What if
there was a way to program your mind so you could stop smoking, or eat more
healthy ? What if you could find
permanent happiness simply by purposefully reprogramming your subconscious mind
? Is it possible to use self guided
hypnotherapy to reprogram your brain to
think differently ?
Our minds
are our greatest asset - or can be our biggest problem. Everything we do is the result of what our
brain tells us - and for most people their lives are a constant tug of war
between their conscious and subconscious thoughts.
How many
times have you wondered why you did something despite consciously knowing you
didn't want to do it? Smoking,
overeating, underachieving, anger, depression - no one forces us to suffer from
these serious issues. No one makes the
decision for us to eat that tub of ice cream or act out in rage over a small
thing a neighbour or friend did. It all
comes from how our mind interprets its current surrounding and how it tells us
to behave.
For
example, researchers have long known that poor eating habits had little to do
in most cases with actual feelings of hunger.
Instead people for a wide variety of deeply embedded psychological
reasons - stress being one of the most common -
eat to soothe deep emotions in their subconscious mind - and thus the
term comfort food.
The
premise behind self guided hypnosis is that it is possible through suggestive
techniques to change how the subconscious mind manifests itself in conscious
thought. The debate on whether or not
hypnosis actually works dates back to the time of the Egyptians and continues
today. As with many alternative
therapies, medical science struggles to quantify the actual success rate in
hypnotherapy treatment.
As
researchers strive to understand how the human mind works, the psychiatric
community is learning more and more about the power of hypnosis and the two
layers of the human mind. The
subconscious mind is a complicated series of memories, emotions and beliefs -
and plays a key role in how a person’s personality develops. The key to self guided hypnosis is to
reprogram those elements in a matter that you consciously choose. For example - if you want to feel a more
permanent sense of happiness - it is quite possible to reprogram your
subconscious mind to focus on happiness - after all - what is happiness and
where does it come from if not from the mind of the person who either feels
happy or unhappy ?
How Self
Guided Hypnotherapy Works…
Self
Guided hypnotherapy in most cases involves the use of recorded sound tracks listened to through
headphones. Typically there are three
stages of the hypnotic process. The
first stage is to relax the body through controlled breathing and a conscious
effort to relax the muscles which in turn allows the brain to slow its thought
processing allowing it to be open to suggestion.
The
second stage is to use autosuggestion to program both the conscious and
subconscious mind. This can be achieved
through methodical speech, using carefully prepared scripts and emphasis on
certain words in the recorded therapy session.
It is in this stage where hypnosis gets it’s
biggest challenge from those that don’t understand it - but there is
nothing mystical or magical about hypnosis or self guided hypnotherapy - it is
the simple science of programming the brain to think a certain way.
The final
stage is most often called the “Return Stage “ where the patient is brought back from the state of relaxation
( called a trance ) to the conscious alert world.
Research
has shown that there is no negative side effects from hypnotherapy - the worst
that can happen is no results are achieved at all.
Does
Hypnotherapy Actually Work ?
For many
individuals, hypnotherapy has been a true blessing - while others claim it has
had no effect. One of the most
important starting points for a person to gain full benefit from hypnotherapy
is found in a person's willingness or openness to the actual treatment. If a person goes into a hypnotherapy session
with the firm belief that this is a foolish endeavour and won’t work - the patient creates a self fulfilling conclusion -
and there is very little chance that it will work for them or that they will
receive full benefit from the hypnotherapy session.
If on the
other hand the patient is open to the hypnotherapy session and releases their
conscious mind so the subconscious mind can be open to suggestion and
programming - the results can be quite spectacular. With no resistance holding the mind back
from being open to change and suggestion - the therapy can take almost
immediately.
It should
also be noted that wanting the hypnotherapy session to work with a great deal
of desire can actually hinder the results as the mind doesn’t relax enough to accept the suggestive process. This is due to the patient staying in a state
of alertness not conducive to the programming of the subconscious mind.
Hypnosis
and hypnotherapy fall under the classification of Neuro Linguistic Programming
( NLP ) which involves the process of creating a model of behaviour and then
applying a series of techniques to match the subject or patient's behaviour and
personality traits to that prototype - thus you will often hear the term “modelling “ when discussing NLP
techniques.
Hypnotherapy
Treatments for Physical Ailments
As the
Hypnotherapy industry grows, it is being used not just for conditions of mentalconditioning - but also for treating diseases and afflictions such as irritablebowel syndrome, acid reflux, muscle
tension and a host of other ailments doctors suspect are being caused not by
physical problems in the body - but by the way the patient’s mind controls the body.
For
example - a person who is experiencing migraines may in fact be found to be
continually grinding their teeth - a condition that can be caused by stress or
worry. Stress has long been known to
affect the digestive tract - and has been closely linked to heart disease. People who complain of chronic neck pain
have been treated not for an actual problem with the spine or muscles - but the
tension being caused by the mind putting undue stress on the muscles
themselves, resulting in a state of rigid tightness.
Hypnotherapy
for Treating Addictions.
For
several decades now alternative medicine practitioners have been using
hypnotherapy to assist people with addictions to smoking and alcoholism. The premise is that despite these addictions
manifesting themselves in actual serious physical withdrawal symptoms - the
patient can reverse these symptoms through hypnotherapy.
The root
element of all of these treatments is the strengthening of the resolve in the
conscious mind being provided by the subconscious mind. It is rare that a person going into the
hypnotherapy session expecting the treatment to simply cure their desire to
smoke, that it will take. Instead, the
premise is that the patient through the hypnotherapy treatment will increase
their resolve both in conscious thought as well as subconscious primary
thought.
Hypnotherapy
for Treating Weight Loss and Eating Disorders
Hypnotherapy
has proven to be highly effective in treating obesity as well as anorexia -
both of which have had their causes traced to psychological behaviour, beliefs
and habits. Patients using hypnotherapy
in addition to professional medical therapy and counselling have found the
results to be much more significant than simple counselling alone.
One of
the reasons hypnotherapy works so well for eating issues is that by its nature,
it reprograms the subconscious mind to change it’s
wants and desires. For people that
overeat the cause of their eating is often found in the fact they find comfort
when consuming particular foods. This is
of course only a secondary factor to the real root cause which can be anything
from suppressed memories to a way for dealing with stress that returns them
psychologically to a time when they were younger and the stress wasn’t present - or their parents were there to make the problem
go away.
For
patients suffering from eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia, their aversion to eating is often rooted in a
desire to look thinner but again this is only a cause and effect symptom
indicating deeper psychological issues.
In both cases
though, hypnotherapy has been shown to help the patient make progress in the
healing process.
Programming
for Success
Another
area where hypnotherapy has become an important role player is in human
performance. This is a wide spectrum of
consideration - encompassing everything from athletes to executives but the
goal is always the same - to gain maximum efficiency from their efforts.
Golf is a
sport where the mind plays a vital role in the success of the player in both
the accurate repetition of their golf club swing, as well as their mental
approach to the game in high pressure situations such as major tournaments
where millions of dollars can depend on a single putt or swing of a club. On the amateur level, golfers have been using
hypnotherapy for decades to help them control their minds - and therefore their
game.
Many
professional teams across major leagues have started to employ psychologists
and psychotherapists to assist their players in reaching their goals. The value of this type of performance
programming was never more evident than in the recent 2010 Vancouver Winter
Olympics where the Canadian Government approved the use of advanced performance
counselling for their athletes which included hypnotherapy - and the result was
that for the first time in their history, they won the most Gold Medals of all
the participating countries. In
comparison, in 2006 they finished with 7 Gold Medals - and 2010 14 Gold Medals
- a full 100% improvement in results.
Hypnotherapy
for Everyday Life.
It is
said you are the captain of your own mind - and you can either guide your
vessel to safe waters filled with prosperity, or you can abdicate the
responsibility and let fate decide the outcome. All elements of the human
experience can be improved upon using hypnotherapy and this website is about
helping others achieve their potential in life.
