Can Hypnotherapy heal the problems that traditional treatments cannot resolve? Is it our attitudes towards bad habits and illness, that encourages us treat the symptoms and not the causes?
Hypnosis may conjure up images of swinging pendulums and stage trickery, but its a technique thats recently undergone something of a change in attitudes towards its use as a healing tool. It is also enjoying a renewed interest from the scientific and medical community as more and more academic studies show significant positive results. Its also apparent that some people are more able to progress into a hypnotic state than others, some people respond and some dont.
Theres now some pretty conclusive evidence that Hypnosis is effective in pain management and very successful in the treatment of stress, anxiety, fears and phobias. Its widely used in dealing with habitual problems, especially smoking and other forms of addiction. Its also used to control certain psychosomatic problems like seizures and irritable bowel syndrome.
So, whats hypnotherapy all about? Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, which is a little bit like day-dreaming. Have you ever driven somewhere and during the journey your mind has been focused on something completely different to the job of driving, and when you have arrived at your destination, you realise that you remember no details of the drive? You were in a hypnotic trance! You were miles away consciously, but your sub-conscious mind was driving the car and doing it quite adequately without the conscious mind interfering, then suddenly youre back to reality.
Full Conscious Awareness is the state in which we spend most of our waking hours. In this state, our mind is attentive and uses logic to reason, evaluate, judge, and make decisions. Unfortunately, when attempting to make life changes, the conscious mind often gets in the way of our desires, by creating doubts and conflict in our thinking.
Hypnosis is special because it opens up a channel of communication between the conscious and the sub-conscious mind. It is not sleep, but a relaxed state, where the critical faculty is bypassed, where we focus and close down the conscious mind, where we store all of our beliefs and values. We can then allow ourselves to absorb new values, beliefs and desires, thus enabling changes that we want to happen, to occur.
At a subconscious level we dont think in the usual way. Our minds react and we can’t distinguish between reality and unreality, we absorb all the information received through the senses as true, as real.
In the Hypnotic State, you are “experiencing” without questioning, without critical judgment or analysis, you are able to suspend your dis-belief, a little like when you are watching a movie, and the hypnotherapist can make suggestions that are very likely to feel real and to permanently alter your values and beliefs – precisely because your conscious mind is not getting in the way. You are not “judging” or being “critical” of the suggestions.
So why is it that some people respond and some dont? Generally, if two or more emotions are in conflict, the dominant one wins out over the weaker. Imagination wins out over will power, emotions win out over logic, the subconscious mind wins out over the conscious, every time, Our emotions rule. If for some reason, you will yourself not to allow suggestions to be accepted, they won’t be. The habitual smoker who asks for help to quit smoking but is not really committed to that goal, cannot be forced to do so against their will.
By definition, Habits, are those repetitive behaviors that you do “without thinking.” With the critical faculty bypassed and by using the power of imagination, specific thoughts and suggestions can be placed in the subconscious where they can propel someone toward a desired goal or change behavior in a positive, permanent way.
I am not for a moment suggesting that drug treatments should be abandoned in every case. There is clearly a time and a place for drug-based therapies, but all too often people assume that there is a pill for everything that is wrong and that simply is not the case.
In many cases drugs are not a cure, we rely too much on the treatment of symptoms and not enough on the causes of our problems. A change in attitude towards the way we think about illness and well-being, may enable us to treat the causes and eliminate the problems permanently.
For the first time, you will learn what you are truly capable of on a physical, emotional and even spiritual level. You will amaze yourself and be a better person for the total experience.