Self-Help / Improvement

A hypnotherapy session always begins with a client sharing their concerns, problems, or issues at hand, just as one would do to begin a regular talk-therapy session. The hypnotherapist listens and takes careful notes to insure that key words or phrases spoken by the client be used during the trance-state portion of the session. By attending to the exact verbiage, it takes the client deeper into their emotions where their real work begins.

An induction into a state of hypnosis can involve many different techniques, however, the goal is to bring the client into deeper and deeper states of relaxation. It’s common for a client to feel like they are not hypnotized, as the conscious mind remains active throughout the entire session. The more a client allows themselves to let go into deeper states of relaxation, the more beneficial the session. The ironic thing is, though, most clients don’t call a hypnotherapist unless they are ready to do the deep work of their soul. So relax and enjoy!

The impact of a direct suggestion can heavily depend on its meaning to the individual being hypnotized. When offering suggestions, it’s essential to consider the language being used. A good example of this would be a particular case involving an individual from a different country where a common implication (as opposed to their dictionary definition) of the word “fat” would mean healthy, whereas calling someone “fat” in English would commonly be used offensively. In other words we benefit from considering cultural connotations, before we rush to decide that our own language is what works for the person being hypnotized. Rapport building and conversation is key to knowing the best approach. We are not the same, but the same in that we are all different.
Cultural environment plays a factor when indirectly influenced. Since studies have shown that indirect and direct language can equally be effective, it makes sense to consider the cultural desires and dislikes of the client when using indirect suggestion before putting the person into a deep trance.

Single parenthood is extraordinary and unparalleled. There is an assumption, however that in order for single parents to live their dreams, they must wait until a child grows independent. At this time, the parent’s mind grows weary and physical capabilities can diminish if a healthy diet and exercise is not part of their routine. Sometimes a typecast is mentioned as the reason for seeking help. “I’m a single mother” is mentioned as a stigma and not a simple statement of fact. To think independently may seem more difficult than to simply accept how many in society, family, and friends believe a single parent should live. Independence equals creativity. Assuming a role everyone else feels you should play impedes on your overall growth & individuality so that seeking a holistic health practitioner, a life coach or therapist offers little help if the individual is not willing to let go of those belief systems holding them back from reaching desired results.

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.

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.

It could be said that the main force fueling effective affirmations is belief. If you are someone who is hard put to believe in anything, you can still make your affirmation work for you. Perhaps the following seemingly foolish questions can serve to illustrate why this is so.

Let us suppose that right now, you are seated or reclining on a chair, couch or a bed. Did you examine that furniture for soundness before throwing caution to the winds and settling yourself in? Are you presently wearing a hat molded of aluminum foil as prevention against mind control by extraterrestrial and/or government operatives? The last time you checked the time, was it in order to see what time it was, or to ascertain whether or not time was still moving forward?

Step Three is preparing for the job interview. If you enjoyed the television technique in Step Two, then you have probably already realized that this technique could work equally well for an interview. If you would like to try this, first self-induce a trance state:

Observe your breathing, and relax your breathing. Imagine all of your muscles relaxing, muscle group by muscle group, moving either from toe to head or from head to toe. Next, choose a number over five, and tell yourself that as you count down from that number, with each number, you will be relaxing ten times more deeply than before. Count down, and when you reach the number one, start the television technique.

If Step One, deleting the terminated job from your thoughts, was very difficult to impossible, you are in good company. If we stop to consider how many applicants there are for a given job, and if a certain percentage of them lost the previous job under stressful circumstances, and then we multiply that vague figure by every job that is now open, it is clear that multitudes are at risk for perseverating on thoughts of the old job and how they might have done things differently or had things done differently to them, or both.

If you are still haunted by thoughts of the old job, and you are not sleeping well due to these thoughts, it is wise to notice how long this situation goes on. If the insomnia does not naturally resolve itself, and you also find that you feel removed from your feelings, are often irritable, have trouble concentrating and feel all alone and somehow to blame for the whole experience, all of this makes sense. These are some of the more common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and are natural responses to a traumatic experience.