Chel Hamilton is a hypnotherapist and has worked in this field for over ten years. She is an expert at helping people overcome their anxieties and fears using her deep understanding of human conscious and subconscious brain functions. She also hosts the Meditation Minis Podcast of short, guided meditations for overcoming anxiety and stress and achieving deep sleep experiences.

Contact Info

• Website: www.ChelHamilton.com
• Free Ebook: Rewire It: Three Simple Steps To Rewire Your Brain Out of Anxiety and Negative Thinking Patterns 
• Podcast: The Meditation Minis

Most Influential Person

• Me. The times in my life when I feel the most unsteady or the most crazy or the most triggered, those have been massive learning experiences for me.

Effect on Emotions

• Mindfulness has definitely made me less reactive. I've definitely gotten calmer. Maybe sometimes to the detriment. Sometimes in our interpersonal relationships with a partner when they're being really passionate about something and when we go to the pure, calm, logic side, they're like, omg, you don't get me. What's wrong with you? I'm like, I'm not a volcan, I swear. I think sometimes we have to say, oh my god, that's amazing and then go to our calm place.

Thoughts on Breathing

• One of my favorite little breathing meditations is I do on my podcast; it's Eckhart Tolle nose-focused breathing where you just focus on the edges of the nostrils. That was revolutionary for me because the whole idea of having to pay attention to all of my breathing felt like too much work. Just paying attention to the feeling of the air was really easy to do in any situation in life whether walking from one room to another or while in the middle of an argument or anything. So that is the one practice that is both breathing focused as well as meditation focused. If I could just tell people to do one thing, that would be it.

Suggested Resources

• Book: The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Luiz
• App: Evernote (I use it as my better brain)

Effect on Emotions

My bullying story had nothing mindful about it. It was fourth grade. I went to inner city schools during desegregation. There was a girl there who was not happy with me and she used to beat me up after school, pretty much every day. She didn't stop until one day I hit her over the head with my lunch box. I don't think mindfulness had anything to do with that. She definitely stopped when I whacked her upside of the head with my lunch box.

My son was bullied in middle school as well as my neighbor because we didn't live in the big houses in the fancy part of our district. We lived in the rental homes. I think that, for him, the thing that helped the most was him beginning to understand through some work that he did with me that if he didn't allow them to see any reaction in him, it didn't give them as much pleasure to do the things that they were doing. Learning how to not react in the moment but then to respond.

That's not to say that if somebody is being physical or overly threatening that you need to tell the adults. We actually had to switch schools because adults were told and the bullying got even worse at the school. The shame involved in all of that; because when the kid gets bullied, it's usually shame-based, it's fear and shame-based. The less that they respond in the moment, the less juice it gives the bully.