“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.” – Napolean Hill

Hypnosis is an enjoyable, easy and effective way to change our bad habits into good ones and our negative feelings into positive ones. All of our emotions, beliefs, and habits reside in the subconscious mind and hypnosis provides direct access to the subconscious mind to replace any negatives with powerful, positive beliefs.

While many people think of it as “deep sleep”, hypnosis is a comfortable and relaxed state that focuses attention and concentration, bypasses the conscious mind filter, and allows the subconscious mind to be open and receptive to positive suggestions, tapping into the power of the body-mind connection. Most people experience a heightened state of awareness when they are hypnotized, while only about 10% will enter into a state where their mind is so relaxed that they do not remember the session.

People experience this natural, normal state at least twice each day – before they go to sleep and when they wake up. If you have experienced arriving somewhere and can’t remember actually driving there, or if you have missed a freeway exit then you have been in a natural hypnotic state often referred to as “highway hypnosis”.

Natural hypnosis may also occur when you become so involved in an activity, reading a book, or watching a movie that everything else seems to be blocked out, even to the point of not hearing people who talk to you. Whenever concentration is intense, it’s easy to slip into a natural hypnotic state.

Hypnosis has been used for thousands of years as a powerful tool to help and heal. Early records mark the Egyptian sleep temples and the Temple of Aesculapius in Greece as sites where hypnosis was used as an important part of the healing treatment.

The ancient Hawaiian Kahuna’s, healing masters, routinely used hypnosis in their healing practices. A resurgence of the use of hypnosis began in the 1700’s with the work of an Austrian physician named Franz Anton Mesmer. In the 1800’s Dr. James Braid brought hypnosis to the medical arena with his work in hypnoanesthesia.

Hypnosis was used as an effective and rapid treatment for “shell shock”, now referred to as post-traumatic stress disorders, following World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.

The American Medical Association approved hypnosis as an effective treatment in 1958 and recommended that training in hypnosis be included in medical school curriculum. Hypnosis and guided imagery continue to be integrated into modern medical and health care systems.

The National Institute of Health recognizes hypnosis as a Complimentary and Alternative Medicine treatment modality and continues to fund research to validate the importance of hypnosis.

Research results have shown dramatic results in a variety of areas, particularly as an adjunct to conventional cancer treatments and for pain management. Moving even more into the traditional arenas of medical care, hypnosis remains as one of the most powerful healing modalities by utilizing the power of the subconscious mind in motivating the mind-body connection for balance and health.

Hypnosis is probably best known for breaking habits with stop smoking and weight loss success and yet it has been found to be effective in reducing and managing stress, achieving deep relaxation, increasing energy, overcoming fears, overcoming insomnia, and reducing the experience of pain.

Hypnosis has also been shown to be effective in overcoming test anxiety, improving test performance, improving sports performance, improving motivation, setting and achieving goals, improving memory and concentration, increasing self confidence, and building self-esteem.

Most of us have habits or feelings that we’ve tried to change and yet nothing we do seems to make a difference. We know how we want to act and feel, but our decision-making and will power doesn’t seem to be enough to have any lasting effect. Although our conscious mind has made a decision to change, the beliefs and ideas held in our subconscious mind won’t allow the change to take place. Hypnosis allows the subconscious mind to move into agreement with conscious desires and goals so you can live a life of freedom and success!
About the Author

Debbie Friedman, M.S., C.Ht., is the Manifesting Maven who helps people consciously create the life they love to live. She is the creator of the popular Cleaning Out the Closet of Your Mind for Wealth series.

www.CleaningOutTheCloset.com.

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Now, more that ever, concerned physicians are beginning to ask about and understand the role of non-drug therapies to assist patients with headache. These therapies, alone or in combination with medications can significantly impact on headache treatment.

This pleases me. As a Family Physician and Clinical Hypnotist with thirty years experience in the field, I applaud this trend. Certainly, a capable and compassionate physician will struggle to assist his/her patient find headache relief by whatever methods, complimentary, traditional or both. Much can be gained if we look at hypnosis as a helpful tool in the battle for headache relief.

As our understanding of how the brain works and which compounds or “neurotransmitters” control our pain response develops, we begin to suspect that relaxation therapies including hypnosis, may alter in a positive and fundamental way our brain chemistry such that pain relief is more likely. An interesting study was performed with patients who learned relaxation skills. The researchers checked the subjects’ monoamine oxidase levels-since monoamine oxidase is what metabolizes serotonin, a pain relief chemical, and found changes in those levels consistent with what you would expect with preventive drug therapy! The study suggests that it is not just a matter of feeling relaxed that’s important but actually learning via these relaxation therapies to turn off and on certain pain pathways in the nervous system by changing monoamine oxidase levels and consequently serotonin levels.

In this paper, I would like to introduce you to hypnosis and self-hypnosis as a modality of pain relief for patients who suffer from headache. Hypnosis is fun, effective, relaxing and has no side effects. What is this thing they call hypnosis? No, Virginia, it is NOT clucking like a chicken, barking like a dog or being ” put under”, helpless, and at the control of the master. Rather for most people, most of the time, it is a focused state of attention or harmony. It is easily achieved by visiting a professional skilled in hypnosis. This pleasant state has two fascinating and useful properties:

1) It is profoundly relaxing. In our stressful lives what person would not enjoy a few minutes of deep relaxation in the middle of the day from hell!

2) The mind becomes open to positive and therapeutic suggestions. Only suggestions given with your permission and for your own benefit are accepted. No one can be forced or coerced into doing something they do not wish to do.

Hence, when I help patients use hypnosis for headache and stress, I offer them headache specific suggestions as well as relaxation and stress reduction instructions. I find this process fun and creative. I get to know my patient not just as Mr. Jones with a headache, but also as a real person in a stressful situation. This stressor in combination with his or her biological predisposition to headache is creating more pain.

Let’s take a look at a case history and see how it all fits together. Mr. X, a hard driving chief financial officer of a high tech company is known as the “firing man” and is responsible for downsizing a company whose expenses exceed its revenues, and whose market share is declining. His neurologist has referred him to me for help with his chronic daily headache that has not responded well to numerous medications. His executive decisions in the short run will result in layoffs and suffering for many. However, with his expertise, talent, intelligence and hard work, he may “turn the company around” and in the long run, his efforts will benefit far more people than those who will suffer in the short term. He is not well liked by his co-workers and worries a lot about his health and finances.

He is a pleasant man, rather intense and self confident to the point of arrogance. At this time, he is wiling to consider non-drug therapies to diminish the pain and discomfort of his daily headaches.

As I get to know him, I will develop for him the three elements essential to our success. First, in order to benefit from the therapy he must be motivated. Motivated to want to use hypnosis for his purposes, not mine, and motivated to put aside ten minutes each day to develop via hypnosis relaxation sufficient to impact on the pain chemicals in his brain.

Second, I must establish with him a positive and supportive rapport. Trust is an essential element of the hypnotic process. For this gentleman who is used to firing people and always being in control in a “one up one down” situation, I must simply be his assistant. Without this rapport, hypnosis will not be effective.

Third, I must make sure he has sufficient hypnotizablity. Most of us can experience hypnosis without difficulty. Probably, only about 10 percent of us will not be able to enjoy the hypnotic process. I have little to worry about with this patient. Most high functioning individuals in our society have good hypnotic skills, as hypnotizability is associated with creativity, intelligence and imagination.

After a brief explanation of hypnosis and after gaining his permission, Mr. X was hypnotized to enjoy some deep relaxation. Of course, like many patients he had expected to be ‘put under” as he had seen on the stage. Prior to his hypnosis, he was informed that this would not happen but nonetheless, in spite of his level of awareness, the relaxation and ability to accept suggestion would be pleasing to him.

With this mixture of trust, motivation (based on correct information) and hypnotizablity, I was not at all surprised that Mr. X achieved some initial success at relaxation using hypnosis and self-hypnosis.

Mr. X was pleased and agreed to return for further sessions. Not surprisingly, he canceled most of them because he was too busy at work! Nonetheless, he was very positive about the hypnosis that we did. He reported that the relaxation lessened the pain from his headache.

It is a principal of hypnosis that all suggestions require reinforcement. Additionally, practice and repetition are required to develop these skills so they can produce both a biologically medicated pain relief (via altered brain chemicals) and a psychological harmony that helps the patient deal more easily with daily stress.

As with most of my patients, I asked Mr. X to set aside ten minutes daily (preferably at work and without interruption) to listen to an audiocassette that I created for him to recapture the relaxed feeling and increased suggestibility that he experienced in my office. With some practice on his part, I was confident that these daily and pleasant practice sessions would reinforce positive suggestions relating to his particular headache and attitude toward work.

Results have been very satisfactory so far. Mr. X has not returned for further work. When last I inquired he reported an improvement in the severity of his daily headache. Once again, he said he had little time for therapy but he was enjoying the ten minute practice sessions via his personalized audio cassette.

This particular case history will illustrate to the reader the value of using non-drug therapies to assist in pain control. Human beings are complex creatures who may have many different “triggers” for headache. Some of these triggers are stress and psychologically mediated. By dealing effectively with these “triggers” we may assist in pain control with less or no drugs.

To summarize, hypnosis is effective and fun and provides a powerful complimentary or stand-alone therapy to those who suffer from headache. Stress reduction and relaxation techniques have an important role to play in the treatment in one of the more vexing problems physicians face in practice, the patient with headache. A recent paper, New Treatment Options In Migraine by neurologists Drs. Brandes, Edvinson, Marcus, and Rapoport rates relaxation therapies as “effective” as a non-drug therapy for migraine.

About the Author

Dr. Larry Deutsch is a practicing family physician and hypnotherapist. His proven self-help and hypnotherapy programs have helped thousands of people achieve happier and healthier lives. As a Family Doctor, he is able to amplify sound medical counseling with a unique and artistic style of self hypnosis accompanied by beautiful and relaxing music. http://www.drlarry.com

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Any ailment or illness, no matter how major, can have a psychological element to it. Even the word ‘cancer’ is enough to give someone a feeling of anxiety which is in itself enough to prove the body and mind have an instant connection. In fact the body and mind and are not two separate entities. The body and mind are one, it is only for the sake of simplicity of understanding that we have labelled and thought of them as two separate parts.

If you accept that the mind and body can have a profound effect on each other then you will also be able to accept that if the body ails, then the mind has played a part in that ailing and can also play an important part in the body’s healing.

With this in mind the Cancel Cancer cds series were produced to help the mind release any part it has played in the origination of the cancer and also to have a positive effect on the body’s defence and immune systems.

One particular letter that Duncan McColl, author of the Cancel Cancer series has received says “Thank you for being the first person to allow me the dignity of discovering the healing resources within myself”

NOTE: Any use of the Cancel Cancer Self Hypnosis Cds should be considered as an extra option to conventional medical treatment and not as a substitute.

About the Author

Clinical Hypnotherapist
Effective Self Hypnosis Cd

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