SHOW NOTES 

Using NLP in Health & Fitness – the inner game that supports life-long health,

fitness and wellbeing – featuring Jan Oxenham

Are you curious about the role mindset plays in health and fitness?

Fed up with the stop/start traditional health and fitness approaches and looking for a new angle?

Ever wondered how the inner game leads to longer term success?

Jan Oxenham is not your typical Personal Trainer!

She busts the myth in this episode that health and fitness is 50% training & 50% nutrition – it’s not!

Maybe you’re healthy and fit already, or looking to get started or restart AGAIN! … all of us have something we can improve around health, fitness and wellbeing, right?!

Jan starts with mindset and getting people’s inner game sorted (including changing habits, beliefs and patterns of behaviour) … then the long term benefits come to fruition.

If you’re wanting to take steps towards living longer, having more energy, enjoying better health, AND want to hear about Jan’s ‘Real Woman Revolution’ … check out this podcast episode today!

Just a two-day NLP Diploma

After meeting a fellow NLP delegate of Unleash Your Potential at a local open day and hearing how NLP can make a difference in all areas of life, Janet became curious about NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and how she could improve her communication skills and use it within her health and fitness business (and on herself).  Janet booked her place on the Unleash Your Potential two day NLP Diploma in Coaching face to face course (this is also now available online!).  Don’t be fooled, this introductory level isn’t just for those people who want to be coaches.  It is a great introduction to the NLP toolkit.  Following this course, she discovered that she wanted to learn more…about herself and her clients, not only learning tools how to help people but learning how to drop the mask and be the real Janet without faking it anymore. So she progressed onto the NLP Practitioner Course, swiftly followed by the NLP Certified Coach Course and then the Ultimate NLP Master Practitioner qualification.

Understanding her own mindset

Understanding her own mindset through NLP has enabled Janet to understand how people (including herself) can change their behaviour and make health and fitness work for them.  Thanks to NLP she is now able to work with her ladies to find their own personal route to health and fitness.  Janet works with each individual and their own fitness journey to get results. As human beings, we all follow patterns and strategies (habits) and when we begin to understand these,  we can make changes at the unconscious level that really work and deliver permanent change.

A personal trainer doesn’t have a magic wand

Janet says that she can’t change her client’s behaviour , but she can help them to change their behaviour.  The problems sit at the patterns and unconscious strategies that each person runs.  Janet says “When you understand what those patterns are,  how they can be changed, it is then you can start to see real results.”  Educating her clients is all part of the process and her job as a personal trainer, she takes a holistic approach, looking at the person as a whole.

Mindset is crucial

If your mindset is not in the right place then your health and fitness will suffer.  Janet believes that at least 50% of your health and fitness is down to mindset and potentially 25% food and 25% exercise.  If your mindset isn’t right, nothing will be achieved.  You may start with good intentions and perhaps consciously manage a few weeks, then slowly old patterns and strategies will begin to reappear as you haven’t made a fundamental change at the unconscious level.  This is where Janet achieves great results with her clients, by changing that mindset from the start.

A holistic MOT is the starting point

Janet works with her clients and starts with a holistic approach to health not just focusing on the food people eat.  She explores their likes and dislikes, their exercise routines, and their mindset.  She carries out what she calls an MOT and will openly admit that she won’t write diet plans for her clients, as she knows they won’t work.  Janet says “The key is to start with the individual’s mindset,  then finding out what suits you as an individual, understanding your fears, what holds you back and making changes to address you as a whole person.” 

How the NLP tools support Janet’s work.

The NLP tools and techniques that Janet learned on her NLP course have enabled her clients to give up bad habits.  One technique called the like to dislike takes about twenty minutes and Janet  used this to help a lady give up diet Pepsi.  Her client was drinking litres and litres of diet Pepsi daily,  she knew this was a bad habit but couldn’t stop it.  Janet worked with her, actively changing her thought process and turned the like of Pepsi into a dislike, eight months later, the client has still not drunk any Pepsi.  Janet has multiple stories with other clients where she has worked with them to change their mindsets and achieved great results which include biscuits and bread, changing their thinking has changed their behaviour and therefore changes the results they achieve.  These short, simple techniques deliver huge changes.

Food diaries offer amazing insight

Janet encourages her clients to keep a food diary.  Not so much what they have eaten, more how they are feeling before or after eating or drinking.  Janet uses this as an exploration into their thought processes and strategies which then enables her to help her client make lasting changes with her NLP toolkit, aligning techniques to problems to get results.

Time Line Therapy™ NLP Technique

One of the most powerful NLP techniques is Time line Therapy™.   This NLP technique allows people to let go of negative emotions which can impact how people behave in their daily lives, (see Series 2, episode 8 to learn more about Time Line Therapy™).  Helping people move forward by freeing them from their past can deliver amazing results.  Janet has experienced every technique of the NLP toolkit and knows how powerful the results can be.  From improving focus, clarity, feeling lighter, brighter and more, Time Line Therapy™ is a great life-changing technique.

The Real Woman Revolution

Janet has started her project ‘The Real Woman Revolution’.  The Real Woman Revolution was born from Facebook lives and Janet receiving messages and questions from real women in her community.  Initially, Janet was genuinely scared of creating Facebook lives, with a little bit of coaching from Laura, she began sharing live videos on Facebook, lockdown meant a restriction on her access to the gym so she began walking, and sharing a video at the same time.  This attracted a number of followers and lots of questions and requests for help and the idea for ‘The Real Woman Revolution’ was born.

Janet is on a mission to make women feel empowered by themselves, knowing we are all different shapes and sizes.  You can look after yourself, eat food you prefer, get healthy and fit as a real woman.  Janet’s mission is to help real women, look after themselves and make a difference.  The work starts with exploring what is going on inside your body, the outside will follow.  Bone mass is important and looking at the fat internally around your organs, making behavioural change, removing the fear and getting results.  Her plan is to introduce workshops and retreats to support this journey and share knowledge for the Real Woman Revolution with a little bit of NLP magic thrown in.