That was despite the 52-year-old former This Morning presenter bringing out a best-selling fitness DVD and advocating natural weight loss in a number of magazines.

After the truth was revealed it sparked a huge furore in the press – and Fern was accused of lying about her five stone weight loss.

Emma Eveleigh-Anderton found a far safer, non-invasive and cheaper alternative worked for her – a ‘virtual’ gastric-band.

The 36-year-old company director from Stoke Park, Coventry, was hypnotised into believing she had a gastric band fitted by clinical hypnotherapist Russell Hemmings, of the Bridge Therapy Centre, Earlsdon.

And it helped her to drop from a size 18 to an eight in six months.

Emma said: “I was really up for it and it worked for me. Russell has a really good reputation and I was recommended by a friend.

“It was a good holistic approach and looked at my relationship with food. I was also motivated to get fit.”

Russell uses a combination of cognitive behavioural therapy and hypnotherapy to ‘reprogramme’ a patient’s mind to respond differently in everyday situations involving food.

Emma needed four £245 sessions over a one month period – costing just under £1,000.

The mum-of-two was brought up in a fit, active family. At school she played hockey and tennis at a county level.

But after the birth of her daughters Antonia, aged seven, and six-year-old Alice a year apart, Emma found it hard to lose her baby weight. She ballooned from a size 10 to 13 stone.

Unhealthy eating habits were exacerbated by stress at work. Although she has always cooked healthy meals for her children, Emma and husband Darren, would sit down exhausted after work and order takeaways most evenings.

“I just got lazy,” she confesses.

Self-employed Emma and her 42-year-old husband run their own international exhibition service, Blaxx, working across the UK and as far afield as Kuala Lumpur, Dubai and Beijing.

But the Kingston University business graduate admits the last two years of recession have been “terrifically difficult” on the business.

“The automotive and engineering industry we work in effectively collapsed,” said Emma. “One of our biggest exhibition shows was cancelled. It was a huge strain. That’s how I first came to meet Russell – to control my stress levels with hypnotherapy.”

Read More of This Article from Coventry Telegraph…

This shows that people who are happy and unstressed are likely to have less potentially dangerous stress chemicals in their bodies.

Professor Peter Weissberg, British Heart Foundation said “It showed that those who were happy less often had higher levels of a bloodstream chemical called plasma fibrinogen, which shows if there is inflammation present. It is an indicator of how great a risk a person has of developing heart disease in the future.”

Researchers tested 116 men and 100 women who were taking part in a major study of thousands of London-based civil servants recruited between 1985 and 1988 when 35-55 years old to investigate the risk factors for coronary heart disease. They carried out tests on people at work, during leisure periods and in the laboratory. People were also asked whether or not they were happy at 33 moments during the day. The researchers then evaluated how often people were happy in the course of the day. Leisure was, unsurprisingly, linked with more happy moments than work.
It was found that some people reported they never felt happy, while others reported feeling occasional happiness and those who felt happy most of the time.
The results were adjusted for gender, age, employment status, weight, smoking habits and psychological distress. Levels of cortisol – a stress hormone – were 32% lower in people who reported more happy moments. Cortisol has been related to abdominal obesity, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and autoimmune disorders.
The researchers also discovered happy people have had lower levels of fibrinogen when they were stressed.
Emotional state. Professor Jane Wardle, who worked on the study, said: “All the research to date has been on unhappiness, rather than happiness.
“This research suggests we should aim to maximise the happiness of the population.”

Professor Andrew Steptoe, who led the study, said: “It has been suspected for the last few years that happier people may be healthier both mentally and physically than less happy people. “What this study shows is that there are plausible biological pathways linking happiness with health.”
He added: “What we find particularly interesting is that the associations between happiness and biological responses were independent of psychological distress. “We already know that depression and anxiety are related to increased physical health risk. This study raises the intriguing possibility that the effect of happiness may be somewhat separate.”

Professor Peter Weissberg, Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation said: “The results of this study build upon this team’s work, which we are delighted to have supported. “Evidence that emotional state is important for good heart health is growing and this shows that people who are happy and unstressed are likely to have less potentially dangerous stress chemicals in their bodies.”

Read the full article on the BBC News website

The screen legend has been taught the power of suggestion and how to put people into a trance by a top Aussie expert.

Rick Collingwood spent 10 days with Mel at the actor’s home in Los Angeles teaching him the skills.

Perth-based Rick, 52, who runs Australia’s largest hypnotism academy, said: “Mel’s a natural. He’s got the look and the patter – as well as piercing blue eyes. He’s going to be a great hypnotist.”

Father-of-one Rick, who has been a hypnotist since he was just 12 years old, is a friend of Mel’s brother, Chris.

Through Chris, an introduction was set up and he and Mel have now become pals.

Rick said: “Mel’s brother Chris has been into NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, and hypnotism for a long time and he talked to Mel about it over the phone and Mel got interested, too.

“I was heading out to Los Angeles for work so Mel invited me over.

“I was with him for 10 days teaching him the technique.

“He is very, very interested in it. He didn’t say he wanted to learn it for a specific reason. He was just curious.

“I think he’s just interested in the mind and human nature.”

Read the original article by Monsters and Critics…

With reference to yesterday’s message, I’m pleased to say the website and podcast are all back to normal.

We managed to find a remove the bad code that the hackers had installed which was interfering with our itunes uploading process.

So everything is just as it should be once again. To make sure you get this weeks show, make sure you right click on the podcast in your itunes and select update podcast.

16/06/2010
The podcast will be going out a day or two late this week on itunes, though it is uploaded on our podcast page and on the feed.

This is because the People Building website was hacked into by baddies at the weekend and there is some behind the scenes fixing stuff happening. Hopefully it will all be sorted tomorrow.

Itunes is having problems reading the feed as the baddies hid some code in the template of our website and this has left itunes a bit confused.

The baddies can be easily identified by their pirate ship and the Captain has got a patch on his eye and a hook for an arm. He has a parrot called Polly and a side kick called Smee. Obviously Smee has to do much of the typing as the Captain can’t type very fast with just one set of fingers and a hook.

If you see these pesky criminals, please call People Building on 0845 8377531 or crime stoppers on 0800 555 111. Successful prosecutions will lead to a reward of a barrel of rum.

Do not approach them as they may be dangerous. Oo-Arh.

Read the full article by CNN.

It was midway through a bout of over-enthusiastic floor-mopping that it first happened. I’d ignored the nagging ache blooming at the base of my spine and, then, suddenly – pouf: a sensation of something deep inside going awry; not a click, not a snap, just a hard-to-pinpoint signal that something’s gone quite wrong.

It’s hardly an unusual story – backache affects a startling 28.3 million Brits – but what I didn’t know then was that, five years later, despite vast outlay and fruitless dabbles with everything anyone ever told me might work, I’d still be feeling the effects of that Saturday morning.

I mentioned this casually to an American woman I interviewed for a completely unrelated article I was writing last year. The piece was on NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. NLP gave me the willies, but, stuck at a three-day NLP conference in Orlando, I took advantage.

Dr Ron and Dr Edie Perry turned out to be a husband-and-wife “bodywork” team, and part of the NLP entourage. Though trained as chiropractors, they specialised in something called the Feldenkrais Method, developed in the Seventies by an Israeli physicist, Moshe Feldenkrais, who, I discover, was a big influence on Bandler. NLP’s co-creator was impressed with the thinking behind Feldenkrais’s approach to treating a stroke patient with paralysis afflicting one side of his body.

The story sounded like a Biblical miracle, but – if true – there was logic in it: rather than using physiotherapy to coax the stiffened arm that was clutched across the patient’s chest back down to his side, Feldenkrais instead did the opposite: nudging the arm upwards. He figured the patient’s limb had frozen en route to the side of the brain in which the stroke had occurred, a natural reflex, and so simply helped the patient to complete that movement. On having done so, the arm then effortlessly dropped to his side. I don’t know what to make of the story, but am willing to give almost anything a go.

Instead of employing the chiropractic techniques they were trained in, the Perrys focus on reprogramming the subconscious to heal the body. It sounded suspiciously crystal-bashing. While I lie – surprisingly – face up, Dr Edie stands at my feet, Dr Ron at my head, and they both speak with soothing, positive words (distressing “negative” phrases such as “Ooh, that feels tight” or “This might hurt” are banned). They gently pull my skin – on my legs, feet and arms as well as my back – in such a way that it will, they say, communicate the necessary changes to my unconscious mind. After 20 minutes or so, I’m asked to stand up. As I step off the bench I feel like I’ve moved from a ship to dry land, and nearly fall over. It’s an extraordinary sensation – like everything has suddenly been aligned. The pain, too, has gone. I bend over effortlessly. No “ouf”.

By Kate Burt
Read the Full Article from the Independent

I picked up ‘Sybil’ by Flora Rheta Schrieber when I was in my mid-teens and devoured it in one fascinated, bitter-tasting gulp.

‘Sybil’ relates the treatment of Sybil Dorsett (not her real name) by a psychoanalyst. Originally the treatment was for social anxiety and memory loss, but during the course of their meetings, the psychoanalyst began to notice Sybil going into a sort of fugue state and other personalities emerging – personalities which, curiously, Sybil herself knew nothing about. Even more peculiarly, these personalities – 16 in all, female and male, and of different ages – knew about Sybil and about each other. All Sybil knew was that she would lose time, sometimes waking to find herself in an unfamiliar place, or dressed in a stranger’s clothes. Once she woke to find that someone had actually built a wall down the middle of her room during the night.

Now diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder – or multiple personality disorder as it is more commonly known – Sybil and her alter egos entered an extended therapy, including hypnosis, during which the “alters” were encouraged to come out and tell their part of Sybil’s story. The cataclysmic fracture of her personality was traced back to a traumatic childhood incident involving her mother and a button hook (here the prurience really kicked in). The psychoanalyst was then able, via hypnosis, to convince the “alters” first that they were all the same age,

Read the rest of this article by the Independent.co.uk

One fries carton had a “Mayfair” sticker from the McDonald’s Easy Win Monopoly game. But the pair knew nothing about the contest – so Chloe plastered the sticker on the wheel.

And a few days later Richard decided to clean his Toyota Corolla, binning the ticket.

The couple realised the mistake two weeks later when Richard went to McDonald’s again – and got a Park Lane sticker. Chloe looked on the internet and found with BOTH properties, they would scoop £500,000. But by this time the Mayfair sticker was lost forever.

Richard, of Sheffield, South Yorks, said: “When I cleaned out the car, I peeled the sticker off and threw it in the wheelie bin and thought nothing more about it.

“It was just a little bit of paper, but if I’d been playing the game I’d have known I’d hit gold.”

Philosophy PhD student Richard even had hypnotherapy to try to find the ticket he threw away over the Easter Bank Holiday. Read the rest of this article by the Sun.

The former Sheffield United, Grimsby and Nottingham Forest striker has been in sparkling form for the Spireites having scored more than 50 goals in around 100 appearances.

But it is not just on the pitch that Jack is leading the way. The 34-year-old, with the aid of a PFA Education grant, is planning for the future by studying Neuro Linguistic programming.

Lawrie Madden finds out more…

Q. Tell us a little bit about Neuro Linguistic programming, or NLP for short. What interested you about it?

A. Keith Mincher was a sports psychologist when I was at Forest and he used to talk to me about it. I was fascinated by it and decided to take it up. It was useful to talk about things in the game and attempt to look at things in a different way.

Read the rest of this article

NLP hypnotherapy, it turns out, to my bitter disappointment, doesn’t actually involve being knocked unconscious under the influence of a swinging pocket watch. Instead, once I’m lying comfortably on a small bed in the corner of the room, Shore brings me down into a deep sleep by counting, and giving strict verbal instructions – “you are feeling relaaaxed” and so on and so forth. After five minutes on the bed, listening to her words, I’m still alert enough that I could bring myself back to total consciousness in seconds if need be, but my body feels unusually relaxed, my mind presumably more malleable too. Somewhat off-putting is that inane thoughts keep creeping into my mind, but Shore insists this doesn’t matter: “The subconscious is still listening.”

Now I’m under her spell, with the sound of the sea calling out from the CD player behind her (I got that bit right), Shore takes me on a mental journey. Under her instruction, I find myself standing at the crossroads of my life. On one side there’s the path that would have been mine: thick, poisonous clouds hang over the street here; sickly men and women gasp for air alongside dying flowers; it’s all rather dramatic. Then there’s my new path: the air is clear, the horizon sunny, freed-up cash blows in the wind before my eyes.

We stay here a while, Shore talking me through the reasons why this is such an appealing place to live before she counts me up again, and out of my semi-trance. If I was expecting to feel reborn I’d have felt let down. Other than having acquired a partial numbness in my left leg from having lain at a rakish angle, I don’t feel any different.

Read the full article by The Independent