My name’s Darren Marks, I’m the founder of Harmony Hypnosis and I’d like to talk to you today about Anchoring. Anchoring is a process, a technique which we use in many of the recordings within the Harmony Collection. Our lives are full of anchors, triggers which; when we experience them create feelings within us. So, for example: You can smell a smell, taste a taste, hear a piece of music and it can trigger off, remind you of an experience that you’d had previously, and all the feelings associated with that experience which could be good or bad. Within the hypnotherapy process we consciously create these triggers to engender good feelings, confident feelings, and maybe feelings of relaxation. For example: If you were telling somebody about an experience you had where you really succeeded, where you’d done extremely well and as you were telling your friend about that experience and how good you felt during that experience, those feelings would come back up. You would start to experience them again. If you imagine it a little bit like it’s on a graph, and a graph goes up and then down. As you are telling your stories you’re remembering, recounting that experience, the feeling gets stronger and stronger and stronger, then at some point you can’t keep it going forever and it starts to drop off again. The idea of an anchor within the therapeutic process is that it’s triggered off as the feeling’s getting strong and it’s still getting stronger, as opposed to strong and dropping off again. So, usually in this type of setting, and this is what we encourage within the recordings; an anchor is created by bring a thumb and finger together like this (okay sign). It doesn’t have to be this, it could be anything. It could be the way you touch your hair, a touch on the shoulder or a tap of the foot, it could be a word, a thought, or it could be something you imagine. I’ve used for example, an anchor of imagining a hand on my shoulder, someone’s hand on my shoulder helping me to feel calm and relaxed in a stressful situation. The thumb and finger (okay sign) is great because it’s very subtle, no one need know that you are doing it. I would recommend that but it doesn’t have to be that. So, the way it works and we are going to have a little practice now if you like; we are going to think of a time when you felt very confident, perhaps an experience where you did very well at something. I want you to remember that experience. So close your eyes if it helps and really take yourself back into that experience, where you were very successful, where you felt very confident. See what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt inside, see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt inside. As you remember that experience and how good you felt at that time, I want you to bring that thumb and finger together. On your right or your left hand bring it together in the form of a circle. As see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt inside. Then you can release that thumb and finger. Just allow yourself to relax. I want you to know that from now on, whenever you bring that thumb and finger together, automatically, subconsciously, all of those wonderful positive feelings will rise back up top of the surface each and every time you bring that thumb and finger together. So, you can watch this video as many times as you like, listen out for that technique within the recordings, it usually comes somewhere near the beginning, just after the relaxation part. We often use an anchoring technique in many of the sessions and now you know what it’s all about and what it’s for. You can practice it, you can reinforce it, and you can have different anchors for different experiences. For example: one finger could be for confidence, and then another finger could be for relaxation and another for motivation. You can stack the anchors up so that you can trigger off different experiences, different feelings according to the situation you want to work with. So, it’s a tool, it doesn’t resolve the underlying problems as to why you’re be struggling with something in the first place, but it is an excellent tool for you to bring out the best in yourself, to remind you of times where you felt really positive, very relaxed, very successful and to bring them into the present.