Brace! Brace! (should no longer be needed thanks to PBT)

We're on the point of spending upwards of 2000€ to tweak 10 year old son's teeth back into shape. Don't ask me why he's missing a tooth - totally missing, you understand, nothing to do with falling over or anything. Strangely daughter also had a tooth missing, but that probably WAS to do with falling over - off a trike at the tender age of 18 months, no less! So missing teeth run in my family but not genetically. At least I don't think so. Anyway, I digress, albeit not a lot. Many months down the line after the dentist first referred us to the orthodontist and the orthodontist referred us to the dental x-ray specialist and the dental x-ray specialist sent us back to the orthodontist and... you get the picture.... the aparato, or braqueta, as they're known hereabouts, are imminent. Would have been next week but a school skiing trip and upcoming 11th birthday put that back a month! So. Digression #2 over and back to the core of the plot. Not my 10yo's brace, but the brace required by a 13 year old whose two-finger sucking habit had played havoc with her dentition. Here, if you've ever had, or known, a child who's grown up sucking their thumb and refusing to give it up, things become interesting. What follows are the words (including the word miracle!) of the teenager's mother. Names have been removed to protect privacy. Sallie is nearly 14 years old and since she was a baby she has always sucked two fingers. I have tried numerous different techniques to try and stop this, but none of them have worked. She has visited two hypnotherapists both of which had no effect on her habit whatsoever. The first one Sallie saw for a period of about four weeks, where she was taken on a Harry Potter ride, to I think make her feel like a superhero where she wouldn’t have to suck her fingers anymore. This didn’t stop her from doing it, in fact had no effect whatsoever. The second hypnotist in addition to therapy gave her crystals to supposedly help her stop sucking her fingers. Sallie was hypnotised over a period of two months, again nothing that this female therapist did helped her to stop her sucking her fingers. On recommendation we also tried a habit breaker from the dentist, which came at a cost of in excess of £350; Sallie would just take this out in her sleep without realising she had done so, it had no effect. She has also worn bandages on her fingers, she used to just take these off, I even tried putting Tabasco sauce, chilli powder and curry paste on her fingers before bedtime, and ironically she just got used to the taste of all of these. Prior to our recent holiday to Spain we had invested over £2,000 pounds with a private dentist having braces fitted to Sallie's teeth as the constant inserting and pressure of her fingers in her mouth were forcing the teeth to protrude. Whilst in Spain I heard about a clinic that had received a lot of TV coverage around the world; we made an appointment. Two days, and two appointments later, all sorted. A bit like a miracle really. Since Sallie met Martin at the Elite Clinic and experienced the Pause Button Therapy she hasn’t sucked her fingers once, not even in her sleep, in fact her fingers don’t go near her mouth, she says she just doesn’t want to do it anymore. Sallie’s mother Essex United Kingdom Of course PBT is available to the general public in book form!!! See Amazon or any good retailer.

Halved her body weight by Pressing Pause

Ok let's forget berating myself for procrastination: get this....

Charity worker Katie Drew nearly halved her body weight – by Pressing Pause! The 32 year old, from East London, incorporated PBT's method of mentally using the idea of the Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward and Play buttons on a remote control device to give herself more thinking time when faced with decisions about food and drink. She credits the method with allowing her to identify her own irrational decision making. She's gradually lost a staggering eight stone and dropped from a size 24 jeans to a standard 10-12. From here on, this blog's basically a press release!! .... info for those that want it about our book Pause Button Therapy, recently published by Hay House. • The Shirrans have created a brilliantly simple and powerful technique for making life choices and effecting positive change. - Dr Leila Edwards, Principal, Transformations Institute. • This approach makes sense to everyone, from teachers to psychologists to parents and students. It is wonderfully simple, but simply effective. - Stelios N. Georgiou, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Cyprus. • PBT is a very simple yet powerful form of therapy. It has the potential to change lives for the better and in doing so have a positive impact on the stresses in today's world. - Lynn Crilly, Author & Counselor. • This book clearly describes a technique that can be employed to very good effect in a range of therapies. I recommend its use. - Windy Dryden PhD, Professor of Psychotherapeutic Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. Pause Button Therapy published by Hay House, Written by Martin & Marion Shirran & Fiona Graham. For further information, extract permission, author interviews or high res artwork please contact Martin Shirran mail@eliteclinics.com Phone 0034 951 311 591 Or, JoBurgess@hayhouse.co.uk or phone 020 89621230.

Cities: Have you been here?

Just spent a time-wasting 15 minutes or so proving how widely travelled I am (or not) by completing a Trip Advisor 'cities you've visited' app. Given that Hopton on Sea was in the database I'm a tad sceptical about their definition of city - Ushuaia, for that matter, and Iguacu, are hardly mega urbs.... anyway, if the html thingy will play ball it'll be there for all to see.

• Create your own travel map.

OI! YOU UP THERE! PRESS PAUSE!!

I just dropped in to see if anyone had commented on my blog (they hadn't) and realised that nine days later it's STILL raining and Malaga has had huge coverage in the local press and media because of the landslips, flooding,damage, etc.. .... .... and I thought of one thing. PRESS PAUSE, weather-fairies!!!!!!

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.............

..........and just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed, nothing seems to fit, tra la la la la la la !!! Actually this is something akin to cabin fever - and with the amount of water dropping on S Andalucia at the moment, a cabin might be the best place for some of us. Water running down mountains, waterfalls where there should be pretty hillsides, bridges UNDER water, mudslides, OMG. None of which is a jot to do with Russia, which is my subject of the moment. I'm amazed - though perhaps I should be proud rather than amazed - that one of the major publishing groups in Russia is looking to come to a translation deal on Pause Button Therapy. Crikey! International readers NOT just in English! Ok that was my news of the moment. Back to the flood. Literally. There are drips falling from the beam to my right and to my left. Ho hum. Saludos Fiona

Pause for Thought

As one for whom deadlines was part of my profession several lifetimes ago, I'm now making quite a meal of having them appear sometimes on a daily basis once again. Close, tight, deadly deadlines I seem able to meet. Ok sometimes with panic and much huffing and puffing, but I meet them nonetheless. Example: Today I knew I had to create three more paragraphs for a piece to be issued by the Press Association. So I did them. Overlooking that in front of me when I made notes was black and white (pixellated, but black and white nonetheless) evidence that in face the publishers wanted to let the PA have five, so they had an element of choice. Five. Not three. A mad dash and much cursing later, the five had been sent. Own fault. No excuses. I said when we took on the PBT project that I would make the research and references something to do more diligently, efficiently and potentially swiftly. Which I did......... diligently efficiently and swiftly enough? Of course not. Come the GMB book (hopefully you know what I'm talking about) and I made a mental note to increase that diligence etc by several factors. Which I did. Enough, though? Nope. Book 10 I might be approaching the right level of focus! On which, a change of tack. Excitement, or what? We've got a foreword by Prof Philip G Zimbardo, eminent and well-known psychology expert, he of the Stanford prison experiment, the marshmallow experiment, Time Paradox, et al. All we have to do is sell *cough* rather a lot of books and at reprint stage it'll slot in. For the US POD version it's already there........ along with his name on the front cover! Yay! Woah! And other 21st century outbursts! Oh, and today we got news that mega Russian publishers (remaining nameless until deeds done, contracts signed, Ts crossed etc) have approached for a translation deal. Crikey let's hope they want (that other book I'm also blogging about on an intermittent hopefully-to-be-stepped-up-a-gear basis) too. Right let's publish this and be damned. Not. !! Saludos and Пока на данный момент Fiona

PBT in Portugal

As I type, Martin Marion and our colleague, educationalist Gay Jones, are in Coimbra, Portugal, preparing to present a paper on the use of Pause Button Therapy within weight loss. They are at the first ever International Time Perspective Conference, which is all about people's views/perceptions of time and the importance of it in their lives (often to do with decision making). A simple example or two: Do you floss your teeth? Why? Probably because of one or two reasons. Your dentist has told you to, your parents told you to and you still do, and/or you know that without flossing there's a chance your teeth won't last you into old age. That's future thinking. You really don't NEED to floss your teeth for TODAY - well not unless you've just eaten pineapple or a tough piece of pork, anyway!..... and PAST doesn't come into this one because that's all about considering that things will be the way they always have so why do anything too fundamental to change them (paraphrasing). But if you are thinking of your dental hygiene now to plan for say 10 or 20 years down the line, well that's future thinking. On the other hand you may floss BUT have to floss because you've just eaten a whole packet of doughnuts. That's definitely PRESENT thinking; if you thought of the future you might have given more weight to the knowledge that fat, sugar, e-numbers et al aren't really terribly good for maintaining a healthy body at a healthy weight. So put the two concepts together and then wind round them the theory that how you view your past is also fundamental.... if you remember it as unhappy, you'll possibly predict an unhappy future etc..... and that's what Time Perspective Theory is. Weight Loss requires a clear understanding of and acceptance of, and adoption of, future thinking. Of course that's only one application of PBT: anger management, addressing addictive behaviours, road rage, all these uses for PBT and many more actually have roots in understanding time perspective. Consequences, after all, are what happens somewhere down the line (ie in the future) as a result of your actions now, in the PRESENT. Which reminds me. I had a cup of tea earlier. Need the bathroom. Need another cup of tea!! Saludos Fiona