HealingDeva.com

[Terri R.]

Hypnosis and You
A special feature article
by Dr. Elizabeth A. King, DCH

 
One of the major benefits to hypnosis is that it works in a relatively short period of time.In many cases, problems can be resolved permanently in a matter of weeks, rather than months or years. The causes and origins of problems can be often quickly discovered by regressing the client to the beginning of when a problem first appeared, thus discovering what prompted the often negative results such as harmful behaviors. A few of the areas that hypnosis is particularly helpful in are:

* WEIGHT MANAGEMENT - Helps you achieve your desired weight and reprogram your eating habits.
* HABIT CONTROL - Hypnosis gives you the tools for permanent behavior modification such as smoking cessation, stuttering, nail biting.
* STRESS AND ANXIETY REDUCTION - Teaches you how to relax, and reduce the stress factors in your personal and professional life, by giving you positive methods of responding to the events around you and how to detach yourself and gain perspective in your hierarchy of needs.
* PHOBIA ELIMINATION - Helps you to free yourself of a debilitating fear of something such as air travel, public speaking, or visiting the dentist.
* PAIN CONTROL - Aides in controlling or often stopping the pain of arthritis, or back pain and other chronic pain, and also helps you to manage the pain of birth, dental work or surgery. Also effective in allowing patients to lessen their dependence on chemical pain medication or, in some cases, dispense with chemical means of pain control altogether.
* SELF-ESTEEM & MOTIVATION - Works to increase your confidence and self acceptance; reprogram past negative behavior. Methods are also given that improves your study habits, enhances your memory, and confidence in successfully taking exams.
* CREATIVITY - Helps you to clear your blocked potential in writing, painting, performing arts, and problem solving.
* SLEEP IMPROVEMENT - Helps you to fall asleep quickly, to sleep soundly and to arise refreshed.
* PROCRASTINATION AND GOAL SETTING - Helps you to find the incentives to stop putting off those things that must be done, and helps you to set positive, attainable goals, and to achieve the goals you have set.
* MILD DEPRESSION - Hypnosis aids you in dealing with those periods of time when you feel out of sorts, depressed, anxious, or discouraged by giving you the tools to sort through the situations and to deal with them positively and concretely.

Contrary to popular opinion, hypnosis is not sleep. The participant is thoroughly aware of their surroundings. They may choose to ignore them. The hypnotist may ask the subject to ignore things or to focus all attention on one idea. But ultimately, it is the participant who makes the choices. You can not get stuck in hypnosis. Either you will awaken on your own or the state will become one of natural sleep.

In reality, everyone has already experienced hypnosis in daily life. For example, have you ever read a book, watched a movie or a TV show, or become so engrossed in an art project that you became completely unaware of everything around you and didn't hear or see anyone entering the room until they touched you or otherwise "forced" your awareness onto them? What about driving and suddenly find you have missed your turn off to go home because your mind was so deeply engrossed with something else? These are examples of that state of mind called hypnosis. . Hypnosis is an induced state of relaxation and concentration in which the inner subconscious -- normally not conscious -- parts of the mind become more readily accessible. Hypnosis can be self-induced or you can enter the state through the guidance of a trained practitioner, or a hypnotherapist. In either case, it is important to note that in a sense all hypnosis is self-hypnosis.

A trained hypnotherapist will direct you in accessing those inner states, using relaxation and focusing techniques, but you are really the one who does the work. 

The hypnotherapist's role is to act as a guide, both in working with you to discover the changes you want to make and in leading the hypnotic induction and delivering the posthypnotic suggestions that will bring about those changes. You are always in control of the process. No matter what suggestions the hypnotist makes to you, it is your choice to accept or reject all of part of those suggestions.

A hypnotized person will not knowingly violate their code of ethics. The eminent therapist, Dr. Milton Erickson experimented with this concept in his own practice, and found it to be particularly true if he made it clear that the subject was responsible for the consequences of their actions.

Hypnotherapy uses the natural state of hypnosis everyone enters into every day to uncover subconscious fears and repressed desires. With the aid of hypnosis, original causal events can be discovered and dealt with in the course of the treatment. In addition, it is a valuable supplement to conventional medical treatment since it can dramatically reduce pain and promote rapid recovery. With the increasing awareness of the mind-body connection, hypnosis is once again receiving increased respect and acceptance from the general public as well as medical, dental, and psychiatric practitioners.

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Dr. Elizabeth A. King is a graduate of the American Institute of Hypnotherapy Doctoral Program and a member of the ABH (American Board of Hypnotherapy). She has practiced in both the United States and Okinawa. Dr. King also holds a Masters in English, and taught College English for nine years. She has created and taught several spiritually based self-help courses ranging from learning meditation to developing spiritiual Awareness, as well as writing several books on this theme. Dr. King heads Desert Quail Counseling, which offers private therapy as well as a full line of hypnotherapeutic cassette tapes.