Week 4—Training Your Brain to Crave Exercise
“I had so much resistance to moving my body. Until I had a hypnotherapy session, I just thought I didn’t exercise because I was ‘lazy.’ During my session, I realized that because my dad deserted our family when I was three years old and because he had been a bodybuilder, my subconscious was rebelling against exercise as a way to ‘side with’ my mom. I don’t even have any conscious memories of my dad, yet I spent years hurting myself by being immobile because of this belief! Through the hypnosis session, I was able to let go of that. I spent a number of additional hypnotherapy sessions healing the feelings of abandonment and anger that were previously buried, and I now run a 5k every morning. I’ve decided to ‘side with my mom’ by being healthy so she has one less thing to worry about.” —Alex M., Quebec, Canada
We’ve arrived at the exercise chapter . . . and the groans are audible to me now from across time and space. ;) But take a nice, deep letting-go breath and put a smile on your face, this is going to be great! Again, I am not a personal trainer, so I’m not going to ask you to get out your yoga mat and do a hundred crunches right now, although you may choose to make that part of your daily routine after you master what this chapter’s hypnosis will teach you.
Amelia, a Grace Spacer, asked, “I have a question about exercise. I enjoy it and it feels so good when I do it, but it’s so hard to get myself to do any movement. How do I even get started? And then continue?”
Danette May is a world-renowned speaker and healthy-lifestyle expert who has helped millions of people through her principles of healing food, movement, and mindset. This is her response to Amelia:
The key to movement is to drop into something you love. Whether it’s running or dance or yoga, if it calls to you and you feel great when you do it, you’re more likely to stick with it. Once you decide the type of movement that most fires you up, seek out a community of others who like the same things or who are going through the same healthy movement mindset shifts you are. There is power in support systems. When you have a tribe of people experiencing similar growth, you become both inspired and unstoppable. Soon you’ll find yourself trying new things and embracing that exercise is a reward for your body, not a punishment. Take that first step—you got this!
With Danette’s wisdom in mind, this week you’re going to discover the kind of movement your body most enjoys and then train your subconscious mind to do that for twenty minutes per day.
Here’s the thing: Do you ever notice how people who exercise daily love it? I mean LOVE it. They’re obsessed! They feel like something is wrong if they don’t exercise. And the inverse is also true . . . that most people who don’t exercise hate it. They avoid it like the plague.
In my experience, few people who have a neutral feeling toward exercise do it with any consistency.
The reason exercising feels so good for those who stick with it is because endorphins are released. According to WebMD, “Endorphins interact with the receptors in your brain that reduce your perception of pain. Endorphins also trigger a positive feeling in the body, similar to that of morphine.”48 The “runner’s high” is a real high! Committed runners go out for a glorious five-mile run, come rain, sun, sleet, or snow, smiling from ear to ear while rocking out to music they love, because their body is so looking forward to the massive reward of that natural high.
These beautiful creatures (I’m not being sarcastic! Remember, we have to LOVE those who exercise so our subconscious will let us become one of them) might seem like mythical fairies to you now—with their high ponytails and green juices and vegan protein power bars tucked inside their leggings for a mid-run snack—but they’re not. They’re simply humans who’ve unlocked the natural power of endorphins through exercise. And they’ve exercised enough times in a row that it became habitual, so much so that the release of endorphins through movement (not food) is craved.
Human beings have a built-in feel-good release of hormones whenever we do things that help our species to survive. We also have built-in major fear responses for anything perceived to be even a remote threat toward our survival. For the past chapters, you’ve been overcoming many of those innate fear responses that we no longer need in the modern world. Now, you’re going to unlock the power of the endorphins that are naturally released with regular exercise so you can crave moving your body in a way that will help you to survive, thrive, and enjoy life for much longer.
Remember, exercise releases feel-good neurochemicals because, in order for our species to continue to flourish, we have to exercise!
Many of my clients who exercise daily use this time to do their manifesting. It’s how they access joy now. They look forward to it; it’s their happiest time of the day. So here’s the thing about training your subconscious brain to exercise: you have to go all in.
All in.
I’m not saying you have to go out and run a marathon tomorrow (in fact, you should not do that . . . more on this in a sec) but it’s vital to exercise until it feels good. Once you get that release of endorphins, it becomes straightforward to tell the subconscious that you want more of it and to build a neural framework of experience that includes you moving your body on a daily basis.
According to Exercise.com, “The time it takes for endorphins to flood the body while exercising will vary from person to person. For some people, as little as ten minutes of intense exercise will do the trick. For others, it takes as long as thirty minutes or more. Whatever the case may be, endorphins are one of those things that when they get released, you know.”49
Some people need ten minutes, some need thirty, so this week (and every week morning forward) you’re going to split the difference and train your subconscious mind to love and crave twenty minutes of physical exercise every single day. The goal with this exercise is not to get rock-hard abs or to lift your butt.
At www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com are diet resources and exercise programs from some of the world’s leading experts. But right now, we’re not focused on the specific type of movement or even outcome (in terms of sculpting or toning). The goal is to train your brain to love movement until exercise becomes a habit, until you crave exercise. To accomplish this, you must follow an important first step.
You must overcome the subconscious blocks you have toward exercise so you can rewire your brain to crave a minimum of twenty minutes of exercise, every single day. Once you feel the endorphins, you can stop (although you might not want to).
Step 1: Overcome subconscious blocks to exercising.
Step 2: Keep moving until you feel the release of endorphins.
Be Aware of Sneaky Self-Sabotage!
The most common form of self-sabotage I see with clients beginning a new exercise regime is to go too hard, too fast. The subconscious says, “Oh sure, you want to exercise. How about you go for a mile-long run after sitting on your couch every night for the last five years? You played softball in high school. I’m sure you’ve still got it in you. Come on, didn’t you say it’s ‘new year, new you’? Let’s do this!” Then off she goes, jogging at full tilt, with an extra forty-five pounds on the body that weren’t there in high school, plus decades of no training in between. And what happens? She’s wobbling home with a hurt knee or ankle or back, so much so that after her first or second run, where do you think she’s landed? Back on the couch. Taken to the extreme, exercising too hard, too fast can include a hospital stay and painkillers, which can lead to a host of potentially dangerous issues.
It is imperative to your long-term success that you work with a personal trainer or yoga instructor or another physical fitness expert (or even a highly rated app) to create a program that will allow you to increase your strength and durability over time so you’re not taken out by a self-sabotage injury on day one.
You might be wondering, “Why would the subconscious sabotage my desire to exercise when exercising releases feel-good endorphins and is necessary for human beings to thrive and live longer?” Great question. The subconscious cares more about protecting you than anything. Because it takes around twenty minutes for endorphins to be released, the subconscious does not view this as an immediate solution to a perceived threat. It does not see the benefit over its much preferred traditional course of action—staying the same. Also, if the perceived subconscious reward of keeping weight on is still “safer” than the perceived benefits of exercising, Resistance will show up. You have to actively let the subconscious know with conditioning that the endorphins released via exercise are keeping you safe. These are the concepts this week’s hypnosis recording and self-hypnosis practice will cover.
Once exercise becomes habitual, an automatic program running in the background, it’s much, much easier to keep it up because you’ll be craving it. Our work together is to get you from where you are to a daily practice of at least twenty minutes of movement per day, until it becomes habitual. Until you love it. Until you crave it. Pop in those headphones, and let’s get to work!
Homework
A.Practice self-hypnosis three times a day, every day this week (right before breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Turn to page 20 for a reminder of how to do self-hypnosis or head to www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com to follow along with a tutorial video.
Week 4 Hypno-affirmations—Exercise
•Every day in every way I move my body until I feel those amazing endorphins for at least twenty minutes.
•I love to exercise.
•I crave exercising.
•When I exercise for twenty minutes, I feel so happy.
•My body craves movement.
•Every day in every way I get my heart rate up for at least twenty minutes.
B.Listen to the “Week 4—Exercise” hypnosis recording every day for the next week here: www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com.
C.Use your journal pages daily to stay motivated, log your progress, and determine which pick-me-up hypno-affirmations you’ll benefit from most.
You’re really doing this. Exercise is amazing, isn’t it? You crave movement every single day because you know just how good those endorphins are going to feel. Great job! In the next chapter, you’ll learn a powerful process to help you get to the root of one of the greatest detractors of weight loss success . . . emotional eating. Turn the page and let’s get started!
48 “Exercise and Depression,” WebMD, accessed November 4, 2019, www.webmd.com/depression/guide/exercise-depression.
49 “How Much Exercise Is Necessary for Endorphin Release?,” Exercise.com, accessed November 4, 2019, www.exercise.com/learn/how-much-exercise-is-necessary-for-endorphin-release/.