Posts Tagged ‘hypnotherapy’

Many do not understand the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy, as well as the difference in educational needs between the two fields. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy, while closely related fields, in today’s treatment market, play two related, yet different roles.

Attempts today to modify certain behaviors through hypnosis is blurring the line between hypnosis and hypnotherapy and with many questionable schools popping up claiming to teach people how to hypnotize others, some in just a weekend, the practice is starting to get a bad name. By entering the subconscious mind, a hypnotherapist can offer significant assistance for deeply embedded issues that other forms of medical treatment cannot reach.

Being able to tap into the subconscious through hypnosis and hypnotherapy has been recognized by many medical professionals as a means of supplying appropriate treatment. Since the 19th century hypnosis and hypnotherapy has been used as more than just a parlor trick. When the practice went to the stage, with a hypnotist selecting a patron from the audience and making them cluck like a chicken on stage, it did the practice a disservice.

Behavior Modification Makes Hypnotic Inroads

People skilled at hypnosis and hypnotherapy found that by reaching into the subconscious mind, modifications could be made to a person’s behavior, which could be beneficial to the subjects. Many started using hypnosis and hypnotherapy to help people quit smoking or to help them lose weight by modifying their eating habits. As the popularity of this practice began to spread so did the need for more hypnotists.

Many still see the hypnotist dressed in a black top hat and long tails performing on a stage, thanks to old movies and carnival posters, but in reality those in hypnosis and hypnotherapy are usually similar to medical professionals, taking pride in their occupation and how they can help people make changes to their lives.

The main commercial difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy is through hypnosis people relate it to the one-shot method of helping people quit smoking or stop overeating. Hypnotherapy, on the other hand, is often equated with helping a patient through deep-rooted issues in their subconscious. These typically take several sessions, sometimes years to fully examine and determine the best treatment method.

It is not unusual to have psychiatric professionals involved in hypnotherapy as they recognize the benefits of getting beyond a patient’s conscious thinking. By combining hypnosis and hypnotherapy with psychology a professional will be in a better position to offer help.

It is my belief that hypnotherapy is the best complimentary therapy because hypnosis affects people at every level including psychological, physiological, emotional, and even spiritual. And really, only hypnotherapy has the power to do that.

It allows you to work on specific problems one by one, but at the same time, it can improve your overall health and well-being in several areas concurrently. Some people seek hypnotherapy to address a specific area while others seek the overall benefits of hypnosis on a regular, ongoing basis. Many people use hypnosis alone while others supplement it with other forms of therapy.

Although every form of therapy is valuable on its own, there is a definite overlap within all methods of treatment. What hypnosis does is it provides a link and it connects those areas together physiologically.

Whether you are in physical therapy recovering from an injury, or in psychotherapy due to emotional stress, it doesn’t matter. Hypnosis can compliment either or both of those treatments, because hypnosis has the power to affect all those areas in a positive way. So in compliment to your physical therapy, it can help you cope on an emotional level with the strain of the injury.

If you are trying acupuncture to help you quit smoking, there is a specific technique that addresses your physical need for nicotine, but acupuncture alone does little to tackle the psychological craving, the mental tug of war that plays out in the early stages of breaking any pattern of long standing, habitual behaviour. Hypnotherapy can compliment the acupuncture by addressing the psychological need for relief.

Another excellent example of combined therapy is the effect of aromatherapy. When I tried an aromatherapy massage, there is no question I was subdued into total relaxation. It was a fantastic experience in itself, and in my case, I actually achieved hypnosis. It’s beneficial by itself, or it can be used as an aide for inducing hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy utilizes a mixture of different models that people are already exerting; they’re just made more powerful when used with hypnosis. Nearly all therapies are successful at producing change in a specific area. Hypnotherapy simply produces change in more areas. This fact makes it the best complimentary therapy in addition to being an excellent stand alone treatment for many problems, specific or combined.

It is important to remember that hypnotherapy is not intended to replace modern medicine or in any way refute its effectiveness. You may choose to use hypnotherapy alone instead of mainstream treatment for whatever condition you are addressing, and that’s a personal choice any individual can make, but it’s not our mandate as hypnotherapists to replace modern medicine, nor do we suggest that hypnosis ever could.

Alternative medicine, which is quite commonly used these days, is very much positioned to offer people a different way to address their health issues. It essentially opposes traditional medicine, by offering stand alone treatments that would directly conflict with traditional treatment and cannot be safely or effectively combined. I would absolutely not place hypnotherapy in that category. Hypnotherapists are not in competition with doctors and health care workers, and we do not suggest that anyone abandon their medical practitioner in favour of hypnotherapy.

By contrast, I believe that hypnosis is an excellent companion to modern medicine. We tend to forget that hypnosis has been used for many years by doctors and health care professionals like psychologists. It in no way undermines the effectiveness of modern treatment. Rather, it can compliment it quite naturally and quite effectively.

For instance, if you are trying to quit smoking, hypnotherapy alone can help immensely, but if you are also using the patch, then you are increasing your odds of success. There is no conflict… one treatment works extremely well with the other.

If you are taking any type of treatment for a medical condition and you find yourself struggling with the side effects, you can turn to hypnotherapy to alleviate the intensity of the side effects and increase you tolerance of the medication, so that it can do its job.

The word alternative suggests that we are looking for a different way of doing things. We’re not. We’re looking to provide a means for the improved physical and mental health of anyone and everyone who needs it. I believe that modern medicine is already doing that. I also believe that hypnotherapy is the ultimate complimentary therapy and can help in so many ways.

 

When it comes to a powerhouse of therapy, thought field therapy (TFT) combined with hypnotherapy is one of the most effective out there today. The mind is full of strength and power and when therapies combine to workout the struggles housed inside the mind, there is no stopping the positive outcome.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is the practice of hypnosis in a therapeutic manner. A person who is hypnotized allows the inner most walls of the mind to fall for a short period of time. During these sessions, the hypnotherapist can guide the person through the various sections of the mind seeking out the causes for any struggles or troubles they may be having in life. While in a hypnotic state, unlike a waking state, the mind does not block outside forces from persuading these negative thoughts and ideas out of the subconscious. Once the causative factors are found and neutralized, the patient of hypnotherapy will have a better feeling about their life and the situation that brought them into the hypnotherapist’s office in the first place.

 

Hypnotherapy is practiced for a variety of reasons. Patients often choose hypnotherapy for phobias, fears, weight loss and anti-smoking. As of late, relationship counselling is also moving up the list of the most common hypnosis treated concerns with patients.

 

Thought Field Therapy

Created by Roger Callahan, TFT is the practice of the physical combined with the mental treatments of certain physical ailments. It is explained that TFT uses what are called meridian points throughout the body as the centres for Qi flow. When a patient thinks about the negative feelings harbour their lives, those feelings are brought to the surface of the body at corresponding meridian points. When tapped upon in a certain manner, the Qi flow is restored and the negative feelings are washed away in minutes.

 

TFT also utilizes voice technology (referred to as VT) in order to help stimulate the rise of the negative energy to the surface of the skin. Training to learn the practices of TFT are very specialized and are taught only be Callahan himself.

 

The Power of Combination Therapy

 

When TFT and hypnotherapy are combined, the results are nothing less than phenomenal. The hypnotherapy is a fantastic beginning point for patients that are unaware of the reasons they are having certain symptoms or negative feelings. Phobias are the perfect example of such a situation. With hypnotherapy, the cause of the fear can be found and then the patient will resort to TFT to restore their inner balance and eliminate the fear from their lives.

 

While there are some doctors who are trained in both hypnotherapy and TFT, the most realistic choice is to find separate doctors within each specialty that are willing to work together in your treatment. The combination of forces needs to be something that all parties agree to and thus TFT needs to be a method the hypnotherapist is willing to accept.

 

While these two therapies are unique, in that they represent a more alternative option for therapy, their popularity is growing by leaps and bounds. Hypnotherapy and TFT are both completely natural and safe for the human body. With no known side effects, the patients of hypnotherapy and TFT are often turning to these treatments for more common ailments before visiting their medical doctors. If there is any chance that they are able to be cured in a manner that is 100% natural, that is becoming the most chosen medical path. From smoking to weight loss, relationship relief to stress relief, the power of combination hypnotherapy and TFT is strong and beneficial.

Why are people so quick to recommend hypnotherapy to other people for everything? Most people that seek help from a professional for mental issues are very vulnerable. Why then go to somebody that you don’t know or trust and let them have complete control of your mind? Other than using it for quiting smoking or losing weight, why do it?
I know hypnotherapy doesn’t give anyone complete control of your mind. I don’t know why I even added that sentence. The reason I ask this is because I’ve seen on here a lot of people recommend hypnotherapy for everything. I”ve even seen someone suggest that a hypnotherapist may even be able to help find deep buried memories. Which is the opposite of what hypnotherapist are suppose to do.

The Conscious And Subconscious Mind:
Influence, Persuasion & Change For Healing
With Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy.

Though we have one mind, there are usually considered to be two sections of it: the conscious and the subconscious. The subconscious was termed by Freud the unconscious. He only saw it as a negative, a swamp of primitive drives and aggressive impulses. Perhaps his was. Hypnotists, au contraire, regard it as the source of creativity, inventiveness and strength, a valuable resource that can be utilized, not only as this negative primitive area. Nowadays some hypnotists use the term, “other than conscious,” mind, to define it as everything not in conscious awareness in the present moment. A metaphor that is used to illustrate the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind uses a comparison to an iceberg. The visible portion above the surface of the water is the conscious mind, guestimated (I can’t imagine how), to be approximately 10% of our thinking ability. The subconscious mind, consisting of that portion of the iceberg beneath the water, being the other nine tenths. I have also seen information that the conscious mind processes a few hundred impressions a minute, to the thousands of impressions the subconscious mind processes in the same time, (I can’t imagine how this was arrived at either), but the general consensus is how much larger and more powerful this mostly hidden “other than conscious mind” can be.

Another useful analogy is to the computer. It seems to fit so well. After all, where would we intuit the design of a complex information processing system, other than our own minds? Many new processes such as “fuzzy logic” are in fact actual conscious attempts to reproduce our own mental processes, as far as they can be ascertained. In this comparison, the conscious mind is the equivalent of the computer screen, consisting of that which is available to our conscious thinking process. It is the analytical, linear, logical, rational, “two plus two equals four” mind. Plus our conscious emotions, those surface emotions that we are aware of. Here we move information around, computing how to minimize pain and maximize pleasure, the two fundamental desires of any organism, however they may be conceived of in any particular being or life path. Here we use the mind to analyze our environment to obtain the necessary control for achieving these ends. So this mind operates primarily in the here and now, though it usually calls on the past as a computational factor. This means many of its functions operate within the framework of and/or via the perspectives and “lenses” supplied by the subconscious mind.

I have found a major function of the conscious mind is to “bend” information to fit these hidden perspectives. Here is one of my usual simple crude examples. “I don’t like women with red hair, they are easily angered and bad tempered.” He forgets the little red headed six-year-old girl that used to hit him when he was four. Or if the memory of her is accessible, there will be no awareness of how those events are connected to his current views! Similarly, how many times does a person see advertisements of happy laughing healthy young persons playing on the beach, accompanied by the slogan, (or hypnotic auditory suggestion), “Things go better with Coke.” The visual imagery is also a visual suggestion associated, i.e. “paired with” the verbal one. Then in a store, the person purchases Coca-Cola, consciously thinking, “I need some Coke,” or “I need some for when my friends come visiting.” Never connecting their actions to the numerous adverts that have been absorbed. But the Coca-Cola Company does not spend untold millions putting out this information in this way for nothing. Cinema and television are powerful trance mediums, as a picture is “worth a thousand words.” This is an example I use with my clients, to illustrate the persuasive penetration of repetition, especially useful when internally absorbed deeply from repeated playing of a hypnosis audio product. This being the case, Hypnotherapists realize that people are actually mainly persuaded based on emotional processes that are going on within them, not logical thinking. Logic helps, but people are making most decisions emotionally, and then backing them up by manufacturing conscious logical thought.

Some psychologists identify anything that can be voluntarily called to mind as being in the “pre-conscious”. A hypnotist however would include all of that in the “other than conscious mind,” too. How many memories are there that could be recalled with the application of some thought, but how many of them are left undisturbed for decades, loitering in the lower reaches of consciousness? And how many are separated from linkages that would give more profound insight, meaning and relief? In our computer analogy, the subconscious mind equates to the software, operating systems, and memory banks, containing our automatic responses, deeper emotions, feelings, habits, impressions, and permanent memory, and our compulsions, impulses and responses to them. It operates apart from the linear logic of the conscious mind, though working with the subconscious as a hypnotherapist, I see what I term as “emotional logic.” Behavior, as is illustrated also in much psychotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, always has some positive intent, which when disinterred, becomes comprehensible within it’s own context and it’s own terms. The inner mind works with analogy and association, uses ambiguity, poetry, and especially imagery and metaphor for storing and processing information, rather than the more limited inductive/deductive quasi-logic, (and prejudices, rationalizations etc.) of the conscious mind. That is why the former inward factors stir us so deeply and readily.

Learned habits, such as walking, are permanently installed and normally accessed without conscious thought by sub-systems. Redundant acquired habits become “grooved in” and self-perpetuating in the “software”. In fact, attempting to consciously “take them over” causes a loss of effective functionality. (Try consciously thinking of where you are placing your feet the next time you hurry up a flight of stairs, and you will soon discover what I mean). So athletes often have to be assisted by a hypnotist to “get out of their own way”, allowing themselves to trust in their own trained abilities without thought, flowing more naturally in the “zone” as it is termed. Or using the “no-mind” as the Zen Buddhists would have it.

The lower or deeper levels of the subconscious part of the mind control blood pressure, body temperature, breathing, digestion, heart rate, and similar biological functions of our body. Also the instincts and instinctual responses, and their physiological counterparts, our reflexes, All of which we inherit presumably mostly through our genes. This resembles the “hard wiring” of a computer. In my pre-talk, to illustrate this point to clients, while simul-taneously reassuring them of their ultimate control I inform them, “No matter how many times it might be suggested, “you will stop breathing”, you would not do so, because it is wired in on the survival level.” Though Yoga adepts and so forth may bring many of these functions under conscious control, it is not such a usual accomplishment in Western culture. The sub-conscious never sleeps, never takes a break from keeping our biological functioning going. I also explain this to clients by, “It’s the part of the cave man mind that always stays on the alert for the Saber Toothed Tiger.” This is usually accepted with a smile. Also relating the “other than conscious mind” to the Guardian Angel, provides a positive frame of reference that helps counter any fears the client may have in releasing conscious control.

The subconscious mind is concerned with bringing about our deepest wishes expect-ations and desires, even if sometimes they are contrary to logic, and our own current well-being. The subconscious mind, seeking to meet our deepest needs, expectations, wishes, does not always do it the way we want it done. The subconscious mind does not care if the body hurts, but rather that the deepest needs are met. If our greatest need is for affection and the only time we experienced affection was when we were sick, we may get sick in order to receive that affection. This occurs even though consciously we don’t like being sick and the reason is unknown. So it is evident that once a solution to a need is found, it may be repeated in essentially the same way incongruently, redundantly, at times in a disguised adult form. A female client, in trance, with no prompting from me said with tears streaming down her face. “When I was young, I was bitten by a dog two or three times. This was the only time I got any caring at home. That is why I kept going to Hospital Emergency Rooms for overdoses or cutting my wrists.” She was bearing the label of a mental condition. As I observed her release herself I thought, “She is never going to be that sick again.”

The soil of the subconscious mind accepts any kind of seeds – good or bad. Once the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to make the idea a reality. When applied in a negative way, the subconscious can be the cause of failure, frustration, unhappiness, and even illness.” Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” And in the Bible, (proverbs), “Whatever a person thinketh in his heart so is he.” Hypnosis is a process that allows access to a whole spectrum of altered states of awareness, (generally described as trance), that allow simultaneously states of inward concentration to occur, with a fluid flow between many levels and depths of the mind. In this state, the mind and body are more open and receptive, the most helpful tool for pursuing treatment goals. The beauty of clinical hypnosis is in acquiring the ability to enter a trance deliberately. This gives us a key in hypnotherapy, because in trance, deep level dysfunctional beliefs can be attenuated or erased, and more functional ones be instilled and installed. Negative images and metaphors can be altered and supplanted with more useful ones. We can guide a person move “away from” damaging information and/or “move towards” healing/positive ideas. This can, when targeted at emotional processes for therapy, give a person a “virtual” better childhood, as the “old tapes” as they were referred to in latter day psychotherapies, can be annulled. More limited problems are amenable to less general suggestion processes. All of this appears to take place, in trance, on the “other than conscious” level where the negative processes were formed, for highly effective change, without will power. Even physiological processes may be affected by suggestion, and has given me the ability at times to assist people who have run out of medical options. Behavioral and functional difficulties can be overcome. As I have stated elsewhere, at times the results, psychological or physical, can appear miraculous. Brian Green, c. 2007. http://www.mindmagic123.com