The Pros and Cons of Hypnotherapy 1

A pig and a chicken are walking down the street. They look up and see a billboard with an ad for Denny’s Grand-Slam breakfast.

 The chicken points to the glossy, sunny-side-up eggs and proudly clucks, “You see that? That is a meaningful contribution!”

The pig looks up and, pointing out the three slices of bacon, grunts, “You see that? THAT IS TOTAL COMMITMENT!”

So I ask you, do you want to make a meaningful contribution? Or are you all in? Total commitment?

Or are you chicken?

In ‘A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson wrote, “The world needs healing desperately, like a bird with a broken wing.  People know this and millions have prayed. God heard us.  He sent help.  He sent you.”

The world needs healers. I believe hypnotherapy can answer that call. I also believe that to do so we’ll need to raise the bar on the practice of hypnotherapy!

Scottish neurosurgeon, James Braid (1795 – 1860) is considered to be the first genuine “Hypnotherapist” and the “Father of Modern Hypnotism.” It was Braid who adopted the term “hypnotism” as an abbreviation for “neuron-hypnotism” which he regarded as the sleep of the nervous system of the body.

The word “hypno”, from which “hypnotism” derives its name, comes from the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos. Hypnos’ had a twin brother, Thanatos, the god of death. Their father was Morpheus, the god of Dreams.

So hypnosis is the “little sleep.” Death is the “Big Sleep.” And when we sleep, we dream … But that is a subject for another day ….

“The word "therapy" comes from the Greek "therapeia" meaning "a service, an attendance" which, in turn, is related to the Greek verb "therapeuo" meaning "I wait upon." Therapy was (and is) a service done to the sick.”[i]

The healers of ancient Egypt were known as “Therapeuts” - in Greek and Egyptian, “Essenes”. This was a secret brotherhood renowned for their service to the sick which involved healing both body and soul.

There are some who propose that the leader of the Essenes at Qumran, known as the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’, was also the Biblical Jesus. Jesus is well-known for his healing miracles. In the New Testament[ii] there’s a story about a woman who touches the hem of Jesus’ garment and is instantly healed. Jesus takes no credit for the miracle, however, telling the woman, “Your faith (belief) has healed you.”

A ‘Pro’ recognizes that all healing is self-healing; the power to heal resides in the mind of the individual.

Hippocrates[iii], the father of modern medicine, observed this power at work healing the body. He called it ‘vis medicatrix naturae,’ or ‘the healing power of nature.’ While this power is invisible, its effects are routinely witnessed. Whenever a wound heals, a bruise disappears, or a bone mends, it is not due to human intervention but to this seemingly magical natural power.

Sure, we can cleanse a wound, protect bruised tissues, or set a bone in place, but we cannot make the body heal. Recognizing this, Hippocrates taught his students that the healer’s task is to restore balance to the system. Interestingly, drug and surgical interventions were used, but only as a last resort.[iv] The emphasis was on removing the blocks to the natural flow of this healing energy to permit healing.

The ‘Con’ uses the title ‘healer.’ He professes to possess special powers which he offers, for a fee, of course. Steve Martin personified this role in the movie, ‘Leap of Faith’ where, as fake faith healer, Jonas Nightingale, he comes to realize that people are actually being healed despite his own lack of belief!

The truth is – healing happens. When we let it.

The power isn’t in the healer. It’s in the client. It always was. Dorothy, in the ‘Wizard of Oz’, discovered that she had it all along. She just needed to tap into it.

The ‘Pro’ knows this.

Pros serve the purpose of empowering the client to tap into “it”  - whatever “it” is. Using her skill and knowledge, the Pro guides the client through a process to release the blocks to awareness and restore the free-flow of this energy.

As it is restored, healing naturally follows.

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[i] Medicine.net

[ii] Luke 8:40-49

[iii] ca. 460 BC – ca. 370 BC

[iv] And back then ‘drugs’ were herbal remedies.

Don’t Believe Everything You Think

I admit it. I’m a bit of an information junkie. I can’t resist the temptation to check out various programs that are being offered.  I sign up for newsletters and weekly e-programs. And before long my head’s a-whirl with a lot of meaningless ‘krap.’ And I unsubscribe from everything.

Recently I stumbled upon some interesting questions, though.

This one got me thinking….

“What really annoys, irritates and grinds away at you regarding your idea/project/product/service? What about the subject really pisses you off?”[i]

Okay, there are pros and cons to everything in life but who doesn’t appreciate an invitation to gripe a little?

The object of the exercise is to identify the ‘grit in the oyster.’ What came to mind, as I pondered this question, was what it is that really irks me about my profession.

So here it is. CON #1:

Hypnosis schools that market certification as the easy ticket to a new, high-paying career. Dollar-driven hypnotherapy certification programs with too large or too small class sizes that ensure insufficient practice time and inadequate supervision.

And no post-graduate support system. You pays your money and it’s “sayonara”!

Add to this a plethora of CI’s with little-to-no actual experience in private practice and the profession has a formula for disaster.

“I’m a CH. Do you want fries with that?”

My first hypnosis certification course was with a local school located about an hour’s drive from my home. As the Fates would have it, another student who had signed up for the 4 week course, lived just a few blocks from my home. So we agreed to commute together and share costs.

For the next four weeks, Terry and I took turns driving to and from class. We became study buddies, reviewing course material and practicing together on weekends.

Terry was a dedicated and hard-working student who, in her eagerness to begin a new career as a Certified Hypnotherapist, had invested the last of her savings. She wanted it BAD!

Six months following graduation I found her clerking at a big-box retail store.

The truth is it takes more than a few weeks study to become a qualified hypnosis professional. It requires business acumen, marketing smarts, and years of study and practice to develop a successful practice – just like any profession.

Eleven years have passed since my first hypnosis certification and I have continued to study hypnosis and healing. Along the way I have been blessed to have some great teachers. And some not-so-great.  All taught me valuable lessons.

What does it take to be a PRO?

1. Know your stuff. Cultivate a thorough understanding of the underlying theories and concepts that will support your client’s success.
2. Develop expertise in using the tools. Immersing yourself in the practical application of whatever methods you utilize will build confidence and skill.
3. Don’t believe everything you think. Continue to learn. Subscribe to journals. Join a forum. Attend classes, seminars, conferences. Remember - you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! Learning from other’s successes and failures will shorten your learning curve and save you $$$
4. Walk your talk. Do your own work. Come from a place of experience and authenticity. And help raise the bar on our profession.

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[i] AndreaJLee.com

Is Insight the Goal of Regression Hypnotherapy?

James Hillman wrote, “We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world’s getting worse.” People spend years in therapy. And most of them can tell you all the reasons they do the things they do.

But they’re still doing them.The goal is to release the energy that drives the unwanted behavior and generates distressing symptoms.

So insight is not the goal of hypnotherapy.

There are short-term objectives leading up to the primary goal of healing. The first is to establish the therapeutic relationship. That means providing a foundation of safety and trust.

The next is to build positive expectancy or ‘hope’ by providing the client with an experience of relief. After all, nothing builds success like success.

And you don’t eat an elephant all at once.

If releasing is the meat and potatoes of regression hypnotherapy, insight is the dessert. The more relief you can provide the client, the more the subconscious mind will trust you (and the client) with the ‘truth.’

And the more likely it is to render up the whole truth.

As a result, the client will begin to connect the dots. And realize how his or her own mind has been creating the problem all along. But insight isn't necessary to achieve success or healing.

In the first Shrek movie, Shrek says, “Ogres have layers.” The subconscious mind can be a real ogre at times! It has many layers of 'truth'. Getting down to the event that caused that 'truth' to form in the first place will all the client to form better decisions - about self, others, and life in general.

Resolving the causal event literally pulls the plug on the energy that's been feeding into the presenting problem. THEN it’s over. 

And that's what 'getting better' means. It means finally being able to choose to direct one's energy in ways that truly satisfy.

Hypnotherapy and Dreams

The word “hypnotism” was first adopted by Scottish physician and surgeon James Braid in the 1800’s as an abbreviation for “neuron-hypnotism” or sleep of the nerves. Braid wrote and lectured extensively on this subject and is considered the first genuine Hypnotherapist.

Hypnotism, which later became known as hypnosis, derives its name from the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos. Thanatos, the god of death, was the twin brother of Hypnos. So you had your little sleep and your big sleep. Their father was Morpheus, the god of Dreams. Morpheus gave form to the images that are dreams.

So dreams and hypnosis have a lot in common.

Dream-working is a very ancient spiritual practice. As far back as 2000 BC the Egyptians recorded their dreams on papyrus. They believed dreams were based on real things that could not be perceived by waking consciousness. And that the gods could appear and communicate directly through the dream state.

The Egyptians were the first to practice dream interpretation. They established temples where the gods could be invoked and consulted in dreams for the purposes of healing.

The Greeks loved Egyptian customs and adopted many of them. They, too, built healing temples, the most famous of which was the Temple of Epidaurus, established by the revered healer Asclepios. The medical staff with the intertwining snakes, a familiar symbol of healing today, is actually Asclepios’ caduceus.

Like the Egyptians, the Greeks consulted dreams for the purposes of healing. They practiced both dream incubation (from incubare, to lie down) and dream interpretation.

The bringer of sleep was the god, Hypnos. By touching or fanning you with his wings, Hypnos would transport you into the dream realm.

His father, Morpheus (meaning “to shape”) gave form to the images that are dreams. Sometimes the dream itself was the healing. Sometimes the dream provided a prescription for physical or psychological healing. With the assistance of a healing priest, such dreams could be interpreted and then acted upon.

Carl Jung believed that dreams are vehicles of self-realization and that bringing dreams to the light of consciousness provides insight and understandings that would otherwise be impossible.

Modern-day research clearly shows that both sleep and dreaming are essential to our physical and psychological well-being. When we sleep the body is free to perform all the restorative functions necessary to maintain health.  And when we dream, psychological healing occurs as the subconscious mind sorts through all the stuff our limited conscious mind wasn’t able to address during the day.

Jeremy Taylor suggests that all dreams come in the service of health and wholeness. And that only the dreamer can say for sure what his or her dream means.

“I have given this all the meaning that it holds for me.”

– A Course in Miracles

Dreams can help and guide us to free ourselves from obstacles in our everyday life. They can provide creative inspiration or guidance.

When used with hypnosis, dreams can act as gateways to the past. Dreams can also provide a barometer to ongoing healing work using hypnosis.

Pay attention to dreams - your own and your clients!

15 Tips to Take Hypnosis to Healing

Here's a list of 15 tips to help you be more effective in taking your hypnosis practice into a healing practice.

1. Listen. The client needs to feel heard. Often the Hypnotherapist is the last resource to be called upon following a long chain of failed attempts to resolve the client’s problem. A distraught, frustrated client is an emotional client! And the subconscious mind is the feeling mind. So listen!
2. Educate. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis. So teach your client what she needs to know to be successful working with you. Uncover and dispel any fears or misconceptions about hypntherapy with a well-crafted pre-talk.
3. Condition. Most of the problems we deal with in our offices are the result of childhood conditioning. So why not condition your client for success? After all, all healing is self-healing. It’s not something we do, it’s something that happens when we allow it. The therapeutic relationship provides the safety and validation the client needs to allow change to occur. So train your clients how to work effectively with you. Prove that they’re in good hands, that you can be trusted, and their subconscious mind will show you the gold!
4. Carpe Diem! "Seize the day." When an abreaction occurs, mentally do a little Snoopy-dog dance then, reassure the client. Remind her that this is why she is here! Prove that you can guide the client quickly to relief and she will gladly walk with you through the Valley of Fears.
5. Relax. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was the client’s problem. So it’s reasonable to expect that it might take a while to resolve it. Healing is, after all, a process. Release the need to be a 'one-hit-wonder.' Be patient. Slow down. Take things one step at a time. Work with the client's subconscious mind to achieve healing.
6. Focus on feelings. Where do we feel our feelings? In the body - primarily in the gut, chest and throat areas (which correspond with major nerve plexus’.) Working with the body has many benefits. First, it gives the client a physical point of focus. And hypnosis is maintained through focused attention. Second, it gives the client a way to subjectively gauge her level of discomfort and, therefore, measure improvements.
7. Validate. All feelings are good. Acknowledge the negative, uncomfortable feelings and make them acceptable so the client can finally allow them full expression. Affirm the positive, better-feeling feelings that come naturally as a result of releasing the negative thoughts and feelings.
8. Test the results. As Yoda said, “There is no try. There is only do and not-do.” Don’t try to convince the client that it’s working. Prove it! Show her that change is already occurring! (Even if it’s 5 minutes into the session.)
9. Wrap up at a point of feeling better. Ask your client to assess how much better she feels compared to when you started. Then drive home the evidence that positive change is occurring, and that complete resolution is merely a matter of time. And when healing is complete the client will not only be free to ‘do’ things differently, she will have a newer, better expectation of life in general. And her thinking and feeling will be congruent with her desired ‘doing.’
10. Shoot for the stars and take what you can get. We’d all love to ‘nail’ the ISE right out of the gate so we can ring the ‘one-session-miracle’ bell. Realistically, though, we’re not in charge of the healing. The client’s subconscious mind decides what it’s going to reveal, when, and why. So work with whatever comes up. Even seemingly insignificant events can generate the gold of healing. Think of a small child who runs home to Mamma crying over a paper cut. When Mamma examines the finger she finds the physical injury is barely visible. Yet Mamma knows that the way to help the child feel better is to give attention to the perceived hurt. She validates the child’s feelings by giving attention to the wound without judging. In doing so, the child’s emotional distress is quickly relieved. A calm child emerges with a new understanding that she can make it through a traumatic event and feel better. Whether the event is an obvious trauma, a minor scrape, or a complete misinterpretation of circumstances - treat it as Mamma would – with love and acceptance.
11. Focus on releasing. All that internal pressure is stress. And stress inhibits cognition. In short, we cannot think clearly when we’re all stressed-out. So focus on releasing the feelings to bring relief. With relief will come clarity.
12. Be thorough. The more the client releases, the more clarity she will enjoy. Increased clarity will allow insight and understanding. Understanding allows forgiveness. And forgiveness is the healing. So be thorough. Release everything. Ensure there’s nothing left to reseed the issue. And when release is complete, forgiveness will come easily. It will just happen automatically.
13. Forgive everyone. I mean everyone. Don’t discriminate! All forgiveness is self-forgiveness. Every individual in an event (even by-standers) are 'players' on the stage of the client’s inner mind. These individuals have been internalized as parts of the client. The mind works through association. Asthese individuals are associated with the internal pain the client is suffering, they need to be forgiven. So forgive them all – even the ‘good guys.’
14. Polish. Polishing techniques can be used to clean up residual material; generalize changes; compound change; help deepen the healing; and apply the healing to specific areas of the client’s body or life. Polishing can project change into the future as an expectation of things to come. They can also be given as homework as a self-healing, self-empowerment tool.
15. Walk your talk. Clairvoyant healer, Rosalyn Bruyere, once said, “If you really knew why you are here you’d show up.” Hypnotherapy is not merely a job or a profession, it’s a calling. So take your work seriously enough to do your own work. Whatever practice you choose to keep yourself clear – whether it's journaling, self-hypnosis, meditation, tapping, dream working, prayer or something else – make it part of your daily routine. Think of it as brushing your teeth. Consistency counts.

The Devil's Therapy: From Hypnosis to Healing is coming soon. Watch for it!

The Devil's Therapy is Hypnotherapy

In ‘The Pathway: Follow the Road to Health and Happiness’, Laura Mellin wrote: “The job of the therapist is to stay above the line when the client is below, to connect with his or her own balance when clients have lost theirs. 

"You know the feeling, for you may well have it when a friend is in distress and you do what you can to be responsive to your friend rather than respond to yourself and run as far away and as fast as you can. That is hard work, and how would you know that a therapist has what it takes to do that? 

"To be close to you in your imbalance yet stay loving and balanced.

“Although insight-oriented, analytic psychotherapy can have some benefit in some situations, my experience has been that the more analytical the therapy the more stalled in his or her development the program participant may become. It’s hard to play both sides of the fence. You either decide that you’re going to figure it out or you decide that you’re going to hold yourself accountable for doing the best you can to stay in balance in the moment. It’s very hard to do both.

“The truth is that people like to gain insight into their problems. It gives them a sense of security and control, and doing so is far easier than mastering the skills. Their assumption is often that if they just understood the problem, it would somehow change. This is much like people believing that if they just knew what to eat, they would eat it, or if they just knew why they got angry, they could stop their rages! As my dear friend Jim Billings, a gifted minister and psychologist says, “If you have a nickel and a truckload of insight, you only have five cents.”

“Another route to revision of the feeling brain is to discover love.  

"In the wordless harmony between two people, the resonance of their emotional cores, is a potent balancing force that we unconsciously seek when we are hurting, lost, or alone. Because one mind has the power to revise another simply by its repeated regard for the other, our relationships can either heal or harm us in ways that we may not fully appreciate. 

"When we look into the eyes of a loving other repeatedly, we become attuned to that person and find our emotional balance improves as that repeated contact has the power to change our feeling brain one synapse at a time. Moreover, our closeness with someone for whom we have the emotion of love but who is not responsive to us can have an equally powerful effect that fosters imbalance in us.”

The Devil’s Therapy is Hypnotherapy. It's about healing. 

And all healing is self healing. 

Regression hypnotherapy is about facilitating self healing. 

This isn’t merely a job – it’s a calling.

As a regression Hypnotherapist you are naturally therapeutic because you recognize the healer is within. Therefore, you engage in ongoing personal development. You want to know the territory of the subconscious mind intimately in order to act confidently and competently as a guide to others.

Because you recognize experience as the best teacher you do your own work - the work of self-healing. That is what empowers you to hold a balanced field of loving energy for the client in distress.

You invest in ongoing professional development. You are focused on mastering your expertise as a therapeutic hypnosis practitioner through experiential training.

And you are involved in a professional community that offers support through a mutual peer mentoring process.

Where’s the book?

I’m in the final phase of editing. The Devil’s Therapy: From Hypnosis to Healing is nearing completion so stay tuned!

Where's Wendie?

I make my home on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. But I'll be winging my way to Massachusetts to teach hypnosis professionals, among other things, the foundation of effective regression hypnotherapy - dream work.  

Devilish, I know.

http://www.bluemoonhealingcenter.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/twonewpowertoolsfinalfinal.pdf

Join me?

The Great Lie

In the Tarot, the devil is an inversion of God. But still God. The devil represents the aspects of God within ourselves that we have rejected. As a result, they enslave us.

What we reject we fear. We then try to distance ourselves from it. If it’s not love, it’s not God. And if it’s not God, it cannot be real. It’s false evidence appearing real. F.E.A.R.

The devil has been called the Great liar. The Trickster. The Deceiver. The devil is fear itself. 

In the movie, ‘Far Away So Close,’ the angel Cassiel falls to earth where he meets a man who introduces himself as "Emit Flesti." Flesti spells out his name before proceeding to dupe the naive fallen angel with a parlour trick.

"E-M-I-T … F-L-E-S-T-I"

Read it backwards. T-I-M-E I-T-S-E-L-F. Temporality. 

The consciousness of mortality generates fear of death.

If God is Love then the devil is Fear. If God is Truth, then the devil is Liar. If God is Feeling Safe (Peace), then the devil is Reason for Fear (Anxiety). If God is Eternity, then the devil is Mortality.

One of the most ancient spiritual precepts[i] reminds us by asking, “Know ye not that ye are gods?”

Like Cassiel, we have gambled away our divine awareness for worldly trinkets. We have gotten lost in addiction. We have forgotten what we are - Eternal Beings.

Hermetic Law states, “That which is above is as that which is below. That which is within is as that which is without.” It’s all one. No separation. A harmonious flow.

The Sun was once representative of the masculine aspect of the godhead. The Moon was consort of the Sun, the feminine aspect. The goddess. The feeling nature.

And Emit Flesti suggests to Cassiel that there was once a golden “time” when heaven and earth were in harmony. When thinking and feeling were aligned. When mind and body were one.

But times have changed.

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[i] Found in Hermetic texts as well as the Bible.