Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy Blog Page 2

The hypnotic benefits of lucid dreaming

Hypnotherapists recognize the value of dreams for revealing information from the subconscious mind and venting blockages and frustrations as therapeutic change occurs. A lesser known but highly effective aspect of dreaming is "lucid dreaming."

The awareness that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. It's an ability every one possesses, yet dormant in most people.

Therapist can assist clients to develop lucidity or increase the degree through specific techniques and practice. As you may know, any hypnotic suggestion is most effective when the client takes some form of immediate action. This is also true for increasing lucidity.

When we work using regression we regularly see the most extraordinary results very swiftly. Suddenly things become plain to the client and they understand why something happened. Subsequently their ability to manage their issue becomes very much more easily understood.

Dave Elman's book, Hypnotherapy, provides a good roadmap for anyone using regression generally to manage an issue. However the pattern occasionally swings out of the norm. Typically an incident in the recent past is associated with an incident in the clients' early life that had traumatic elements and introduced stress and anxiety. By reframing the earlier incident the issue in the recent past is resolved " and future occurrences defused. This is not an unfamiliar process to most hypnotherapists.

Hypnosis related jokes and amusements.

Hypnotic projection is the opposite of regression and means projecting the mind into the future to see what will be, or what is likely to be. If this sounds a bit far-fetched to you, remember that the mind can move not only backwards and forwards in time, but sidewards as well - take dreams for example, how can you define time in dreams? I can't be the only person who has dreamt through a whole year in less than 30 minutes.

If the mind envisages something happening enough times, there is a strong likelihood that it will eventually become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Having read quite a bit of information about negative hallucination I figure that I understand the basic concepts behind it.

I have seen stage hypnotists claiming to be invisible to their subjects and cross the room (allegedly bodiless) holding a stick or something else that is apparently travelling around on its own.

Or they tell their subject that a broom is a beautiful woman whom they will want to make love to - or someone's belly button or penis has dropped off in the toilet - I'm sure you've seen the same sort of act if you've been to one of those shows?

The four aspects of Karma are: Cause and Effect, Compensation, Balancing and Completion.

Through different lifetimes we work through our karmic cycle in order to attain perfection of the soul, which is trapped within five different lower planes. Only when we reach a higher plane are we able to move forward to the next level.

The Five Lower Planes are as follows: The physical plane - this is where you and I are right now. It is also known as the Earth Plane - at this level the body is a physical one and a large amount of karma can be added or erased at this level.

Pin Pointing is the starting point of a neurosis. Every neurotic condition started somewhere. The starting point is referred to as the pin point.

The types of problems to use Pin Pointing for:

This report was sent in by Victoria, a hypnotherapist who has been working with a cancer patient with the use of hypnosis.

Less anesthetic was used due to a relaxed physical and mental state

-hunger and thirst quickly followed surgery to keep the body functions (bladder and bowel) naturally and easily

-color in her cheeks unlike the usual drained look that matches hospital sheets

-the immediate healing of the surgical wound so as to be infection free

By Rob Hadley

Up to one in ten women between 18 and 25 will at some stage suffer an eating disorder. Worse still, it will be the one in ten we least expect. Clients are mostly female, but not exclusively.

As a hypnotherapist specializing in eating disorders I often work with clients struggling with Bulimia. In many cases they consider themselves overweight, and yet are not. Like anorexics, they have little idea of how they appear to others. Yet, this is not an issue that has a great deal to do with food. Food is merely the media of expression for the problem.

Rebecca, 29, has successfully managed to quit smoking with the help of hypnotherapy so she decided to use it again to help her with her anger management.

She told me that she had always had a 'short fuse' but these days it was mostly directed towards her eldest daughter, Jessica, aged 9. Rebecca felt irritated whenever she was in Jessica's company and directly avoided spending time with her daughter, without really knowing the reason why.

Case history revealed that:

This case history demonstrates how dissociation takes place, although this wasn't the problem that Mary came to see me about.

She was troubled with an unsettled mind - could never stop thinking about things, hearing the slightest little noise and didn't sleep well. She had constant headaches which she attributed to recently having taken a course of anti-smoking medication which failed to work.

Mary told me that she had been abused as a child at the ages of 4, 8 and 11 although we didn't go into this in detail as it didn't appear to be the issue that was concerning her.

It's common for people in trance to feel that they're not hypnotized, when in fact they are. Often such subjects don't realize how deep they went until they come back to full awakening consciousness.

Some people also think that they are 'under the hypnotist's control' but this is not so. They are free to reject or accept suggestions.

Tom came for his first session of hypnosis in 1998 saying that he needed to lose some weight but couldn't stop nibbling in the evenings, he also drank a bit too much. Tom was a lawyer who spent a lot of time dining with clients; as a result he was about three stone overweight.

Debbie made an appointment for driving test nerves. Her next exam was due in less than a week and because I didn't have time to arrange more sessions with her, I suggested that we arranged her session for the afternoon before her exam (which was scheduled for about 8:30 a.m. the next morning).

Debbie seemed a fairly confident woman. She wanted to pass her test mainly because her husband worked away most of the time and she had two young children and felt it would be nice to be free to take them places and also to shop without the hassle of having to take buses or taxis.

Carl was in his early 20's and too embarrassed to discuss his problem over the phone when he booked his appointment, however he stressed that it was urgent that he had help, as it was affecting his life to the point where he couldn't think of anything else.

He was a tall, intelligent, attractive guy and duly filled in his 'consent form', stating his problems to be depression and stress.

Carl told me that approximately 3 years ago he found a lump on one of his testicles. He consulted his GP who arranged for a series of tests to be carried out by a hospital specialist and the lump was found to be benign, however this reassurance did little to stop his worrying and he checked himself 2 or 3 times a day for the following 3 years.

When Sandi phoned up to enquire about hypnotherapy treatment for her fear of flying she explained that she was due to get married in 3 weeks time and was going on holiday to Australia. She was anxious about the long flight, dreading leaving her home and her anxiety was so severe that it was spoiling her anticipation of the forthcoming wedding.

We booked 3 appointments - the final one to take place the evening before her flight (2 days after her wedding).

Sandi was a bright, attractive young woman in her early 30s. She told me that she also suffered from OCD and was always worrying about her health and had a morbid fear of death.

I would like to share this experience of helping a respected headmistress to overcome a fear of flying.

Jane (name changed for privacy reasons) was due to fly abroad in 3 months time. I have found that 3 sessions (sometimes 2, depending on the outcome of the first session) seem to work finer.

The third session is always scheduled as near as possible to the clients flight date - the reason for this is to reinforce any positive suggestions or introduce new ones according to whatever issues might have cropped up during the (usually middle) one.

As most sufferers of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) know, this is a distressing symptom that causes stomach aches and pains and the frequent need visit the toilet can make going out a traumatic experience.

It is a condition that can be helped immensely with hypnotherapy as my most recent case proved. Nadia was typical of many IBS sufferers that I have seen. A pretty 21 year old girl, apparently confident and outgoing, Nadia's social life was virtually non-existent. She hated visiting new places in case she couldn't find a toilet and planned her trips around places where she felt safe.

I often tell clients that I can't just wave a magic wand to cure them - however, this case history, sent in by Hypnotic World member Jenny Guy made me reconsider - and we'd like to share it with you.

Jenny was asked to help a 5 year old girl with her fears. (Names are confidential, but we'll call her Kate). Kate had a fear of alarms, especially fire alarms and it caused her to get up several times a night to use the bathroom, she subsequently became a very nervous child.

Knowing that many 5 year olds believe in magic and fairies prompted Jenny to use this belief system to help Kate. So before the hypnosis session, Jenny made a 'magic wand' and placed it in a brightly colored box in her back garden, where a plant pot had been.

Barbara and Sheila came along for a past life regression session. Sheila was passionately curious to discover if she had lived before so Barbara agreed to come along for a session too, as they were traveling a long distance to my office.

Surprisingly enough it was Barbara who, by her own admission, wasn't really interested in regression or hypnosis, yet she turned out to be the best subject.

I had one or two doubts to begin with that she would actually regress, never mind be a good subject for hypnosis. After the induction and deepener I decided to use the Book of Time script on Hypnotic World and asked her to visualize entering a room which was lined with old and new books of various shapes and sizes.

With the awareness of false memory syndrome many psychotherapists now believe that hypnosis has no value when it comes to recovering lost memories. That is not always the case though - we can 'forget' something whilst in a state of shock, or whilst intoxicated, or under duress, and we can remember when we 'return' to that experience. Hypnosis is the key to the subconscious mind and can help even the most forgetful of people.

Lucy sat down in my office one Monday morning and began to tell me the story of how she had lost a £30,000 winning scratch card! She, her mother, sister and brother in law had pulled up at a garage for some petrol and as usual Lucy bought a scratch card, joking as she handed it to her sister to inspect - "Sharon look, have we won the jackpot?"