Attitudes

There are quite a few methods that are concerned with helping people to form the correct mind-set and understanding of life that will help them overcome their difficulties. This may sound like traditional psychotherapy, but their worldview is often quite different because they accept the idea that our thinking actually influences our environment.

Some of these are: NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), the Sedona method, Heart Math, the Law of Attraction, Creative Visualization, Affirmations, Hoponopono and methods based on the resolution of polarities, such as the PEAT Method and John Demartini's Breakthrough Experience.

Centering techniques

Relaxation - there are quite a few techniques to help people relax, and the benefits of relaxation are tremendous.
Hypnosis - uses the relaxed condition to give people positive suggestions.
Meditation - aims to quiet the mind by stopping its ceaseless inner chattering for a while - easier said than done!
Yoga, Chi-Gong, Tai-Chi, etc, previously mentioned in the exercise section, are aimed at centering and relaxing the mind as well as exercising the body.

The Brain

1. Brainwaves Depending on the kind of activity a person is engaging in, their brains emit waves at different frequencies. During deep sleep, the brain emits delta waves, between 0.5 and 3 hertz. From 4 to 7 hertz are the theta waves, associated with dreaming and creativity, very frequent in children. Alpha waves, 8 to 13 hertz, are associated with meditative and relaxed states, and Beta waves, from 14 to 44 hertz, are present during our normal waking activities. The higher beta frequencies are related to stress. The alpha and theta states in particular are considered beneficial, but they don't come as easily as beta. Ways to attain these states are through meditation, hypnosis, the Silva method, and more recently, brainwave entrainment, where visual or auditory signals are sent in such a way as to lead the brain to emit at the same frequencies it is seeing or hearing.
2. Parts and the whole

It is often said that we only use about ten percent of our brain. Imagine what we could accomplish if we used our whole brain! There are different ways to divide the brain into parts. There is the left side and the right side, each having distinct if not completely separate tasks. In our logical-minded society, the right brain, which is concerned more with intuition and artistic pursuits, is not always given a chance to show what it can do. Brain Gym, another branch of kinesiology, has specific exercises to stimulate brain integration.

From another point of view, the brain has three parts, the reptile brain, the mammal brain, and the frontal lobes. The reptile brain is concerned with our basic survival instincts, and in times of stress or fear, we tend to revert to reptile brain functions and forget to use the other parts. The mammal brain, or limbic system, is related to emotions, and the frontal lobes, the most evolved part, contains our thinking and reasoning faculties. So any method that helps calm fears will help people to use their frontal lobes more, which is probably where most of the unused 90 percent is hiding.

The subconscious mind

The theory of the subconscious mind was first developed by Freud, but St. Paul seemed to know about it already when he lamented "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (epistle to the Romans, Ch 7, v. 15)

The subconscious mind is a mysterious part of us, hidden by definition, hard to access and even harder to change. To access it, the muscle test used in kinesiology or the pendulum can be used. To understand it, one can try dream interpretation, and to change it, subliminal messages and hypnosis are said to bypass the conscious mind and speak directly to the subconscious.