Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2014, Vol. 16, No. 2, and Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 3-183
 2014 Heart-Centered Therapies Association
Applications of
Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy:
A Compilation of Brief Monographs
Diane Zimberoff and David Hartman*
Abstract: Hypnosis and hypnotherapy provide a plethora of applications that
are well-researched and evidence-based. In the brief summaries included in
this anthology, the emphasis is on piquing the interest of the general public
rather than focusing on that research base. The material is divided into two
sections: one is quick suggestions regarding the many ways hypnosis and
hypnotherapy can be utilized by a general practitioner hypnotherapist; the
second focuses on practice building ideas for the hypnotherapist.
Table of Contents
Hypnotherapy Applications
What Is the Difference Between Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy?
How Does Hypnosis Work?
Does Hypnotherapy Work?
Hypnotherapy and Relationships
Five Ways to Treat Depression with Hypnotherapy
How Can Hypnotherapy Support Pregnancy and Fertility?
How Does Hypnotherapy Work in Treating Suicidal Patients
Hypnotherapy and Mind-Body-Spirit Healing
Hypnotherapy Applications: Complex Trauma and Complex PTSD
Treating Anxiety and Stress with Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy Can Help Women Prevent Cancer and Treat Menopausal Symptoms
Hypnotherapy for Pregnancy: Can it be Applied Effectively?
Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy in the Treatment of Chronic Migraines
Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy for Cancer Patients: Great Need and Wide Acceptance
Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy Can Reduce Dementia
PTSD Related Insomnia and Treatment With Hypnotherapy
Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy as a Way to Triumph Over Arthritis
Hypnotherapy with Hospice Care and/or Dying Clients
Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy for Spinal Cord Injury Pain Management
Hypnotherapy with a Suicidal Eating-Disordered Client
Healing Resistance to Life through Hypnotherapy
How Hypnotherapy Can Treat Fear of Commitment
Use Hypnosis to Double Your Fertility Rate
Hypnotherapy with Authority Issues in our Relationships
Highway Hypnosis: Applications in Hypnotherapy
Alert Hypnosis
Patterns That Effect Our Life – Knitting A Sweater
Discovering Authority Issues with Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy Enhances Sports Performance
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* The Wellness Institute, 3716 - 274th Ave SE, Issaquah, WA 98029
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What Are You Prepared to Lose?
Treating Exhausted Stress Response with Hypnotherapy
Five Principles of Existential Hypnotherapy
How Does Hypnotherapy Enhance Jungian Psychology?
What Is Intimacy And How Can I Achieve It?
Hypnotherapy Can Reveal Your Past Lives
Assumptions and How They Negatively Affect our Relationships
Treating PTSD with Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss: How is it Different than Hypnosis?
Containment Equals Energy Management
Hypnotherapy Can Help Caregivers of Special Needs Family Members
Heart-Centered Personal Transformation
How Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy Reveals Shadow Parts
Hypnosis and the Science of Visualization
Hypnosis for Tourette Syndrome in Children and Teens
Hypnosis in Dermatology: Warts, Psoriasis, Herpes Simplex
Hypnosis Prevents Weakened Immune Status
Resourcing and Reparenting
How Hypnotherapy Can Stop Thumb Sucking in Children in 20 Minutes
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For Therapists: Hypnotherapy Best Practices
Healing Trauma Without Re-Traumatizing
Ask the Right Questions to Find the Best Training Program for You
How to Obtain Hypnotherapy Certification
Hypnotherapy Training In Only Six Days? Frequently Asked Questions
Five Ways Hypnotherapy Certification Will Benefit Your Practice
How to Get More Hypnotherapy Referrals From Other Professionals
How to Retain Your Hypnotherapy Clients
How to Attract New Hypnotherapy Referrals From Existing Clientele
Why Are So Many Therapists Attracted to Hypnotherapy?
What To Do When a Client Falls Asleep in Hypnotherapy
Are You Feeling Bored, Frustrated, Unable to Really Help Clients?
The Art of Clean Language in Hypnotherapy
15 ways Hypnotherapy Can Expand the Scope of Your Practice
Why Hypnotherapy Is the Missing Link to Powerful Treatment
What is Your Grand Bargain that Allows Spring to Replace Winter?
On a Personal Note: Nelson Mandela’s Passing
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What Is the Difference Between Hypnosis
and Hypnotherapy?
There are many different courses that call themselves
“hypnotherapy certification programs” but are not truly that.
There is a big difference between “hypnosis certification” and
“hypnotherapy certification.” Sometimes the difference between
the two terms is blurred by schools in order to enroll unqualified
people.
Hypnosis is the process of getting a person relaxed and
giving them suggestions that may or may not help them to get
their desired results. They may stop smoking or lose weight or
decrease their anxiety. However, these hypnotically suggested
changes are often temporary, and this is one of the reasons that
both hypnosis and hypnotherapy have gotten the reputation of
not having long lasting results. These terms have been used
interchangeably and they are two very different concepts.
What is Hypnosis?
A professional therapist can easily learn to put someone into
hypnosis, but then the question becomes, “what do I do now?”
Let’s take treating addictions. Most treatment facilities have a
very low success rate. This is because they are treating a very
complex issue with band-aids. They are treating addictions by
only reaching the conscious mind, which comprises 10% of the
individual’s total being. When we put someone into “a state of
hypnosis” we now have the potential of going into the other 90%
of the mind, the subconscious, to discover and treat the
underlying addictive pattern. Just putting the person in the state
of hypnosis and giving suggestions, however, does not resolve
the deeper issues. It is more like a tourniquet than a band-aid, but
it still only stops the bleeding for a short period of time.
Hypnotherapy Certification: The Clinical Difference
Learning and getting certified in hypnotherapy gives you the
skills to discover quite easily what the source of the addictive
behavior is. Then, using the full 100% of the mind, you learn
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how to resolve the issues which have led to this destructive and
often deadly behavior. Hypnotherapy training and certification
can help you free the client from toxic behaviors. Hypnotherapy
will lead people toward healing the unresolved issues that have
been hounding them their whole lives. We have learned to
uproot the causes which have been feeding this hungry tiger
within. Most people during childhood are faced with unpleasant
situations and then draw subconscious conclusions about
themselves from this very childish mind. We also make
decisions about how to behave which seem good at the time, but
now are defeating us. These childhood decisions are so deeply
hidden that only through the depth of hypnotherapy, not
hypnosis, can they be discovered and treated.
A hypnotist (not a hypnotherapist) will mainly use relaxation
and hypnotic suggestions to address the behavior. The hypnotist
may ask the person to associate a nasty, disgusting substance
with the food or drug they are addicted to. This may work for a
few days or weeks. However, if the compulsive eater, say,
encounters a situation where someone they love deeply threatens
to leave, they are immediately back to consuming their addictive
substance of choice. The pattern itself of using substances (food,
drugs, etc.) to medicate unpleasant feelings has not been changed
or healed.
With hypnotherapy, you can regress the client to childhood,
discover these patterns and change them deep within the
unconscious mind. The new affirmations and suggestions will
stick for more than just a few days. This is a fundamental reason
why the mental health professional must discern the difference
between hypnotherapy certification and hypnosis certification.
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How Does Hypnosis Work?
Hypnosis is a simple shifting back and forth between the
conscious and the subconscious mind. Studies show that all
humans experience this between 80-90% of the day.
The Conscious Mind
Let us understand what the functions of the conscious mind
are. When we are in the daily activities of thinking, debating,
analyzing, doing mathematics, figuring things out or trying to
remember, we are using the conscious mind. These, of course,
are very important activities and we need our conscious mind in
order to process our everyday activities. The surprising part of
this, however, is that the daily activities and requirements of the
conscious mind only comprise about 10% of the total capacity of
the mind. The other 90% of our mind is taken up by the
subconscious. The subconscious controls all the activities which
the conscious mind is largely unaware of.
In fact, a very good analogy for these two parts of our mind
would be a computer and its memory system. All the
programming in the subconscious part of the mind is akin to the
files we store in our computer. So for example, the conscious
mind can remember certain experiences, but only up to a certain
point. When we ask a group of people how far back in their life
can they remember, there is a wide range of answers. Most
cannot remember younger than being 5 or 6 years old. And many
people say, jokingly, things like, “My memory is not as good as
it used to be and I can hardly remember what happened last
week.” So the conscious mind is like our e-mail. It contains the
current information, but is very limited in access to the archive.
Hypnosis and the Subconscious Mind
With hypnosis, the subconscious mind can actually search
(similar to a search engine like Google) the memory files as far
back as required in order for the individual to see patterns that
have developed that they may be looking to change. Each
unhealthy current behavior, such as smoking, losing one’s
temper, excessive alcohol consumption, or compulsive
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overeating has a chain of events that laid the foundation for all of
our current unhealthy choices. Through the “memory chip” that
has been laid down in the subconscious mind, we can trace back
the experiences and subconscious decisions we made as children
that may be leading us to the behavior that is no longer healthy
for us. An example might be a husband who flies off the handle
whenever his wife or children question his authority. He would
prefer to have a more gentle approach to his family discussions,
but he can’t seem to stop his triggered response of anger.
With the help of a certified hypnotherapist, our client can
join us on the internal search through the stored files of the
subconscious mind. Perhaps he discovers that as a child one of
his caregivers was very explosive, which terrified him. We often
make life decisions from these young experiences that continue
to be operating until they are discovered and changed. As a
young child he may have made the decision that, “power is scary
and I must puff up and get bigger in order to keep myself safe.”
This decision has been stored deeply in his subconscious
mind and surfaces whenever his power or authority as a father,
boss or husband is threatened. Now that he has, through
hypnosis, access to the childhood computer program that was
installed, only he can change it. With the help of a certified
hypnotherapist our client can discover what the destructive
subconscious programs are, where they are stored, and how to
effectively change them. When the unhealthy programming is
changed on this level, the computer can easily be reprogrammed
with much more mature and effective responses. This is the
beauty of hypnosis and its use in hypnotherapy!
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Does Hypnotherapy Work?
You may be wondering, what conditions/issues does
hypnotherapy work for and will hypnotherapy prove to be the
most effective treatment method available?
The answer to the question, does hypnotherapy work, is
largely dependent on:
1. The professional who is facilitating the hypnotherapy
session
2. The individual who is receiving therapy treatments
Obviously, there are a wide range of people who advertise as
hypnotherapists. It is preferable to choose a hypnotherapist who:
1. Is a licensed clinician with a Masters degree in Social
Work, Marriage & Family Therapy, or a related
professional field
2. Is certified in hypnotherapy from a well-recognized
hypnotherapy training program
3. Continues to update his/her own hypnotherapy training
to keep current with new techniques
4. Has personally undergone extensive hypnotherapy to
understand the client perspective
5. Makes the client feel comfortable and secure
In order to answer the question does hypnotherapy work, we
must also recognize that there are important requirements for the
client as well. The client should:
1. Have a positive view of hypnotherapy, or at least be
open to the idea that it can help them
2. Be willing to look honestly and deeply at what the root
cause of their problem is
3. Be clear that hypnotherapy, while being a very powerful
healing modality,
 Is not “magic”
 Is not a parlor game for fun and entertainment
 Is not accomplished in one session
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What Problems Can Hypnotherapy Help Treat?
The exciting aspect of hypnotherapy is that it has and can be
used to treat a wide variety of human illnesses, diseases,
addictions, diagnoses and complaints.
It can also be used for motivation and to help people achieve
personal growth and success in their lives. In fact, what
hypnotherapy can truly work for depends upon the skills of the
certified hypnotherapist, their creativity and their willingness to
receive the most progressive training in the field. Any client that
comes into the office of a skilled hypnotherapist may come in
wanting to address one specific aspect of their life, for example
weight loss. Upon working with them, however, the
hypnotherapist may also learn that this person has a bad temper
and would like to become a more positive, loving spouse or
parent. After some time other issues may be addressed such as
considering a new profession, wanting to increase their income,
or time management.
The beauty of hypnotherapy is that it works effectively for
all of these issues and more. Once clients realize the power of
hypnotherapy as a treatment option as well as a way to improve
their life, they begin to refer other friends and family members
for sessions. Hypnotherapy benefits the clients as well as the
hypnotherapist. There is no limit to what can be treated or
improved, and there is no limit as to how many new clients the
practicing hypnotherapist will receive just through word of
mouth.
Nurturing Creativity Through Hypnotherapy
One of the most exciting areas that hypnotherapy works for
is greatly expanding the individual’s creativity. The creativity
center is located in the subconscious mind. For example, some
clients who begin hypnotherapy may come into the office stating
that they have recently picked up their old ballet shoes and
begun dancing again, or are newly invested in their relationships.
Many clients bring in amazing poetry that they have written or a
beautiful drawing or painting as a result of their hypnotherapy
sessions. Once the subconscious mind begins to open, the client
has access to a wide variety of gifts and talents that may have
been previously unexplored.
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This gift of recovering their own creativity also brings in
new ideas into their lives. They may now have ideas of ways to
expand their business, develop new programs to teach or new
marketing ideas. The resource of the subconscious mind with its
deep well of creativity is unlimited and is why hypnotherapy has
grown into one of the most powerful healing methods, and
effective tools for personal growth and expansion. Its resources
are unlimited!
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Hypnotherapy and Relationships
Traditional Marriage and Family Therapy trains counselors
to always see the couple together, never individually. The reason
for this is to prevent the counselor from “taking sides” with one
or the other. The problem, however, is that often in marital
therapy, the individuals do not tell the real truth in the presence
of their partner. The next and even deeper flaw in this traditional
method is that it involves only engaging the conscious mind
(10%) of each individual.
Applying Hypnotherapy to Relationships
With hypnotherapy, we engage the full 100% of the mind, in
order to bring to conscious awareness the deeper source of the
difficulty in the relationship. This is best understood by offering
an example. In hypnotherapy we begin by speaking individually
with each person to gain their trust and hear their truth. While
this takes place, the other is filling out a relationship inventory.
Then we switch so that the other gets their individual time with
the therapist.
We then meet with the couple together and discuss the
benefits of hypnotherapy and the plan for treatment. We suggest
that they each come in for 3 to 5 individual hypnotherapy
sessions. These individual sessions allow the clients and
hypnotherapist to build rapport, but more importantly, to get
down to the core of the relationship difficulties. It allows the
clients as well as the therapist to have all the facts and an overall
perspective, rather than just two narrow personal viewpoints.
The Benefits of Hypnotherapy for Relationships
Many people are in adult bodies and look like adults, but
when they get “emotionally triggered” they automatically regress
to a child state of mind. For example, a man comes home from
work and finds his wife not at home to fix his dinner. He panics
and then immediately turns that fear into anger. Or a wife is
fixing dinner and her husband doesn’t arrive home at the agreed
upon time. For each, this may be what we call, “a triggering
situation,” meaning that they have a strong physiological
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reaction in their body to the event. They may feel breathing
increase, indicating anxiety, fear and panic. Their heart may
begin to pound and then the mind races through all the fearful
scenarios. “He/she is having an affair” or “He/she was in an
accident, may be in a hospital.”
The woman may begin to cry and start making frantic phone
calls. The man, having been trained by our culture not to cry,
may become rage-filled. His racing mind certainly increases his
angry reactions, judgments and conclusions.
In hypnotherapy, we acknowledge the physiological
responses and then use this information new information to do an
age regression back to what memory has been triggered to cause
the intense physiological response. The woman in our example,
when regressed in hypnotherapy to the source of her fearful
reaction, may go back to age six, when perhaps her father had
been drinking and didn’t return home for dinner or perhaps for
the whole night! She feels her mother’s distress and feels
helpless to comfort her mother. So here we have an adult, the
woman who came into our office for marital therapy, regressing
to a six-year-old time in her life, who was abandoned by an
alcoholic father. Conversely, the husband’s regression on his
reaction when his wife is not home may immediately take him to
his childhood when his mother may have been having affairs,
perhaps drinking or otherwise not available for the children.
This is why hypnotherapy is truly a mind and body therapy,
since all the reactions, emotional and physical, are used to
determine what this strong reaction that is out of proportion to
the situation may be about. This is especially important if similar
scenarios have played repeatedly in the relationship.
Hypnotherapy helps us to see that we humans have a huge
memory bank stored in the unconscious parts of our mind, and
allows us to take a current situation in our lives and to use it in a
memory search to discover how old the child part of us is that
continually reacts to triggering events.
Resolving Relationship Conflict with Hypnotherapy
Very often during a marital conflict, both parties literally
regress back to an emotional state indicative of a younger part of
themselves. If we discover that our clients (or we ourselves) are
regressing back to a similar experience, it indicates that the
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childhood conflict was never resolved. Or that the child’s
emotional needs never were addressed.
During that younger time we made conclusions and
decisions that have remained stored in our unconscious minds,
just like the memory chips of our computers! An example may
be for the woman, “I am unlovable. It’s my fault that daddy left.”
And the behavior pattern that developed from this self-belief
may be “I am responsible to keep everyone safe. I have to know
where everyone is at all times.” This unconscious programming
pops up whenever a situation occurs that is similar enough to the
original traumatic prototype experience.
The good news is that with hypnotherapy, we can use the
emotional reaction of the husband or wife to do an internal
search and discover why this couple seems to replay these scenes
over and over in their marriage. And why couples often go from
therapist to therapist searching for answers but nothing seems to
permanently change the relationship or the intense reactions.
The major false belief that traditional relationship therapists
have perpetuated is that consciously understanding the problem
will change it. This is as false as believing that you can call an
electrician to fix your car or your computer. The electrician does
not have the tools or the skills to fix your car. And likewise, the
conscious mind does not have the knowledge or ability to change
the unconscious mind.
Advanced Hypnotherapy for Relationships
In several individual sessions with each partner, the certified
hypnotherapist can easily discover the ages of the “children”
who are fighting with each other. We can then change the deep
underlying self-beliefs and grow these immature parts up to
match the adult bodies in which they reside.
We can then bring this couple back into our office as adults
so that they can de-role their partner from being whoever it was
in their childhood who did not provide the healthy nurturing they
needed. In other words, each partner can recognize they have
been reacting to someone from their past, not the actual person in
their life today. It is immensely healing to say, and to hear, “I
know you are not my drunken father who didn’t come home.
You are my husband.” Likewise “I know you are not my mother
who was not available for us children. You are my wife.”
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Once the preliminary hypnotherapy is completed, we can use
the advanced hypnotherapy technique of regressing the couple
together so that they develop a more profound awareness of the
pain or fear that lies underneath their spouse’s reactions, and find
compassion and tolerance for each other. When the physiological
reactions are reduced and they can each remain in their adult
state of mind, even if their partner is late without calling, the
marital therapy is successfully completed.
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Five Ways to Treat Depression with
Hypnotherapy
Depression is often a reaction to a distressing or traumatic
event. The people and situations who are associated with the
traumatic event in our lives are referred to as traumatic triggers.
An example is someone reporting, “I never was depressed
before my father (mother, child, spouse, best friend) died.” After
a loved one passes on, the individual often has to deal with their
belongings including their home, or now has to take on their
responsibilities. Any of these can become traumatic triggers. If
the person or family member who has lost the loved one does not
have time to fully grieve the loss, and to process unfinished
feelings about the person, depression may set in almost
immediately. Other traumatic triggers include losing a job,
divorce, or financial reversals such as bankruptcy or home
foreclosure.
The Signs and Symptoms of Depression
The following are some of the typical signs of depression
that may take over slowly like a fog rolling in on what was
previously a sunny day and now is becoming darker with each
minute.
 Symptom #1 – “Now, I can’t get out of bed in the
morning. I just don’t have the same interest in things that
I used to.”
 Symptom #2 – “I have body pains and I’m worried that I
may have (fibromyalgia, cancer, arthritis, diabetes,
etc.).”
 Symptom #3 – “I can’t seem to stop overeating and I
gained 40 pounds.” Or “I have gone back to drinking,
smoking cigarettes or pot, etc.”
 Symptom #4 – “I’m having trouble sleeping at night and
I’m exhausted.”
 Symptom #5 – “I cry at the drop of a pin, but mostly I
feel numb.”
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Often these symptoms will be treated with drugs prescribed
by a doctor. Anti-depressants, sleep medication, and perhaps a
diet or stop smoking program will be prescribed. These treatment
methods, of course, are aimed at symptom relief but don’t get
down to treating the underlying cause of the depression. If the
depressed person goes to a counselor, they will talk about the
feelings which may help for a while. Other therapists may try
relaxation techniques combined with positive affirmations. There
is a basic reason why these common responses to depression
don’t really work: they do not address or resolve the deeper
underlying causes of depression.
How Does Clinical Hypnotherapy Treat Depression?
1. First, we drop down from the conscious mind, which is
only 10% of the mind into the subconscious mind. Now
we are addressing the whole person, 100% of the mind
rather than just treating the symptoms.
2. People often have what Dr. Fritz Perls called “unfinished
business” with whatever has been lost, be it a loved one,
a job, or a home. These unresolved feelings, such as
resentments, regrets, blame, anger, guilt, jealousy, and
fear are stored in the body and must be released as soon
after the triggering event as possible. Otherwise they
become deeply buried beneath the numbness created by
the anti-depressant drugs, the addictive behavior, and the
concurrent repression that occurs when trauma and grief
go untreated. Clinical hypnotherapy works for
depression because it removes the underlying basis of
depression and completes the unfinished business that
otherwise continues to recycle as self-sabotaging
thoughts and behaviors.
3. With hypnotherapy, we can go down to the deepest level
of these traumatic experiences, memories and stored
emotions to release them from the mind and body. When
this hypnotherapy process is completed, the client
reports that their depression has lifted, that they have
stopped the compulsive thoughts or behavior, and that
they are ready to resume living their lives again.
4. With each healing session of clinical hypnotherapy, we
can replace the fearful repetitive thoughts that often
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haunt people following a traumatic experience. Positive
affirmations now work because the underlying emotional
release has been accomplished.
5. Hypnotherapy provides an effective way to access the
individual’s ability to affect the physical body. Once
self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors have been
resolved, the individual can begin to use hypnotic
suggestibility to improve the body’s functioning.
Hypnotherapy can be very helpful in correcting patterns
of restless sleep, low energy or libido, headaches or
chronic pain. And one can use hypnotherapy to increase
motivation to exercise and eat properly.
Consistent research and methodology refinement has
allowed hypnotherapy to progress as an advanced form of
therapy to the point where clinical hypnotherapy is now
regularly considered as a treatment option for depression.
Working in tandem with a group of powerful psychotherapy
techniques, hypnotherapy can be a highly successful form of
treatment for individuals with depression.
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How Can Hypnotherapy Support
Pregnancy and Fertility?
Desperate couples spend tens of thousands of dollars trying
to get pregnant, many to no avail. We have successfully treated
young couples with hypnotherapy, who now profusely thank us
for helping them to conceive their beautiful babies.
Hypnotherapy Works Miracles for Infertility Treatment
First of all, let’s look at what may be blocking some couples
from conceiving. Once tests are completed and found that there
is no medical issue in the way of conception, we then begin the
hypnotherapy to bring to awareness the emotional/psychological
issues that may be at the root of this problem. Each of us holds
hundreds of beliefs and subconscious conclusions about
ourselves that were framed by very early experiences in our
lives. When we experienced abusive or traumatic events in our
childhoods, these conclusions were drawn without the benefit of
our as-yet undeveloped adult understanding of the world.
Hypnotherapy is a process of self-discovery, uncovering the
deeper beliefs and decisions we made as small children without
the benefit of an adult consciousness.
The rational ten percent of our brain does not have the
awareness necessary to change this child-mind thinking, because
these experiences are held within the ninety percent of our mind
that makes up the subconscious.
A common example of this is a young woman who may have
been sexually abused, or even raped, as a young child by a male,
perhaps even by a close family member. This experience is very
distressing for a young girl and often causes symptoms of PTSD.
She may have nightmares, flashbacks and a myriad of fears and
phobias that develop in her life from this experience. Children
consistently draw conclusions about themselves and make
decisions about how to stay safe during these times of distress in
their young lives. They draw many generalizations which the
subconscious mind clings to as truth.
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One of the common beliefs we have uncovered through
using clinical hypnotherapy with women who have been
traumatized by men is that, “All men are abusers.” This belief is
especially strong in women who were abused by their fathers,
step-fathers, brothers or uncles. Since children commonly go into
a state of dissociation and shock during traumatic events, this
often creates a situation in which they do not remember what
happened to them. Dissociation is a protective mechanism which
helps children cope with abusive experiences so that they don’t
go crazy; it can actually appear as if nothing happened.
If a child abuse victim was also not protected by her mother
or any other adults in the family, she may develop the belief
system that tells her, “I am just like my mother and am unable to
protect my own children.” She may have drawn the conclusion
that she might even harm her own children. This could lead to a
subconscious decision, “I should never have children.” Or, “I
should never be a mother.” Thus, “I will never get pregnant”
may be a deep unconscious decision still affecting her even in
her adult life. This belief, then, sends a signal to her female parts
to stop ovulation or in some other way prevent any pregnancies.
Fertility, Pregnancy, and the Mind-Body Relationship
The amazing thing that we have observed in over 35 years
and thousands of hypnotherapy sessions is that the mind and the
body do work together to carry out the messages of the
subconscious mind. We have observed this phenomenon and
now there is clear medical research to support the assertion that a
woman’s body reacts to her deep subconscious beliefs in a
similar way to what we commonly call “the placebo effect.” The
research is clear that when a control group is given a “sugar pill”
and told it is an anti-depressant. Many in that group have the
same diminishing of depression as the group that is actually
given the anti-depressant. So the placebo effect consistently
reinforces what we as clinical hypnotherapists have observed for
decades. The mind and body are intrinsically connected and
work together to follow the directions of the belief systems that
we hold.
So when we apply this phenomenon to the infertile couple
through hypnotherapy, we can get down into the subconscious
mind and discover what experiences may be held there and what
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conclusions and decisions may be preventing her from
conceiving.
These unwanted and unconscious conclusions can now be
taken out of the hands of the young child who made them and
brought to the adult to reframe into conclusions and decisions
that support the adult to have her desires fulfilled.
Hypnotherapy Can Influence Conception and Pregnancy
The blocks to conception do not have to be as severe as
sexual abuse. This is only one example of what may be blocking
a couple from conceiving. Couples need to also understand that,
whatever may be uncovered in the sessions, it does not mean it is
the woman’s fault. We are not looking to blame or point fingers
at either the man or the woman. A man’s subconscious beliefs
can also affect his sperm count and it is a good idea for both
partners to use hypnotherapy to get down to whatever may be
blocking conception.
The skilled, certified hypnotherapist has the tools to work
with the couple in order for them to clear what is blocking their
baby from entering the world. We at The Wellness Institute have
many parents, grandparents and family members who send
pictures of their babies and consistently thank our
hypnotherapists for discovering a much less expensive and much
less invasive method of treating infertility than going through
traditional infertility treatment.
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How Does Hypnotherapy Work in
Treating Suicidal Patients
At The Wellness Institute, we have worked with thousands
of people with suicidal ideation. Often these clients are just
labeled depressed by family doctors and sent on their way with
the latest anti-depressant. Traditional therapists may spend hours
upon insurance-billable hours using CBT (cognitive behavioral
therapy), attempting to cognitively teach the client to “manage”
their symptoms of depression. Too often this is what we call
“band-aid therapy,” like putting a band-aid on a survivor of a
major car crash.
Applying Hypnotherapy to Depression and Suicidal Ideation
With Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy we begin treating the
depression by identifying the symptoms and feelings, and then
proceeding to where and when it began. Seeking the origin of the
depression may lead us back to a recent devastating loss, failure,
or rejection. However, ultimately the real source of the
depression is often found in pre- and prenatal experiences. And
what is most often discovered in this amazing journey of
personal transformation is that somewhere down the road are
several hidden beliefs/ conclusions about oneself and decisions
about how to behave as a result of these self-sabotaging
conclusions. For example, a client we will call Penny has been
bulimic for most of her life, not allowing herself to receive
nourishment. She then became very desperate with her inability
to stop the bulimic behavior.
Penny found herself caught in the trap of the “Victim
Triangle” with her food addiction. She always felt like a victim
by not being able to control what she ate, then she would try to
rescue herself by attempting to over-control her eating addiction
behavior. When that didn’t work she would persecute herself
with all the judgments and negative self-talk about what an
inadequate loser she was. And then she would subsequently push
herself right into the victim role again. Penny was not
consciously aware that by persecuting herself with negative self-
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hypnotic suggestions, by regurgitating the nourishment from the
food she was eating and then by diving deep into her depression,
she was attempting to kill herself.
Using Hypnotherapy to Identify Past Trauma
As she attended many traditional treatment programs for
eating disorders which never worked, she began to fall into
deeper and deeper depressions. This ultimately led to several
serious attempts of suicide by cutting her own wrists. When she
finally found her way to a trained and certified hypnotherapist,
she had given up any hope of ever healing. The first regression
lead her to age five where she had intense body memories of a
man forcing his penis down her throat and she felt like she was
choking to death. Then she was gagging to the point of needing
to throw up in order to get rid of the slimy disgusting stuff that
was stuck in her throat. Then the next thing that came to her was
that she was in the kitchen where her abuser proceeded to give
her cookies and other sweets to soothe and make her feel better.
These sweets were always around since her father owned a
bakery and each night he would bring home the sweets that
hadn’t been purchased. She was taught to self-soothe anxiety,
fear and panic with cookies, pastries and cupcakes.
In several subsequent sessions, Penny visited different places
of anxiety connected with food. Her father being an alcoholic
and a control freak made the dining room table a place of
horrendous fear and panic for his wife and their six children. He
always inspected their nails, clothes and hair like he had done
when he was in the Marines. He demanded that they fill their
plates with food and sit there until it was all eaten. He
continually reminded them of all the suffering children on the
planet, how he had fought overseas so that he could feed them
this food and what ungrateful little wretches they were. He
would yell at one or two of the children each meal time for
obscure offenses that they had supposedly committed. One night
he turned over the whole table and all the plates, silver and
glasses went crashing onto the floor. Utter chaos ensued just as it
had so many other times at the family table. One night he picked
up a very hot beef roast and threw it at their mother, who began
screaming in pain, humiliation, terror and rage. He felt the roast
was not rare enough for his liking. The children, of course,
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always had to clean up the messes, pick up everything from the
floor and wash the dishes, floors and walls. When the dishes
were done, he would come in to inspect them. If even one spoon
had a smidgen of food on it, he would make them pull down all
the dishes, pots and pans and glasses and rewash everything all
over again. Then of course they had to do their homework. By
then the children were so exhausted, nervous, and anxious they
could barely concentrate on their homework assignments. It was
at this time when she had made a decision to die.
Achieving Healing Results
There were many regressions of our bulimic, self destructive
client where she used the energy release bat to get out her fear
and rage. She began to feel her depression lifting and discovered
what it felt like to be relaxed, peaceful and even joyful. We did,
however, have one more hypnotic regression to do. She said that
whenever she met new people or came into a new situation, she
always felt inadequate, unacceptable and extremely selfconscious. She would be so anxious that she wanted to run out of
the room, but she knew she had to make herself stay. So in the
next session, instead of focusing on the specific eating disorder
symptoms, we focused on her experience of not being accepted
for who she was every time she entered a new situation.
In the regression, she discovered herself in her mother’s
womb. At first it was dark and pleasant and quiet. Then she
began to look upset. We asked her what was happening and she
replied, “I’m a girl. My father definitely wants a boy. I’m not
right for him. He will never be able to really love me.” She soon
began to realize that as she was being born and her gender was
announced by the doctor, “It’s a girl,” her mother also felt very
disappointed. Our client could feel that her parents were both
expecting and wanting a boy, since they already had four girls.
Her early conclusion about herself was, “I’m a mistake.” “I’m
unwanted.” “I’ll never be what they want.” Her decision was, “I
shouldn’t exist.”
This combination of traumatic experiences, is the perfect
recipe for an eating disorder which can become deadly. The
original rejection of the child for her gender, oral sexual abuse
forced on this same small girl followed by attempts to soothe her
with cookies, and all this amidst almost continuous gut-
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wrenching anxiety-filled abusive meals: these are the perfect
ingredients to form an alcoholic, food-binging eating disordered
woman with suicide attempts.
Penny resolved her eating disorder, her anxiety, and her
suicidal depression all at the same time, because they were all
symptoms caused by the same source traumas. In this instance,
hypnotherapy was directly applied to treat a complex web of
symptoms that, to the patient, seemingly had no end.
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Hypnotherapy and
Mind-Body-Spirit Healing
Many schools of psychology and even hypnotherapy do not
understand how to integrate the mind, the body, and the spirit
with the clinical treatment of clients using hypnotherapy. In a
Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy model, people often discover
emotions that they never knew they had or that they did not have
an ability to express. Using hypnotherapy, we can teach the
client to identify their emotions and then to put the appropriate
label on these feelings. The most effective way for clients to
have absolutely certain that an emotion is in fact present, is to
bring their awareness down into their body and notice what is
happening.
Many try to simply “think about” what they are feeling. The
problem with this attitude is that these feelings are not located in
their head, nor are they located in the conscious mind. These
emotions are located in the subconscious part of the mind and
physically in the body. Hypnotherapy is most effective for mindbody work because every emotion that we experience has a
corresponding reaction in the body.
Hypnotherapy Can Address the Mind/Body Relationship
For example, when you begin to feel sadness, your eyes may
start to tear up; you may have a slight pressure in the center of
your chest, the heart center. The heart center is not your physical
heart; it is your emotional heart. When you experience joy, you
may feel like laughing or smiling (a physical reaction) and you
may feel a warm feeling in your chest. Some people experience
anger in their chest with a pounding sensation, rapid breathing
and tightness, perhaps in the stomach. Fear often expresses as
tightness or burning in the stomach or chest. Shame or
embarrassment usually causes the person to put their hand over
their eyes or cover their face.
The body never lies and is the most consistent reporter of our
current emotional status at any given time. In Heart-Centered
Hypnotherapy, we always ask the client to bring their awareness
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into their body to find the place where the feeling or emotion is
located. Then we use the Gestalt Therapy approach taught by Dr.
Fritz Perls of “giving that part of the body a voice” and letting it
express to us our deeper emotions of which we are usually
unaware.
Many people hold their emotions inside their bodies, which
is what some of us were taught to do as children. When this
holding-in of powerful emotions has become a lifelong pattern, it
can certainly lead to disease and chronic pain or illness. With the
Heart-Centered types of therapies, the stressed person can learn
to identify and release these powerful emotions in a healthy way
so that the internalized stress does not lead them to a fatal illness
such as cancer or heart attacks.
When a client is in a hypnotherapy session, they have much
more direct access to their emotions because they are in the
subconscious mind. The client in the trance state is much more
aware of their body and can be easily directed to notice and
express in a healthy way, the feelings that have been stored
within the body. This release of emotions is like opening or
loosening the valve of a pressure cooker. The steam can slowly
be released without exploding. This is how hypnotherapy heals
the mind and the body, through the information revealed,
expressed and released from the client’s energy field. This is also
the reason why hypnotherapy can be so successfully used by
psychologists, clinical social workers, licensed professional
counselors, and school counselors as well as by doctors in the
field of integrative medicine.
Hypnotherapy and the Spirit
Now how does spirit fit in? While the person is in the
hypnotherapeutic trance state, clients often experience warmth or
a light sensation near the end of their session. This phenomenon
occurs with such frequency during the hypnotherapy experience
that we have not been able to ignore it. We have learned after
more than forty years of experience that many people are longing
for some type of spiritual connection. This connection is
available through the hypnotherapy process and can be used to
help the client reclaim what may have been missing in their lives
since they were children: the deepest and highest parts of
themselves.
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Complex Trauma and Complex PTSD
It has become clear in recent years that there are degrees of
wounding in traumatization, some being more pervasive and
complicated than others. One attempt to distinguish between
them is the distinction between trauma and complex trauma, or
PTSD and Complex PTSD. Complex trauma refers to trauma
experienced as overwhelmingly intolerable, that occurs
repeatedly and cumulatively, usually over a period of time and
within specific intimate relationships which violate the human
bond and sever the vital human connection.[1] The victim of
complex traumatization is entrapped and conditioned by the
perpetrator whom the victim relies on for safety and protection.
In families, it is exemplified by domestic violence and child
abuse and in other situations by war, prisoner of war or refugee
status, and human trafficking. Complex trauma also refers to
situations such as acute/chronic illness that requires intensive
medical intervention or a single traumatic event that is
calamitous.
Understanding Complex Trauma and Complex PTSD
Unresolved complex trauma results in Complex
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Complex PTSD), which produces
apparently contradictory symptoms.
When children and adults are traumatized beyond their
breaking point, they retreat inwardly to call on unconscious
resources. The child tried fight or flight and it didn’t work (the
abuse got worse), so he had to stop responding with that
behavior. But his body’s nervous system didn’t stop reacting
with sympathetic activation, and this energy just built up because
it was unsafe to express it. So he had to find a way to override
the body’s natural response to stress, and to tolerate the growing
accumulation of undischarged energy.
The mind dissociates from paying attention to what is
intolerable; the body dissociates as well, through compensating
activation, which we call shock. This is the central distinction
between trauma and complex trauma, between PTSD and
complex PTSD. This is the clinical definition of Complex
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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: exposure to sustained, repeated or
multiple traumas, particularly in childhood, resulting in a
complex symptom presentation that includes not only
posttraumatic stress symptoms, but also other symptoms
reflecting disturbances predominantly in affective and
interpersonal self-regulatory capacities such as difficulties with
anxious arousal, anger management, dissociative symptoms, and
aggressive or socially avoidant behaviors.[2]
The Individual Split
These other symptoms are really defenses which formed
early on and were effective at surviving the ongoing trauma by
allowing body and mind to dissociate. In a sense, the person is
now accompanied by a powerful companion, a protective
bodyguard for the traumatized and overwhelmed person to hide
behind. Creating this bodyguard comes at a steep price, however;
the person must turn over to the bodyguard, the set of defensive
behaviors, the moment-to-moment decision-making about when
and how to protect him/her. So the bodyguard might perceive an
imminent threat, whether there is actually one or not, and throw
himself in front of the one he is sworn to protect, suddenly,
without warning or explanation or even rational purpose. That
happens when I begin to experience loneliness and my protector
ushers me into the kitchen to eat three pieces of cake; or when I
experience that my boss is angry at me and my protector forces
me into the nearest hiding place; or when I experience my
spouse getting cozy with someone I consider to be a rival for her
affection and my protector explodes in a jealous rage.
The result is a split in the individual; the bodyguard develops
into a powerful neurotic pathology in the form of addictions,
thought disorders, anxieties, depression, and other selfsabotaging behaviors.
These self-sabotaging behaviors are the psychological
component of the protection, i.e., the adaptation to perceived
threat. And shock is the physiological component, the same
dissociative and defensive pattern embedded in the autonomic
nervous system. The bodyguard (who shares the body’s real
estate with the conscious ego-self) has conscripted the body to its
service and manages to step into control, to take the steering
wheel away from the conscious ego-self, through control of the
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nervous system. The over-eater literally “finds herself eating
desserts” despite the conscious ego-self’s best intentions not to.
The bodyguard has taken control of the part of her that carries
the willpower and ability to make healthy choices by putting it to
sleep (parasympathetic shock) or by distracting it with busyness
(sympathetic shock).
It is important to recognize that the bodyguard is just doing
its job, what it was selected for so long ago and trained to do:
protect me. It is not malevolent, bad, or mean-spirited, any more
than the ocean is when it rises up in a tsunami. It is just doing
instinctually what comes naturally. We showed great courage
and wisdom as children in going out to seek and find a powerful
ally to help us deal with the trauma. Surely now as adults we can
find the courage and wisdom to confront those same powerful
forces (bodyguards) to renegotiate the arrangement.
The way to retrain or recondition the bodyguard is to retake
control of the body’s nervous system. When the bodyguard
cannot usurp the body through sleep or distractions, the
conscious ego-mind is returned to its rightful place at the
steering wheel. And then I can choose to say to the bodyguard,
“Thank you for trying to help me, but right now there is no
threat. So take a break. I’ll take it from here. And that means I
won’t eat cake right now; I’m going to deal with my loneliness
in a different way. Maybe I’ll call a friend.”
Hypnotherapy is a preferred method of working with both
the psychological component and the physiological componentof
Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
[1] Courtois, C. A. (2004). Complex trauma, complex reactions:
Assessment and treatment. Psychotherapy: Theory,
Research, Practice, Training, 41(4), 412-425.
[2] Herman, J. L. (1992). Complex PTSD: A syndrome in
survivors of prolonged and repeated trauma. Journal of
Traumatic Stress, 5, 377–377.
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Treating Anxiety and Stress
with Hypnotherapy
There are three main traditional ways anxiety has been
treated.
1. Medication is usually offered to the anxiety ridden
patient as the first line of treatment. This may work for some
people, but it is more like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound.
You need to keep reapplying the band-aid daily in the hopes that
the wound will eventually get better. And the band-aid may not
be big enough to cover the wound. There will be more bleeding
and maybe an infection will set in and before you know it you
may have to go to the emergency room because adequate
treatment was not given at the beginning.
2. Some people will go to a counselor or take a stress
reduction class, in hopes of getting some relief. This would be
like putting the band-aid to treat the gaping wound on another
part of the body. So let’s say the wound is on your left leg and
then you put the band-aid on the right leg. It obviously will not
stop the bleeding at all.
3. Some people try to ignore it or get used to their
anxiety for many years until the symptoms demand attention.
Perhaps the person is so anxious that he is driving his family
crazy and his wife wants a divorce. Or he begins to self-medicate
his anxiety with alcohol, drugs, sex, food or gambling. Then he
is referred to AA or put on a diet or sent to a marriage counselor.
Again, the symptoms are being treated without going to the
source of the anxiety and the so-called treatment will not solve
the problem at all.
Why Is Hypnotherapy So Effective in Treating Anxiety?
We are addressing the underlying emotions that feed the
anxiety. Effective hypnotherapy can quickly, usually in the first
session, get right down to the source of the client’s anxiety
through age regression work. In the hypnotherapy session, we
always begin with the current situation or triggering event in the
client’s life. So perhaps they describe becoming extremely
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anxious when facing a public speaking engagement or having to
go in front of their professional board for an oral exam, having to
speak to their boss or performing in a sporting event.
1.) We start with the feelings that they experience before the
performance begins. The feelings that feed the anxiety are quite
often fear, panic and shame. Then we ask where are these
feelings located in the body. Perhaps they say in my chest or
stomach. We then have them express these feelings to relieve
some of the stress from their body. This is a main component in
what makes hypnotherapy so effective. The majority of
counselors and therapists have been taught to try to treat the
feelings by talking about them with the client. Talking about
feelings does not release or resolve or relieve them because
emotions are not located in the brain. They are located in the
body.
2.) Now we ask the anxious client to regress back to one of
the first times they had these same or similar feelings of
performance anxiety. Because we have hypnotized the client, we
are actually addressing the subconscious mind and requesting
that it bring to the awareness of the client the missing pieces of
the puzzle of their anxiety. The subconscious mind is a huge
reservoir of information, exactly like the memory chip in your
computer. It stores a vast amount of information about patterns
in your life and it can be accessed easily through hypnotherapy.
3.) We use the exact same situation of the client facing a
performance and then experiencing anxiety, combined with the
feelings of (for example) fear which is described as tightness in
the stomach, and the feeling of panic may be sweating and the
feeling of shame indicated by the person putting their hand over
their eyes or face to hide the blushing. And when the client
regresses to a similar situation it is often in their childhood.
So keeping with our example of performance anxiety,
perhaps the subconscious mind takes our client to age 12 where
he is asked to present something in front of the class at school.
He reports that his teacher begins to yell at him because he did
the wrong assignment. And then the other children start laughing
at him and calling him names. He then may regress even younger
to age five when he wet his pants in kindergarten and his teacher
shamed and embarrassed him in front of the whole class.
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4.) Now in the hypnotherapy session we are able to assist
that five year old boy to create a different experience. He can tell
the teacher that it hurts his feelings when she speaks to him like
that, and tell her to never do that again. Ever! He can recognize
that his best friend in the class is not laughing at him or mocking
him, and he can find comfort in his friend’s loving support.
Incredibly, the relief that the five year old experiences actually
relieves the adult’s anxiety and bolsters his self-confidence.
The beauty of hypnotherapy is that we can follow the bridge
that takes us through the life of the person and right to the
sources of dysfunctional patterns and anxiety.
Hypnotherapy treats the complete mind, body and emotions
as one complete package, and we can do that all at the same
time.
By going down to the source of the anxiety we are rooting it
out. It’s as if you wanted to get the weeds out of your garden and
you did so by cutting the upper part of the weed down to the soil.
Now we all know that by doing that, we have not gotten to the
root of the weed and it will certainly grown back very soon! Find
the roots of the symptoms in a person’s life today and resolve it
once and for all.
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39
Hypnotherapy Can Help Women Prevent
Cancer and Treat Menopausal Symptoms
Hypnosis is a proven effective treatment for menopauserelated hot flashes and night sweats, new research finds. This
alternative therapy reduced hot flashes by as much as 74% in a
study conducted by researchers at Baylor University’s MindBody Medicine Research Laboratory.
Only hormone therapy, which many women can’t take or
want to avoid, is more effective for treating the most common
symptom of menopause, says researcher Gary R. Elkins, PhD.
Hot flashes, which affect about 80% of women, are a sudden
rush of heat, followed by facial flushing and sweating, often
followed by chills and clamminess. The progression is familiar
to most women of peri-menopausal age, although it is unclear
why some women are more affected than others.
Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy Reduce Hot Flash Frequency
In an earlier study, Elkins and his Baylor colleagues showed
that hypnosis dramatically reduced hot flash and night sweat
frequency in breast cancer patients with treatment-related
symptoms.
In the newly published study, they set out to determine if the
alternative treatment would do the same in women whose
symptoms were related to menopause.
The study’s postmenopausal women reported having at least
seven hot flashes a day, or 50 a week. The women in the study
were given self-hypnosis training consisting of five, 45-minute
weekly sessions. During the sessions they received suggestions
for mental imagery designed to minimize the intensity of their
hot flashes, such as images of a cool place. The women were
also given a recording of the hypnotic induction, and they were
asked to practice self-hypnosis at home daily.
The study participants kept “hot flash frequency” diaries,
and they also wore small sensors on their bodies that recorded
their hot flashes.
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After 12 weeks:
 Women in the hypnosis group reported 74% fewer hot
flashes on average, compared with 17% fewer among the
other women.
 The skin sensors showed a 57% reduction in hot flashes
among the hypnosis group, compared to a 10% reduction
in the non-hypnosis group.
 The women treated with hypnosis were far less likely
than the other women to report that their hot flashes
interfered with their daily lives and sleep.
The study was published in the Oct. 26, 2012 issue of the
journal Menopause, and was funded by the National Institutes of
Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative
Medicine.
Hypnotherapy and the Mind-Body Treatment of Women
The use of hypnotherapy in the mind-body treatment of
women is concomitant in helping them to find healing and to
take back control of their bodies. From the earliest age of
beginning menses, many young women feel mystified, usually
because they haven’t been properly informed about what was
happening to them and their bodies. The women who tend to
have debilitating cramps and difficult menstrual cycles, painful
intercourse and long arduous birthing experiences, are often the
very same women who have been shamed about their menstrual
cycles, ridiculed about their developing breasts, treated as sexual
objects and even sexually abused or raped. So it is not surprising
that these are often the same women who, when entering into the
aging process, also find that to be just as painful, humiliating and
out of their control. Hypnotherapy, then, is the key to giving
them back power over their bodies and the cycles that are still
mystifying them.
How can hypnotherapy give women back power and control
of their bodies and prevent cancer?
1. Teaching them self-hypnosis and making healing
recordings that they can play at home.
2. Using the titration hypnotherapy technique so they can:
 decrease the intensity of the hot flashes, with less or
no medication needed
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2014, Vol. 16, No. 2, and Vol. 17, No. 1
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
decrease painful menses cramps, less use of medical
drugs
 increase good feelings about being a woman,
decreasing anti-depressant drugs
 decrease intensity of surges in childbirth (not using
anesthesia, producing a fully present mother and an
alert infant)
 increase their ability to relax when their body is
tensing up (less medications)
 decreasing hot flashes and thus eliminating taking
hormones (potentially cancer producing)
3. Treating sexual abuse, thus reducing the shame they
carry internally about being a woman.
All of the shame, fear, rage and self-hatred has a high
correlation among women who eventually develop cancers in
their breasts, cervix and uterus. Just take a look at the ever
increasing number of women having hysterectomies at younger
and younger ages. Treating these issues early on with
hypnotherapy can certainly help to prevent or ameliorate some
forms of dis-ease, including cancer, and perhaps decrease the
number of women losing their wombs. When left unaddressed,
all of this shame, terror, rage and self-hatred begins and
continues contaminating a woman’s internal organs. This
cancerous self-loathing continues “eating away” at the sexual
organs of the women when they have not had the profound
benefit of hypnotherapy to cleanse their body, mind and indeed,
their soul.
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Hypnotherapy for Pregnancy:
Can it be Applied Effectively?
People often call to ask if it is advisable to use hypnotherapy
with a pregnant woman. The answer is YES! Actually there are
many uses for hypnotherapy and pregnant women. Recently
there was an incredible program on NBC Dateline showing the
use of hypnosis in delivering babies. Two young women birthed
their babies, totally free of pain, quickly and without any drugs
or pain medication.
This article offers suggestions for using clinical
hypnotherapy techniques for pregnant women with any of four
situations described: (1) any specific fears about childbirth; (2)
nausea or vomiting; (3) any condition which requires her to stay
in bed; or (4) desiring a baby of particular gender.
Hypnotherapy and the Conditioning Process
You will always want to teach and condition the couple in
the use of hypnosis at least two months before the birth in
several real-life sessions as well as making them audio
recordings. You should make one 90 minute recording with all
kinds of positive suggestions. The “mother-to-be” needs an
audio player with headphones. This way she can begin listening
to the tape as soon as she goes into labor to stay totally relaxed
during the whole process. The more relaxed things are, the
quicker and easier the delivery will be.
Educating the Doctor About Using Hypnotherapy
It is advisable for you as the certified hypnotherapist to make
a visit to the doctor with your patient in order to explain what
you will be doing and how he/she can support your client in not
using anesthetic. One way is not to offer it to her. Another is not
to ask any unnecessary questions, allowing her to remain
undistracted and relaxed.
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Know the Parents’ Issues
Talk thoroughly with the parents to find out if either has any
special problems such as:
1. Any specific fears and whom he/she may have learned
those fears from
2. Any nausea/vomiting
3. Any condition which requires her to stay in bed
4. Wishing to have a baby of particular gender
Hypnotherapy can be effectively applied to pregnant women
who exhibit one of these four special cases as well as many
others. The application of hypnotherapy during pregnancy is
intended to harness the power of suggestion and relaxation in
order to access the part of a patient’s mind that is responsible for
physiological functions and reactions. Helping pregnant women
cope with the fear and anxiety that typically accompanies
pregnancy and childbirth is the chief aim of any application of
hypnotherapy in this context. During labor, anxiety and fear can
contribute to harder and more painful contractions. If
hypnotherapy is applied effectively during childbirth, the
expectant mother should have a more even breath rate, delivering
oxygen more effectively to the mother and baby, and improved
relaxation in the core muscle groups contributing to the delivery.
Ideally, this will lead to contractions that are less painful and
more effective.
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Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy in the
Treatment of Chronic Migraines
Treating and preventing chronic migraine headaches with
hypnosis is a cost-effective alternative to prescription drugs.
Actually, hypnosis is of benefit in the treatment of headache
whether the headache is migraine, episodic, or chronic.
In one recent study, researchers compared the costs of
several types of behavioral treatment with preventive
prescription drugs. After six months, behavioral treatment was
comparable with prescription drug treatment. In minimal-contact
treatment, a patient sees a therapist a few times a year and for the
most part practices the behavioral techniques at home, often with
the aid of recorded audio programs.
After one year, minimal-contact therapy was nearly $500
cheaper than drug treatment, according to the study published in
the June 2011 issue of the journal Headache.
Using Hypnotherapy to Treat Underlying Stress
Even more effective than self-hypnosis, however, is using
hypnotherapy to treat the underlying stress causing the
headaches. Pain in the body is a “wake up call”, delivered in the
language that the body speaks: sensation. In hypnotherapy,
because we have direct access to the subconscious, we can ask
the body to deliver its message in the language that the conscious
mind understands, that is in English. We might ask the client,
“Now bring your attention to the sensations that are most
foreground for you right now. Where is that? Okay, the temple
areas of your head. Now give the feelings in that area of your
body a voice. Let it speak.” This Gestalt therapy technique is
very effective, and inside the trance logic of the hypnotic state,
the client will almost always spontaneously experience words
coming out of their mouth to express the point of view of the
pain located within the body. “I am sick and tired of working so
hard and getting nowhere” or “I need a break, and this is the only
way I know to force you to give it to me.”
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This is just the beginning of the emotional exploration,
however. Next we use these words and the light they shed on the
underlying dynamics at work to go back to the source of this
behavior pattern, back in age regression. Perhaps the client
follows the trail back to an incident at age seven when he was
exploding with frustration in his second grade classroom, unable
to understand the teacher’s explanation of how to tell time. His
head began to throb, and the teacher allowed him to go to the
nurse’s office to lie down and rest. The headache became his
ticket out of a hopelessly difficult situation, and he unconsciously
began using it more and more often. We then work with the
client’s age-regressed seven-year-old ego state to find alternative
ways of dealing with the challenging situation. And with the help
of the adult ego state, that seven year old will always come up
with creative solutions. “Maybe I’ll just tell the teacher that I
need more time. Or maybe I will replace the analog clock on the
wall with a digital one.” The client experiences a healthy
corrective experience, gaining a sense of empowerment, and also
a sense that the headache has been one option but is not the only
option in any given stressful setting. And perhaps it is an option
that his adult no longer chooses.
Seeking Alternative Modes of Relief
This new insight, and the freedom experienced retroactively,
bring the client relief from the dread that these familiar
headaches are inevitable, that they are a mortal enemy lurking in
his head waiting to pounce anytime. Reaching such a realization
on the visceral level, not just intellectually, is possible only
through accessing the creativity of the subconscious mind. And
hypnosis is a gentle yet powerful means of gaining access to
deep subconscious motivation, and access to the body’s wisdom
in a clearly understandable language.
It is very common for patients to go to doctors or to the local
drug store or to the medicine cabinet for relief. They do not often
think of going to their therapist to work with physical issues such
as headaches.
However, hypnotherapy clients know quite well that every
physical symptom they experience has the potential to be healed
with hypnotherapy. This is a way that many certified
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hypnotherapists greatly increase their income while serving their
clients more effectively.
The subconscious mind has the amazing ability to speak for
and through the human body. When clients are taught the skill of
direct communication with the body, they are empowered in
ways they never before imagined. In modern medicine, we have
been trained to exclusively go to medical doctors to solve
physical problems. However, Chinese medicine, Indian
Ayurvedic medicine, and other ancient herbal medicines have
always connected the mind, body and spirit: all parts of
ourselves are connected. Modern Western medicine that
specializes and separates different parts of the body is actually
sometimes counterproductive to healing.
In places like the Cleveland Clinic’s Integrative Medicine
department, they are discovering how to use hypnotherapy, along
with other tools, to bring healing to the entire mind, body and
spirit of their patients.
When clients realize that their pain, illness and even serious
disease may have originated from a childhood decision based on
attaining safety or comfort or getting their needs met in some
way, they are elated that they can now make healthy adult
decisions that don’t include the pain or illness! It is often quite a
surprise and a joyful healing event when this takes place right in
the therapist’s office.
So when you learn hypnotherapy you will have a whole new
resource of referrals wanting to avail themselves of this modality
of treatment.
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Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy for Cancer
Patients: Great Need and Wide
Acceptance
The diagnosis and treatment of cancer are often stressful
events, and high levels of psychological and psychiatric
disorders have been reported consistently over the last 20 years
as a result of these conditions. However, there is good evidence
that much of this distress is preventable by providing a support
service that is fully integrated with other parts of the patient’s
cancer services. Relaxation therapy, guided imagery and
hypnotherapy can be very beneficial in helping patients cope
with their cancer diagnosis and treatment. This helpful
intervention can take the form of self-hypnosis or facilitated,
Holistic Hypnotherapy.
Self-Hypnosis for Cancer Patients
Self-hypnosis can be taught as a life skill to integrate
psychological as well as pharmacological interventions in pain
management, anxiety, insomnia, and medication side-effects.
Typically, patients are given two to four instructional sessions on
how to self-induce a hypnotic trance and effective ways to create
and structure self-suggestions. Patients are usually asked to keep
a daily record of their hypnosis sessions, and to track the
resulting relief from whatever symptoms they are addressing.
Applications for Advanced Hypnotherapy
When a more intensive therapeutic intervention is arranged,
patients are typically offered three to six hypnotherapy sessions,
together with a follow up several months after the last session.
All hypnotherapy sessions must be individually tailored to cover
the specific individual needs, however, particular attention
should be paid to:
1. management of anxiety, depression, anger, frustration
2. management of pain, fatigue, insomnia
3. management of side-effects of chemotherapy and
radiotherapy
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4. visualization to promote health improvement.
Fortunately, the vast majority of cancer patients (89%) are
willing to use hypnosis to control side effects associated with
cancer treatment, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, education or
age, according to a study at Wake Forest University. The
research also concluded that “Evidence suggests that hypnosis is
an effective intervention for reducing distress, pain and other
side effects associated with cancer and its treatment.” It was
published in the October 2010 issue of The American Journal of
Clinical Hypnosis.
Regression Hypnotherapy for Cancer Patients
Along with these types of physical treatments, regression
hypnotherapy can provide direct communication with the body
to discover the emotional components of the disease or illness. If
we only use traditional medicine, the physical disease may go
into remission for a while. But without listening to what the
illness or the body is telling us, the disease will often reoccur or
some other one will appear in its place. Traditional medicine and
hypnotherapy can work hand in hand to produce healing, in what
is now called Integrative Medicine.
The body is speaking to us; we need to pay attention and
teach our clients how to listen. For example, we always listen to
the words that the client uses to describe their illness. A person
with stomach cancer may say, “My cancer is eating away at me.”
In a hypnotic trance state, we may then ask the client to give the
cancer a voice and let it speak. The cancer may say, “I’m eating
you up inside. You are too stressed and all that anxiety is killing
you.” We also want to address where in the body the cancer may
be located. Since breast cancer is prevalent among woman, we
may say, “Now give your breast a voice, what does it say?” We
often hear things like, “I’m your breast and your giving too much
to everyone else. I need your attention. Take care of me.”
The subconscious mind is a vast storehouse of personal
information, and hypnotherapy is the search engine that will
retrieve this information that is vital to each person’s personal
growth and healing.
All the clinician needs to do is:
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1. Learn how to communicate, through hypnotherapy, with
the internal search engine – how to perform an effective
Google search for data stored in the subconscious
2. Be ready to openly listen to the information we receive
3. Be willing to use this sacred communication for the
healing of ourselves and our clients.
The Cleveland Clinic Center for Integrative Medicine
continues to hire clinicians who are trained and well prepared to
use hypnotherapy in conjunction with their traditional medical
treatments. It has been abundantly demonstrated to them that
clinicians with this training are skilled at using hypnotherapy
with a wide variety of medical and emotional challenges to
benefit patients cost-effectively.
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Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy
Can Reduce Dementia
A scientist at the University of Liverpool has found that
hypnosis can slow down the impacts of dementia and improve
quality of life for Alzheimer patients in seven main areas:
1. Concentration on daily tasks thus retaining valued
independence
2. Relaxation thereby reducing anxiety which is a common
feature
3. Motivation, which helps to avoid depressive states
4. Undertaking daily activities and keeping active
5. Short term memory retention
6. Memory for significant life events
7. Socialization, thereby avoiding the tendency for selfisolation and depression.
Forensic psychologist, Dr. Simon Duff, Department of
Clinical Psychology at Liverpool University, investigated the
effects of hypnosis on people living with dementia. His study
compared the treatment to mainstream health-care methods and
to a type of group therapy which encourages participants to
discuss news and current affairs.
The study found that people living with dementia who had
received hypnotherapy showed an improvement in
concentration, memory and socialization compared to the other
treatment groups. Relaxation, motivation and daily living
activities also improved with the use of hypnosis.
Dr. Duff said: “Over a nine month period of weekly
sessions, it became clear that the participants attending the
discussion group remained the same throughout. The group who
received ‘treatment as usual’ showed a small decline over the
assessment period, yet those having regular hypnosis sessions
showed real improvement across all of the areas that we looked
at.
“Participants who are aware of the onset of dementia may
become depressed and anxious at their gradual loss of cognitive
ability and so hypnosis – which is a tool for relaxation – can
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really help the mind concentrate on positive activity like
socialization.”[1]
[1]
http://www.liv.ac.uk/news/press_releases/2008/07/Hypnosis_sho
wn_to_reduce_symptoms_of_dementia.htm
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PTSD Related Insomnia and
Treatment with Hypnotherapy
Individuals that suffer from PTSD commonly complain of
insomnia and related sleep disorders. Not enough sleep, or sleep
that is not restful enough, can contribute to other symptoms of
stress and trauma. One group of people who suffer inordinately
from PTSD related insomnia is combat veterans.
Treating PTSD with Medication vs. Hypnotherapy
Commonly, these individuals are treated with medications:
either Zolpidem, a short term insomnia medication, or an SSRI
anti-depressant treatment. These medications can be helpful, but
often are only effective as long as they are being taken. There is
no long term relief from the underlying stress. In one recent
study, thirty two male veterans suffering from PTSD combat
related insomnia were assigned to one of two groups:
hypnotherapy or Zolpidem. The hypnotherapy for PTSD sessions
were administered in two 1.5 hour sessions twice a week for two
weeks by a board of certified practicing psychiatrist
hypnotherapist. Those in the medication group were given
Zolpidem for 14 days.
All participants in the study were diagnosed with PTSD,
were between 21 and 40 years old, and all participants had been
taking an SSRI anti depressant medication for a minimum of two
months prior to the study.
The study found that those in the hypnotherapy treatment
group reported a 76.4% improvement in their ability to sleep
compared to 26.6% of those in the standard treatment protocol
group. 82.3% in the hypnotherapy group were shown to have
increased their total sleeping time compared with 66.6% of the
Zolpidem group. Post treatment, 88.2% of the hypnotherapy
group reported an excellent or good quality of sleep level, this
compared to 26.6% of the Zolpidem group.[1]
[1] Abramowitz, E., Barak, Y., Ben-Avi, I., & Knobler, H.
(2008). Hypnotherapy in the Treatment of Chronic Combat-
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Related PTSD Patients Suffering From Insomnia: A
Randomized, Zolpidem-Controlled Clinical Trial. International
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 56(3), 270-280.
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Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy as a Way to
Triumph over Arthritis
Dani Dudek had fingers so sore, it was difficult to open a car
door, and pain in her elbow so intense, straightening her arm
made her feel like she had broken something -- at age 22. In
2009, senior point guard Dudek was one of the most prolific
women’s basketball players in NCAA history, only the second
woman to top 1,000 points, 800 rebounds and 600 assists. She
has learned to handle the pain through using self-hypnosis.
Dudek developed arthritis in fifth grade, and for the next
four years, she took antibiotics for the infection in her
bloodstream. But there was no prescription for the intense pain.
During her freshman year in high school, Dudek found relief in a
self-hypnosis technique taught to her by a pediatric psychologist
at the Hackensack University Medical Center. As he explained to
Dudek, her light switch for pain was constantly on. By
hypnotizing herself, she could turn that switch off.
It is encouraging to note that numerous studies have
documented that hypnosis is effective in reducing the pain
associated with arthritis and chronic inflammatory disease. But
beyond symptom relief, and even more encouraging, is the
finding that hypnosis impacts at the disease level, reducing
swelling and stiffness.
One large study also found that depression is often
connected with arthritis and the concomitant loss of physical
ability. This study finds that the depression is significantly
reduced for those who utilize hypnotherapy for depression and to
deal with the pain and other symptoms of arthritis. Chronic pain
contributes to clinical depression, and using hypnotherapy for
chronic pain management helps to alleviate the depression.[1]
It is best for hypnosis to first be taught by a certified,
professional hypnotherapist before recommending that someone
try self-hypnosis on their own. Professionals are trained and
skilled at providing the proper wording for the most positive
results. Positive suggestions, appropriate visualizations and key
wording is required in order to reduce pain and inflammation. In
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addition, we use mind body techniques that will help the arthritis
sufferer discover any emotions that may be connected with the
arthritis in order to relieve the symptoms of depression,
frustration and the feelings of powerlessness over their body.
[1] Horton-Hausknecht, Jillian R.; Mitzdorf, Ulla; Melchart,
Dieter. (Jan 2000). The Effect of Hypnosis Therapy on the
Symptoms and Disease Activity in Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Psychology & Health, 14(6), 1089-1104.
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Hypnotherapy with Hospice Care
and/or Dying Clients
There are many issues with which Heart-Centered
Hypnotherapy can be very effective. When someone is facing
death, it is vital that they do in-depth work as early as possible.
Some of the issues to be addressed are (1) completing unfinished
business with family, friends and co-workers; (2) asking for
forgiveness and self-forgiveness for any perceived wrongdoings; (3) releasing pent-up emotions that may be locked in the
body; (4) releasing attachments that may be preventing them
from letting go of life on earth; (6) reconnecting disowned parts
of themselves including their soul; and (7) developing or
maintaining a strong spiritual connection.
Let’s take each one of these issues by itself to examine it
further to see why Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy is such an
effective tool.
Completing Unfinished Business
Most people have not been given the tools during their
lifetimes to communicate directly with friends and family
members. In the trance state, their inhibitions and defenses are
lowered so that they can speak their truth to their loved ones, and
their “not-so-loved ones.” Within the privacy of their session,
they can fully express all that they feel without worrying that
they will hurt anyone’s feelings. Through this work they can also
get clear if there is actually anything that needs to be said in
person to complete this relationship. Often releasing the feelings
is all that is needed; speaking them directly to the person
involved is not necessary. This is most important since it is often
this unfinished business that keeps people emotionally “hanging
on” to life when their body is in extreme pain and is ready to go.
Asking for Forgiveness
Many people carry hidden guilt around with them for their
perceived wrong doings during their lifetime. When they are
facing death, this guilt can result in self-punishment and
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prolonged and unnecessary suffering. This is a personal issue as
well as a spiritual issue. They need to ask whomever it is that
they have wronged to forgive them as well as to ask God. This
work needs to be done on the subconscious level since that is
where all the self-blame is stored. And then it is important, of
course, to have a deep conversation with themselves to release
the guilt.
Releasing Pent-up Emotions
When people repress emotions in their bodies, these
emotions block and drain their vital supply of energy. This
energy is so important especially when they are often drugged
for pain control. Also as they release the emotions, they become
much more clear about what they may need to communicate in
person. Emotions such as deep grief, anger, and resentment keep
them locked in their bodies, unable to “let go”.
Releasing Attachments
Hospitals, nursing homes and hospice homes are filled with
people who are ready to die but who can not “let go”.
Attachments to people with whom they have unfinished business
keep them hanging on for months and years. This causes the
agony of unnecessary suffering on the part of the caregivers as
well as the dying person. All attachments need to be released so
that the individual is finally freed from any “hooks” that are
keeping them in their suffering bodies.
Integrating Disowned Parts of Oneself (Soul Retrieval)
Often during the lifetime of an individual there have been
certain traumas such as abuse, accidents, natural disasters, or
major illness. During those times, a commonly used method of
self-protection is dissociation or disconnection from self. When a
part has dissociated or split off from the whole, people
sometimes describe it as “I feel empty inside” or “Ever since that
time, I just don’t feel like myself.” Another common experience
is described by the familiar song, “I Left My Heart in San
Francisco.”
As part of the dying experience, it is important for
individuals to go back and reclaim disowned parts of themselves.
Whatever their experience, such as the loss of their heart, their
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soul, or a specific part of themselves, the clinical hypnotherapist
is in an excellent position to help the client reclaim these
disowned parts. It is very common, once the person has access to
their subconscious mind to be able to go back to where the part
split off and to reclaim it. This integration process often is a
powerful spiritual and emotional healing for the person.
Developing or Maintaining Spiritual Connections
This is by far the most important work for the dying patient
to address. And because Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy naturally
guides them onto the spiritual plane, it is obviously a powerful
tool to use. Some people are already very clear about the
spiritual connection and so the trance work can be used to further
deepen that connection.
Another group of people know they have some spiritual
connection, but perhaps they have not really had the motivation
to clarify it previously. Obviously this is the time to get into full
spiritual contact and to address the spiritual issues such as
forgiveness and where do I go from here? The Heart-Centered
Hypnotherapy will assist them in discovering through
visualization and directly experiencing who or what their
spiritual connection is. They may see or feel Jesus, the Divine
Mother, Buddha, White Light, the Great Spirit, or the feeling of
Unconditional Love. It is important in these situations for the
hypnotherapist to feel comfortable with spirituality and not to
impose any specific religious doctrine onto the client. This work
is not about religion, but rather to assist the client to discover
what feels right for them.
The third group of clients that you may encounter may have
denounced God, religion and spirituality all their lives. But as
they begin to face death, suddenly these issues begin to take on
new urgency. Through hypnotherapy, the client may suddenly
begin to have spiritual experiences. It is important to support
them and encourage them to accept that it is not too late to
develop this relationship. When we are facing death, things that
never seemed important before suddenly take on a very deep
importance.
It is important to educate people about what they will
experience in death. It is extremely beneficial to describe to them
reports of people who have had near-death experiences (NDE).
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This should be done both on the subconscious level in hypnosis
and on the conscious level as well. This will demystify death for
them and also relieve the fear that most people carry about
dying. They need instructions about how important it is to go
directly into the light and not to cling to their dying body or to
another person on earth. This will help them have a peaceful
journey instead of becoming a tortured or energy-draining
earthbound disincarnate.
Another powerful aspect of this work is, of course, to do this
work with close family members as well. They need to also
finish their business with the dying person and “let go” so that
they do not inadvertently keep their loved one in his/her body
longer than necessary. Also they need to pray and visualize the
person moving into the light and being greeted by an appropriate
spiritual connection to “take them across.” When family
members are educated in this way, their assistance can have a
profound effect on the dying experience. In this way they are all
working together, sometimes for the first time, to create a
healthy release for everyone concerned.
Doing this kind of in-depth healing with someone facing
death is sacred and poignantly fulfilling.
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Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy for Spinal
Cord Injury Pain Management
The vast majority of persons with spinal cord injury report
chronic, unpleasant sensations or pain. And about a third
describe the chronic pain as severe, which is a very hard thing to
live with.
Chronic pain in persons with spinal cord injury tends to exist
at multiple body sites and generally does not improve with time.
It can interfere significantly with normal activities such as work
and social life, and perhaps for that reason is associated with
depression.
Acute pain takes place before healing has occurred, whereas
chronic pain sets in after the healing is already done: the injury
has healed, but the pain remains, and it becomes chronic pain.
Traditional biomedical treatments, like opiate medications, are
generally effective for acute but not chronic pain management.
Chronic pain is extremely complex and difficult to treat with
narcotics alone.
A number of factors complicate chronic pain conditions and
their treatment:
 Psychological distress. There is a significant association
between chronic pain and depression and anxiety. We
have found that people don’t get used to chronic pain.
Instead, it actually gets worse; people get worn down
after years of unrelenting chronic pain.
 Grieving the loss of activity. When chronic pain results
in an inability to continue with usual life activities, grief
over this loss can increase or maintain the pain.
 Original cause of pain is often gone.
 Deactivation. When you are having pain with any kind
of movement, what do you do? You avoid movement,
and as a result your muscles become deactivated and
start to atrophy (shrink and become weaker). Thereafter,
any movement you try to do is far more painful because
the muscles haven’t been used. This becomes a vicious
cycle.
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
Guarding. This is the tendency to tense up or tighten the
muscles around the injured area as a way of protecting it,
which then causes you to move or walk differently. For
instance, if you sprain your ankle, the muscles around it
tense up, causing additional pain. Furthermore, you will
probably put more weight on the other foot, eventually
causing pain in other parts of your body. In fact, a
common problem following sprained ankle is hip pain
on the side opposite the ankle sprain.
Using Hypnosis for Treating Chronic Pain
For hypnosis to be effective in chronic pain situations, the
post-hypnotic suggestions need to focus on the five factors (from
the list above) that are maintaining or aggravating the chronic
pain syndrome. So, instead of suggesting to chronic pain patients
that their pain will go away, which doesn’t work, the therapist
might suggest that they’re going to feel more energy and more
motivated to participate in physical therapy or an exercise
program. These suggestions are more successful in helping
somebody who is coping with chronic pain.
Hypnotherapy can be highly effective in addressing the other
factors: depression, anxiety, and grief. In other words, going
beyond giving suggestions to the receptive subconscious mind,
with hypnotherapy we can deal with the emotional (and spiritual)
“collateral damage”.
Pain often interferes with sleep, so decreasing pain helps
increase restful sleep. Studies show that sleep also improves as a
result of the hypnosis.
Another research team [1] at the University of Washington
School of Medicine Rehabilitation Medicine, documented a case
of working with a U.S. Army soldier stationed in Iraq who
developed myriad pain problems after sustaining a high-level
spinal cord injury from a gunshot wound. These problems were
negatively impacting his ability to participate fully in his
physical rehabilitation and care. Ten sessions of self-hypnosis
training were administered to the patient over a 5-week period to
help him address these problems. Both the patient and his
occupational therapist reported a substantial reduction in pain
over the course of treatment, which allowed the patient to
actively engage in his therapies. Six months post treatment, the
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patient reported continued use of the hypnosis strategies taught,
which effectively reduced his experience of pain.
Based in part on a report by Shelley Wiechman Askay, PhD,
Clinical Psychologist at Harborview Medical Center and
assistant professor, Rehabilitation Medicine, University of
Washington. Retrieved
[http://sci.washington.edu/info/forums/reports/hypnosis_for_sci_
pain.asp].
[1] Stoelb BL, Jensen MP, Tackett MJ. American Journal
Clinical Hypnosis, Jan 2009, 51(3):273-280.
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Hypnotherapy with a Suicidal
Eating-Disordered Client
We at The Wellness Institute have worked with thousands of
people with suicidal ideation. Often these clients are just labeled
depressed by family doctors and sent on their way with the latest
anti-depressant. Traditional therapists may spend hours upon
insurance-billable hours using CBT (cognitive behavioral
therapy) attempting to cognitively teach the client to “manage”
their symptoms of depression. Too often this is what we call
“band-aid therapy,” like putting a band-aid on a survivor of a
major car crash.
With Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy we begin treating the
depression by identifying the symptoms and feelings, and then
proceeding to where and when it began. Seeking the origin of the
depression may lead us back to a recent devastating loss, failure,
or rejection. However, ultimately the real source of the
depression is often found in pre- and prenatal experiences. And
what is most often discovered in this amazing journey of
personal transformation is that somewhere down the road are
several hidden beliefs/conclusions about oneself and decisions
about how to behave as a result of these self-sabotaging
conclusions. For example, a client we will call Penny has been
bulimic for most of her life, not allowing herself to receive
nourishment. She then became very desperate with her inability
to stop the bulimic behavior.
Penny found herself caught in the trap of the Victim Triangle
with her food addiction. She always felt like a victim by not
being able to control what she ate, then she would try to rescue
herself by attempting to over-control her eating addiction
behavior. When that didn’t work she would persecute herself
with all the judgments and negative self-talk about what an
inadequate loser she was. And then she would subsequently push
herself right into the victim role again. Penny was not
consciously aware that by persecuting herself with negative selfhypnotic suggestions, by regurgitating the nourishment from the
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food she was eating and then by diving deep into her depression,
she was really attempting to kill herself.
As she attended many traditional treatment programs for
eating disorders, which never worked, she began to fall into
deeper and deeper depressions. This ultimately led to several
serious attempts of suicide by cutting her own wrists. When she
finally found her way to a Wellness-trained therapist, she had
given up any hope of ever healing. The first regression lead her
to age five where she had intense body memories of a man
forcing his penis down her throat and she felt like she was
choking to death. Then she was gagging to the point of needing
to throw up in order to get rid of the slimy disgusting stuff that
was stuck in her throat. Then the next thing that came to her was
that she was in the kitchen where her abuser proceeded to give
her cookies and other sweets to soothe and make her feel better.
These sweets were always around since her father owned a
bakery and each night he would bring home the sweets that
hadn’t been purchased that day. She was taught to self-soothe
anxiety, fear and panic with cookies, pastries and cupcakes.
In several subsequent sessions, Penny visited different places
of anxiety connected with food. Her father being an alcoholic
and a “control freak” made the dining room table a place of
horrendous fear and panic for his wife and their six children. He
always inspected their nails, clothes and hair like he had done
when he was in the Marines. He demanded that they fill their
plates with food and sit there until it was all eaten. He
continually reminded them of all the suffering children on the
planet, how he had fought overseas so that he could feed them
this food and what ungrateful little wretches they were. He
would yell at one or two of the children each meal time for
obscure offenses that they had supposedly committed. One night
he turned over the whole table and all the plates, silver and
glasses went crashing onto the floor. Utter chaos ensued just as it
had so many other times at the family table. One night he picked
up a very hot beef roast and threw it at their mother, who began
screaming in pain, humiliation, terror and rage. He felt the roast
was not rare enough for his liking. The children, of course,
always had to clean up the messes, pick up everything from the
floor and wash the dishes, floors and walls. When the dishes
were done, he would come in to inspect them. If even one spoon
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had a smidgen of food on it, he would make them pull down all
the dishes, pots and pans and glasses and rewash everything all
over again. Then of course they had to do their homework. By
then the children were so exhausted, nervous, and anxious they
could barely concentrate on their homework assignments. It was
at this time when she had made an unconscious decision to die.
There were many regressions of our bulimic, self-destructive
client where she used the energy release bat to get out her fear
and rage. She began to feel her depression lifting and discovered
what it felt like to be relaxed, peaceful and even joyful. We did,
however, have one more hypnotic regression to do. She said that
whenever she met new people or came into a new situation, she
always felt inadequate, unacceptable and extremely selfconscious. She would be so anxious that she wanted to run out of
the room, but she knew she had to make herself stay. So in the
next session, instead of focusing on the specific eating disorder
symptoms, we focused on her experience of not being accepted
for who she was every time she entered a new situation.
In the regression, she discovered herself in her mother’s
womb. At first it was dark and pleasant and quiet. Then she
began to look upset. We asked her what was happening and she
replied, “I’m a girl. My father definitely wants a boy. I’m not
right for him. He will never be able to really love me.” She soon
began to realize that as she was being born and her gender was
announced by the doctor, “It’s a girl,” her mother also felt very
disappointed. Our client could feel that her parents were both
expecting and wanting a boy, since they already had four girls.
Her early conclusion about herself was, “I’m a mistake.” “I’m
unwanted.” “I’ll never be what they want.” Her decision was, “I
shouldn’t exist.”
This combination of traumatic experiences is the perfect
recipe for an eating disorder, which can become deadly. The
original rejection of the child for her gender, oral sexual abuse
forced on this same small girl followed by attempts to soothe her
with cookies, and all this amidst almost continuous gutwrenching anxiety-filled abusive meals: these are the perfect
ingredients to form an alcoholic, food-binging eating disordered
woman with suicide attempts.
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Penny resolved her eating disorder, her anxiety, and her
suicidal depression all at the same time, because they were all
symptoms caused by the same source traumas.
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Healing Resistance to Life through
Hypnotherapy
Resistance is exhausting; however, millions of people
struggle with their own resistance on a daily basis. How do we
create internal resistance? If we can think of this like a pulley,
which has immense power to lift things, it is easier to
understand. It is the tugging, the pulling from opposite ends that
actually creates the power to lift a heavy object. However, it also
takes a lot of energy in order to lift or move an object. When this
pulling and tugging is going on internally, it is exhausting!
Lucille’s Story
Inside of ourselves, this power also exists. What are the two
opposite parts that pull against each other within us? We call
these autonomous complexes or splits. These splits are often
represented by small child parts of ourselves, struggling to solve
problems that are way beyond their capabilities. For example, a
middle aged woman named Lucille (not her real name) takes
years to make decisions. She wanted to change her profession
and took over 10 years to do so. She was resistant to making any
of the necessary changes required to move forward on her goals.
She wanted to take a training course that would move her into
her new career; however, her resistance kicked in and she
struggled for over four years to finally decide to take it. She took
the first level and then took four more years to decide to take the
second level. She used all kinds of excuses such as not enough
money, when she had actually just bought a home in an
exclusive neighborhood and drove an expensive car. Recently,
she wanted to teach a workshop and had 20 people who were
interested, but none of them actually took her class.
From Talk Therapy to Hypnotherapy
After many years of talk therapy, she finally found her way
to Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy. Through age regression, we
were able to get down to the source of her resistance to life. In
hypnotherapy, people often regress back to early childhood in
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their search for the core issues that cause their self-defeating
behavior. She regressed back to when she was in her young
mother’s womb. Her mother’s parents (Lucille’s grandparents)
were furious that their young 16-year-old daughter was pregnant.
They shamed her and wanted her to get an abortion. Our client’s
mother then attempted a terrifying abortion from an unqualified
person, back in the days when abortion was illegal. Lucille has
gone through life resistant to coming into a family who never
wanted her and literally tried to kill her. She was filled with
shame about her very existence, but never knew why. She had
spent years in talk therapy never knowing this or the reasons
why she couldn’t move forward in her life. She was literally and
unconsciously trying to kill herself, to fulfill her mother’s and
grandparents’ wish.
Resolution
Lucille is so much more aware now of her resistance to life
and how it manifests. She is moving forward in her life,
achieving her goals more easily and laughing at herself when she
feels the resistance emerging. By using hypnotherapy, these
changes are not just from her conscious mind but deeply
embedded in her subconscious mind. She finds herself making
new changes and choices now without even having to think
about them. Lucille describes the new, wondrous feeling of
freedom she experiences living life without the burden of the
deep existential shame she had always carried.
Resistance to life can fall into one or more of the following
categories:
COMMITMENT ISSUES. “I can’t really commit to that.”
How do these commitment issues show up in relationships?
1. The presenting issue of having difficulty committing to a
relationship.
a. Divorces – something is always wrong with the
other person
b. Searching on “Match” but no one seems to be “the
one”
c. Break-ups with friends, always focusing on the
faults of others
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d. Changing jobs, always finding something wrong
with the boss, the co-workers, the building, the
salary, the location, etc.
2. Having difficulty committing to the therapy
agreement they have made with you (and themselves)
a. Not showing up for appointments – excuses such as
sickness, no money, etc.
b. Showing up late with more excuses
c. Always having excuses that seem real, but there is a
deeper hidden motivation
d. This can even escalate to where they get sick or have
an accident just before an event in their life that they
have committed to.
AMBIVALENCE ISSUES. “I’m not sure which one I want to
do.”
1. Consistently setting up two or more choices for
themselves and then feeling stuck in the middle
2. Debating in their minds, “Should I do this or that? Take
this vacation or that one?” or “Maybe I just won’t take
one this year.”
3. “Should I take this course or that one? Or maybe I’ll just
go back to school and get my degree.”
4. “Should I apply for a job here? Well, actually, I’m
thinking of moving to another state. Perhaps California,
my sister lives there. Oh, but . . .”
RESISTANCE ISSUES. “I don’t want to be here.”
1. Struggling much more than is necessary in their life
2. I don’t want to be here in:
a. This job
b. This marriage
c. This state or city
d. Your office (for therapy)
e. This house
f. Searching for geographic solutions (“I’ll leave, I’ll
move”)
g. Their answer is often to just leave rather than solve a
problem
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3. “I’m exhausted, it all seems too hard.” I’m just too tired,
I can’t seem to do anything.
4. “I’m stuck!” I just can’t move.
5. The “Yes, but” Game in which any suggestion the
therapist offers for problem solving, they go into “Yes,
but…” and then list all the reasons why that or any
solution won’t work.
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How Hypnotherapy Can Treat
Fear of Commitment
Many couples or individuals come into therapy with
frustrating patterns that they can’t seem to break through. Many
have tried all different types of therapies, taken courses and read
books. In general, if these endeavors have mostly engaged the
conscious mind, then the couple has only used 10% of their
overall mental resources and thus have spent a large amount of
their resources. The majority of people believe that if they could
just figure things out, which will solve the problem. This is
certainly true in mathematics, science and technology. However,
the human brain is much more complex than that.
The human brain is composed of two basic parts: the
conscious mind, which is about 10% of our capabilities and the
subconscious mind, which engages the other 90%. So when a
client goes to a talk therapist, cognitive behaviorist or any of the
other “thinking type” therapies, they are only paying to treat
10% of their mind, i.e., the conscious part.
The Conscious and the Subconscious Mind
The conscious part of our mind holds some of our defenses,
such as judgments, rationalizations, and analyses, and “thinking
type” therapies can be helpful in confronting these defenses.
However, most of our defenses are subconscious, such as denial,
projection, and addictive and compulsive behaviors. These
defenses are formed as children as a way to protect us from
harmful or abusive people and situations. They are useful when
we are in danger, but then become like a wall, which prevents us
from getting down to our more vulnerable feelings and our
profound resources.
So many of our untapped resources are held in the
subconscious mind, which is where hypnotherapy can take us.
These resources are contained in our memories, feelings,
emotions, intuition and unconscious motivations. Most people
like to think that they make decisions based in their so-called
rational mind but actually researchers have shown that most
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decisions are made from our feelings. This is especially true
when it comes to relationships. Studies show that when singles
go into a meeting place, they attract someone within 60 seconds
of entering. The studies also show that if you have been bullied
as a child, you may subconsciously be attracted to a bully. If you
grew up in an alcoholic family, the alcoholic will find you
almost immediately. If you believe, subconsciously, that all
women are “bitches” or all men are abusive, guess who you will
be attracting?
But all of this is happening so quickly, and so deeply below
our conscious awareness, that the conscious mind is easily
outmaneuvered. This is exactly why Heart-Centered
Hypnotherapy has discovered that we must guide people into the
depths of their subconscious vault where all these relationship
patterns are stored.
Hypnotherapy and the Subconscious Mind
The subconscious mind contains a deep inner wisdom which,
when properly directed, will take the client right back to the
source of where these patterns began. For example, a woman
who keeps attracting men with commitment issues may be
subconsciously directed by her internal resources to visit her
childhood family where her father left when she was a toddler.
Another peak into the window of her early life may give her the
view of her mother who continued to bring men home who
eventually would leave. A subconscious conclusion she may
have made about herself when these father figures left was, “I’m
unlovable” and the behavior she may have chosen based on that
belief was never to be vulnerable, never to commit and thus to
always keep herself safe from being abandoned again.
Once the deeper source of this fear of commitment is
discovered through Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy, then the
healing can truly begin. Without this deeper work, the client
continues in a whirlwind of searching for answers that her
conscious mind just does not contain. Hypnotherapy brings
awareness sooner and heals the deeper pain hidden below the
conscious mind. Now new conclusions about oneself can be reprogrammed into the computer-like region of the brain that holds
all of the past programming.
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Use Hypnosis to Double Your
Fertility Rate
Doctors and scientists from all over the world are proving
the effectiveness of hypnosis for fertility and other reproductive
challenges. Many fertility experts see the transfer of an embryo
to a woman’s uterus as a key event that determines whether IVF
will succeed. Stress during embryo transfer can reduce the
success rate, and many women experience stress from fear that
the treatment will fail, or that the transfer will be painful.
Hypnosis can be instrumental in relieving such stress.
Study Showing Hypnosis Doubles Rate of Fertility
Women who are hypnotized before undergoing the transfer
of an embryo by in-vitro fertilization (IVF), may be more likely
to become pregnant. One study showed that nearly 60 percent of
a group of women who used hypnosis during the
procedure became pregnant compared to about 30 percent of a
group of women who didn’t use hypnosis.
Women in the hypnosis group met with a physician certified
in hypnosis, who asked them to select a “very pleasant” past
experience to think of during embryo transfer. Patients were
hypnotized before the transfer, and told to compare the
procedure “with the reception of long-awaited and very welcome
guests.” After the woman was in trance state for about 10
minutes, the doctors began the transfer. When the procedure was
finished, before the patients were taken out of the hypnotized
state, they were given instructions intended to help them feel
calm, relaxed and optimistic.
Hypnosis Relaxes the Uterus, Increasing Fertility
Dr. Eliahu Levitas of Soroka University Medical Center in
Beer Sheva and his colleagues published their study in May 2006
in Fertility & Sterility, Journal of the American Society for
Reproductive Medicine (March 2006, vol. 85). Dr. Levitas
hypothesizes that hypnosis helped a woman’s uterus to remain
relaxed, allowing the embryo to implant more easily. It is also
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possible, he says, that hypnosis produced changes in the immune
or hormonal uterine function resulting in “an improvement in the
interaction between the blastocyst and the endometrium,” or the
lining of the uterus.
“This study suggests that the use of hypnosis during ET may
significantly improve the IVF-ET cycle outcome in terms of
increased implantation and clinical pregnancy rates,” according
to Dr. Levitas.
Using Hypnotherapy to Treat Depression Improves Fertility
Depression can often occur by the second to third year of
infertility and does not return to normal levels until six years
later. Treating depression can improve your fertility.
 Women with a history of depressive symptoms reported
twice the rate of subsequent infertility (Psychosomatic
Medicine, 1995, vol. 57)
 Women with depression, when treated showed a 60
percent viable pregnancy rate within six months,
contrasting with 24 percent when depression went
untreated. (Journal of American Medical Women’s
Association, 1999, vol.54)
 Women who experienced depression following the
failure of their first in vitro fertilization (IVF), had much
lower pregnancy rates that their non depressed
counterparts during their second IVF cycle (Journal of
Psychosomatic Research, 1993, vol. 37)
A study reported in Reproductive Endocrinology (April
2000, vol. 73, issue 4), treated women who were in their second
year of infertility. The women who received group psychological
interventions to stem the tide of depression caused by infertility,
had significantly increased viable pregnancies compared to those
who did not receive preventative treatment for depression.
Hypnotherapy reduces stress and increases confidence,
instilling a sense of control in the client, which in turn enables
her to maximize chances of conceiving naturally and/or increase
the success of medical assistance.
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Hypnotherapy with Authority Issues
in our Relationships
Authority issues arise in two distinct situations: when a
person or institution has power and authority over another,
and/or when I am the person with authority. In general, modern
psychology has struggled to effectively deal with this pervasive
issue. And yet, it is at the bottom of most relationship conflicts in
our society. In psychotherapy situations, couples often come in
stating that they have power struggles or that their partner is a
control freak! Here we will focus on this aspect of authority as it
relates to working with couples.
Authority Issues Emanate from Our Family of Origin
Our authority issues generally are the result of being
immersed in power struggles within our family environment.
These power struggles often originated in our families between
Mom and Dad, between parents and grandparents, or between
siblings. One common set-up for power struggles within the
family structure is children being raised by older siblings who
are left to their own devices to make and enforce the rules. The
so-called adult child often resents having to care for younger
siblings and may become abusive behind the backs of the
incompetent, alcoholic or overly stressed parents. The younger
children often grow up with deep resentments and confusion
toward their older siblings who often misused the power they
were given, even to the point of severe abuse perpetrated on the
younger ones (sibling abuse).
Authority Issues from Undermining Another Authority
Another devastating form of authority issues results when
one authority (parent) undermines another, especially in front of
the children or even directly to the children. One common
scenario is when one parent would go behind the other’s back to
change rules, or would wink at the children to indicate “you
don’t really have to do what he/she says.” This wink
communicates collusion and teaches children not to respect the
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authority of the other parent. Another example is one parent who
uses put downs or shaming of the other parent who was
supposed to be in charge of the children. Another common
situation results when other relatives, such as grandparents,
break the rules that the parents have set for the children. This
clearly undermines the family power structure and teaches
children not to respect authority. One parent may go behind the
back of the other parent, recruiting the child to adopt his or her
judgments about the other parent: “He’s so weak” or “She’s
crazy” or “Don’t believe a word she says.” This teaches children
to disrespect authority and teaches a destructive family pattern
called “Let’s You and Him Fight” (Eric Berne, Games People
Play).
Healing through the Subconscious Mind
These deeply embedded power struggles, learned so subtly
during our formative years, follow us throughout our
relationships in school with teachers and friends, throughout our
dating years and then of course into our own families.
Hypnotherapy is most effective in addressing the current nonproductive experiences in our lives and then following the thread
to where they began. Most cognitive therapies may talk about
these relationship issues and gain an understanding of them;
however, the conscious mind only contains 10% of our psyche.
In order to permanently change these deeply embedded and
complex patterns, we have discovered the importance of
enlisting hypnotherapy techniques. This enables the client and
therapist to access the wealth of information stored in the
subconscious mind and to replace these destructive patterns with
new healthy patterns on the deepest level.
Using Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy
In Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy we use a double induction
technique with couples in which both partners engage in ageregression therapy at the same time, next to each other. This
facilitates compassion and empathy for each other, an
understanding of how their foundational childhood patterns may
be conflicting with those of the spouse, and then developing new
healthy behaviors with each other as well as with their children.
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Highway Hypnosis: Applications in
Hypnotherapy
“About one hour into a long drive, typically on a highway
with a straightaway, you start zoning out and your reaction time
slows down,” according to Joshua Maxwell, an ergonomics
engineer at Hyundai-Kia Technical Center. “Your brain goes
into an auto-pilot phase.” When a driver is in this mental state it
is possible to travel many miles with little recollection of having
consciously done so. And there is a greater chance of becoming
drowsy.
Science and Engineering
Engineers from automakers Hyundai and Kia have partnered
with researchers from the University of Michigan to study
“highway hypnosis,” to measure driver brainwaves using
electroencephalograph (EEG) sensors. These sensors are able to
detect when a driver begins to get drowsy and have been
programmed to perk the driver up through audible and physical
alerts. Currently, detecting how drowsy a driver gets during a
long drive is determined by monitoring changes in their head
position and the amount of times they blink their eyelids. The
EEG method has the potential to determine drowsiness before
typical behavior changes in head and eyelid activity can be
observed.
390,000 Injured/died by Distracted Driving
We’ve probably all had the experience of “waking up” after
travelling some distance without any awareness, and it turns out
to be a very serious potential driving hazard. The National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration says 3,331 fatalities
occurred in 2011 as a result of distracted driving. On top of that,
the NHTSA estimates an additional 387,000 people were injured
because of distracted driving.
So how are the engineers planning to jolt the driver awake
when necessary? Maxwell said the engineers haven’t come up
with a specific warning system for cars yet. “It could be a sound
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and a visual cue. “It might be the coffee cup icon, which is
familiar to most people (as a drowsy-driving alert).”
Application of Research in Hypnotherapy
Of course, there are two quite separate states of mind that
have been lumped together here, using the term highway
hypnosis for both. One is drowsiness, sleepiness. The other is
quite different: a dissociated state in which a person can function
at repetitive tasks easily while being mentally engaged in
something separate. It is this ability that we use in the therapeutic
use of hypnosis. An example is that in age regression the
individual actually goes back to the earlier time and reexperiences it (not just remembering it as an event in the past),
while he/she is able to use their adult cognitive and language
abilities without awareness, without distracting attention from
the age-regressed focus of attention on the re-experience.
It is possible that we may gain something useful from the
University of Michigan research into driver brainwaves beyond
keeping us from falling asleep at the wheel. We may learn more
about this fascinating ability humans have of dissociating, and
that will help us become more effective hypnotherapists.
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Alert Hypnosis
[Adapted from Scientific American Mind, December 2008]
In reading an article about hypnosis in Scientific American
Mind, I came across a reference to people being hypnotized
while vigorously riding a stationary bicycle, and I was intrigued
by the idea. So I began researching it, and here is some of what I
found.
Active Hypnosis
The concept of active hypnosis developed from an
observation in social science; Ludwig and Lyle (1964)
introduced the concept of “hyperalert” hypnosis to describe
people who seemed to be following suggestions in a hypnotized
way, while physically very active. As examples of this “natural
hypnosis” they cited tribal dances, religious revivals and political
rallies.
Bányai & Hilgard (1976) described “active-alert hypnosis”.
They developed a standardized induction that involved open
eyes, no mention of relaxation or sleep, and measurable physical
activity. During the induction their subjects pumped a stationary
bike under heavy load. Bányai used a standard script for the
induction, with suggestions for alertness, attentiveness and
freshness instead of sleep and drowsiness. The hypnotic state
produced by active-alert induction was nearly identical with a
traditional relaxation induction. This opened the door to using
hypnosis in situations that require open eyes and alert attention.
Improved Cognitive Skills
In one study, college students were taught to use “alert selfhypnosis” to improve their skills to read, listen, take notes, and
write exams. Students were randomized into alert hypnosis
treatment or waiting list groups. Following training in an eyesopen induction, treated subjects were coached to create and give
themselves suggestions for better comprehension while reading
in hypnosis. After training, all subjects were tested on a
standardized reading comprehension test, and students in the
“alert self-hypnosis” group improved their test scores, and they
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made an average gain of almost one half a grade from the quarter
before to the quarter after training (Wark & laPlante, 1991).
Athletic Achievement
Athletic achievements can be increased with alert hypnosis,
for example raising an archer’s precision. In one model (Robazza
& Bortoli, 1994), the athlete in alert hypnosis receives
suggestions for body awareness, imagery rehearsal, focus on
relevant cues for the event, and smooth automatic execution. The
impact of all these suggestion is enhanced by alert hypnotic
induction and suggestion during practice, followed by a total
review later, in traditional hypnosis. Their study showed marked
improvement in the alert hypnosis archer.
While many studies have shown virtually no difference
between the hypnotic state produced by a traditional relaxation
induction and an active-alert induction, one distinction is
significant: alert inductions are significantly associated with
reports of joyful dreams (Bányai, 1980). So apparently there are
positive uses for active-alert hypnosis beyond tribal dances,
religious revivals and political rallies.
Citations
Bányai, É. (1980). A new way to induce a hypnotic-like alert
state of consciousness: Active-alert induction. In L. Kardos
and C. Pleth (Eds.), Problems of the Regulation of Activity.
(pp. 261-273). Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
Bányai, É., & Hilgard, E. (1976). A comparison of active-alert
hypnotic induction with traditional relaxation induction.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 85(2), 218-224.
Ludwig, A.M., & Lyle, W.H. (1964). Tension induction and the
hyperalert state. Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, 69(1), 70-76.
Robazza, C., & Bortoli, L. (1994). Hypnosis in sport: An
isomorphic model. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 79(2), 963973.
Wark, D.M., & laPlante, P.M. (1991). Reading in alert trance:
Effects on comprehension. Hypnos, 17(2), 90-97.
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Patterns That Effect Our Life –
Knitting A Sweater
Knitted sweaters often consist of repeated patterns
throughout. The more intricate the pattern, the more difficult and
time consuming it is to do the knitting. It requires a great deal of
concentration, co-ordination and determination to complete. We
can choose to just purchase a machine-made sweater from a store
or we can develop the skills to knit the most beautiful one-of-akind sweaters that really suit our own individual needs.
And so our lives are very similar. Many people have difficult
situations in their lives such as toxic addictions, inability to make
decisions, debilitating procrastination, or hurtful even abusive
relationships. They may spend decades of their lives repeating
these same patterns over and over until they finally get help.
Perhaps they talk to a friend, go to their minister for counseling
or to a therapist hoping to find relief. They may gain some
understanding and vow to change the patterns that have not
really supported a fulfilling life. However, these patterns are so
deeply entrenched that just deciding, even committing to change
them, does not usually last very long. Just like the patterns in the
sweater, they continue to be repeated over and over again.
Unhealthy Patterns
An example is a young woman we’ll call Susie, who can
never seem to move forward in her life. She came to her
counselor feeling stuck in her life; however, through counseling,
she began to see that she has confused love with rescuing. That
pattern of putting others’ needs before her own seemed to be at
the root of much of her unhappiness. After years of repeating this
pattern, she was elated about her discovery and committed to
changing the pattern. This was not as easy as she thought.
After several more years of trying to leave her loveless
relationship, she became very depressed, anxious and again
feeling stuck in her life. She finally discovered Heart-Centered
Hypnotherapy, desperate to change this pattern of putting others’
needs before her own. With hypnotherapy, she was able to go
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deeper and discover the source of this pattern. Her subconscious
mind revealed to her that the source was while she was in her
mother’s womb. Her mother was a very needy person who spent
much of her life feeling empty and lonely. When she became
pregnant with our client Susie, the mother began to feel a blissful
joy that she never experienced before. Having a baby inside of
her made her feel complete and she wanted to hold on to that
feeling. When it was time for the delivery, she did not want this
union to vanish and so mother, unconsciously, held on to the
baby.
Life Patterns From Birth
Three days after her water broke, baby Susie was still not
born. The midwife felt this was dangerous and finally gave the
mother an ultimatum: either you have this baby this morning or
we will be going to the hospital. Baby Susie was born within
hours of this ultimatum. Through hypnotherapy Suzie discovered
the source of this pattern of putting others’ needs before her own.
In the womb, she began putting her mother’s needs before her
own, by staying stuck inside even though she was ready to be
born. Even though she felt constricted and even suffocated she
did not push forward to be born. This pattern of staying stuck in
order to please someone she loved, kept repeating over and over
in her life. And just like knitting the sweater, the pattern was set
to continue.
I know that for people who have not experienced
hypnotherapy, it seems unbelievable that you could return to
your birth and that it could have an effect on your life. But after
thousands of hypnotherapy sessions and much research, we have
determined that most of our lifelong patterns begin very early in
our lives. And all this invaluable information is stored in the
vault of our subconscious minds. Hypnotherapy is the key to
unlocking this valuable wealth of information and to changing
these patterns where they began. That’s when the most beautiful
new pattern can emerge.
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Discovering Authority Issues with
Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy
Authority Issues in the Therapeutic Relationship:
Transference and Countertransference
Surprise, surprise! Therapists are human just like their
clients, often with very similar issues. This is why Freud, Jung
and others brought to our awareness the concepts of transference
and countertransference. They became aware of experiencing
authority conflicts and power struggles with their own patients as
well as with each other, their colleagues. From our 35+ years of
teaching and healing professional therapists, we have also
become aware of how pervasive unresolved authority issues are
within all of us, therapist as well as patients. Do you find
yourself reacting (being triggered) when a client engages in a
power struggle with you? Perhaps they disagree with your
advice, miss an appointment, or don’t keep an agreement they
made with you. An extreme form of this is a client who reports
you to your professional Board or takes a legal case against you.
The way to notice a trigger is to check in with your body. When
a client is late (or any of the above mentioned triggers), drop into
your chest or stomach and see if there is a tightness, shortness of
breath or discomfort. Notice your jaw; is their clenching or
tightness?
It is difficult to properly treat clients who trigger us by
reacting to our authority in subtle or not so subtle ways. This is
why our predecessors (Freud, Jung, etc.) always required their
students to be in their own analysis/therapy for many years so
that they could resolve their own issues and be unbiased with
clients. In Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy we completely agree
and follow the model of, “Physician, heal thyself.” We often say,
“You can’t take a client anywhere you haven’t been yourself.” If
we, as therapists, continue to be in our own self-discovery
process, we will learn as much from our own reactions to our
clients as we learn directly from them.
How do most therapists handle clients who are reactive to
them or who trigger their own issues? Some therapists try to
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ignore it, some actually engage in trying to rescue the client or
fix their problems and others just refer “unpleasant” clients to
another therapist. These are unhealthy choices and don’t allow
us, as therapist or our clients to effectively heal.
How to Discover Authority Issues
Many people find themselves reacting when a person or
institution has power and authority over them. People may get
triggered (react strongly) when stopped by a policeman, get
critiqued by their boss, or are evicted by a landlord. Others may
react to political leaders, to their course instructors, or to their
minister, rabbi or priest. Do you notice yourself in power
struggles (acting out behavior, or even just in your mind) with
others who are in positions of authority: criticizing the authority,
finding faults with how they govern, teach or run institutions?
Perhaps you often feel you know better than others and get into
power struggles with officemates, parents, spouses or even your
own children.
Authority issues are universal and affect many areas of our
lives. It is important to become aware of the clues or triggers to
our own authority issues before we, as therapists, can properly
treat these issues in our clients. Noticing the triggers or reactions
in our bodies can provide us with invaluable information that
leads to healing. Authority issues can take the form of feeling
powerless in the presence of certain other people, comparing
ourselves in our mind and then feeling incompetent or better
than, and then engaging in power struggles in relationships. We
may notice ourselves “putting others down,” trying to steal
power from the authority figures, or engaging in gossip about
those who are in authority. Some people do the opposite and try
to align themselves with powerful people by bragging about their
personal friendships or association with those in authority in
order to elevate themselves. Whether discounting authority or
falsely aligning with it, these are all road signs pointing to where
the healing needs to happen.
Healing Through Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy
In Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy we use the strongest
triggers as the starting point in each therapy session. The
conscious mind can tell stories, fool the therapist, or believe our
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own justifications. However, in hypnotherapy we often ask the
body to tell us the true story. The body never lies and is a very
clear road marker which points in the direction of our own
individual issues. Whereas the conscious mind in cognitive
therapies can take us on detours, put up road blocks, and make
the trip much longer than it needs to be, the subconscious mind
provides us with the direct route to the issue we want to heal.
This direct route to healing authority issues not only gives us
insights into our projections, but allows us to finish our business
with people in our lives that we may only subconsciously have
known to be unfinished (Fritz Perls). Through age regressions
we can express feelings that were unacceptable to express as
children, we can change our old unhealthy conclusions about
ourselves, and make new functional decisions about how to
behave.
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Hypnotherapy Enhances Sports
Performance
Visualization through hypnosis, as taught by The Wellness
Institute, can improve an athlete’s mental attitude, increase
confidence and improve performance, sometimes even more than
actual physical practice. One study shows that Olympic
swimmers and downhill skiers who spend equal time in physical
training as well as mental rehearsal, achieved better performance
results then their competitors who only practiced physically.
Another study amazingly showed that basketball players using
only visualization had the same rate of improvement as those
who only practiced physically!
The same mental imagery techniques have been shown to be
highly effective in refining other skills as well as sports
performance. For example, basic surgical skills were refined
better with mental imagery than with textbook study only in a
Texas A & M College of Medicine study.
What is Sports Visualization and Mental Rehearsal?
It involves recreating our best sports performance in our
minds, engaging all of our senses but without conscious thoughts
and without making any physical movements. All of our senses
are located in the subconscious mind and that’s why
hypnotherapy is so effective, in fact essential, in enhancing
sports performance. Mental rehearsal involves making complete
use of our senses. It must include hearing the familiar sounds
such as the crowds cheering us on, the familiar sights connected
with our sport, and most importantly, the sensations and feelings
we have when we are “in the zone.” Many athletes describe the
experience of “being in the zone” as a feeling of oneness.
An example is a golfer where the golf club becomes an
extension of their arm and connects with the ball in unity with
the perfect swing. That feeling of connection with the ball then
may move into the golfer feeling himself standing there and
watching the ball land in the perfect spot. Re-experiencing the
emotions of joy, fulfillment and excitement are all an essential
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part of the sports visualization experience. Olympic skiers
visualize soaring down the slopes, feeling completely connected
with nature and the mountains, with the sound and feel of their
skis moving through the snow and the experience of soaring with
the flow of the course. They may also feel the wind or cold air
on their face as they fly down the slopes. All of these sensual
experiences are vital components of sports visualization and
enhancement.
Along with mental rehearsal, there are several ingredients
that contribute to an athlete’s performance which can all be
addressed by Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy.
The Three C’s of Enhanced Sports Performance
 CAPABILITY – Any repetitive skill can be greatly
enhanced by visualization and mental rehearsal. The
most important aspect is to have a clear picture of what
you want to accomplish and then rehearsing this for 10
minutes at a time. Also, just before dropping off to sleep
is an excellent time to do your final daily “visualization
practice.” When a task is new, run your simulations
slowly so you can focus on the details. If you’re an
expert, quicker is better.
 CONCENTRATION – The experience of being in the
zone is something that is required by every successful
athlete. In the heat of competition, it is required that an
athlete block out everything and stay completely focused
on the physical execution of the sport. This is truly the
gift of hypnotherapy which opens the doorway through
the subconscious mind to effectively master the practice
of mental rehearsal. It is essential to block out the
conscious mind’s thoughts, distractions and fears and
drop deeper into our senses.
 CONFIDENCE – Confidence is one of the biggest
stumbling blocks for many athletes. The athlete may be
excellent at the physical execution of their sport, but if
they lack confidence, those negative self-beliefs can
totally undermine their physical ability. Through HeartCentered Hypnotherapy we can quickly discover what
their negative self-talk is and go back to the source of
this and change it. An example may be a person who
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keeps sabotaging their own success, even though they
are physically talented in their sport.
One example was a young man who had the belief that he
could never be number one! He always came in 2nd or 3rd rather
than 1st. In hypnotherapy he was able to revisit his childhood
where, in his family, he had a developmentally disabled sister.
The family did not want her to feel badly about herself, so they
kept boosting her up and asked the boy to hold himself back so
as not to make her jealous. He grew up learning to hold himself
back and subconsciously continued to do that in school and
athletics. This led to always coming in second or third and never
understanding why he wasn’t first. Once he worked this through
in Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy, he allowed himself to soar to
number one!
Because Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy teaches individuals
to visualize as well as to resolve unconscious and self-limiting
beliefs about ourselves, it is truly a dynamic model for sports
enhancement and mental rehearsal.
Citations
Bauman, James. (May/Jun 2000). The Gold Medal Mind.
Psychology Today, Vol. 33 Issue 3, p. 62.
Moran, Aidan; Guillot, Aymeric; MacIntyre, Tadhg; Collet,
Christian. (May 2012). Re-imagining motor imagery:
Building bridges between cognitive neuroscience and sport
psychology. British Journal of Psychology, Vol. 103, Issue
2, 224-247.
Suinn, R. M. (1997). Mental practice in sport psychology: Where
have we been, where do we go? Clinical Psychology:
Science & Practice, 3, 189–207.
Sanders, Charles W.; Sadoski, Mark; van Walsum, Kim;
Bramson, Rachel; Wiprud, Robert; Fossum, Theresa W. (Jun
2008). Medical Education., Vol. 42 Issue 6, 607-612.
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What Are You Prepared to Lose?
Entering into psychotherapy, or any method of honest selfreflection, demands a willingness to lose something as well as to
gain something. Personal growth often involves “loss”: the loss
of illusions I have believed in order to avoid the truth. Perhaps I
have constructed a self-image that is too flattering, or just the
opposite I may have believed myself to be less competent and
less capable than I really am. It is common in therapy for an
individual to begin their work believing that “My family (or
Mother or Father) was practically ideal”, only to realize later a
more honest appraisal.
Projection and Inflation
It reminds me of the Fleetwood Mac song “Tell Me Sweet
Little Lies.” All of the defense mechanisms that Freud itemized
so thoroughly a hundred years ago are built around the principle
of deception and creating illusion. We deny the truth and invent
a fantasy in its place. It might be that “I’m not afraid of intimacy
and being fully present in this relationship – you are!” (called
projection). It might be that “I am the most capable person in my
department at work, and the only reason I haven’t been promoted
is everyone is jealous of me” (called inflation).
Honest self-reflection requires that I get real about the stories
I have told myself, that I acknowledge the truth I have denied
and that I renounce the fantasies I invented. This is what we call
Shadow work, discovering how destructive our “blind spots”
have been in our life. In the Twelve Step paradigm it is Steps
Four and Five:
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of
ourselves.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human
being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Shadows
And for most of us, the greatest wrongs we have committed
have been against ourselves. Our “blind spots” have allowed us
to stay enslaved to addictions, to stay too long in unsatisfying or
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unsafe relationships, to make excuses for our failures. Our
shadows don’t reveal themselves as such – these parts of us are
too clever for that. Rather they tend to externalize onto a
troubling aspect of the environment “out there”, the projection
gambit referred to earlier. Thus they tend to be denied as any
part of me, with the result often being entrenched “me vs. them”
boundaries and a continuous search for scapegoats. Naturally,
the solution to problems they create is to “problem solve” the
other’s beliefs and behavior.
There is a twofold process in healing the internal split
through which these shadows emerged. One is to give back to
the rightful owner any untrue beliefs about myself taken on early
in life. My father told me that, “You’re worthless” or “You’re
stupid.” Because a small child gullibly believes everything an
adult tells him, those messages became introjected as deeply held
self beliefs. And they need to be recognized as not mine, not
reflecting my true essence, not me, and given back.
The beautiful Truth
Only then can the second part of the healing process take
place. That is to reclaim the original truth: “I am worthwhile” or
“I am as smart as I need to be.” And being rigorously honest, we
must acknowledge the damage done through the confusion,
whether the damage was to another or to myself.
Here is where the healing extends beyond the personal,
however. We need to address the world we live in, and that
requires a re-evaluation of how we make personal choices. There
are cultural values exerting influence from the background,
unconsciously, just like the personal ones I introjected from a
parent. Beyond the personal, I discover and confront the
archetypal shadows, the cultural assumptions and societal biases
that can be so limiting.
My healing also requires that I become clear about the
background patterns that drive my reflexive behaviors, the
archetypal shadows operating independent of the ego, and give
them back to the rightful owner, too. Or better yet, to allow those
to become “losses” that personal growth grows from.
Hypnotherapy is an ideal vehicle for this shadow work,
because through age regression it allows access to our various
“parts” which are the arrested development child states that we
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call shadows in adults. It also gives access to the traumatic
events that initiated the defense of these shadow parts.
Compassion comes easier when we begin to recognize our
shadows as inner child states attempting to get a basic need met,
needs such as safety, nurturing, comforting, or acceptance.
Gaining this perspective allows us to lose the dysfunctional
patterns that these infantile or childish parts of ourselves have
been relying on.
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Treating Exhausted Stress Response
with Hypnotherapy
Allostatic load is “the wear and tear that results from chronic
overactivity or underactivity of allostatic systems.”
Hypnotherapy is an effective treatment for the conditions that
result.
We know that the body is able to deal with stress by
responding to threat or challenge with heightened cortisol levels,
and then to gradually dissipate the excess cortisol as the
challenge diminishes. We know, too, that the body’s ability to
deal with stress and danger is limited, that it reaches exhaustion
at some point and begins to shut down. In integrative medicine it
might be called adrenal fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, or
fibromyalgia.
Allostatic Load: Too Much Stress
The first type of allostatic load is simply too much stress in
the form of repeated events that cause repeated elevations of
stress mediators over long periods of time with insufficient
relief. For example, the amount and frequency of economic
hardship predicts decline of physical and mental functioning as
well as increased mortality (Lynch, et al, 1997). We have written
about this condition before in relation to femicide, using the
terminology of insidious trauma (Zimberoff & Hartman, 1998):
insidious traumas are characterized by repetitive and cumulative
experiences of oppression, violence, racism, genocide, or
femicide. They present an assault on every level of security a
person has: physical, psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual.
Yet not all types of allostatic load deal with chronic stress, it
can also be dealing with the inability to turn on the antidote to
stress, that is to turn off the stress reaction. This leads to inability
to relax or to allow the vulnerability of an intimate relationship.
Allostatic Load: Failure to Habituate
This second type of allostatic load involves a failure to
habituate or adapt to the same repeated stressor. This leads to the
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over-exposure to stress mediators because of the failure of the
body to dampen or eliminate the hormonal stress response to a
repeated event. An example of this is the finding that, while most
individuals habituate their cortisol response to repeated public
speaking so that it becomes less stressful over time, a significant
minority of individuals fail to habituate and continue to show
elevated cortisol response no matter how often they speak in
public (Kirschbaum et al, 1995).
Another example of this is blood pressure elevation in workrelated stress which turn down over time for most people; the
longer they are in the job the less job stress they experience.
However, job-related high blood pressure is very slow to
decrease in some individuals with a family history of
hypertension (Gerin & Pickering, 1995).
Hypnotherapy is a valuable tool to use in helping people to
gain clarity about why they react to certain situations as stressful,
which translates into more conscious choice about how to deal
with those situations. Hypnotherapy also provides direct access
to the unconscious mind’s regulation of the nervous system and
the endocrine system.
Gerin, W., & T. G. Pickering. (1995). Association between
delayed recovery of blood pressure after acute mental stress
and parental history of hypertension. Journal of
Hypertension, 13, 603-610.
Kirschbaum, C., J. C. Prussner, A. A. Stone, I. Federenko, J.
Gaab, D. Lintz, N. Schommer, and D. H. Hellhammer.
(1995). Persistent High Cortisol Responses to Repeated
Psychological Stress in a Subpopulation of Healthy Men.
Psychosomatic Medicine, 57: 468-474.
Lynch, J. W., G. A. Kaplan, and S. J. Shema. (1997). Cumulative
impact of sustained economic hardship on physical,
cognitive, psychological, and social functioning. New
England Journal of Medicine, 337, 1889-1895.
McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and Damaging Effects of
Stress Mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338,
171-179.
Zimberoff, D., & D. Hartman. (1998). Insidious trauma caused
by prenatal gender prejudice. Journal of Prenatal and
Perinatal Psychology and Health, 13(1), 45-51.
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Five Principles of
Existential Hypnotherapy
1. Meaning in life is found in the living of each moment.
Most people have experienced some of their most
profoundly meaningful experiences in the most fleeting of
moments. Consider the adage to “smell the roses along the path.”
Being fully present in the experiencing of each moment also
implies that the meaning and purpose to be found is in the
engagement itself, not in some result that “I get out of it.”
One of the primary injunctions for a therapist with an
existential approach is to not have expectations, or an agenda, for
the client’s experience or therapeutic goals. Such an approach
could be considered awakening from the “trance of ordinary
life”.
For most people, the past is alive in the present in the form
of unfinished business and uncompleted developmental tasks. As
one resolves and completes what was left unfinished, the person
opens to the immediacy of the present moment, reducing
reactivity and increasing self-esteem, which hypnotherapy is
very effective in treating.
2. Passionate commitment is the highest form of expression
of one’s humanity.
Many researchers have consistently found that relationships
are the most important source of meaning for all age groups and
both genders. Females identify significantly more relationship
meanings than males, however, confirming the emerging
understanding in the field of identity development that there is a
relatively greater significance of relatedness in female
development, and of self-definition in male development.
3. All human beings have freedom of choice and
responsibility for our choices.
Faced with existential anxiety, one option is avoidance
through neurotic defense such as addictions or depression. A
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second existential choice is self-rejection, to judge, attack or
punish oneself for being the person he/she has become.
A third existential choice is to remain open and nondefensive in the face of our deepest anxieties. Hypnotherapy is
useful in assisting an individual to recognize fears, anxieties,
defenses and personal shortcomings without self-judgment.
4. Openness to experience
“Openness to experience is the most frequent predictor of
wisdom”. Kramer’s research (2000) documents that people who
are generally considered wise share the following attributes:
 promotion of their own personal development and
enjoyment of learning;
 enrichment of relationships;
 critical awareness and tolerance of ambiguity and
complexity;
 self-clarity including a critical stance toward oneself;
 capability of finding purpose and meaning in life’s
turbulence and using their negative emotional
experiences as catalysts for emotional growth;
 ability to see patterns in their experience and life
choices, and to use the insights gained to help
themselves and others;
 concern for others’ welfare and a lack of self-absorption;
 embracing of one’s own negative and positive
characteristics for greater wholeness.
5. The imperative of death
Death is a common theme in many transpersonal altered
state experiences, and this is the case with existential therapies
(Zimberoff & Hartman, 1999). The context of death may express
the fear of existential annihilation, taking one of several forms:
1. It may be that of ego death, the surrender of the limited
self-concept in the service of transformation and
integration. It is the profoundly spiritual transformation
that deep existential therapy can bring.
2. It may be that of the necessary death that must precede
rebirth, the initiation required for successful return of the
hero discussed by Joseph Campbell.
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3. Everyday awareness of death may provide the
motivation to live life more immediately.
4. The context of death may be that of the depressed lack of
psychical energy we call malaise, symptomatic of soul
loss in Jungian psychology.
Alternately, the context of death encountered in existential
therapies may reflect a “death urge,” taking one of several forms:
1. It may be that of an existential resistance to life, to being
incarnate on earth, the deep sense of “I don’t want to be
here.”
2. The form of death urge may be that of someone who
gets to a particular stage of development and has a
mortal fear of moving on to the next stage.
3. It may be that of fulfilling a pre- or perinatal imprint on
one’s encounter with death prior to or in birth, e.g. reenacting the traumatic suffocation created in a prolapsed
umbilical cord birth or an overterm birth.
4. The “death urge” may be fulfilling one’s perception of
the parent’s desire for the child’s death, e.g. parental
rejection in the form of contemplated or actual adoption
or contemplated or attempted abortion.
This person, afraid of death, is actually terrified of life. A
line in the popular song “The Rose” captures this approach to
life:
It’s the one who won’t be taken
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying
That never learns to live.
Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy addresses these aspects of a
client’s life experience by directly accessing the unconscious,
where these deeply embedded patterns live.
References
Kramer, D. A. (2000). Wisdom as a classical source of human
strength: Conceptualization and empirical inquiry. Journal of
Social and Clinical Psychology, 19(1), 83-101.
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Zimberoff, D., & Hartman, D. (1999). Personal Transformation
with Heart-Centered Therapies. Journal of Heart-Centered
Therapies, Vol. 2(1), 3-53.
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How Does Hypnotherapy Enhance
Jungian Psychology?
From Jungian Psychology we have been introduced to the
concepts of shadow parts. These shadow parts are actually
hidden parts of our personality, hidden, that is to us, but certainly
not to our friends, family and co-workers. Shadow parts are akin
to the blind spot in our rear view mirror. Even though the car
passing to our left side is nearly upon us, we can not see it.
Examples of personal blind spots or shadow parts may be having
the self concept that we are a loving kind mother, wife and friend
and then losing control and lashing out at those closest to us.
Then later on, acting as if nothing has happened. It’s like the car
we don’t see in the rear view mirror until they are suddenly in
front of us and we continue on our journey, as if we had seen
them all the time.
Example
Another example is believing that we are fair, kind and
accepting and then listening to the voices of our inner judge who
stands back and mentally criticizes or finds fault with others,
nearly continuously throughout our day. Outwardly, perhaps we
act normally, giving them compliments about how nice they
look, how accomplished they are or what a great friend they have
come to be. The running shadow dialogue in our head is quite to
the contrary. “What an ugly dress, he/she is an idiot and will
never get anywhere, or I don’t trust them as far as I can throw
them.” These inner dialogues indicate that our shadow parts have
actually formed an alliance within us called a complex by Jung,
without our conscious awareness or agreement.
How does Heart-Centered-Hypnotherapy interface with and
enhance these Jungian concepts to make them more
therapeutically available to our clients? First, with hypnotherapy
we can actually slow down long enough to drop into the
subconscious mind to be able to hear the unconscious dialogues
that play in our heads like a radio left on. These internal dramas,
akin to a soap opera, take on a life of their own, uncensored and
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uninterrupted. When we, client and therapist, enter into the
dialogue through hypnotherapy, we become aware that this radio
program has been playing for a long time. Through the wisdom
of the subconscious mind, we can regress to the origin of this
dialogue and discover the age of the child part that is hiding in
the shadows, i.e., the blind spot of our rear view mirror.
Healing Unresolved Infantile Conflicts
Second, with hypnotherapy we can resolve the infantile
unresolved conflicts that gave birth to the immature parts of us
that felt unsafe and had to hide in the shadows/recesses of our
consciousness. As children if we grew up in families where we
were criticized instead of encouraged and loved only if we
performed to an impossible standard, we had to develop some
defenses in order to survive and not become completely
hopeless.
It was a strong survival instinct that created our internal
shadow parts that knew they could not be seen or we could have
been punished to the point, in some families, where the abuse
would have been even more devastating.
Conscious vs. Unconscious Mind
Without the tools of hypnotherapy, we are limited to using
only 10% of our mind which is the conscious mind. Like the
blind spot in our rear view mirror, the limited conscious mind
can think, analyze and talk about the concepts of our deeply
hidden shadow parts.
With Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy we have complete
access to use the full 100% of the mind. Having increasing
access to the subconscious mind allows us to drop down into our
memory banks in order to expand our full awareness of when
and how these young shadow parts and complexes were created.
These complexes can be untangled so that the intertwining issues
that were suffocating our human development can be resolved.
Through hypnotherapy, the client as well as the therapist, is
gifted with the ability to hear these shadows, determine what
they truly need for safety, and encourage them to emerge from
their hiding places to be seen, loved and transformed!
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What Is Intimacy and
How Can I Achieve It?
Intimacy is being able to drop down into your deepest
feelings and feel safe. Intimacy is:
1. feeling safe to share your deepest feelings and know you
won’t be ridiculed or shamed.
2. knowing what the deepest part of your soul is longing to
express and being able to express it with your partner,
spouse or friend.
3. knowing in the deepest part of your Soul that you are
loved, adored and treasured.
4. being able to disagree, even strongly, and trusting that
you will be heard – if not immediately, then at least
sometime in the very near future.
5. feeling honored and respected enough to be yourself
even if that self is not always sugar and spice and
everything nice.
6. being able to receive the love that is offered even if it
doesn’t come in the form you wanted or expected it to be
in.
7. being able to love the other person even if they don’t
meet your expectations, speak the way you want to be
spoken to, or live up to your expectations of the fantasy
relationship you thought you wanted.
8. having faith and a deep knowing that your souls are
supposed to be together for a much deeper purpose than
you can see right now.
9. being able to face the suffering of humanity together and
becoming stronger for the journey.
10. deeply laughing, playing and crying together and
passionately loving.
11. being able to create together: music, poetry, the dance
and thoroughly enjoying every moment of the process
without regard for the finished product.
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12. trusting our most vulnerable parts to be exposed and
expressed, and having faith that we won’t be judged, but
knowing that we will be valued even more deeply.
13. feeling deeply respected and deeply respecting the other.
14. laughing and crying together, disagreeing and clearing
the air to pave the way to go even deeper.
Intimacy is not a commodity that you can purchase or figure
out. It is a magnificent lotus flower that divinely grows and then
emerges from the depths of our souls.
Intimacy is a fabric that two people weave together when the
strands of their lives dance the intricate dance of vulnerability,
passion and rejoicing.
Intimacy cannot be achieved; it must be uncovered,
recovered and discovered!
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Hypnotherapy Can Reveal
Your Past Lives
The subconscious mind is a wonderfully complex piece of
internal mental machinery. Most of us try to understand the
complexities of the subconscious mind and the even deeper
complexities of the unconscious mind with the relative simplicity
of conscious mind. Herein lies the problem.
During one of my very first hypnotherapy sessions, I had a
powerful, physical and emotional experience of regressing back
to a war zone that was not in this lifetime. Because the
subconscious mind has access to all the senses, I could actually
feel the dirt on my skin, smell the dead bodies around me and
feel the freezing temperatures of the night air on my skin. When
I returned back to the everyday reality, I was quite puzzled and
discussed this with my hypnotherapist.
Different Aspects of Past Life Regression
There are many different aspects of “past life experiences”
which are valuable in our own personal development. First, with
Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy we are most concerned with the
client’s presenting issue. If someone comes into our office with a
marital or relationship issue, that is what we will be addressing.
So our client, Sandra came in saying that her daughter Franny
was extremely defiant towards her, very disrespectful and ready
to fight her at the drop of a hat. To further add pain to this
situation, Franny’s father, Sandra’s husband, did not seem to
notice the defiance of their daughter and if he did, he usually
sided with Franny.
The value of Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy is that we can
regress the client back to the source of their conflicts, in order to
then resolve any underlying unconscious issues that often are
contaminating their relationships. Sandra at first regressed back
to her family of origin where a familiar family scene came into
her awareness. It was that her older sister was beautiful,
intelligent and seemed to be the “Golden Child” as she described
her. Sandra’s mother and father constantly compared her to her
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sister and somehow, Sandra always felt she came out on the
bottom rung of the ladder. We began to address this issue of
competitiveness and regressed her once again on these feelings
of other females disrespecting her.
In this regression, she found herself in another lifetime
where she was being stoned to death for her religious beliefs by a
group of zealots. It was a very painful, shaming and completely
devastating experience. As she was dying in that “past life”
Sandra concluded that she didn’t deserve respect and that there
was nothing she could do to redeem herself. She was powerless
and devastated.
We asked her to look at the faces of the people in the crowd
that stoned her to death to see if she recognized any of them. She
felt that her daughter, sister, mother and father (in this life of
Sandra) were all in the crowd. She felt she could see a person
that resembled her husband standing off from the crowd but
unwilling to help her. We asked her to then get in touch with her
spiritual connection and to cut the cords that have kept her
connected with that past life experience. She was able to do that,
along with other techniques we use in hypnotherapy to free
people from their past experiences, whether in this life or
another.
Common Questions
Now, many common questions often arise in the mind of a
client: 1) Do past lives really exist? 2) Was that a true experience
of a past life? and 3) What do I do with this experience?
There is much research in other cultures and countries such
as India that “prove” that past lives do exist. A common study
has researched many young children who were speaking about
their “other family” from another town. The children were young
enough to remember names, houses, family members and even
addresses. The researchers set out to these towns and in 80% of
the cases were able to verify what the children said and how they
died in that incarnation.
In order to work with past lives, however, it is not necessary
to believe this research or to believe that past lives literally exist.
Dr. Carl Jung taught about the collective unconscious where we
each have aspects of ourselves that relate to universal archetypes.
They are the primal images that come alive every night in our
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dreams, or in moments of fanciful imagination. In HeartCentered Hypnotherapy, we work with these archetypes as a way
to heal on the deepest unconscious level.
Another form of healing that we use is Energetic
Psychodrama. We would take Sandra’s current family situation
and assign roles for people in her therapy group to play. Sandra
would be in a trance state and go through her feelings, eventually
regressing to her childhood and then even to the “past life” in
order to heal these issues. Our goal is not to unveil what some
people see as the fascination of past life issues. But rather to see
the links, conclusions and decisions that people make in their
lives that continue to attract dysfunctional patterns of behavior.
Changing these patterns on the deepest subconscious level is
the main difference between Hypnotherapy and talk therapy. It is
also fascinating to explore the depths of the subconscious mind
for what is stored in that vast treasure trove of surprises. And
past lives just may be one of them!
Resources
Dr. Jim B. Tucker, M.D. is a board-certified child
psychiatrist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and
Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He has
carefully researched past life phenomena, and written two very
good books about it – Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation
of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives and Return to Life:
Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives.
You can learn more at http://www.jimbtucker.com/return-tolife.html.
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Assumptions and How They Negatively
Affect our Relationships
“Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.” –
Marshall McLuhan
Assumptions negatively affect our relationships in several
important ways. We unconsciously make assumptions and
judgments about (1) other people’s behavior, (2) other people’s
intentions behind their behavior, and (3) our own behavior and
intentions.
For example, a husband goes to the store to get something
for dinner. He knows his wife will be hungry and tries to find out
what she would like. He calls her from the store, but to no avail.
Then he tries to decide what she may want. He had asked her in
the morning but she didn’t know what she might want 10 hours
later. When she gets home in the evening, he prepared what he
likes and says, “I didn’t know what you wanted, so I didn’t get
anything.”
The woman immediately goes into a fury. She angrily
replies, “Have I ever gone to the store and gotten something for
myself and not for you? No, of course not! I would never do that
to you. Now I have to go back to the store to find something for
myself.”
So what are the assumptions that each has made about the
other’s behavior?
1. The husband shopping at the store assumed that since
his wife didn’t tell him what she wanted, that she might
get angry if he came home with the wrong thing. He
assumed that she might be more angry if he came home
with the wrong thing than with nothing at all.
2. The wife assumed that her husband didn’t care about her
needs, didn’t think about her and was selfishly only
thinking of himself. She judged him to be selfish,
uncaring and thoughtless. He judged her as overly
emotional and irrational.
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3. Now, in the moment she was too angry to check out her
assumptions and he was too confused to check out his.
The behavior pattern of each person can be traced back
to early experiences of how, or if, their needs were met.
Age regression hypnotherapy is a powerful tool to
accomplish this exploration.
Our assumptions are directly related to what we project onto
others. Assumptions, projections and judgments are where the
fights begin in relationships. After an argument, a good practice
in couples work is for each partner to look at their assumptions
and judgments. If you really want to change your relationships
into a healthy communication style, here is a practice couples
can do.
Sit down with a notepad and complete each stem sentence
1. Describe the behavior, just the actual specific behavior:
“When you . . .” (for example, “When you went to the store
and bought your dinner and came home with nothing for
me”)
2. Identify your emotional feelings: “I felt . . .” (only the core
emotions of angry, hurt, sad, scared, lonely, jealous, or
shame)
3. Identify your assumptions: “I assumed that you . . .” (“You
didn’t care about me”)
4. State your judgments: “The judgment I made about you was
. . . (“You are selfish”)
5. What question would provide more useful information to
clarify your assumption: “I assumed that . . . Is that true?” (“I
assumed that you don’t care about me. Do you care about
me?”)
6. Be clear about what you need from yourself in order to
handle a similar situation in a healthy way (“I need to check
out my assumptions before acting on them.”)
7. Be clear about what you would like from the other person,
knowing that you may or may not get it (“I would like you to
buy food for both of us when you go to the store.”)
8. Close the exercise with an intention to create closeness with
the other person (“I would like to open my heart to you and
have a conversation about what happened.”)
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Treating PTSD with Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy has emerged as a credible, evidence-based
treatment option for sufferers of PTSD. Posttraumatic Stress
Disorder, PTSD, consists of a series of symptoms that arise from
a traumatic event in one’s life. The symptoms of PTSD usually
consist of:
1. Intrusive flashbacks (mentally reliving a violent scene)
2. Nightmares or recurrent bad dreams
3. Anxiety disorders resulting in chronic physical pain,
body tensions, teeth grinding
4. Over reacting to situations with seemingly little control
5. Sudden outbursts of rage or temper tantrums
6. Unexplained fears or phobias
7. Sleep disorders
8. Inability to relax the mind and the body
9. Persistent stress, tension, fears
10. Inability to concentrate, loss of memory
Another common thread is that certain people or situations
may suddenly remind the person of the traumatic event. We call
these triggers.
What Is a PTSD Trigger?
An example of a PTSD trigger is anyone who has served in
combat who may be walking down the street and hears a car
backfire and reacts in a similar manner to when they were in a
high-stress combat situation, re-experiencing the past as if it
were happening right now. The trigger from the car backfire may
cause this combat veteran to begin to sweat, feel his heart
pounding, his breathing may increase rapidly and he or she may
even find himself running for cover. The triggered PTSD veteran
may begin to have flashbacks where intrusive memories flood
their mind and they may, for some period of time, feel like they
are actually right back on the battlefield
Hypnotherapy in large part deals with unlocking the
subconscious mind. We must emphasize here that the main tools
of the conscious mind are rational thinking, analyzing and
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judging. In contrast, the gifts of the subconscious mind are all
located within our senses. The subconscious mind is a huge
sensory vehicle consisting of the ability to experience our world
through our senses: sounds, smells, tastes, visuals or pictures,
and/or feelings. One way to locate what is stored in our
subconscious in order to help an individual suffering from PTSD
is to understand what the PTSD triggers actually are.
Hypnotherapy and PTSD
Trigger events can be very disconcerting for any victim of
PTSD who does not either know they have PTSD, or are
unfamiliar with their own particular triggers. PTSD often goes
undiagnosed by the medical profession and even in the
psychological community. Common examples of undiagnosed
people with PTSD can be adults who, as children, grew up with
parents who were alcoholic, where there was violence, yelling,
fighting and bullying in the household. A person who was
physically, emotionally or sexually abused during the formative
years most likely has grown up with symptoms of PTSD without
it ever having been recognized or treated as well. Familiarity
with the principles of the mind through hypnotherapy gives us
the most effective tools to truly recognize, diagnose, and then
treat PTSD.
Hypnotherapy for PTSD is an evidence-based treatment and
can effectively treat the symptoms as well as the underlying
causes. The people who have the most severe PTSD symptoms
and who will likely benefit greatly from hypnotherapy are people
who have had previous trauma or stressful experiences during
childhood. Here are some of the unique ways that hypnotherapy
is effectively used in the treatment of PTSD:
1. Immediate installation of powerful stress reduction exercises
recorded so the PTSD client can replay the recordings as
often as needed after leaving the treatment facility
2. Titration of symptoms so that the PTSD client can slowly
reduce his or her reactions to the common triggers
3. Identifying each trigger so that the client experiences more
control of situations in their life
4. Hypnotherapy to go even deeper into individual memories to
see if other, previous stressful events are adding fuel to the
PTSD wildfire
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Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss:
How is it Different than Hypnosis?
First and foremost, it must be understood that hypnosis does
not work permanently for weight loss. Hypnotherapy, and its
integrated set of therapeutic techniques, does.
So, why is hypnotherapy a more effective treatment option
for weight loss than simple hypnosis? Thousands of people seek
out a hypnotist to lose 10 or 15 pounds, perhaps because they
want to fit into that wedding dress or swim suit in three months.
This may be done in an individual session, a small group or a
very large group. Hypnosis can be very effective in these
situations. The person or group will be hypnotized, put into a
light trance and given suggestions. These suggestions usually
include:
 Seeing yourself at your perfect weight
 Feeling motivated to exercise
 Feeling the desire to choose healthy foods.
The problem is that this may be only temporary for a good
percentage of the millions of people seeking hypnosis treatments
to lose weight. A small percentage of these people are
sufficiently motivated by the situation, for example, the
wedding. When the situation is over and they no longer have a
direct motivation to lose weight, however, they often return to
their previous eating patterns and gain the weight back.
Hypnotherapy Is an Effective Treatment for Weight Loss
Tens of millions of people around the world spend large
amounts of money in attempts to lose weight. There are so many
different weight loss options that are aggressively promoted and
commercialized that it’s becoming more and more difficult to
find a plan that actually works for you personally. For the
majority of people desperately seeking to lose weight, however,
issues with food typically go much deeper than any diet or
exercise program will be able to address.
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A certified hypnotherapist will ask a series of questions to
determine how the hypnotherapy can best help a client with their
weight loss goals. It must first be determined if the seeker of
hypnotherapy for weight loss has the habit pattern of emotional
eating. This means that they eat for reasons other than true
hunger; like when they are stressed, feeling angry, scared, guilty,
unhappy, lonely, or just plain bored. Do they eat just because it
is lunch or dinner time or break time? Do they use food as a
reward for “good behavior”? Most importantly, are they addicted
to certain high calorie foods such as sweets, greasy fried foods,
fast foods from restaurants like McDonalds, pastas, pizza and
breads?
Emotional eating is just as much of an addiction as
alcoholism and is often more deadly due to its direct link to
obesity and the illnesses that may follow. For these tens of
millions of people, hypnosis may not be the most effective
method for weight loss. They require hypnotherapy by a certified
hypnotherapist who uses powerful, hypnotherapeutic techniques
to get down to the root causes of this stubbornly addictive
relationship with food. These deeper issues must be identified,
addressed and resolved by a professional who is not just content
to give simple suggestions and hope they work.
Many people are so desperate to lose weight that they will do
almost anything. Many try dangerous and invasive surgeries,
attend expensive in-patient eating disorders programs and use
high amounts of dangerous drugs in an attempt to stop these
addictive eating patterns. In fact, it is entirely possible for people
to lose nearly one hundred pounds with stomach bypass surgery
only to gain it all back because they have not addressed the
psychological aspect of emotional eating and weight gain. If this
surgery had been combined with hypnotherapy to help reverse
the emotional eating patterns, it may have been a much more
successful weight loss treatment in the long run.
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Containment Equals Energy Management
What does the word containment mean? How does it apply
to me as a therapist or group leader? Or parent or spouse? What
are the tools that I have available to provide containment for
myself, my clients, and my family members?
Think of milk: it is essential to a baby’s development.
Without milk, the baby’s bones would break and the growing
child could not walk or participate in many of life’s
opportunities. Without a proper container, the milk would just
spill all over and the wonderful nutrients would be wasted. This
is the same for our human energy. Energy is a powerful force
which, when uncontained, spills all over everyone in the vicinity
and can contaminate our personal interactions. Similarly, water
is a very powerful force and when contained by a dam, provides
electricity for the world to use productively, yet when
uncontained can become a destructive tsunami or flood.
So, how does this apply to me as a therapist or group
facilitator or parent? First, we have ground rules, especially for
our individual clients and when teaching or leading groups.
Ground rules provide the parameters to keep group members
safe so that they feel confident to do deep personal work. In
Wellness programs, we provide consistent ground rules such as
confidentiality, only one person speaking at a time, no sexual
advances and no use of drugs and alcohol during or just before
therapy sessions. Sometimes when we as leaders provide or
present the ground rules for safety, individual members may
react. We will come back to this further on. Some of these same
ground rules could also provide safety in families and schools for
children.
Then there are the more subtle forms of containment which I
am calling energy management. Just like the powerful energy of
the water in a rushing river, emotions, if not contained properly,
can cause flooding, destruction and even death. When that
emotional energy is properly contained, it provides enormous
healing power for all concerned, even the therapist. In HeartCentered Therapies we offer the Clearing Process which like the
river dam, enables strong emotions to become usable for
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personal growth and transformation and thereby prevents
destruction of relationships. This process provides safety so that
the reactive individual does not flood another group member or
the entire group with their uncontained emotional reaction.
We all as human beings, have what we call “emotional
triggers.” These are situations or other people that we have a
strong reaction to. One example is when someone threatens to
leave or does leave the group without proper closure
(containment). This leaving may “trigger” in others a reaction of
feeling abandoned or rejected. “What did we or I do wrong?”
We, as humans, fill in the blanks when we are not provided with
the facts. Usually we fill in the blanks according to our past
experiences. So, if as children, one of our parents died, or
physically or emotionally abandoned the family, we interpreted
this leaving as if I, the child, were bad or had disappointed the
parent. We then became filled with guilt, self-blame and feelings
of unworthiness to really be loved. And some group members
will automatically fill in the blanks when triggered with their
storehouse of guilt, self-blame and unworthiness.
An important part of energy management (containment) is
knowing that we have been triggered, and what the reaction is.
We teach our students and therapists to always check in our
bodies, first and foremost, to determine what has triggered us.
We check first in our chest for pounding or increased heart rate
and breathing, then in our gut for pain and tightness, then
perhaps in our jaw for tightness. These are a few of the common
body signals that tell us we have had a reaction. Our bodies can
tell us, also, what the reaction is: we include a short regression or
visitation into our childhood to see where this reaction/projection
came from, where the deep unresolved feelings began, and to
own their own reactions instead of projecting their emotional
reactions onto others. This owning of individual reactions is the
container which leads the client to their own healing, the milk
carton which allows the rich nutrients to become useful to our
own personal growth.
In therapy terms, this is often called transference, especially
in one-on-one therapy between client and therapist. In our HeartCentered Therapy model, we place equal importance to our
countertransference. When we as the therapist experience a
reaction to one of our clients, we need to contain, through
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recognition and resolution, our own emotions and reactions so
that we can be as clear as possible. Then and only then can we
become a clear and open channel through which our own
intuitive energy can be used for healing.
One important part of creating safety is commitment.
Keeping commitments is part of creating integrity and teaching
our students and clients how to recognize when their fear
thoughts cause them to want to run or miss scheduled meetings.
Because so many people have been raised in families with
divorce or some other ways of being abandoned, commitment is
an important safety agreement for everyone. When our process
becomes challenging, we often turn into that small child that
wants to run away from home or hide under the bed or in the
closet.
Our adult needs to come in and provide the container for the
fearful child to stay present and receive the consistent support
that comes from honoring our own commitments, from facing
our patterns of avoidance and ambivalence that fool us into
thinking that our fear voice is our clear voice.
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Hypnotherapy Can Help Caregivers of
Special Needs Family Members
Many people find themselves in situations where they do not
want to put elderly or disabled parents into nursing homes, or
where they do not or cannot afford to get outside care for special
needs children or family members. How can Heart-Centered
Hypnotherapy help?
1) Respite care for caregivers is always advised but most
people don’t know how to make that happen. Self-hypnosis
provides a deep state of instant relaxation once it has been
taught. The caregiver may not be able to physically leave the
home for rest and relaxation, but can “leave the stress
behind” when taught to do self-hypnosis and relaxation
techniques while their patient is sleeping or otherwise
preoccupied.
2) Hypnosis is also exceedingly helpful in providing healing
and relaxation for the aging or disabled family member.
Milton Erickson discovered hypnotherapy when he was
besieged with polio as a child. He learned to eliminate his
daily pain by imagining himself slowly floating down to the
bottom of a swimming pool (self-hypnosis) and then leaving
the discomfort down there. As he visualized himself coming
up to the surface of the pool, he saw this large black pool of
pain, which he termed “ink.” He realized he could visually
leave the ink/pain at the bottom of the pool and gradually
float up to the surface, i.e., coming up out of the deep trance
he had created by going down to the bottom of the pool. He
emerged free from discomfort for the entire day. He
committed to doing this pain control practice daily and we
now use this and many more techniques to relieve chronic
pain. It helps to reduce or eliminate the need for pain killing
drugs which can become addictive.
3) Often the caregiver has deeply buried emotions toward the
family member they are caring for that have not been
released. For this we employ the deeper methods of
Hypnotherapy. For example, perhaps the caregiver is
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resentful, feeling as if they have been forced to put their own
life on hold for an undetermined period of time. Sometimes
they find themselves secretly “wishing” that their patient
would die. Of course this brings feelings of guilt and shame.
They may also feel fear that they are causing their family
member to get worse, or that they are responsible for any
downward turn the patient takes. Through hypnotherapy for
the caregiver, we can go back to the source of the guilt and
shame, perhaps to a pattern of taking on burdens of
responsibility that they really did not want to take on.
4) We also suggest that the caregiver read our book Breaking
Free from The Victim Trap, which will help them to
understand the family dynamics that may be contributing to
the situation they have created for themselves. An example
of this lifelong pattern is best told by one of our long time
students named Faith, who, herself recently had a heart
attack at age 67.She had spent the best years of her life
taking on the heavy responsibility of caring for other family
members. The pattern began in childhood when her role in
the family was to be “the good little girl” and “mama’s little
helper.” Her mother shaped this role for her with constant
praise and rewards when she took on the role of selfsacrifice. This role was especially praised when Faith took
care of her mother and grandmother. She spent much of her
youth caring for her “dying grandmother.” Faith kept
thinking that grandma would die soon and then she would be
free to play and have fun.
The more this situation dragged on, the more rewards
Faith received from her mother. When grandma finally did
die, of course, Faith was sad, but was looking forward to her
new freedom to play with friends. Needless to say this never
happened as there was always someone else her mother set
her up to care for. This pattern continued into adulthood, and
of course Faith became a nurse so there were always folks to
care for. What a dilemma! However, after that heart attack,
Faith realized through her hypnotherapy experiences that she
was not responsible for everyone else, that it was selfsabotage to sacrifice her own life in order to take care of
others, and that it is now time for her to be free, to play and
have fun.
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Heart-Centered Personal Transformation
One of the most important breakthroughs in Western
psychology has been the discovery that psychological maturation
can continue far beyond our arbitrary, culture-bound definitions
of normality, and that techniques exist for realizing our expanded
potentials.1
Abraham Maslow said, “What we call normality in
psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so
undramatic and so widely spread that we don’t even notice it.”2
Normality is a form of arrested development, where the
developmental process has stopped prematurely, incomplete.3
Many people now see development beyond normality as the
logical culmination of human development. In the first phase of
life, from childhood to middle adulthood, we are becoming
individuals, learning to meet the demands of family, work, and
society. In the second phase, which begins, according to Carl
Jung, with the “midlife crisis”, we begin to turn inward, to
reconnect with the Self, the center of our being. In the first phase
we build and develop our ego and in the second phase we
transcend it.4
We have all experienced moments of transcendence, induced
by religious ritual, a peak experience, hallucinogenic drug,
meditation, near-death experience, or many other means. This
experience provides a “glimpse” of the vast possibilities beyond
normal everyday consciousness.
We transform first physically, changing the structure and
functioning of our bodies. We begin to understand the subtle
energy that we are composed of, and learn to manage it for
optimal health and growth. We gain conscious influence over
many of the processes once believed to be autonomic, such as
our sleep cycle, recovery from injury and illness, the functioning
of the immune system, and ultimately the process of dying.
Secondly we transform emotionally, healing the wounds of
unresolved trauma and growing in self-actualization (Maslow’s
term) or individuation (Jung’s term). This healing necessarily
involves incorporating the full expression of ourselves,
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embracing the repressed shadow, the imperfection, the
unworthiness as well as the wisdom and the transcendence.
Thirdly we transform spiritually, surrendering the ego to that
which is greater than itself (“Thy will, not mine, be done”),
finding our highest purpose in life and beginning to express it in
every action. This involves reclaiming all the fragments of the
Soul that have been dissociated or lost through identification
with a narrow, too-limited self-concept.
Finally we transform our social context, creating healthy
community to support our highest level of functioning. We
transform within the crucible of relationships, creating an
identity and strengthening the resulting ego by facing our
deepest fears and greatest challenges. We create through. We
create and use safety and trust, encouragement and support
within the heart-centered unconditional love of a healthy
community.
Psychotherapy, Healing, and Transformation
In psychotherapy, we basically follow the prescription
discovered by Freud of retrieving traumatic memories, bringing
unconscious material into consciousness, expressing the attached
emotions, and releasing the trauma. In the process, traumas are
resolved and we return to the normality of social adaptation, free
of symptoms. Our goal is a well-adapted life with a sense of
personal power and healthy relationships. The ultimate goal is a
happy life.
In healing, we expand the goal of our intervention from
symptom relief to system optimization. It might be seen as the
difference between medicine and naturopathy. We also bring
into the process spiritual connection (the client’s and the
healer’s), accessed through intuition and experienced as the
grace of God. We use more powerful techniques to access deeper
levels of the unconscious, bringing forgiveness and acceptance.
Our goals are self-actualization, the expression of unconditional
love in healthy community, and service to others. The ultimate
goal is a harmonious, balanced life.
In transformation, we begin by following the same
therapeutic process. We might call this phase of transformation
regressive, going to the source of lessened capacity and healing
it. We don’t stop there, however. We continue the healing into
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the psychospiritual realm, overcoming normality and achieving
(returning to) wholeness. We might call this phase of
transformation progressive, evolutionary growth into selfactualization. We transcend the limitations of generally accepted
ordinary reality. We release the attachments to people and things
that keep us captive and limited, and work toward karmic
liberation, clarity of psychic vision (listening to and following
the quiet, infallible Inner voice), and reaching the highest
expression of love in the surrender of the ego to the will of God.
The ultimate goal is a life of moments so balanced and conscious
that one maintains equanimity, composure and spiritual focus
even at the moment of death.
People usually seek therapy for quick solutions to immediate
problems. Perhaps they have an addiction or anxiety or a
relationship issue which they know they need to address.
Unfortunately, therapeutic treatment is symptomatic, and often
results in symptom replacement.
Healing, on the other hand, requires an in-depth look at what
life is about, the purpose and meaning of existence, and how to
more fully express oneself in this lifetime. In healing work, we
recognize the interconnectedness of the whole person. We go
deeper to the level of early trauma and resolve what was left
unresolved. We know that true healing clears up the problem,
symptom and cause, leaving the person healthy and prepared to
fight off future infections, be they physical or emotional.
In transformational work, we see the symptom as a clue to
the deeper spiritual issue with which the person is involved. The
symptom can actually lead through the deeper emotional work,
clearing out ego issues that block spiritual connection. For
example, a person who is continually upset with his/her
relationship partner is so preoccupied with these projections that
it prevents him/her from looking deeper at the real source of the
hurt and anger.
A hindrance to transformation is the support we may receive
to not change. The process of transformation often results in
estrangement from those who have been our companions in
ordinary life. As we develop new insights, new interests, new
life scripts and life goals, those in our companionship circle who
haven’t changed in a like manner are no longer able to
effectively support us. They may even try to sabotage our growth
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in a new direction, and support us to turn back to the old ways.
This is especially common with relationships that have involved
addictions or other behaviors designed to keep us numb and
asleep.
However, we can create healthy community, a network of
new companions, like-minded and supportive of the newly
expanded perspectives. This is a community of seekers on the
same path who value consciousness over unconsciousness. After
spending time with people who share their soul on the deepest
levels, it is difficult to go back to cocktail parties and idle chitchat. It becomes very boring to spend time with people who are
not honest about their feelings and are still highly involved in
feeding their hungry egos.
References
1
Walsh & Vaughan, 1993, p. 47.
2
Maslow, 1968, pp. 71-72
3
Walsh and Vaughan, 1993, p. 110
4
Metzner, 1998, p. 258
5
Thomas Moore, 1992, p. xi
Maslow, A. (1968). Toward a Psychology of Being, second
edition. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.
Maslow, A. (1971). The Farther Reaches of Human Nature.
New York: Viking.
Metzner, R. (1998). The Unfolding Self: Varieties of
Transformational Experience. Novato, CA: Origin Press.
Moore, T. (1992). Care of the Soul. New York: HarperCollins
Publishers.
Walsh, R., & Vaughan, F. (Eds.) (1993). Paths Beyond Ego: The
Transpersonal
Vision.
New
York:
Jeremy
P.
Tarcher/Putnam.
Zimberoff, D. (1989) Breaking Free from the Victim Trap:
Reclaiming Your Personal Power. Issaquah, WA: Wellness
Press.
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How Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy Reveals
Shadow Parts –
The Jungian Aspect of Our Work
How Do I Know if I Have Any Shadow Parts?
Shadow parts are like the blind spots in our rear view mirror.
One moment we look out of the mirror and it looks as if we have
clear sailing, no cars in sight. Then suddenly, seemingly out of
nowhere, a car appears dangerously close to us! Where did that
come from?
Similarly in our lives, we may be having a discussion with
our partner, co-worker or friend and suddenly a shadow part is
triggered, reacts to something said, and jumps out, seemingly
without your permission or even awareness! The reaction might
be sudden rage or jealousy, sadness or fear. Now we have a mess
to clean up that was completely out of our control, like getting
side-swiped by an unseen car trying to pass on the highway.
The power of Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy in these
situations, when shadow parts jump out, is that we offer many
tools and techniques to help that rear view mirror give a clear
and realistic picture of the traffic which may be there ready to
take you over. This is accomplished by providing tools to
effectively work with trance states and with the deep
unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is a gold mine ready
to be explored through hypnotherapy, to reveal what has been
deeply buried within each of us.
How Does this Work?
We take Jungian psychology out of the head, which is only
10% of our mind, and we bring it into the subconscious portions
of our awareness, into the body, and even into the unconscious
mind. This is only logical since this is where the shadow parts of
us reside, in the blind spots hidden deep below our conscious
awareness. The trick here is to “see” where the shadows are
hiding since usually we only observe the aftermath of a shadow’s
emergence. Just like how confusing it is if we have a car
accident, without ever seeing the car hidden in our blind spot.
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We might ask ourselves, “Why did that happen or how did that
happen? I didn’t even see it coming!”
Blind spot shadow collisions frequently are evidenced in our
relationships. An example is a man in one of our groups whose
shadow parts would emerge through his interactions with others
as well as in e-mails. He would characteristically respond to a
group e-mail with an angry response to something from out of
the blue. One time he was sent an announcement about an
upcoming class to which other people responded with excitement
and interest in enrolling. Those that weren’t interested simply
didn’t respond at all or just said, “No thank you, not at this
time.” The shadow part of this man, we’ll call Dan, responded
with an angry tirade saying, “Why should I take this class? It
isn’t going to help me and it certainly would not increase my
income!” And then he continued on from there.
When we would question this student later about one of
these tirades, he either didn’t remember it at all or would just
blow it off by minimizing it. “Oh that’s over now, I didn’t mean
anything by it.” His wife who lived with him, would just
dissociate by going into shock when his shadow tirades flared
up. However, as she continued to grow through her own deep
work with Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy, she began to thaw out
from her shock state of dissociation. She began to no longer
tolerate the appearance of these hostile, demeaning and
disruptive shadow eruptions. Through their relationship work, he
agreed to honor a signal from her which she could use to let him
know that one of his shadow parts had taken over “driving the
bus”.
How Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy Heals Shadow Parts
Each time a shadow part emerges, we regress the client to
the source of the reaction, the connected feelings and the early
decision that was made by a young, uninformed child, about how
to survive.
Let’s go back to the angry response to the offering of a new
class. We would ask the person what feelings were triggered
when he read the announcement of a new class. He may have
said, “Well, I was very stressed about money that day, etc.” Then
we would regress the person back to the source of these feelings
of not enough money or resources for him. In this case, he
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instantly regressed to being five years old, during an economic
hardship where his parents were raising several children and they
couldn’t make ends meet. There was a lot of family stress during
that time and the young boy wanted to help. He offered his
services in some way and was pushed aside by the older siblings
with shaming and demeaning words. “Don’t be silly, you are a
baby, what makes you think you could earn any money for the
family?” He went to hide in his room, feeling shamed,
unappreciated and very anxious that there would be no food for
them to eat. The deeper fear was, “We’re going to die.” The
unconscious conclusion he made about himself was, “I have no
value, I’m worthless.” The small child’s subsequent decision
was, “I’ll get revenge. They’ll be sorry, I’ll hurt them the way
they have hurt me.”
It was here at five years old that his shadow part developed
about hurting others before they could hurt him again. This
shadow part followed him around for all of his life, angrily
attacking or reacting to others who he perceived as rejecting his
offers to help. This shadow part contributed to many personal
conflicts, the loss of business partners, and eventually going
bankrupt. His healing began when he saw that his little boy just
wanted to be loved and appreciated and valued. He realized that
he had a very soft, loving heart that was easily hurt. He learned
to put protection around himself and ask his fellow Wellness
students and family members for feedback if the angry child
shadow part of him emerged without his awareness. The blind
spot that had caused collisions so often in his life, was now
moving into clear sightedness.
Healing shadow parts is most easily accomplished with
hypnotherapy to bring access to the unconscious events and
decisions that are the petri dish in which the seemingly isolated
shadow parts grow. Further healing is accomplished through
groups where loving feedback can bring light to these shadow
parts and thus bring them into the person’s awareness and out of
the dark.
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Hypnosis and the Science of Visualization
Although visualization may have been regarded as “new age
hype” by some, research has shown that there is a strong
scientific basis for how and why visualization works. It is now a
well-known fact that we stimulate the same brain regions when
we visualize an action and when we actually perform that same
action. For example, when you visualize lifting your right hand,
it stimulates the same part of the brain that is activated when you
actually lift your right hand. This amazing discovery offers new
possibilities for healing and recovery in areas such as:
 Stroke rehabilitation
 Strengthening the immune system
 Improving athletic performance
 Treating phobias, such as a fear of flying
 Changing mental attitudes
When a person has a stroke due to a blood clot in a brain
artery, blood cannot reach the tissue that the artery once fed with
oxygen and nutrients, and that tissue dies. This tissue death then
spreads to the surrounding area that does not receive the blood
any more. However, if a person with this stroke imagines
moving the affected arm or leg, brain blood flow to the affected
area increases and the surrounding brain tissue is saved.
Imagining moving a limb, even after it has been paralyzed after a
stroke, increases brain blood flow enough to diminish the
amount of tissue death. This is a very clear indicator of the
power of visualization. Extending the use of hypnosis beyond
visualization to incorporate hypnotherapy can be very helpful in
assisting a stroke survivor to deal with anxiety and depression
that may develop. Both levels, the physical rehab and the
emotional healing, can be accomplished in the same hypnosis
session.
Many studies have shown that visualizing T-cell production
(which enhances the immune response) actually does increase
the body’s production and distribution of those infection-fighting
cells.
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Athletes have known about this power for a long time. One
study showed that visualizations under hypnosis enabled
nationally ranked Stanford male gymnasts to execute for the first
time several complex tricks that they had been working on for
over a year. The gymnasts were able to eliminate timing errors in
the tricks, to increase flexibility, and, possibly, to concentrate
strength. Visualization has also been shown to improve high
jumpers clearing the bar.
This principle clearly applies to mental attitude and emotion.
When people focus on their fears it increases blood flow to the
brain regions that process fear, which will stop your actions. If
you focus on a positive outcome, blood flow in the brain is
enhanced in areas that activate initiating goal-directed action. It
is important not to let fear leak into your positive visualization,
because if you visualize while worrying, it is like painting with a
shaky brush. For example, a powerful treatment for a phobia like
the fear of flying is to gradually increase visualizing the anxiety
producing aspects of flying while maintaining a relaxed and
positive attitude. Hypnosis is a valuable method for staying
relaxed even in the face of an imagined stress.
The same techniques can be used in helping someone to
change their belief system about low self-esteem, or an inability
to create abundance.
Hypnotherapy provides additional depth to the process of
visualization by allowing an individual to go back in time,
through age regression, to the source of the fear or phobia or
self-limiting beliefs.
Your brain will act in accordance with your visions.
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Hypnosis for Tourette Syndrome
in Children and Teens
A new study of children and adolescents with Tourette
Syndrome finds that self-hypnosis taught with the aid of
videotape training reduced their symptoms and improved their
quality of life.
Seventy-nine percent of the 33 research participants
achieved enough improvement in tic control to report personal
satisfaction with the technique, according to the study published
online in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Development and
Behavioral Pediatrics. This is the largest case series of patients
with Tourette Syndrome treated with self-hypnosis. The authors,
Jeffrey Lazarus, M.D., and Susan K. Klein, M.D., Ph.D., were
with University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s
Hospital and the Case Western Reserve University School of
Medicine at the time of the study.
Subjects were shown video clips of a young boy with
Tourette Syndrome before, during, and after his self-hypnosis
training. Following that, each child or teen in the study was
taught self-hypnosis in individual sessions. The participants
ranged in age from 6 to 19 years, with an average of 13 years.
The research subjects also were assigned to practice the selfhypnosis technique three times a day and homework to answer
questions designed to increase their awareness of tics and how
they felt about experiencing them. All of the research
participants had motor tics and three had verbal tics in their
initial evaluations.
According to Dr. Lazarus, self-hypnosis helps the patient
experience a state of mind that combines relaxation with
concentration on a desired point of focus while other thoughts or
feelings fade into the background.
“Once the patient is in his or her highly focused ‘special
place,’ work is then done on controlling the tic,” said Dr.
Lazarus. “We ask the patient to imagine the feeling right before
that tic occurs and to put up a stop sign in front of it, or to
imagine a tic switch that can be turned on and off like a light
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switch. Further suggestions are made, including encouraging the
patient to invent his or her own images.”
Almost all of the participants experienced a dramatic
increase in tic control after only a few sessions: 12 after two
sessions, 13 after only three visits, and one after four visits.
Dr. Lazarus says that this non-pharmacological therapy for
tics is attractive because the medications that are used to treat
tics can be associated with undesirable side effects. Also,
physicians are reluctant to prescribe medications for mild or
moderate tic disorders, which many children often outgrow as
they get older.
“This case series suggests that self-hypnosis might be able to
be taught effectively in fewer sessions than another technique
known as habit reversal, but we’ll need to study this further.
However, the use of videotape as a teaching aid presents several
advantages: It can help standardize the technique of teaching the
method, it may shorten the length of time needed to teach the
technique, and it makes the technique more accessible to
younger children. Viewing a series of videotapes of another
patient gives patients the reassurance that they are not the only
ones in the world with this problem, and it gives them hope and
the motivation that they can take control of their bodies and life
challenges,” said Dr. Lazarus.
Lazarus, Jeffrey E.; Klein, Susan K. (July/August 2010).
Nonpharmacological Treatment of Tics in Tourette
Syndrome Adding Videotape Training to Self-Hypnosis.
Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics.
31(6):498-504.
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Hypnosis in Dermatology:
Warts, Psoriasis, Herpes Simplex
Hypnosis is a tool with many useful dermatologic
applications. It involves guiding the patient into a trance state for
a specific purpose such as relaxation, pain reduction, or habit
modification.
Hypnosis can regulate blood flow and other autonomic
functions not usually under conscious control. The relaxation
response that occurs with hypnosis also affects the
neurohormonal systems that in turn regulate many body
functions.
Hypnosis may be used to increase healthful behaviors,
decrease situational stress, reduce needle phobias, control
harmful habits such as scratching, provide immediate and longterm analgesia, ameliorate symptoms related to disease such as
pruritus, accelerate recovery from surgery, and enhance the
mind-body connection to promote healing. Hypnosis can be
especially helpful when dealing with skin diseases that have a
psychosomatic aspect.
Warts
The efficacy of suggestion in treating warts has been
confirmed numerous times (Sheehan, 1978). Numerous reports
attest to the efficacy of hypnosis in treating warts. In a wellconducted controlled study that serves as a typical example
(Surman, Gottlieb, Hackett, & Silverberg 1973), 53% of the
experimental group had improvement of their warts 3 months
after the first of five hypnotherapy sessions, while none of the
control group had improvement. Another randomized controlled
study with similar findings was that of Spanos, Williams, and
Gwynn (1990). Hypnosis can definitely be helpful as
complementary or alternative therapy for warts.
Psoriasis
Stress plays an important role in the onset, exacerbation, and
prolongation of psoriasis. Hypnosis and suggestion have positive
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effects on psoriasis. Tausk and Whitmore (1999) performed a
small randomized double-blind controlled trial using hypnosis as
adjunctive therapy in psoriasis with significant improvement of
highly hypnotizable subjects.
Herpes Simplex
Ameliorization of discomfort from herpes simplex eruptions
has also been reported as well as reduction in the frequency of
recurrences of herpes simplex following hypnosis. One study
showed that, following hypnotherapy, there was a significant
overall reduction in the number of reported episodes of recurrent
genital herpes simplex virus, accompanied by an increase in the
immune system activation. The improvers showed significantly
reduced levels of anxiety when compared to non-improvers.
References
Sheehan, D.V. (1978). Influence of psychosocial factors on wart
remission. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 20, 160164.
Spanos, N.P., Williams, V., & Gwynn, M.I. (1990). Effects of
hypnotic, placebo, and salicylic acid treatments on wart
regression. Psychosomatic Medicine, 52, 109-114.
Surman, O.S., Gottlieb, S.K., Hackett, T.P., & Silverberg, E.L.
(1973). Hypnosis in the treatment of warts. Archives of
General Psychiatry, 28, 439-441.
Tausk, F., & Whitmore, S.E. (1999). A pilot study of hypnosis in
the treatment of patients with psoriasis. Psychotherapy and
Psychosomatics, 495, 1-9.
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Hypnosis Can Prevent
Weakened Immune Status
Studies suggest that hypnosis may improve immune
function, increase relaxation, decrease stress, and ease feelings
of anxiety. The mind has the ability to control the body’s
production of immune cells and regulate immune functions, and
hypnosis provides access to the part of the mind that has that
capability.
Researchers have determined that hypnosis and related
relaxation techniques can actually prevent the weakening of the
immune response that often follows periods of acute stress.
Preventing the weakening of the body’s defenses is good, but
studies show that hypnosis may even enhance the immune status
in people facing surgery or other stressful events.
The lead researcher in a study reported in the Journal of
Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Janice Kiecolt-Glaser
describes using hypnosis in this research as something like
“hitting a reset button” for the participants in the study. KiecoltGlaser is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Ohio State
University.
This study found that subjects who had not used selfhypnosis showed a 26 to 39 percent difference in the levels of Tcells - important to the immune response – as measured by blood
samples before and after the stressful event.
 Stress caused subjects in a control group to drop
production of T-cells ( T-lymphocyte) by 33 percent
compared to an 8 percent increase of T-cell proliferation
in the hypnosis group;
 The more frequently the subjects in the hypnosis group
practiced their technique, the better their immune
response was.
This is validation of the observations of so many clients that
hypnotherapy is useful in treating the underlying origins of
diseases of stress, such as Crohn’s disease and fibromyalgia, as
well as anxiety and depression.
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The hypnosis is always best done by a licensed professional
who is also well trained in Hypnotherapy skills. In this treatment,
stimulating word choices and teaching the client to visualize can
enhance the power of increasing the immune system’s response.
It is also imperative to help the client uncover the underlying
emotions connected with the decrease in immune efficiency. A
common example is a person who has just lost a spouse or child
and thus has lost their own will to live. This often decreases the
immune system in a subconscious desire to leave the earth and to
be re-united with the lost family member. It is fascinating to
observe how the body responds to our unconscious directives.
Because hypnotherapy works on the subconscious level, a skilled
hypnotherapist can help the immune deficient patient to discover
what may have turned their immune system off and how to turn
it back on again.
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Resourcing and “Reparenting”
When clients are dealing with shock, we work with them to
create a situation in the present that supports them in exploring
their shock in a “peeling the onion” approach, going back in time
from the most recent shock to earlier experiences, and providing
appropriate treatment for each situation. In the hypnotherapy as
well as in psychodrama and breathwork, the most important part
of treatment for shock is resourcing. We always do that at the
beginning of the session. Some ways we resource the client are
to establish:
1. A strong adult ego state as a resource
2. A spiritual connection for protection and resourcing
3. A “1, 2, 3, stop” agreement or a hand signal if they
need to take a break from the process
4. Permission to touch them for support or to hold them
for nurturing, or in some cases to
shift their position out of the shock posture they are in
5. Cold packs (BooBoo Buddies) and hot packs (Belly
Buddies) to treat sympathetic as well as
parasympathetic shock.
In Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy, along with resourcing, we
always include the following for treating shock:
1. Reparenting, which we do in the regressed state so as to
incorporate the loving nurturing parent, the spontaneous
child, and the wise adult into the subconscious mind
where state dependent learning actually occurs.
2. Empowerment, developing appropriate (and healthier)
defenses, and learning to fully express what could never
be said in the shock state. Going back and
reprogramming the old dysfunctional rules and belief
systems which have kept the person from expressing
feelings so that they may now be empowered to have
and express a full range of emotions.
3. Interrupting and repatterning the shock physiology.
You can do this by sitting the client up gently if they
have been very far into shock and asking them to slowly
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take a drink of water. This will help them connect back
with their body. You can also very gently ask them if
you can move their foot. Or you can ask, “Which part of
your body do you feel the most energy in? Please move
that part of your body if you can.” As they move, have
them begin to feel the energy coming slowly back into
their body. Work slowly.
4. Letting go of your agenda in order to build trust and
safety. Because people who have been emotionally
and/or physically shocked are deeply wounded around
trust, the work proceeds slowly to allow genuine contact
at those most wounded levels, which builds the
resources so that the deeper healing can occur.
5. Titration approach to accessing traumatic material and
working with it cathartically. Titration allows for
“dipping into” it and out again, gradually. This
accomplishes essentially a gradual extinguishing of the
deeply embedded wounding.
6. Containment of the person’s experience. We provide a
“holding environment” for it, similar to the way a
mother contains her baby’s experiences.
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How Hypnotherapy Can Stop Thumb
Sucking in Children in 20 Minutes
I recently met two sweet sisters who sincerely wanted to stop
sucking their thumbs (actually it was their fingers rather than
thumb that they constantly had in their mouths). The girls were
wearing braces but still could not stop the behavior.
Their single mother was also highly motivated since she was
the one who had to pay for their braces.
Follow these steps to eliminate thumb sucking behavior:
1. In a comfortable location, the girls laid down on either
end of the couch with mom and grandma in the room to
create safety and normalize the experience.
2. We did a short “down the stairs” induction with only five
steps.
3. Then each girl created a resource state, which was going
to the beach, current in their experience since the setting
was a resort in the Caribbean.
4. Then I asked, “What would be the best thing that would
happen for you (each, separately) when you stop sucking
your fingers?”
5. Both responded, “Straight teeth and no braces!”
6. Then we did collapsing anchors, each girl imagining
something gross and disgusting on her thumbs and
fingers.
7. Then I instructed them, “Okay, now wash your hands and
see yourself on the beach with a beautiful smile, no braces
and feeling so proud of yourself.”
8. Instructions to Mom were, “Don’t ask them anything
about their experience or ‘check up on them’. Just leave it
up to them to speak about it if they want to.”
Mom was elated with the results. She reported two weeks
later, sending pictures of the girls, “Hi Diane - Just wanted to
drop you a quick hello and let you know that so far there have
been no fingers in the mouth since we came back from vacation
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and they have not even needed to go back to the recording. You
are fantastic!!!”
These NLP techniques work exceedingly well with children
(collapsing anchors, anchoring a resource state, and rehearsing a
desired future self).
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Hypnotherapy Best Practices:
Healing Trauma Without Retraumatizing
Working with trauma in the Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy
model is always careful to avoid re-traumatizing the individual.
That does not mean, however, avoiding re-experiencing the
trauma fully.
Hypnotherapy and the Release of Past Traumas
In the therapeutic process of deep healing and release of past
traumas, the three most important elements are:
1. The energetic somatic release of the painful emotions,
which in turn releases the shock and body armoring
embedded in the body’s musculature and nervous
system.
2. Containment of the process and of the client’s energy.
The hypnotic trance is induced, managed, and terminated
all in an orderly way. We titrate the emotions through
the extinguishing process. We help them to create a safe
resource state with anchors that they can always return to
and use as a refuge from overwhelm. Ego strengthening
is begun before the therapeutic part of the session, and
continued throughout with corrective experiences of
empowerment. There is an agreed upon signal to use if
they wish to interrupt the process or take an
intermission: “1, 2, 3, Stop”.
3. The corrective experience. They abreact feelings
bringing in the adult to express for the child what the
child could not express at the time of the trauma, thus
overcoming early inhibitions. Their experience is
legitimized. They learn to attribute the abusive behavior
to the abuser, not accepting blame themselves, and to
discriminate between self-identity and introjected
qualities taken on from others. They reconnect memories
and emotions to events, giving meaning to past events
that were experienced as bewildering.
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Louis Cozolino (The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, 2002,
p. 27) has a number of suggestions for how to facilitate neural
integration in psychotherapy. He proposes that neural growth
and integration in psychotherapy may be enhanced by:
1. The establishment of a safe and trusting relationship.
2. Gaining new information and experiences across the
domains of cognition, emotion, sensation, and behavior.
3. The simultaneous or alternating activation of neural
networks that are inadequately integrated or dissociated.
4. Moderate levels of stress or emotional arousal
alternating with periods of calm and safety.
5. The integration of conceptual knowledge with emotional
and bodily experience through narratives that are coconstructed with the therapist.
The first ingredient speaks for itself: without feeling safe,
no client is going to risk the vulnerability of working to heal
trauma. The second ingredient means that we need to address
all the ways individuals process information. Some people are
visual, some are auditory, some kinesthetic. In facilitating a
session, we obviously don’t want to expect a non-visual person
to “see” or a non-kinesthetic person to “feel”. We emphasize the
narrative of experience with someone who does best with verbal
language, while we utilize the physical with someone who does
best with ‘hands on’ experience. Some people relate literally,
others to symbolic or poetic metaphor.
The third ingredient is crucial for effective healing.
Cozolino (p. 46) states that “all forms of therapy are targeting
dissociated neural networks for integration.” We engage the
person as they were at the time of the trauma, which means some
of their processing was not functioning properly. In a moment of
trauma, the hippocampus goes offline. It is the brain structure
instrumental in the synthesis of experiences which provides a
conscious structure, context and a time stamp to the experience
in the process of memory encoding. In traumatic states, Broca’s
area, a circuit of interaction with other brain areas that plays a
vital role in the production of language, located in the left
hemisphere, may be inactive. So trauma resolution involves reexperiencing the trauma with corrections so that the
hippocampus can understand context (that particular man, but
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not all men, are abusive) and time-stamp the experience (prevent
a memory in the past from seeming to float in time and invading
the present). We want to encourage the person to speak her truth
and verbalize her feelings in order to activate the Broca’s area of
her brain during a re-living of trauma. Here we are activating
both the fear circuits and language circuits in ways that enable
clients to reorganize their damaged neural connections.
The fourth ingredient is commonsense, really. We all have
limits to how much intensity we can tolerate, and when we have
reached that limit, it is time to take a break. We ‘take a break’ by
treating shock, allowing quiet time for reflection, helping the
client find internal resources, nurturing the client with external
resources, and attending to his overstimulation. We ‘take a
break’ so that we can then return to disturbing material when
affective regulation is under better control, and there is more
capacity for an integrated brain response. Psychoanalyst Fred
Pine calls this “striking while the iron is cold” because it delays
the intervention from a moment when the conflictual issues are
bubbling over and the client is not able to handle it
(Developmental Theory and Clinical Process, 1985, p. 153). The
therapist must be careful, however, not to delay “striking while
the iron is hot” (when the timing is right for the issue to be
confronted) as a rescue of the client who doesn’t need rescuing
or as a means of avoiding therapeutic work that is personally
challenging for the therapist.
And the fifth ingredient on Cozolino’s list means that we
must reach our clients in their physical and emotional
experience, as well as their mental or cognitive understanding.
Talking alone is not sufficient to heal trauma. The memories are
carried deep in the unconscious, embedded in the body,
recording “fears set down at a young age in the amygdala, the
one part of the brain that never forgets. That’s why therapy is
seldom successfully done in a session or two, and is never
simply a matter of ‘explaining’ to people how irrational their
thinking is, or how counterproductive their behavior” (Mary
Sykes Wylie & Richard Simon, Psychotherapy Networker,
Sep/Oct 2002, ”Discoveries from the Black Box: How the
Neuro-science Revolution Can Change Your Practice”).
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These procedures wrapped together in the Heart-Centered
Hypnotherapy protocol are coordinated to actually help rewire
the brain circuits that were damaged in early trauma.
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Ask the Right Questions to Find the
Best Training Program for You
There are certainly many diverse courses in hypnotherapy
available for those seeking certification. Here are some things to
consider in order to discover the best training model that fits
your professional and personal goals.
1. Are you currently practicing or employed in a related field of
treatment? Do you have a Masters degree or a professional
license in any of these fields?
 Social Work
 Psychology
 Professional Counseling
 Drug and Alcohol Counseling
 Mental Health
 Nurse, Nurse Practitioner
 Private Practice Alternative Therapy
If so, you should be looking for a professional hypnotherapy
training and certification program (not just hypnosis training:
know the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy) that
has been training professionals for at least 10-30 years. The
highest quality hypnotherapy training should focus on training
you to do psychotherapy with your client in a trance state. The
best programs will teach you the skills of hypnosis while
blending your current knowledge of psychotherapy, your clinical
background and treatment skills with:
 Learning age regression techniques and how to
implement them during therapy
 Assessing how to use hypnotherapy with different
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM) diagnostic categories such as personality
disorders, addictions, anxiety disorders, PTSD and
depression
 Using hypnotherapy within different states of
dissociation, shock and trauma
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Understanding which diagnostic categories would not be
appropriate for hypnotherapy
Working with developmental stages and healing the
inner child
Combining humanistic psychology, Gestalt and
Transactional Analysis
This type of course work serves to provide an integrative
approach to hypnotherapy techniques that will ultimately result
in better client outcomes and patient success stories.
2. Do you value a blend of clinical learning and hands-on
experiential training? What percentage of the course time is
focused on:
 Practicing new skills
 Watching live demonstrations and videos of the
techniques presented
 Learning to do the techniques presented
 Learning cognitive clinical material
Advanced hypnotherapy training must provide you with an
experiential, hands-on learning environment that serves to
develop a comprehensive clinical and demonstrative approach to
hypnotherapy treatment. Ask these types of questions to get a
clear handle on just how experiential the course will be and how
much that will contribute to your learning and overall ability to
perform hypnotherapy techniques in your own practice.
3. Would you like to expand your ability to work efficiently
with a wider variety of clients with conditions such as:
 Eating disorders
 Stress reduction
 Anxiety disorders
 PTSD, for example, veterans returning from the
battlefield
 Trauma resolution
 Addictive behavior, relationship addictions, love
addictions, sexual addictions
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4. Would you like to learn to combine your profession with
healing and energy work? If so, here are some things to look
for in a hypnotherapy training program:
 A trained professional with at least a Master’s degree is
leading the course
 A high value is placed on trainers staying current with
their own personal work in the field of hypnotherapy
 The energy work can be combined with the
hypnotherapy training in a step-by-step process
5. Does this training have continued professional support in the
form of follow-up supervision groups, advanced trainings
and a client referral program?
Use these questions as your starting point for determining
which hypnotherapy certification program makes sense for your
professional and personal goals. Many hypnotherapy students
find the most success in hypnotherapy programs that apply
advanced techniques with experiential training. When looking
for the correct hypnotherapy certification program for yourself,
be sure you are investing your time, money, and energy in one
that will meet your professional needs as well as provide
ongoing community support and interaction in order to facilitate
your growth as a hypnotherapist.
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How to Obtain Hypnotherapy
Certification
Each State Licensing Board has different requirements that
constitute a full certification in hypnotherapy. It is important to
take this into account as you search for the best hypnotherapy
certification program that fits your professional needs and goals.
Finding the Right Hypnotherapy Certification Program
There are many groups that offer hypnotherapy certification.
How can you tell which is the correct one for your professional
aspirations? Typically, the question comes back to whether you
are looking to learn simple hypnosis or clinical hypnotherapy.
Additionally, you must answer the question as to whether or not
you already have a Masters degree in a mental health field.
Every state is different, every hypnotherapy school is different
and there is no one standard across the board to receive a
hypnotherapy certification. The generally accepted hypnotherapy
certifications are:
 Clinical Hypnotherapist (C.Ht.) and
 Advanced Clinical Hypnotherapist (A.C.H.)
The field of hypnotherapy, unlike other professional
therapeutic fields, is generally unregulated and certainly not
standardized. It is different from state to state and each state has
its own standards with some states having virtually none at all.
All professionals who hold at least a Masters degree in a health
care discipline, and have licensure/certification in the state which
they practice, are qualified to pursue hypnotherapy certification
and are able to incorporate hypnotherapy into their current
practice of psychotherapy. The State of Florida is the one
exception, requiring an additional certification in hypnotherapy
over and above the mental health licensure.
Hypnotherapy Certification Requirements
In some of the most prominent (well-recognized)
hypnotherapy training institutions, in order to receive
certification you must complete at least 60 hours of in-person
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classroom training and complete at least 20 practice sessions,
some of them under supervision. To provide adequate
preparation in the field, any certification training must include
supervised practice sessions, not just demonstrations by trainers.
Otherwise, the training is abstract theory only, and lacks the
hands-on experience so necessary to mastery of any clinical
practice.
Legitimate training leading to certification as a clinical
hypnotherapist must incorporate information about the ethical
uses of hypnosis and professional boundaries. There should be
information relating to the use of hypnotherapy in treating
specific diagnostic presenting issues, such as depression,
addictions, anxiety, sexual abuse, or anger management. One
would expect to learn how to teach self-hypnosis to others, and
what are the appropriate uses of self-hypnosis. NLP (neurolinguistic programming) and Gestalt Therapy are related
therapeutic techniques that are often incorporated into
hypnotherapy training as well.
Hypnotherapy can also be very effective in conjunction with
medical treatment such as pain management, accelerated healing
of broken bones or burns, or anesthesia for surgery. Certification
in clinical hypnotherapy should prepare a health care
professional to work with these types of conditions and many
more in an integrative medicine setting.
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Hypnotherapy Training In Only Six
Days? Frequently Asked Questions
We would like to help answer some frequently asked
questions that come up when professionals are searching for the
right hypnotherapy training course(s).
1. Can I Learn Hypnotherapy in Six Days?
Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy is an intense six day training
providing 60 CEU hours.
Because The Wellness Institute attracts mainly licensed
mental health professionals and health care providers, we assume
that they have a basic foundation in subjects such as developing
rapport with clients, making assessments as to the current DSM
diagnosis of clients, and basic interviewing and counseling
techniques. Most other hypnosis schools enroll a wide range of
students with little or no requirement for previous education in
counseling or therapy or health care. As a result, they may
require many more hours of training, and rightfully so.
The fact that most of our students are Master’s level
professionals, affords us the luxury of being able to teach trance
inductions and deepening techniques as well as self-hypnosis in
the first day and a half instead of stretching it out over a week.
We do not have to spend three to five days teaching interview
techniques, developing rapport, and how to assess the client’s
level of functioning and their appropriateness for hypnotherapy.
We then move right into the most exciting and challenging
aspect of hypnosis which is incorporating hypnotherapy and
trauma resolution into the trance state. We spend the majority of
our six-day training by balancing clinical information with live
sessions, videotapes of the Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy
process with real clients, and hands-on experiential practicing.
We are not just practicing trance induction and deepening
techniques, but each student gets to be the therapist, the client
and an observer several times during the training.
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2. Can I Practice Hypnotherapy When I Return Home?
In general the answer is a resounding YES! If you have been
a practicing therapist previously, this is a definite yes! People
come into the training with all different skill and confidence
levels and different tools in their tool box. The more previous
experience you have in working with people, the more intuitive
ability you have and the more overall confidence you bring, the
more likely you are to leave the training and begin using the
Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy immediately.
3. What if I Don’t Have a Practice or Clients to Work with?
The Wellness Institute is highly regarded among
professionals in the field of training due to our commitment to
provide a wealth of support once you have completed the SixDay Hypnotherapy Certification program. If you don’t have
access to clients, the supervision and internship groups will
provide people to be a part of your practice sessions.
4. What Ongoing Support and Training is Available after the
Hypnotherapy Course?
Supervision groups (not included in the price of the training)
are ongoing, once per month, in each of the cities where the SixDay Hypnotherapy Certification course is taught. These groups
bring together other people in your area who have taken the
training and who are working on completing their 20 practice
sessions required to complete the certification process. These
groups also attract all levels of certified hypnotherapists who
come to further their learning and to network with other likeminded healers in their area.
5. What if I Live more than Two Hours Away from
Supervision?
 You can drive in and stay with another certified
hypnotherapist in our network, then drive back home the
next day. Our network support will provide you with
someone within the supervision area, and you will
probably make a new friend!
 You can also arrange online Skype Supervision. We
have graduates all over the country who are happy to do
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Skype Supervision and will arrange the time and fee
with you.
6. Do You Offer Advanced Training after Completion of the
Initial Hypnotherapy Certification Course?
Once students return home and begin doing their practice
sessions, they begin to realize how much they learned... and how
much more there is to learn. Because of student requests for
further
trainings,
we
developed
the
two-year
Advanced Internship Training over 25 years ago. We are now
beginning our 60th Internship group. This program meets for
four extended weekends per year, with the same students in each
group for the entire two years. Each subject covered for one day
in the Six-Day training is expanded to a whole weekend for a
much more in-depth learning experience. The student is also
learning group skills which allow you, eventually, to do this
work with groups. This greatly increases your income as you
learn to work smarter rather than harder. In other words, you
earn more per hour when you are treating 10 to 16 people in a
group setting rather than hour after hour of individual sessions.
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Five Ways Hypnotherapy Certification
Will Benefit Your Practice
In this article we would like to discuss some underlying
questions that many aspiring and practicing certified
hypnotherapists have come to us with related to the integration
of hypnotherapy into their individual careers or practices.
Overall, the answers to these questions are intended to give you a
sense of how a hypnotherapy certification will potentially benefit
you and your career.
1. How can Hypnotherapy Certification increase my income?
If you work for an agency, take a minute to calculate how
many hours you work per week and what your salary is per hour.
Most Masters level therapists or Social Workers are shocked to
find out that the answer to this question is usually $25-$35 per
hour!
If you have a private practice and “work for the insurance
panels” you probably earn around $60 per session. If you now
calculate into that hourly wage the amount of time you spend to
do insurance paperwork, your salary has now decreased to $35
per hour. You may be surprised to learn that most of our HeartCentered Hypnotherapists earn $150-$200 per session. Many of
them have gotten off the insurance panels and now only accept
private pay clients.
2. When you were drawn to the helping professions, what
experience were you looking for?
Most professionals say that when they went to college, they
wanted to help people and through that experience, dreamed of
feeling gratified. Therapists are often searching for the
experience of personal satisfaction and feeling that they are
contributing to the good of mankind in some way. But after
many years of dry book learning and tens of thousands of dollars
in college loans and internships at inadequately funded agencies,
they have begun to feel discouraged about their original
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hopefulness about being able to make a difference in people’s
lives.
Through adding a hypnotherapy certification to their
practice, most of our therapists are now experiencing the
satisfaction of knowing they have the professional skills to truly
bring positive change into the lives of their clients/patients that
walk into their offices. These therapists report that they now feel
fulfilled by being able to bring powerful healing to nearly
everyone who seeks help from them.
3. How many clients do you refer out in a year to someone
“more qualified” to treat certain presenting issues?
By adding Hypnotherapy Certification to the tools in your
toolbox, you never have to refer a client out to someone else.
The brilliance of Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy is that it can be
applied to nearly every presenting problem seeking to be healed.
Now other therapists in your area will begin referring to you!
This is the exciting and challenging aspect of learning
hypnosis. You will learn to explore the deeper subconscious
mind which contains 90% of our mental capacity. Getting an
advanced degree from a university provides you with the
foundation necessary to build your “clinical house.” This
theoretical foundation, while necessary to provide structure and
stability, certainly requires the rest of the rooms in your “clinical
house” to be built in order to provide truly effective treatment for
people seeking your healing.
4. How do I become “the expert” in treating a much wider
variety of presenting issues with hypnotherapy?
Expand your competence and confidence to treat more
presenting issues effectively. The hypnotherapy certification will
help build the treatment rooms in your “clinical house” for:
 Addictions to substances such as alcohol, marijuana,
cocaine, caffeine and others.
 Stress, depression and anxiety, which have been
treated primarily with medications which merely cover
up the underlying cause of these symptoms. “Talking
with a counselor” may help the client to understand all
the reasons for their disorders, but that only addresses
10% of the client’s mind.
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Behavior addictions such as codependency, sex
addiction, gambling addiction, and a wide variety of
unhealthy relationship patterns such as always attracting
drunks or domestic abusers.
Eating disorders, including food addictions, anorexia,
and addressing the most prevalent complaint of obesity.
Mind, Body, Spirit healing, physical complaints
ranging from allergies, headaches, bladder infections,
back problems, eye, ear, and throat dysfunctions, cancer,
Fibromyalgia and much more. People usually seek a
physician’s help although studies now show that people
are overwhelmingly also seeking alternative solutions.
Clinical hypnotherapy is an integral part of holistic and
Integrative Medicine. You will learn how the
unconscious mind can speak through the body and
inform the client about what needs to be treated and
what the underlying causes of any physical complaint
may be.
Relationship Counseling
Children and Family Therapy
Sexual Abuse
5. How can I change my personal beliefs that may be holding
back my success as a certified hypnotherapist?
Over the past 35 years of training professionals like yourself,
we at The Wellness Institute have discovered a surprising fact:
the amount of money that most therapists earn is in direct
correlation with the effectiveness of what they are offering, but
just as surely with their belief about their own worthiness
(confidence that they deserve to be compensated well). Would
you agree? Ask yourself honestly, if this may be true for you and
may be affecting your income?
Do you have the belief that you should help others and really
shouldn’t be asking for money for providing healing work? Do
you have difficulty collecting your fee from clients, or
confronting those who are behind in paying you?
During the Six-Day Hypnotherapy Certification training, you
will have the opportunity to look at underlying beliefs that may
be holding you back from reaching your full potential. As you
are learning to heal your clients, you will also have the profound
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opportunity to experience Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy for your
own self discovery and personal transformation!
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How to Get More Hypnotherapy
Referrals from Other Professionals
Professionals will be eager to refer individuals to you once
they know you and are comfortable with the quality of work you
provide to those whom they refer. So the challenge is to get
those initial referrals that will allow you to “prove yourself” as a
certified hypnotherapist. We’ve all received a mass-mailed letter
of introduction from a therapist in the area, asking for referrals –
and we’ve all probably discarded them without a thought. But if
one of their clients recommends you, that professional is much
more likely to consider referring to you.
Referral Sources for Practicing Hypnotherapists
There are many professionals who can become good referral
sources for your practice:
 Attorneys always have clients that are in need of mental
health intervention: a car accident victim suffering
PTSD; an individual embroiled in divorce; the underachieving children of a business client.
 Physicians have patients who need to stop smoking or
release forty pounds or reduce the stress that is
escalating their high blood pressure.
 Dentists have patients with TMJ who may be able to
relax through hypnosis and hypnotherapy enough to
avoid surgery, and patients who could benefit from
hypnotherapy to deal with their panic attacks that occur
in the dentist’s chair.
 Physical therapists have clients who may benefit from
hypnotherapy to obtain better compliance with their
prescribed therapy.
 Massage therapists can refer clients who are unable to
relax or to tolerate physical touch.
 Other psychotherapists, of course, have clients with
whom they are at an impasse, and may welcome the
opportunity for a referral for a single hypnotherapy
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session with you – perhaps one that the referring
therapist would attend with their client.
When you gain added opportunities to demonstrate your
proficiency as a certified hypnotherapist, you will soon have the
reputation as the “wonder worker”. You will work with a wide
variety of presenting issues, more than most psychotherapists.
And some of the areas you are prepared to work with after
rigorous hypnotherapy training have few other therapists capable
of offering services. For example, utilizing hypnotherapy you
will be able to work with referrals from physicians on
psychosomatic disorders, autoimmune deficiency, TMJ, pain
relief, smoking cessation, or weight loss. You will also receive
referrals from other therapists for consultation with their clients
who are at an impasse, who cannot seem to access their
emotions, or who are unable to remember crucial events from
their childhood.
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165
How to Retain Your
Hypnotherapy Clients
It’s not that you want to keep your clients in treatment
longer than is helpful to them, of course. But we’ve all
experienced a client who makes an appointment and at the
end of a really good session says, “Wow, that makes me
feel a lot better. I’ll call you if I ever feel like coming in
again.”
Retain Your Clients as a Long Term Investment
Such an individual may be a little short sighted, and
probably could benefit from more sessions. Perhaps she
feels embarrassed about what she revealed, and wants to
avoid facing you again. Perhaps she has low self-esteem,
and doesn’t value herself enough to feel deserving of
spending the money on her own healing. Perhaps she has
prosperity anxiety, and is afraid to invest the money in this
way. Whatever the reason, in most cases they are actually
presenting issues for therapeutic intervention – and the
ethical therapist will bring that to the client’s attention with
an invitation to continue in therapy long enough to
adequately address them.
It is not only ethical but also humane to discuss
treatment outcome goals with your client from the
beginning of your time together. Ask your client to
complete assessment checklists on codependency,
addictions, and anxiety, and then use the results to establish
treatment goals. When you have short term and longer term
outcome goals set up, it provides the framework for
discussing not only current successes but also the
unfinished work that remains to be completed. If your
client says to you one day, “Wow, I feel a lot better. I’ll call
you if I ever feel like coming in again,” you have their
uncompleted goals to refer to. It would be unthinkable for a
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dentist to accept that statement from a patient who had a
toothache resolved but still had teeth with cavities. We are
dealing with the identical situation.
Hypnotherapists are offering more than repair of a
damaged psyche. The individuals who come to us want
that, of course. But many or most of them also want to live
their life more freely and their relationships more
intimately, liberated from self-imposed inhibition and
achieving mastery over the obstacles that have been
interfering with a fulfilling life. And these are life skills
that we can assist our clients to develop through the power
of hypnotherapy.
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How to Attract New Hypnotherapy
Referrals From Existing Clientele
It usually requires hard work and persistence to attract new
clients to your practice. New clients may come through online
marketing, the Yellow Pages, referrals from colleagues, or an
event where you were a speaker. By far the best source of new
clients, however, is referrals from your existing clientele. There
is no cost to you, and no effort other than letting your clients
know that you appreciate their referrals and will welcome any
new clients that they refer.
Why do hypnotherapists find that they get more referrals
from their own clients than most other psychotherapists? People
are much more likely to talk with their friends and family about
their therapy, and to encourage them to follow suit, when they
are experiencing dramatic results. Your client may not tell his
friend, “Yeah, I talked about how unhappy I am in my marriage
again. My therapist gave me some ideas that he thinks would
help.” But he may very well tell a friend, “Wow, you wouldn’t
believe what came up for me this week. I had totally forgotten
about the time in second grade that I had such a crush on Becky
that I was showing off and fell down the stairs at school. I felt so
foolish, and all the kids in the hallway were laughing at me. I
think it’s taken ever since then for me to feel confident in
approaching women.” Every hypnotherapy session is an
adventure, and they always end on a positive note.
Seven Ways to Attract Hypnotherapy Client Referrals
There are several action steps for you to take in order to
maximize your referrals from existing clients who have found
personal success in their sessions with you:
1. Let your existing clients know that you are accepting
new clients, and that you will give their referral priority
in scheduling an appointment.
2. Reassure your clients that you hold their privacy as a
sacred trust by stating explicitly your confidentiality
policy.
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3. Offer a no-risk initial telephone consultation (setting a
definite maximum time length for the call) to anyone
that your client refers.
4. Have a brochure, pamphlet, or flyer about your services
available for your clients to take with them to give to
their friend or relative when they speak about you.
5. Offer classes or public talks regularly on interesting
topics that your clients could invite an interested
acquaintance to attend with them. The events can be
free, or you may want to have a small charge to attend
which you can waive for your clients and anyone they
bring with them.
6. Hold an open house at your office occasionally, inviting
existing clients to come by for refreshments, and
suggesting that they are welcome to invite other
interested friends or family to come along.
7. Ask your existing clients if they would be willing to
write a testimonial about your services that you could
post on your office bulletin board or include in a
“scrapbook” on display in your waiting room.
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Why Are So Many Therapists
Attracted to Hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy is one of the most sought after clinical
trainings in the world. And it is one of the most requested forms
of treatment by patients and clients. After teaching hypnotherapy
for over 30 years to tens of thousands of therapists
internationally, we have discovered that therapists are very
curious people. They really want to understand the mind and
how it works. They want to understand why bad things happen to
good people. They are driven toward self discovery and personal
growth. To our amazement we have found that the majority of
people entering the field of psychology want to understand
human behavior and that often begins with their own.
Learning Hypnotherapy
Unlike many other forms of therapy, hypnotherapy cannot be
simply taught through lectures and reading books. How to
hypnotize someone, to put them into a trance possibly could be
taught that way, although we certainly don’t recommend it. Most
people who learn to just put someone in a trance state, then say,
“Now what can I do with this powerful state of deep relaxation?”
Becoming proficient with the many uses of hypnotherapy
requires hands on, experiential training. That is how we train our
therapists at The Wellness Institute. We have found that during
our trainings, therapists often say that one of the most valuable
aspects is what they learned about themselves. Each one of our
students gets to experience being the client, the therapist as well
as an observer of this powerful process. Every session in which
they participate is a completely unique experience with new
learning, every step of the way. Of course they highly value the
rapid healing they see taking place right before their eyes that
they will be able to apply to their clients as well.
An Example
An example is a student who has a great deal of ambition
and many creative ideas of classes she would like to teach and
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books she would like to write. She also would like to do some
public speaking, but seems to have a deep fear of that. She gets
to the point of putting all her materials together, but seems
unable to enroll her classes or to get her writing to a publisher.
During her session of Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy, she worked
with this frustrating pattern in her life. Her subconscious mind
took her back to just after she was born where she became aware
of the shame her mother felt about her birth. It seems that she
was the product of a secret affair that her mother was having
with a very fair skinned, blond haired, blue eyed man. She was
born with this light coloring even though her mother and her
supposed father were both dark skinned with dark hair and dark
eyes.
Each time her supposed father saw the baby, our client, he
was furious and was reminded of the affair his wife was having
while they were trying to get pregnant. And each time this
happened, the mother of our client felt shame and guilt about the
existence of her illegitimate child. This completely explained to
our client her pattern of hiding and not wanting to be seen. It
helped her to understand why she kept procrastinating the
completion of any project that would make her more publically
visible.
She was subsequently much more able to bring her ideas
forward, enroll her classes and even do some public speaking. It
was now okay for her to be seen. She was very grateful for what
she had unexpectedly discovered about herself in the process of
learning the exciting new professional skill of Heart-Centered
Hypnotherapy.
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171
What To Do When a Client
Falls Asleep in Hypnotherapy
Sometimes when a hypnotherapist induces hypnosis, the
client appears to have fallen asleep. This may not actually be
sleep as we know it, but rather it may be a signal that this client
is what we call a somnambulist. These folks go very deeply, very
quickly, into a hypnotic trance or into a dissociative state. Our
research in over thirty years of trauma work is that
somnambulism is a defense mechanism which the young child
has unconsciously used to “retreat from the reality of trauma”
and to find a safe haven. This is a natural response which also
confirms what we teach, that hypnosis is a natural state of mind.
Young children go to that state frequently when they visualize
“imaginary friends” or just stare out the window and
“disappear.” They may be in a deeply hypnotic trance state. The
adult in our office may have been this traumatized child who is
well trained to go to sleep when threat or fear arises.
Before completing the session, we would inquire how much
sleep they had last night to try to rule out that this response may
just be exhaustion. But most often a client who falls asleep in
your office (this is different than falling to sleep listening to a
recording of the therapist’s voice) is having a response to facing
some traumatic events in their life.
In the work that we do at The Wellness Institute, we are
learning to recognize what a shock response looks like. A client
falling asleep during the induction is a probable indicator that the
client is withdrawing from the process, possibly out of deep,
unaddressed and therefore unconscious fears.
How Do You Treat this Shock?
Immediately at the point of your client appearing to be
asleep, you can vary the volume and tone of your voice in order
to rouse the client. If he/she doesn’t respond to that, I would
gently wake them up and treat their shock. This would include
asking the client to sit up, which involves “changing the shock
posture” and often will move the person out of their dissociative
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response of falling asleep. The therapist can also ask the client to
take a drink of water as well as to offer them some heat or cold
to place on their belly, neck or chest. The therapist may certainly
ask if the client is aware of what their fears may be. All this is
done within the trance state, and you can instruct the client,
“Now keep your eyes closed and let yourself really feel what’s
going on inside your body.”
A qualified hypnotherapist would go back to what the
client’s presenting issue is to discover what the fears are.
However, many people don’t consciously know what their
deepest fears are about and that is why they have chosen
hypnotherapy. An example of this is a client who had a huge fear
of hospitals, doctors and couldn’t even relax when going to the
doctor’s office. He kept falling asleep during the induction.
When his shock was treated, and he began to feel safe, the client
was finally able to remain awake during the induction. When
regressed to the source of his anxiety about doctors and his
sleepy response, he regressed back to six months old. It turns out
that he was born with a physical disability and required many
painful surgeries as a very small baby. He was filled with much
anesthesia for the series of operations. Also, during those days,
parents were not allowed in the operating room or even the
recovery room for fear of infections. The result of this is that
there was no comfort available to the disabled baby, our “sleepy”
client. The hypnotherapist learned to use shorter inductions and
build in resources so that the client could heal the baby within
him and release the anesthesia from his body.
An experienced hypnotherapist develops the clinical skills of
managing the client’s depth of trance, the level of their somatic
energy, and treating the traumatic shock embedded in their
nervous system.
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Are You Feeling Bored, Frustrated,
Unable to Really Help Clients?
Let Hypnotherapy Put Zest Back into Helping People
Therapists, like yourself, sit hour after hour, day after day,
week after week, listening to clients who go over and over their
problems and why they can’t change. You offer suggestions and
they play the “Yes, But Game” telling you why that wouldn’t
work. Clients do need to tell their stories, but it’s not the events
in their story that are the problem; it is when the story becomes a
never-ending repetitive pattern like a mouse on a mouse wheel.
The client becomes stuck in this pattern, often clinging to their
story as some type of badge of honor. We as therapists may want
to ask ourselves, in continuing to listen to their stories, are we
contributing to maintaining their repetitive patterns. Eugene
Gendlin has done research showing that when we continue to
think and talk about a problem, we are actually drawing the same
lines heavier, rather than inspiring the painting of a new picture.
It’s no wonder that we as therapists get just as depressed and
frustrated as our clients do. Gendlin’s research shows that
mindfulness and experiential therapy, such as Heart-Centered
Hypnotherapy, provide clients with what he called a felt sense,
an epiphany, a breakthrough experience, which takes the client
outside of his or her usual mental concepts and catapults them
into a completely new awareness. This felt sense is experienced
in the body, mind and spirit of the client. The profound part of
this is that the therapist also experiences this felt sense with the
client. Just as we, as therapists, can empathize with our clients’
pain and anger, we can also co-experience the felt sense of a new
paradigm, a complete shift in consciousness that happens in an
instant in deep experiential therapies.
Hypnotherapy, Reaching The Mythopoetic Level
Hypnotherapy provides the petri dish in which felt senses
can grow and emerge like a beautiful lotus flower that is
developed in the darkness of the muddy river bottom and then
emerges as a magnificent orchid-like flower. Just as people can
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get stuck in their thoughts about their problems, they can also get
caught in an endless cycle of emotions. Just because a person is
crying or angry, that in and of itself does not indicate healing.
These emotions can become part of the repetitive cycle which
keeps clients chained to their helplessness or rage. A key
ingredient necessary to provide the space for a felt sense is
slowing down and sitting in the silence. Hypnotherapy provides
just that as both client and therapist must slow down in order to
access the trance state. In our Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy
model, we move with the client from the story level, down to the
emotional level, and then to the mythopoetic or spiritual level.
Once those emotions are released, we often just sit quietly and
hold a safe space for the client. They are doing deep processing
where words are not important; in fact they get in the way.
Words are often inadequate to describe the depth of the
awakening the client is experiencing at such a time.
The Subconscious and Dreams
A felt sense, as described by Gendlin, needs to just emerge.
It is an intricate whole that encapsulates the entire set of life
situations the client is addressing on this very deep level. This is
all happening below the conscious mind/ thought level, often
below the subconscious level and even into the collective
unconscious level. This is why, we ask clients to write down
their dreams (without interpretation) after sessions since many
images and symbols come to them. The felt sense then is
processed so deeply, that perceptions of one’s life and situations
change, seemingly miraculously! It is like a picture that is worth
a thousand words, an intricate puzzle where the pieces just
suddenly fall into place to reveal a whole new perspective for the
client as well as the therapist!
This is why after a profound hypnotherapy session, we do
not talk about the experience with the client, but rather we ask
them to sit for a while in the waiting room and journal. We ask
them to go for a walk and not speak to anyone but just to
incorporate the experience into every cell of their body. Then to
verbally explore their new awareness on their next appointment.
Deep, experiential hypnotherapy provides a profound new
paradigm that sets the stage for personal transformation.
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175
The Art of Clean Language
in Hypnotherapy
In hypnotherapy we directly access the client’s unconscious,
and the words he/she uses to communicate their experience are
precise and personally deeply meaningful to the client. We
always want to use the client’s exact words, not substituting
“angry” when they say “pissed” or “alone” when they say
“lonely”. Our language conveys interpretation and suggestion,
and we want to avoid either one.
Explicitly introducing clean language into one’s approach to
psychotherapy sharpens the focus on the client’s own inherent
wisdom. The less we attempt to change the client’s model of the
world, the more they experience their own core patterns, and
organic, lasting changes naturally emerge. David Grove quite
radically modified the traditional philosophy of NLP by using
clean language (containing a minimum of presupposition) to
replace typical NLP patterns of language which are designed to
have maximum influence, often through the covert use of
suggestion. NLP is based on the notion that you can take an
experience, find its structure and if you change its structure it
changes the experience. Thus the Clean Language therapist
follows the natural direction of the process rather than leading it.
Working with Symbol and Metaphor
What Grove discovered was the more he used Clean
Language, the more clients naturally used metaphor to describe
their symptoms. When Clean Language questions were then
directed to the metaphors and symbols, unexpected information
became available to the client, often with profound results. By
interfering with a client’s description of their symptoms with
interpretation and suggestion, well-meaning therapists can rob
clients of the very experience needed to resolve their unwanted
behaviors.
Working with symbol and metaphor is the forte of Clean
Language. The aim is for the client to gather information about
their own subjective experience, not necessarily for the therapist
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to understand it. Common by-products of being asked Clean
Language questions are: a state of self-absorption (trance often
spontaneously develops); a sense of connecting with some deep,
rarely explored aspects of ourselves; and a sense of wonder,
curiosity and awe at the marvelous ingenuity of our unconscious.
When a therapist makes even minute changes to a client’s
words the implications can be significant. Clients often have to
go through additional translation processes and mental
gymnastics to reorient to the therapist’s presuppositions. Thus
the therapy subtly goes in a direction determined by the
therapist’s map of the world.
To illustrate how easy it is to unwittingly interfere in a
client’s process, recognize that a therapist could respond in a
number of ways to the statement: “I’m stuck with no way out.”
It is highly therapeutic to begin by fully validating the
client’s ‘current reality’ that there is no way out of stuck through
the use of Clean Language. It may be tempting to want to direct
the client, subtly or not-so-subtly, toward a solution. But that is
short-circuiting the client’s exploration of their dilemma.
There are 9 basic Clean Language questions. Two questions
request information about attributes and two ask for location
information. There are two questions which reference the past
and two which reference the future. One question offers the
client the opportunity to make a metaphorical shift in perception.
The 9 basic Clean Language questions are:
1. And is there anything else about ......?
2. And what kind of ...... is that ......?
3. And where is ......?
4. And whereabouts?
5. And what happens next?
6. And then what happens?
7. And what happens just before ......?
8. And where does/could ...... come from?
9. And that’s ...... like what?
Grove, David J. & B I Panzer. (1989). Resolving Traumatic
Memories: Metaphors and Symbols in Psychotherapy.
Irvington, New York.
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15 Ways Hypnotherapy Can Expand
the Scope of Your Practice
Develop new specialties using hypnosis and hypnotherapy in
your practice.
With all the current, updated and new research being done
with using hypnosis, there are so many more areas that you can
specialize in. For example, in the past, researchers were using
old fashioned types of suggestions to reduce the pain from spinal
cord injury patients. The newer researchers at The University of
Washington discovered that just telling the patient, “you no
longer have pain” was actually detrimental in the pain relief of
the patient.
The resurgence of the ancient belief of Integrative or Holistic
medicine, is now incorporating hypnosis and hypnotherapy into
their departments. The world renown Cleveland Clinic has lead
the country in providing comprehensive holistic services to its
patients and their families. They have found that the use of
hypnosis and Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy actually reduces
recovery time from surgeries, and reduces the amount of drugs
that patients are required to take. They have shorter hospital
stays and can return to work faster than previously thought.
Here is a short list of some of the current research indicating
effective uses of hypnosis in the fields of:
1. Surgery preparation, which has been shown to decrease
the recovery time
2. Post-op recovery, including pain management
3. Hypno-anesthesiology for children, the elderly and
people who cannot tolerate anesthesia
4. Migraine headache treatment, often eliminating the need
for drugs
5. Reducing bleeding.
6. Fertility treatment; without expensive and invasive
medical procedures
7. Hypno-birthing to support natural childbirth without
pain
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8. Claustrophobia, especially for people needing MRIs and
other suffocating medical procedures
9. PTSD for trauma survivors and vets returning from war
zones
10. Weight management and addressing the underlying
emotional issues of obeisity
11. Smoking cessation to prevent heart attacks and cancer
12. Eating disorders and bariatric surgery
13. Anxiety and depression
14. Autism
15. Dementia
And the list of possible uses of hypnosis goes on and really
is endless. It is only up to the creativity of the hypnotherapist to
provide the link between the presenting issue of the client and
the treatment using hypnosis.
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Why Hypnotherapy Is the Missing Link
to Powerful Treatment
and How to Change Self-sabotage
Studies show that the conscious mind, even though it is very
important, is only about 10 % of our minds. The conscious mind
helps us to think, debate ideas, reason, and process short term
memory experiences.
All very important tasks.
The subconscious mind contains a full 90% of the mind! It
contains long term memory, to help us “learn from our own
history.” This demonstrates the profound saying that if we don’t
learn from our history, we are likely to repeat it, making the
same mistakes over and over again. So even though our
conscious mind may completely understand our dysfunctional
relationships or self-sabotaging patterns, it is not capable of
making the necessary changes.
What we have discovered by exploring the intricacies of the
subconscious mind, is that from very early in our development,
we draw conclusions about ourselves which are programmed
into the deepest core level of beliefs about ourselves. And then
we make decisions about how to behave based on those
conclusions. And this behavior is so deeply buried into our
operating system that the limitations of the conscious mind do
not allow us to find them or change them.
An example of this would be growing up in an alcoholic
family or dysfunctional family system. Having the experience of
sitting at the dinner table with an explosive parent who pounds
the table and emphatically says, “You’re not leaving this table
until you eat everything on your plate!” Or sitting at the dining
room table night after night with parents who are fighting, drunk
or screaming at the children. A conclusion that the children
growing up in this family might make about themselves is, “I’m
a bad person.” Or “I’m not safe, even in my own family.” Then
those conclusions may be followed by a subconscious decision
about how to behave in order to feel safe. That decision might
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be, “I’ll just become invisible – if I become real small perhaps
no one will notice me and then I’ll be safe.”
Later on in life such people may wonder why they cannot
really be successful in reaching goals in their life. They become
aware, perhaps in cognitive therapy or counseling, that they keep
sabotaging themselves, hiding their own light, so to speak.
Getting it all figured out in the conscious mind is certainly a
good first step. But after lots of time and money spent trying to
change this behavior of self-sabotage by talking about it,
analyzing it and deciding to be different, most of us have learned
the hard way that the self-sabotage continues!
Professionals are flocking to receive hypnotherapy
certification training because it has proven to be the most
effective and efficient path to create change within ourselves and
our clients. Through hypnotherapy we learn that the way to
change these old stubborn patterns that have plagued most
people for a majority of their lives, is to have direct access to the
subconscious mind, discover what conclusions and decisions are
still operating and re-program them. This is just like the
operating system of your computer. If you don’t upgrade the old
system, it will no longer be operational. The old programs are
just not sufficient to serve you. Hypnotherapy is a powerful tool
in re-programming what no longer serves your highest good.
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181
What is Your Grand Bargain that Allows
Spring to Replace Winter?
On March 20 every year we celebrate the Spring Equinox. In
the rhythm of the seasons, there are two points in the cycle
where light and dark are equal – the spring and autumn equinox.
These are the occasions for special festivals that celebrate the
polarities of life, from ancient times until today. On the Spring
Equinox day and night are equal, poised and balanced, but about
to tip over on the side of light. The spring equinox is sacred to
dawn, youth, the morning star and the east.
The Greek Goddess we associate with the Spring Equinox is
Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of grain and
growing things. In the spring, Persephone comes back from the
Underworld to be reunited with her mother. Here is the story of
how they came to be separated, and why they share reunion each
spring.
In the beginning, there was no separation of seasons, just
never-ending good crops. And it was Demeter, Goddess of grain
and growing things, who nourished the earth with this abundance
of plant life. Once upon a time Demeter’s daughter Persephone
was abducted by Hades, God of the Underworld, and taken there
to become his Queen. Demeter abandoned her divine functions
of nourishing the earth in order to look for Persephone. Angry
and mourning, Demeter left Olympus and hid the seed for the
next harvest far below the ground, bringing famine to the land of
mortals. This in turn threatened the very existence of humankind,
who were left with no crops and no food, the springs of fertility
ran dry, vegetation languished, animals ceased to multiply, and
the hand of death touched mankind.
It was not until after the great Zeus beseeched Demeter to
return to her duties, that man was able to go on living. Demeter
only agreed to this in a great bargain with Zeus and Hades:
Persephone would live in the Underworld for one third of each
year, and would be allowed to return to this world each spring
and remain here for the remaining two thirds of the year. Still to
this day, Demeter allows the earth to go barren during those
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winter months in which Persephone resides with her husband.
But every spring, with the return of her daughter, the goddess
shows herself in the blossoms, the leaves on the trees, the
sprouting of the crops, the mating of birds, the birth of young
animals. In the agricultural cycle, it is time for planting.
We, too, have rhythms in which periods of productivity
alternate with periods of wandering and hibernation. It is good to
accept these cycles gracefully instead of attempting to force
productivity all the time, which some of us “work-a-holics” try
to do. There is a legitimate place for creating sustenance in this
world, and a place for reigning over the invisible world beyond.
Another insight from this story is that the power to give is most
notably and often only appreciated when it is withheld. It is so
easy to take all of life’s precious gifts for granted. And finally,
the myth seems to convey the intrinsic contribution of the
Mother, the Great Feminine to life itself, and the implicit
warning of the grave consequences inherent in not respecting
her.
As well, there is a parallel between this myth and our form
of psychotherapy. Our ability to live a good life, prosperous and
productive and loving, depends on our willingness to journey
into the dark and unfamiliar realms of our own deep
unconscious, the Underworld where our shadows live otherwise
undetected. So what is your grand bargain that allows spring to
replace winter when you find yourself mired in anguish,
disheartened by disillusionment, seething with rage, or
hopelessly lonely? Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy is effective in
assisting people to navigate between these two realms, to explore
in the underworld for the source of these plagues and then with
that clarity to bring renewed passion and exuberance into their
daily life. It’s springtime!
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On a Personal Note:
Nelson Mandela’s Passing
December 5, 2013
Dear Graduates,
Our hearts are heavy with the passing of Madiba – the term
of endearment always used for President Mandela, it is the name
of his clan.
When we were called to come to South Africa in 1995, the
year after he was inaugurated South Africa’s first democratically
elected President, we had no idea of what we would encounter.
We were soon educated by the residents there about the atrocities
of apartheid which traumatized all the races of South Africa:
white Afrikaaners, English-speaking whites, black, Cape
Colored and Indian. We taught integrated classes on the clinical
skills of Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy, and we received a
powerful education about what truly happened as that history
unfolded through personal experiences in participants’ age
regressions. We witnessed firsthand and deep within our souls,
the pain, the terror, the rage and the shame for all concerned that
resulted from a culture deeply divided by racial prejudice.
We met Madiba in person one night in 1995 when he visited
the hotel in Johannesburg that we happened to be staying in. His
beloved rugby team was having a celebration after winning the
World Cup. David and I will always remember all the waiters
and hotel staff breaking out in a spontaneous tribute song and
dance dedicated to him and showing their deep respect for his
bravery and leadership, even after twenty seven years of
imprisonment. The movie Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman as
Mandela, recounts the significance of that historic event.
His passing represents the passing of an era, of a generation
that bravely fought, lived and died for their ideals of freedom of
expression for all people. Madiba has left an enduring legacy:
the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 to Nelson
Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk jointly for their work to
peacefully terminate the apartheid system anticipated the
graceful Truth and Reconciliation Commission which averted
the violence that could have easily overshadowed the transition
to democratic majority rule.
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