TRACEY BELL THE ART OF REINVENTION
Beauty and the Brain
After years of transforming and re-inventing smiles, faces, skin and I would definitely, say image, I have obviously witnessed the physical characteristics of my patients changing over the course of their treatments, but one of the things that has amazed me the most is the internal emotive change that these physical alterations can instigate. I have seen confidence grow, contentment and self esteem spread, zest and vitality for life and in a way, a sort of empowerment. We already know that every thought can produce a physical reaction and by changing the way a person thinks and feels about themselves it can produce an emotional change. Their physical body language alters and the way they communicate and present themselves changes, their image or dress sense gets tweaked and they start to emit a new found confidence and I have always maintained that “it's not just about physical beauty, it's about putting that spring back in your step and feeling good on the inside”. It is powerful beauty a sort of 'Beauty and the Brain' process, a combination of looking in the mirror and liking what you see, which builds confidence , scientific studies at the University of California have shown results that our brains are trained on attractiveness and beauty.
While eyes are the vehicles for receiving visual images, the brain decides how attractive those images are. Attractiveness appears to be related to how easy you can wrap your brain around a face. "A stimulus becomes attractive if it falls into the average of what you've seen and is therefore simple for your brain to process," said study author Piotr Winkielman, of the University of California, San Diego. "In our experiments, we show that we can make an arbitrary pattern likeable just by preparing the mind to recognize it quickly." ref; Live Science.com A patient of mine Linda has struggled with her weight for years and this year I have been researching and developing a new weight management program called SlimScription and running trials in some of my practices. Linda was very interested and asked me lots of questions and so we put her on the program. This is Linda's story; “I have struggled with weight loss all of my life. Yes I'd tried every diet, had the medals, badges and rosettes to show my worth, but the same old story kept repeating itself over and over again. I would get geared up, get on the diet, claw my way to the finish line and hit my target, but I never felt quite complete, I felt somehow duped. Yes I had lost the weight, but my shape and how I felt about my body, never seemed right and insecurities set in about how I felt when I looked in the mirror and guess what – before I knew it I was back to being five stone overweight, plus a few extra pounds each time. www.traceybell.co.uk