and ate it out under the pergola. The weather was too hot for much else.  However, sometimes we’d make a fuss, dress up summery, use our nice table and sit down properly under the ceiling fan. Although we liked to have Christmas pudding and icecream we usually felt stuffed full afterwards!

The kids would then be ready for a fun swim in the backyard pool, the adults happy to chat, or do the jigsaw puzzle. Some sort of outdoors game often happened later in the afternoon; we had a badminton net up. The evening meal would be a bbq, the kids having great fun in and out of the water ‘til late.

A fab Christmas followed by summer holidays, often camping at the beach if you weren’t already there.  A fitting way to finish the year!

Enjoy your Christmas and know I am here if you need help with new years resolutions such as stopping smoking, weight loss, sports improvements, help with worry, confidence, and the like.

My soothing hypnotic CDs and mp3’s are worth checking out for Christmas presents, they offer real help for confidence, sleeping and healing. Find out more on www.marilyntuck.co.uk, or just call and ask 07962 811907.

She did however bring me a pair of sheepskin slippers, like very short ugg boots, and my feet have been toasty warm ever since. I thoroughly recommend them but these were loads cheaper there than here. Mind you they have millions of sheep. When we lived there we farmed sheep and I cured my own sheepskin floor rugs- used a baking soda paste if I remember. The kids were brought up bottle feeding pet lambs.

She’s gone back home now into the summer and back to her lovely family. What a treasure to have that special time.

… and where would we be without wonderful Skype?  She planned her trip with us and has skyped them daily. It’s so spontaneous!

When I think of how I grew up in New Zealand, and my grandparents were living in the UK . I only ever saw them on two occasions. Once they visited us and another time we came over by sea, 6 weeks on a ship to get here via the Suez Canal, 6 weeks here and 4 weeks back through the Panama canal. It was a big round the world trip for a young school girl and I had to do my studies as I went. (not that successfully as there was so much else going on) That was some years ago I might add. 1958. It was far too expensive to fly.

Maree’s flight was 27 hours with 4 hours in Bangkok. She took a week to get into our sleeping pattern and will be soon gone.

She will be testing out my sleeping mp3′s on the return journey. Hopefully she will sleep a whole heap better on the flight and be back into a routine much more quickly on her return. I am interested if the hypnosis audios can fix jet lag and wish I had thought about it before she left! Other people have already used them (the mp3′s) to great advantage on plane trips.

The wave of relaxation and Powering down are perfect soothers to help sleep.

Now, whether you consider cigarettes and smoking are a big part of your life, or not, it doesn’t really matter, if you have to have that first smoke of the day, every day, you are addicted. Smoking is ruling your life whether you like it or not.

It is a habit, constantly there, reminding you that you need to light up throughout the day. That you need to go out, hover in a sheltered corner in the rain and cold, walk away from a good conversation, isolate yourself. I am sure I don’t need to tell you this.

If you think about it smoking has actually become a huge part of your life – your day revolves around where you can smoke and where you can’t, how many you have left, when you need a smoke, and why you need to smoke. You know you use it to calm down, to get away from difficult situations, to think, to clear the air, to relax, to accompany a drink, and so on.

You may be aware of the smell of smoke in your hair, your mouth, your clothes. It’s something you are continually covering up. And if you think you can smoke secretly, think again, others do know you smoke, they can see and smell acutely.

You also know that if you haven’t talked about giving up at some stage then someone close to you probably keeps reminding you that you should. This, of course, makes you dig your toes in. No one likes being told they should do something.

I should point out here that nicotine is one of the most poisonous substances known to man. The nicotine extracted from one cigarette and injected directly into the vein will kill in seconds. It is enough to kill a horse. Yet, nicotine is just one of the many toxic substances, including arsenic, cynanide, carbon monoxide, and prussic acid, in a cigarette.

Believe it or not a smokers body is in constant stress. It is continually trying to fight off these substances and it is continually being fed them. It gets no time to relax. Nicotine is a vaso constrictor, arteries narrow and the heart has to work much harder to push the blood around, getting vital oxygen to every organ, while rubbish in the lungs reduces their capacity to produce the oxygen. Resistance to infections, viruses and cancers is impaired due to the immune system being otherwise occupied. Reproductive potency is detrimentally affected…. And so it goes on.

Every cigarette that you smoke will rob you of six minutes of life expectancy.  If you smoke 20 a day that’s 2 hours, that’s 30 days of your life gone, and £2000 of your hard earned cash up in smoke… every single year.

So, who is in control here?  You, or the fags?

The comforting thought is that you were born a non smoker and you have the blueprint within you somewhere that can be reactivated. There is hope.

If you want to be free of smoking then get some hypnotherapy now. There is a higher chance of this method working than any other.  The price you pay will actually save you money, lots of it. It will give you more energy, lots of it. You will actually take back control and you will feel a huge sense of achievement.

I offer a 2 session stop smoking programme, First – experience hypnosis and be motivated.  Second – Stop and thoroughly enjoy the change.

More on the website or phone 07962 811907 for a chat.

Some of the noticeable new improvements are the photos in the A-Z symptoms; a hugely improved and styled testimonial area with photos; new pages for pregnancy and birth, children, tinnitus, money worries, and past life regression and we have separated anxiety and worry. Theres new photos and updates all over!

The biggest new feature is the online shopping. I have been working on new hypnosis recordings to sell online. These are professionally put together with music and are in mp3 and CD format, very reasonably priced. The original idea was to put out a short mp3 that someone can listen to on the way to work to set themself up for the day. These form the confidence series. There’s a healing series and a sleep series, too, nine 22-23 minute audios in total so far. I keep having ideas for what the next ones will be and so there will be more series and more recordings in each. Watch this space!

So, do check out the website. Sign up for my newsletter and listen to a few audio tasters, too.

I love working with sports and creative people; too, they so know what they want to improve.  Whether it be a better lap time, a more consistent round of golf, a new technique, dealing with self-consciousness during a performance, a higher note sung, focus to finish a book… there is so much fun in helping them achieve.

Talking about horse riding today. I admire people with horses, they have the tenacity and figures to prove their daily commitment and responsibility. However, I do have riders come who have lost confidence, are scared, anxious and not riding. They are thinking about having to sell their horse, and yet they really want to ride.

Jo was one such person. Her lovely, patient, horse was spooked one day, and took off. She couldn’t stop him. It was really frightening, she very nearly fell off. After that she was fearful about riding him out on her own. That was three months ago. As well as acute anxiety she also felt guilt and anger that she hadn’t controlled him.

Someone at the stable had been to see me about her fear of cantering and was really appreciative of the results. She and Jo talked and Jo gave me a call.

I always take the time to get the full picture. Jo was all tense. We needed to release some negative tension and started the process with some tapping on her energy lines. EFT (emotional Freedom Technique) works a treat for emotional release. She came back for her second session and reported how much calmer she had been, including a riding lesson that went really well, some unusually calm behaviour at home and at work. She was feeling pretty pleased with herself already.

In her second session we dealt with the horse incident and this brought up another anxiety issue from way back. She felt the release and it felt good. She once again left smiling. I was proud of her, she was ready for this. Hypnotherapy followed a week later and she was able to go riding afterwards on her own and even had an exhillerating canter!

Our next goal is to deal with her fear of riding without stirrups.

I have no doubt that her new confidence will ensure she enjoys riding, and over time various other things she hadn’t even anticipated will improve too. This is such positive work!

I guess there may be someone else out there who feels like Jo and may like to deal with it like she did. Just phone, we can do it together.

Quite a number of people have come to see me, and recommended my services on, simply because they overcame fears and worries about riding. I am talking about falling off the horse, taking control of the horse, riding out on their own, dressage and jumping improvement (handling both themselves and horses better, and mastering techniques well) and getting over anger, self consciousness in front of others, and general confidence issues.

Often 2 or 3 sessions can make the difference, and the results mean they enjoy themselves immensely. No big deal!

Over and out!

Most of those I see love their job, but it is getting the better of them. They are plodding on, with a stiff upper lip, not wanting to take time off because it will impact their good attendance record. They see me in private preferring to keep it quiet.

So many teachers suffer tenseness in their shoulders, arms and hands, anxiety in their stomachs, and tight chests. Shallow breathing is a classic sign of tension.  At home signs of stress are irritability, complete tiredness, or lack of sleep, worries during the night, aches and pains, panic attacks, emotional outbursts, lack of sex drive. Many grind their teeth, many get IBS (a classic sign of stress), while others get irritable, and others are even depressed.  Stress needs to be addressed or it turns into nasties like long term chronic illnesses and cancers.

At school a stressed teacher will cover this up, after all they have a job, some teachers don’t. Health is not discussed in depth, they grit their teeth and carry on, as they always have. There is too much else to do and think about, and besides, you don’t admit defeat, blot your copy book, by admitting it is difficult to cope, by admitting that you are on medication, such as anti depressants.

School budgets now include provision for dealing with stress and sickness. Like all businesses, if someone is off sick the school has to use up precious money to pay them, as well as their replacement.  Double pay for one job.  It is in the schools best interests to nip stress in the bud, to look after their teachers. Yet, it is up to the teachers to admit that they need that help, that they are not superhuman. Many still do not.

I am on the school supply list, a supplier of stress relief to schools who wish to get their teachers back in the classroom as quickly as possible. Whether they come via their school, or by themselves, this work is very confidential, yet targeted. It has an empowering effect and teachers can relate to it well. They have amazing inner resources of durability and positivity and I work with these to get the change they need. It is a combined effort for their benefit.

It is quite likely others in similar professions can relate to this, nurses and healthcare workers, too. If this resonates with you come and deal with it, the sooner you look after yourself the better.

One such person was Clare (name changed for confidentiality) who had had a miscarriage and had not been able to get pregnant again. The Doctor said all is ok, but that wasn’t helping her to get back in a cycle, nor her sense of loss and tears at having lost a baby, nor her feelings of failure, or her jealousy at seeing other people pregnant, nor the counting off the months and thinking how pregnant she would be now if she had not lost it.  Women in this state need help. They need relaxation to sort their system out, get it back in sync, and reassurance that all really is ok. Clare was grieving, and needed help to say the things she needed to say about, and to, her lost child. We talked it through and she found the love and forgiveness she needed. The soothing tapping of EFT (emotional freedom technique) helped us here. At home she will use the relaxation hypnotherapy audios I have done for her for a previous condition and I hope she soon conceives

Another person was Janet, who only uses complementary medicine. She has a weight issue which is wrapped around household obsessions and her family. There are many emotional issues tied up here and we are unravelling them with great care and safety. I have a number of clients like Janet, who have obsessions, or worries, about negative thoughts, routines, food and the like. They benefit in numerous ways as we progress, including gaining more confidence and self belief.

I not only listen, as a counsellor or psychotherapist might, but I am proactive too. Having trained in CBT, EFT, NLP and energy therapy, as well as Hypnosis I am able to teach people really helpful techniques they can use. As they help themselves they progress faster and feel better quicker.

Apart from relationship, IBS, anxiety issues, help to get jobs, driving tests, flying phobias, and smokers who want to quit, there have been numerous children and teenagers this last couple of weeks. Bed wetting and nail biting issues, study for exams, confidence, and sports techniques that need to be mastered. It is delightful to see the smiles on their faces when they experience hypnotherapy. They love it.

So, you see there are many differing ways hypnotherapy and EFT can help. It is fascinating to see people change for the better without drugs, just using a bit of help  to access their own resources. If you relate to any of these do phone for a chat . 07962 811907 and look at my website.