This covers day 27 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I'm collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

When I first worked with Greg over a year ago, it was (ostensibly) to help me get back on the SCD, the diet I use to control my Crohn's disease. The dang recording he made me worked so well, though, that I immediately told him we should not waste one more second on the diet stuff, I'd take care of that on my own time, but that we should start poking around to see what other enormo-changes we could effect.

Fast-forward to one year later. I'm back off the diet (big time) and in need of a tape that's not a tape, or what I like to call "a digital file." So yesterday, we made me a new recording to keep me off the bread and sugar, chocolate and potatoes, rice and soybeans.

Now, I'm fairly brutal with myself: I can force me to do an awful lot. But after a while, this makes life not so much fun and me not so much fun to be around, so to find this lovely, elegant way of doing an end run around myself at the ripe old age of 46 is pretty damned extraordinary. Hypnosis swiftly connects the needed action to the uber-goal, a really handy trick when it comes to delaying gratification. (And in case you hadn't noticed, a plate of fresh-cut fries from In-and-Out Burger is awfully gratifying in the now.)

It's up to me to commit, and to reinforce the good lessons learned and habits begun during these almost-30 days with Greg. But I think I'll probably continue to check in with the blog about my progress in the weeks and months to come.

Partly because it might be illuminating for you. Mostly because it will be honest-making for me...

xxx c Image by newyork808 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.