The history of hypnosis and hypnotherapy as a powerful healing tool for the benefit of mankind
The use of hypnosis as a therapeutic tool is as old as man himself. As far as can be traced back through time, we can find records of hypnosis being used to heal and to make change. Hypnosis has been used under many different names down through the centuries and the use of hypnosis for healing can be traced back to around 3000 BC in Egypt. Both the new and old testaments of the Bible speak of what could be deemed to be hypnosis, and the ancient Greeks and Romans had sleep temples where those seeking healing would be put into a trance like sleep. Their dreams, would be interpreted by the priests. By rhythmic drumming and monotonous chanting together with eye fixation, the Shaman of today can still produce catalepsy of the body and this helps to give the shaman the appearance of having magical powers just as they have done for centuries. Much of what has been done in the past by the village witchdoctor, shaman or wise woman, can be attributed to the fostering of a strong belief, conviction, expectation and imagination in the one being healed, and the chanting and singing often takes the form of what we would term as suggestion. After all, if the most powerful and magic person you know tells you will become well, you are very likely to do just that. Of course in many cases where such an individual administered to a sick person they would have recovered eventually anyway and this intervention just speeded up the healing process. It has long been believed by many healers that body, thoughts and emotions can influence one another. Therefore it is possible to influence a physical sickness by working on and realizing particular emotions and by changing thoughts and behavioural patterns. The Romans said ‘MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO’, healthy mind in healthy body. This saying seems to confirm that for many centuries it has been believed that physical and emotional well-being have an effect on one another. To put this in perspective, only has to consider how our health declines after periods of stress or as a consequence of radical events. The division between body and mind in medicine is something that only took place around 1750, with the scientific developments from Newton. Since then the mind and spirit have been considered to be under the jurisdiction of the church and the body under the jurisdiction of science. This is also the reason why all other kinds of medicine see the human being as a whole consisting of body, mind and soul. Traumatic experiences are not only stored on an emotional level but also on the physical level. The emotional charge of the different traumas can influence our immune system and health conditions. Through processing old traumas and the emotional charges that are connected to a certain sickness it is possible to find resources inside of us that could help us start the healing process. Modern hypnosis began with Anton Mesmer (1734 - 1815) in the 18th Century. Mesmer was a medical graduate from the famed medical school of Vienna and after studying as a Jesuit priest, he became interested in magnetism. Mesmer became Europe’s foremost expert at magnetic healing, where magnets where passed over the body to effect a healing. His results where fabulous and so he became very famous. Mesmer believed all living things contained a kind of magnetic ‘fluid’ and if a person had enough of this fluid, they would be healthy. This is where the term ‘Animal Magnetism’ comes from. Mesmer forgot his magnets one day and so just made passes over the patient with his hands and was surprised to find that they got better. From there on, he thought he had sufficient magnetic fluid in himself top effect the cures.
James Braid (1795-1860) coined the terms ‘hypnotism’ and ‘hypnosis, in 1843. He was a Scottish surgeon working in Manchester. He found that some people could go into a trance if there eyes where fixated on a bright object like a pocket watch for instance. He believed that a neurological process was involved and that the process could be very useful when no organic origin could be found for a persons disorder.
James Esdaile (1808-1859) another Scottish surgeon working in India would use ey fixation to prepare a patient for surgery and slow sweeping motions, putting them into a deep hypnotic sleep, causing full amnesia throughout the body.
James Braid and James Esdaile where among the first who could be called ’scientific’ in their research and use of hypnosis. These pioneers removed hypnosis from the realms of ‘mysticism’, and started experimenting with what could really be done with it to help people with their disorders. Other scientific pioneers include, Liebeault, Bernheim, Brewer and Freud. Unfortunately the great man himself, Freud, was responsible for hypnotherapy being shelved by many for some time when he abandoned it’s use.
Amongst those individuals who have been fundamental to the current view of hypnosis are: Milton Erikson, Ormond McGill, Charles Tebbetts and Dave Elman.
Ormond McGill was, it is true a stage hypnotist, but he preserved the public interest in hypnosis, but then the great Charles Tebbetts was involved in stage hypnosis in the early part of his career, but these where different times to those we live in today and the stage hypnosis would prove to engender a desire to know more about this curious art and therefore bring many of the people who moved the therapeutic use of hypnotherapy forward through the last (20th) century.
Dave Elman brought some measure of acceptance to hypnosis from the medical profession in the USA when the Council on Medical health of the American Medical Association accepted the use of hypnotherapy in 1958.
Probably the most important contributor to the acceptance of hypnotherapy as both an art and a science, was the grandfather of hypnotherapy - Dr Milton Erikson. Dr Erikson was a psychiatrist and hypnotherapist with outstanding professional credentials and because of his solid medical background he had credibility within the medical profession. Other people worthy of note for their contribution to the advancement of hypnotherapy as a healing art and as a science in the 20th century are: Rosen, Abramson, Menninger, Shenek, Magonet, Wolberg, LeCron, Bordeaux, Wetzenhoffer, Erwin and Simonton, who continues to do amazing things with cancer patients using mental imagery and focusing on beliefs and belief systems amongst other things.
By Alan Crisp Clinical Hypnotherapist DHP GQHP MASC MBIH LNCP GHR Reg
About the Author
Alan Crisp DHP is a Clinical Hypnotherapist with a busy practice in Beckenham, Kent UK. He can be contacted on 020 8658 4290 or atalancrisp@yourtruth.co.uk. His website is found at www.yourtruth.co.uk
I have seen a huge interest in hypnosis over the last few weeks. I have also seen that there is limited interest in developing intelligence and creativity. Memory is still a topic with many followers, especially those trying to find a surefire method of remembering everything without effort.
The human mind has incredible powers. Our mind is capable of processing huge amounts of information at once, and is able to sort out a form of order from sensory chaos. As infants, we are placed in a world where nothing is familiar, yet we learn physics (balance, motion, cause & effect, gravity, momentum, etc.), language, some degree of psychology, and millions of details which are now processed at an unconscious level such as identifying objects from the mass of visual information fed into our brain (something our highly developed computers still struggle with).
Not only this, but our minds have powers which are still being discovered. Only in the last century has psychic perception been accepted as a scientific fact. Prayer itself has been scientifically tested and found to be a statistically valid exercise. While science has not found out why these abilities exist and what makes them work, it is agreed that the process is, at least in part, a mental one.
There is still much research being done. How does one develop these abilities to a point of being reliable? Which techniques are the best to use? What are the factors that influence a person’s ability to use these mental skills? Are genetic factors involved? Are environmental factors important? How powerful can one mind become?
These are questions I struggled with during my research. While I do not claim to have concrete answers, I have been able to develop my own abilities and the abilities of many people I’ve worked with. There are some good systems readily available, although I find some degree of fault with almost all of them. The Silva Method is excellent. Max Freedom Long’s book “The Secret Science Behind Miracles” gives some very fascinating insights to these higher abilities of the mind. Many books on shamanism give reasonably good instruction on developing your skills in this area. Any book by Joseph Murphy or Catherine Ponder will give many good examples of one form of mental power at work.
In every system of working with the higher functions of the mind, it is stressed that the power lies within the unconscious regions, that part of the mind generally labeled the subconscious. In every workable system, there is a whole training process where the subconscious mind is ‘programmed’ with symbols for communication with the conscious mind, or with symbols for what it is being requested to do.
And this is where hypnosis fits perfectly! Hypnosis is a phenomenon where the conscious mind is quieted to a state of nonresistance. During this state, the subconscious mind is easier to work with, to get information from and to create new programming. Using hypnosis, a patient can generate his/her own painkillers for painless surgery or dentistry. Using hypnosis, millions have been able to break their addiction to tobacco, alcohol, overeating, laziness, phobias, and a host of other maladies.
And hypnosis was the techniques which gave Edgar Cayce his ability to diagnose and prescribe treatments for thousands of suffers (and every one accurately!).
The evidence which points to the possibility of using hypnosis for developing and training the mind for any and all of the mind’s natural abilities is overwhelming! And I’m definitely not the only person to notice this. Books can be found everywhere showing how to use hypnosis for all of these purposes.
But is hypnosis enough? Does hypnosis have all the power necessary to develop the mind to it’s highest potential? I don’t think so. If hypnosis could be used to accomplish everything we needed to accomplish, then why would we have a conscious mind at all? The process of hypnosis specifically eliminates the conscious mind from the equation, working with the subconscious mind exclusively.
We have two (or more) phases of mind for a reason. Any system that does not address the two modes of mind in it’s development process can not be a complete system. Use this criteria to judge any system of development you consider pursuing.
About the Author
Alan Tutt is the creator of the phenomenally popular Keys To Power Mastery System available from http://www.KeysToPower.com. Become the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Mind Power using the Keys To Power Mastery System, and get everything you want in life.
Overcoming shyness can’t be that hard. All you need to do is just go start talking to people. Ready? Here we go! Any second now. It’s coming. Just start talking and right now! Yeah. Okay, maybe it’s not so easy.
Unfortunately, overcoming shyness is rather difficult. You want to meet people, mingle at parties, ask out that certain someone. However, the closer you get to talking to someone, the harder it becomes until you are so nervous that your confidence fails you as you try to slip in a word. Then you walk away, feeling like you are some sort of failure. This feeling of inadequacy does not actually help you the next time, though. In fact, it just makes it more likely that you will freeze up the next time, since you have become used to shying away when you want to be speaking.
However, through hypnosis, you can rid yourself of these feelings of inadequacy, boost your self-confidence, and finally start overcoming shyness. By allowing your mind to help itself, you can find yourself a more confident person in any social setting. Instead of backing away at the chance to talk to someone, you can comfortably converse with them and, if you like, even start the conversation yourself! Wouldn’t that be a nice change?
Hypnosis can help you achieve your goal of overcoming shyness through its method of relaxation and suggestion. First, the subject is brought into a state of deep relaxation, not unlike meditation or deep sleep. However, where hypnosis differs from these two states is by leaving your subconscious mind open to suggestion. And it is with suggestion that the mind is allowed to remove the barriers that create fears, phobias, or shyness. Thus, by visiting a trained hypnotherapist or using self-hypnosis tapes, overcoming shyness is possible, and it can happen quicker that you had expected. You are simply allowing your mind to rid itself of something that it already wants to get rid of.
Hypnosis is a very useful tool for overcoming shyness. Through suggestion to an open mind, your anxieties in social situations can finally be a nothing but a memory. You don’t need to keep suffering every time you want to meet new people or try to get a date. By overcoming shyness through hypnosis, you will be confident and collected in every social situation and setting. And isn’t that something that we would all want?
About the Author
http://www.about-hypnosis.com teaches you how to use hypnosis to improve your life. Hypnotism can help with weight loss, stopping smoking, fear of public speaking and more. You can also learn to hypnotize yourself.
