I have found a method quite by accident that works with the special needs child to promote independence and increased ability to achieve self control. This method utilizes stories with both familiar and unfamiliar characters. These stories promote independent play by providing coaching by cd. The cd’s help the child to play more independently and also to learn new coping strategies. Relaxing music with familiar nature sounds seems to help the children to learn better. It also increases creativity in the children by helping them to compose their own fantasy people to introduce to the therapist. Children both benefit and enjoy it because they are in trance easily and naturally and they enjoy cds with their name and familiar people in the stories. The children that I have helped by this method have gotten increased self esteem and self efficacy.
One child could not be alone and play for more than two minutes. Now, he comfortably plays for fifteen minutes. Both the coached play and the blend of both the familiar and the unfamiliar seem to help.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in hypnotherapy for quitting smoking, the very same methods that work for most people may not work for others. In choosing just what methods to use for a person, I offer various options and follow the person’s gut level response. This is because there is such a wide variety of personal tastes and belief systems among people seeking hypnotherapy and because a gut level response is much more indicative of subconscious agreement. The only way any method can work is with agreement by the subconscious mind.

One of the amazing things about the subconscious mind is that your Imagination is the inner language of that mind. It's like a rehearsal room where you can practice being the person you wish to be. In your imagination, you can be anywhere you desire...just like when you were a kid in a classroom and you gazed out the window and drifted to some other place you'd rather be...perhaps to a beautiful island or transported back to the last few days of summer camp.

In your imagination, you can be anything you desire....a king or queen, a movie star, or a great athlete, or perhaps president. It's your own private place, where you can travel through time and space. And if used correctly it "dreams can come true..." If not, they are merely daydreams and fulfil us at the moment, but do not bring change into our lives.

Hypnosis offers means of communicating with the functions of mind that are below conscious awareness. Anyone who has ever tried to quit smoking cigarettes already knows that the urge to smoke comes from something gravitationally more powerful and monolithically more immune to persuasion than the conscious mind. These deep functions of mind are called the Unconscious, not because they don’t know what the conscious mind is thinking, but because the conscious mind is unconscious of what these deep functions are doing. A fleetingly remembered dream or a embarrassingly timed Freudian slip may give us glimpses into what’s really going on, but on the cruise ships of our lives, most of the action is not happening in the well-appointed first class dining room of consciousness, but in the unseen engine room whose vague pulse is the sound that consciousness has learned to ignore. Alarmingly to those whose identities are well-seated in their intellects, the powerful engines of these deep functions of mind can change and even cause our perceptions, feelings and thoughts.

"One of the great discoveries a man (or woman) makes, one of his/her great surprises, is to find he/she can do what he/she was afraid he/she couldn't do. Most of the bars we beat against are in ourselves --- we put them there, and we can take them down." --- Henry Ford

I would like to add to this quote. Some "bars" are put in our minds by others, and these, too, can be taken down. Consider the following statements that may run through one's mind, "I never keep the weight off," "You'll never amount to anything," "I can't hit a drive today, " "I know I'll fail, " "You're stupid, " "I have to have a cigarette with my cup of coffee, '' "I can't stop eating," "You don't like me. " The list goes on and on. Thoughts such as these reflect one's beliefs.

The previous blog advanced the idea that if you are not sure if you were hypnotized or not during a hypnotherapy appointment, that you can assume that you were hypnotized if you got the results that you desired. The following is an anecdote illustrating this idea.

One day at the Palo Alto School of Hypnotherapy, the director, Josie Hadley, was giving a class in hypnosis for weight reduction. She asked for a volunteer on whom an induction would be demonstrated, and several people responded with alacrity. The lady she chose, whom we’ll call Susie, came to the front of the room and stated that she was carrying an extra fifty pounds as a result of eating.

It seems that whenever her partner left town, she would be besieged by a horde of high quality chocolate-covered ice cream bars named after the bird of peace. When he returned, she could keep the ice cream bars at bay. However, the previous week, she had fallen prey not only to the chocolate-covered bars, but had suffered a skirmish with a key lime pie. The pie had prevailed and had joined itself to her entirely, with not a crumb to spare.

After a hypnotherapy appointment, how do you know if you were hypnotized? Speaking only from my practice of hypnotherapy, the answer is simple: everything else being equal, you were hypnotized if you got positive results.

Sometimes, hypnosis feels just like your normal state of consciousness. Suppose you tried your hardest to change the problem and then sought out hypnotherapy. Then, looking back on your hypnotherapy appointment, you feel like all that you did was close your eyes, and nothing else occurred. IF you still got your desired results, then that seems to indicate that your unconscious mind received and accepted the posthypnotic suggestions that were given at the appointment.

Operating within belief, the key component for change, are imagination, motivation, and anticipation. If you can imagine something and it's within reason, mostly likely you will achieve it (Hadley and Staudacher,1996). What the mind can conceive and believe, you will achieve. Research has shown that when an event is vividly imagined, the body's internal system reacts in the precise same way it would if the activity were actually happening. This is what many great athletes practice: they imagine each part of an athletic event: golfers "see" the breaks in the green, they "smell" the finely cut grass, and they "hear" the roar of the crowd when the ball drops in the hole.

You too can practice this creative visualization process. First, clarify exactly what it is you wish to achieve. Maybe you want to clean out the garage. Imagine yourself starting the project: organizing what stays, what gets thrown out. See the clutter begin to disappear. Notice all the new available floor space. Perhaps you include a garage sale and now see your reward as all the money you have simply because you cleaned out your garage.

This technique can be used with anyone. However, it probably works best with persons with whom you have a relatively close relationship. It is not safe to use this technique when you are driving or operating machinery. This is because it places you in a light trance state, which you then allow the other person to borrow.

The first step in this six step process is to notice that the other person is agitated and to refrain from mentioning this fact.

The second step is to notice the rate at which the person (let’s call him Bart) is breathing. This can be ascertained by watching the rise and fall of his chest, the expansion and contraction of his ribcage, changes in the size of his nostrils, the rise and fall of his abdomen, subtle changes in the position of his chin, or the fluttering of hairs on his mustache. If Bart is congested, you may be able to hear his breathing. If he is talking, and he is not a musician who has mastered circular breathing, then no minute scrutiny is required, since, obviously enough, his words come on the exhale, and he pauses to catch his breath.