Dr Paul Ogilvie
MbChB MRCGP DCH DRCOG DFFP HPD DipH PTFT PNLP
Hello & welcome :)
My name is Dr Paul Ogilvie. I work in the UK. I have been working as a medical doctor since 1994.
I use complementary therapies, like hypnotherapy and meditation, to help people make their lives better.
About this website
This website is about sleeping better, eating better, losing weight, being healthy, being confident in yourself, reducing stress and anxiety and living more in line with your personal values.
A message for your mind
The different sessions on this website, contain different messages or ideas, for your mind to absorb, while you relax, or drift into sleep.
Sleep
Regular, good quality sleep is an under-rated, healthy thing to do. We are often caught up in a society that puts a very low priority on getting enough sleep.
The right amount of sleep gives you the energy and enthusiasm to do the things you want to do. It makes life more enjoyable. It can help in a variety of ways, ranging from losing weight to reducing your stress levels.
If you have any difficulties getting to sleep, or if you suffer with insomnia, there are sessions here on this website help you to naturally drift into sleep. They work by guiding you into a relaxed state of mind, which then leads to drifting into sleep. For example, below is a free guided hypnotherapy session for insomnia relief and sleep. Hypnotherapy is not the same as sleep, but through deep relaxation, it can lead easily into sleep. Just click play when you want to go to sleep.
Focus
Whatever you focus on, you tend to get more of in life.
Hypnotherapy is a nice way of reducing distractions, and to focus your mind on a message, or an idea, that you want to have more in your life.
Hypnotherapy can condition the more unconscious parts of your mind to be in line with what you consciously desire.
If you would like to know more about hypnotherapy and hypnosis, please see the FAQs on what is hypnosis and the history of hypnosis.
Repetition and intent are the key to conditioning your mind to absorbing a message and making it more part of your life. It can lead to changes, like developing habits to eat more healthily, or to exercise, or to reduce stress and anxiety, or to achieve what you want in life.
Combined Sleep Sessions
The ‘combined’ sleep sessions on this website are to help focus your mind, on a message or an idea, as you to drift into sleep.
Focusing on a message or an idea, in the form of positive words and thoughts, as you drift into sleep, can help you make positive changes in your life.
All the premium sessions have this option of combining drifting into sleep with a positive message.
Some of the free sessions, which are in the archive, also have this option.
An example of a combined sleep session, is the following weight loss and sleep hypnosis session:
Weight loss
Weight loss can be a very confusing topic.
There are many different opinions out there. They are sometimes contradictory, and sometimes they can be too vague, or abstract, to be useful.
The conventional mantra of eat less and move more, can help, and is a good start, but doesn’t always work in the medium to long term.
As much as I like exercise, it is not essential for weight loss. What matters more, is what you eat, and when you eat, and the habits you have with food.
The sessions on this website are about helping you to develop healthy habits with food. It is about dealing with those addictive desires, and emotional attachments we have with food.
We often under-estimate how hard it can be to make those internal changes, and how hard it is to make them stick. Those internal changes which lead to developing healthy habits, thoughts and feelings with food.
The above weight loss and sleep session can help you to start to make those internal changes.
There are more sessions on this website, which deal with different aspects of developing healthy habits for weight loss.
Change your habits, change your life
“We become what we think about, all day long.”
Habits are both habitual behaviours we do, and habitual thoughts we have.
Changing your habits can be hard. However, if you can manage to develop healthy, positive habits which will take you in the direction you want to go, then you have a very good chance of achieving your goals.
Aim to be healthy first, and lose weight second
(Why weight loss is not a good primary goal)
The same principal applies to many addictive habits, like smoking, alcohol, drugs, gambling etc.
If you want to lose weight, aim to be healthy FIRST, and the weight loss will follow, as a SECONDARY effect of being healthy.
In general, avoid any eating plan which you don’t intend to follow in the long term.
By aiming to be healthy, you will develop habits which have a positive knock on effect in several areas of your life, all of which will help you to lose weight and stay slim.
Weight loss as a primary goal, can have some negative effects. For example, your self-esteem and self-worth becomes tied up with a number on the scales. This can determine how you feel about yourself, and whether you have a good or bad day. Also, food gets very emotionalized and polarized as either good or bad. Plus, you can end up constantly thinking about food, or being obsessed with food all the time.
Instead of thinking and focusing on food and losing weight, instead focus on doing things to become healthy.
Focus on your health first, and the weight loss will follow.
In the process of becoming healthy, you will develop positive habits and social connections which are important in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Also, after you have lost the weight, it will be much easier to stay slim and be healthy because those healthy habits have become part of your life.
The alternative is often temporary weight loss, and yo-yo dieting, as the result of some forced, or unhealthy, or fad diet which is not how you want to live in the long term. So, when you stop the diet, or your willpower fades, you revert back to all your old eating habits, and you tend to gain any lost weight, plus some more.
Aim to become healthy first, and the weight loss will follow, as a secondary effect.
Exercise
Exercise helps you in so many ways to be healthy.
Developing exercise as a regular habit, has huge benefits.
Exercise is a great way to reduce stress and anxiety, sleep better, burn off calories, and reduce your risk of many diseases, like, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and many cancers.
Exercise can help make it easier to change habitual ways of thinking.
Plus, exercise helps to improve your mood and feel better.
As well as hypnotherapy and meditation, I am a big fan of exercise, or any activity that gets you moving, that you like to do.
Values
Spiritually based values, like gratitude, acceptance, loving kindness, hope, compassion, forgiveness can play an important part in our lives.
Living your life, more in line with your personal values, tends to lead to a to happier and more fulfilling life.
Sometimes, spending a few moments, each day, focusing on the values which are important to you, can make all the difference.
There are sessions on this website, that help you to focus on a value, so you can experience it more into your everyday life.
For example, in this gratitude session, between periods of guided relaxation, there is the message, to focus on what you can be grateful for in your life. It is a nice way to get the benefits of deep relaxation, as well as reminding yourself of a personal value you would like to experience more of, in your life.
Confidence
To do anything in life, we need the confidence, or self-belief, that we can achieve what we set our mind to do.
Many of us live with low levels of self-esteem, self-belief and self-confidence.
Sometimes, we develop bad habits, like over eating, or drinking too much, as a way of coping with a very low self-esteem. When we improve our self-esteem, it becomes easier to let go of those unwanted bad habits.
We live in a world where our confidence and self-esteem and self-belief gets constantly knocked back.
Spending a few minutes each day, listening to positive messages and ideas, to help develop your confidence and self-esteem, can have a huge, positive effect in your life.
Below is an example of a session to generally increase your confidence and self-esteem:
Stress Relief (& Bad Habits) - How Regular Deep Relaxation Can Help
Deep relaxation is a good way to wipe the slate clean.
Regular, daily, deep relaxation is a useful strategy to manage your stress levels. It can help you to avoid the destructive effects of chronic stress or feelings of being overwhelmed.
Deep relaxation can also help you to overcome bad habits.
When stress, addictive urges, unbearable emotions build up, a short period (for example, 10 to 20 minutes) of deep relaxation, can really help to let go of those unwanted thoughts and feelings. It is like wiping the slate clean, or pressing ctrl+alt+delete buttons to restart a computer.
It is particularly useful in three ways:
Firstly, regular deep relaxation, can help prevent, in the first place, going down those unhelpful thought patterns, and addictive behaviours, you want to avoid.
Secondly, it can encourage new positive ways of thinking, and in doing so, it helps to develop good, new habits.
Thirdly, when you are at the very point, where you are about to use food or alcohol or cigarettes or drugs or gambling or any other addictive behaviour, as a way of dealing with things, or coping, or rewarding yourself. Instead, use a short period of deep relaxation. It can be a very effective alternative, and a good way of moving forward.
So in that very moment, when you know you are going to go down the wrong path, instead of using a bad habit to cope, or an unhealthy reward, use deep relaxation. If you can do that, there and then, it will help you to overcome that bad habit.
I hope many of the sessions, here on this website, help you reach a deeply relaxed state of mind, both quickly and easily, so you can wipe the slate clean, let go of any stress, and be able to carry on with what you consciously want to do.
The value of deep relaxation becomes greater the more you experience it on a regular daily basis.
The answer
There is often not just one thing you can do, or buy, that will make everything better.
When you want to achieve something, particularly in the areas of weight loss, stress and anxiety, bad habits, low confidence and self-esteem, a good strategy is to aim to focus on becoming healthy first. It is a great way to help you to achieve your goals.
For example, if you want to lose weight and be slim, focus on being healthy as your primary goal, and the weight loss will follow. Yes, food related issues are important, but it is also important to sleep well, to reduce stress, to avoid a sedentary lifestyle, to exercise, to build social connections, and to develop your self-esteem and confidence. All of this will help you to lose weight and become slim.
Or, if you want to reduce stress, specific stress relief sessions are helpful, as well as, sleeping well, eating healthy food (what you eat does affect how you feel and your stress levels), exercising, building social connections and developing your self-esteem and confidence. They are all important factors in helping to to find relief from stress, especially chronic stress, or feelings of being overwhelmed.
I hope the sessions here on this website, both the free and premium ones, help you to become healthy, in whichever way that is useful to you.
I also hope the messages and ideas, in these sessions, help you to achieve your goals, and make your life better.
My previous work
My previous sessions are freely available. There are several of the free sessions here on this page, in the videos and audios above. The rest are in the archive.
My current work
My current work is focused on a series of sessions to help in the areas of sleep, weight loss, relief from stress and anxiety, developing your confidence and self-esteem, and to live more in line with your personal values.
The new sessions are available in the premium membership. It is a streaming service from this website. The sessions are streamed in the same way as the video and audio are streamed on this webpage.
If you are familiar with the guided relaxation and visualisations in the free sessions, they also feature in the premium sessions.
What makes the premium sessions different are the messages or ideas, between the periods of guided relaxation. In addition to the benefits of deep relaxation, it is listening to positive messages and ideas, in a relaxed state of mind, that can help you to achieve your goals, and make your life better.
Premium membership
There is a fee for the premium membership. This is because there is only so much I can do for free. For all the work it takes to provide these sessions and maintain this website, there is no funding, no team, no sponsorship, no support, no finance, no company and no advertising.
It is just me, and I am just one person, with limited resources. But I believe the messages in these sessions can truly help. And for some people, it can help a lot, and even be life changing. So offering this premium membership is a sustainable way for me, to share my work with other like-minded people.
Getting good sleep, losing weight, eating healthily, exercising regularly, feeling more confident, daily deep relaxation, reducing stress, living in line with your personal values, and listening to positive messages and ideas, can potentially make a huge difference in your life.
I hope it helps you, as it does for me, and if you do join, a big hug, and, a big thank you for your support :)
Paul