The Transparent Hypnotist

Did you try out the subliminal software?

No, that is actually not the Sunday question. But, you guessed it, I am going to have the question relate to Esoteric Saturday.

Here goes:

What are your thoughts about using subliminals? Do you use them for hypnosis or on their own? What is your experience?

Again, I shan’t ramble about this (for I have not really utilized them in my practice) and will hope you will respond.

So which camp do you follow - subliminals work or subliminals do not work? Perhaps you have read the information that audible subliminals are a fallacy? Perhaps you believe visual one’s work?

There are many who believe subliminals a wonderful tool for creating change.

Therefore it seems most appropriate to feature a subliminal computer program in an esoteric Saturday posting. This becomes a little more difficult because I am a Mac person, so it seems essential to feature one that would work for regular PCs and Macs. I persevered, though.

The software is called Subliminal Message from Custom Solutions of Maryland and it is a free program. I downloaded it before writing this just to get a feel for it. On the Mac, it runs in the background…even as I type this, every now and them I perceived a bit of a flash. I see the flash because it has a user interface that allows one to set the darkness level and the speed of which it flashes. So I have it where I can see it at the moment. The interesting thing is that it lets you set your own suggestions as text or images.

To learn more about this or to download it, visit customsolutionsofmaryland.50megs.com. Please keep in mind that this is freeware, which means that the creator is giving it away just for the sake of it. To encourage these kind souls continue their work, please consider making a donation to the software creator.

If anyone tries this on a PC operating system and would like to comment on how it works with that, it would be appreciated, as would any comments!

A few days ago I had an annual doctor’s appointment (it went well, so no horror or sad stories about to enter into the mix here). As usual, the doctor asked me how the hypnosis business was going and I told her it was just fine. Then she told me something that deeply pleased me, but startled me as well.

First, you have to understand that my practice is amongst the area of the Bible Belt in the US. This means that sometimes telling people you are a hypnotist becomes a challenge, as does marketing. There area is transient enough that there are several open minds around, which is a very good thing. So slowly but surely hypnosis is being more accepted. I already work with a few doctors, but it was after nurturing the relationships (a lot). There are still several doctors in my area who know little about it and do not want to learn more.

So, I was a little taken a back when my gynecologist mentioned that she wished she was younger so that she could go back to school and learn a combination of acupuncture and hypnosis to help women have an easier time during labor. Her medical internship was in the New England area, and one of the doctor’s she studied under used the combination. She said it was amazing the difference between birthing experiences the women who used traditional methods verses acupuncture and hypnosis.

Way back, I agreed to keep my hypnosis practice as transparent as possible as a way to create open dialouge with other practitioners, people who are interested in the daily operations of running a hypnosis practice and for clients to know more about hypnosis. It has proven to be a fairly interesting concept (and I have enjoyed blogging with you all). However, there are times when it gets a little complicated. These are times when I am rushing about or my day was no perfect. But an agreement is an agreement.

Recently I had a client come to me for regression work to locate a missing key to her aunt’s car. Her husband called to make the appointment. He was a little sketchy with the details and I assumed it was the normal cannot find the keys issue. Silly inference on my part. There is no normal. Normal is a baseline average.

So I met with her. The keys simply were not lost. She had put them away somewhere where her aunt would not find them. Her aunt was involved in drugs and is currently serving a bit of a lengthy jail term. The keys were originally hidden so that the aunt would be forced to stay with family members and change her ways. And now that the aunt is incarcerated, the husband of my client wants her to remember where the keys are so that they can move the car out of the garage.

Well, we did fine at first. Then it appeared that there was a block when it came to the keys. We deepened the hypnosis and tried several methods to get around the block. No go. No keys. So we went in search of what was going on with the block. It turns out that she has lost all trust of her aunt and is tired of the turmoil. The keys will not surface until the trust is regained.

The client was okay with this and felt she understood herself a lot more. Her husband, sadly, was not as happy. The car is blocking some of his sports equipment.

Well, the intern caught up with reading the blog and is now giving me a hard time about the post I did about getting a portable DVD player to use as a pre-talk. She thinks it is horrible idea. In her words, “It’s not real.” Hmmm.

So rather than saying, “Real? I’ll give you real,” I asked, “What is your suggestion?”

Now she seems to think I should suck it up and take the plunge. “Hire a receptionist,” she said.

I asked if she had read my blog and noted where I said I was not quite ready for it. She said I was just being unrealistic. She said a receptionist would give credibility to the office. A receptionist could do the pre-talk. Yeah, and she could do the hypnosis as well…and who said she? Why not a he?

But I digress in my pithy panic.

By the end of the day she sent me a link to Trovix Recruit, among others. She said it would be timely for me to look into their service, just put the whole thing in their hands, or that of their intelligent website services. It is tempting to say the least, but of course I know I am not ready for a head hunter. But as my intern explained, Trovix Recruit is Internet based, sort of like putting out a job posting to one source and getting a lot more for the bang. It is a full
applicant tracking system, which means you can get feedback on potential candidates from different recruiting managers and you can track everything online from the job posting to the interview/hiring process.

So, it is in the thought process. We will see. We will see. Again, any thoughts are welcome or even advice.

Last week while looking for information and statistics about hypnosis and breast cancer, I came across another study done in 2004. This one involved children undergoing cancer surgery and their pain levels.

Though I am still trying to find the original study information, including where it was done, this information came from a review by Linda A. Vrooman at thecancer.net taken from Cancer Online in September 2004.

There was research done to substantiate the role of hypnosis in prolonging life of those with cancer. One study specifically looked at how pain was perceived by children and the affects of hypnosis on this perception. Apparently 80 children participated. They were broken up into four groups, two of which consisted of experiencing an anesthetic and hypnosis during various procedures. The other two groups received an an anesthetic and counseling. The groups who used hypnosis experienced much less pain then the other groups, based on their response to how much pain they suffered using a scale of zero to five.

Again, I am still looking for the study this review is from, but thought it would be good to infuse a little good news after the debauchery we suffered yesterday with the showbiz hypnosis. If you know of the source of the cancer study, please share it here.

My 200th post on this blog. Wow. That is a lot of writing and a lot of reading. For those of you who are still with me, thanks for hanging in there!

Today, I am pondering the client experience. I am in a quandary. Some hypnotists believe it is better to meet the client the moment they walk through the door and escort them through the entire process from intake, to pre-talk, and through the session. There are other hypnotists who have a waiting room, receptionist and an assistant who does the pre-talk, then directs the client into the session with the hypnotist. Then there are those who greet the client and after having the client fill out the intake, show a video that explains the hypnotic process, the hypnotist’s philosophy, answers general questions and addresses mythology. Then the session begins.

Well, I am definitely the first type. Many times I would like to be the second, but I am not quite ready for that yet. And now I am contemplating becoming the third type.

I have been reluctant to do this because I have not wanted to have a television in my space. I hate the way they look. I know I could put it in an armoire to hide it, but that seems like a lot of hassle (and not to mention heavy). So a potential solution would be to get a portable DVD player. It could live in a storage unit and be taken out just for the introduction. This would be real handy when there are multiple people in the office. I could set it up in a different room easily enough. However, the size of the screen could be an issue. Well, Digitalframez.com offers a portable 10 inch DVD player that seems like a decent size. It is actually made for use in vehicles (which might be a nice bonus in my personal life when traveling and such), so it has rechargeable batteries that last four hours or can use a car lighter to run it. Other things that it includes are a TV-tuner (Mythbusters watch out) and can play DivX formats (compressed files). It will also play video from a USB flash drive. Pretty versatile.

Now the question is, do I use it in my pre-talk or not? Any thoughts or experiences?

Good morning! No green tea today, back to black. And as I sit contemplating the first (and maybe only, we will see) post of the day, I think I will start a segment to the blog called In the News.

When I first saw the headline, I clicked on it. I believe I saw it sometime during the weekend, but the link had an error and I could not find the story. It surfaced today. From The Desert Morning News in Utah comes “Hypnotist’s show in Logan sends girl to the hospital.” It is by a young man names Ben Winslow. He presents the facts:

• There was a hypnotism show at a high school
• A local policeman was at the school for another event.
• He saw a 17 year-old girl being taken out of the school on a gurney.
• He said she was hyperventilating and very panicky.
• He also said the hypnotist was in the audience trying to get other people out of a state of hypnosis.
• Police said other young women had difficulty coming out of hypnosis.

For those who have any notion of the hypnotic process, you are probably thinking something along the lines of “eeek” and maybe even feeling a slightly acidic sensation in the stomach region. For those not experience or with little knowledge of hypnosis, you are probably thinking that this article may have some credibility. Don’t.

If you actually click on the link to the story and read it, be sure to read all the comments as well. They are infinitely more interesting. Though I will come to the writer’s defense. Yes, the article lacks a lot of information, the name of the hypnotist, what suggestion he/she had given to cause the girl to hyperventilate and be panicky (for if she was still in hypnosis, she would still be acting on that suggestion), and what happened to the girl. But, this story, like so many, is a quick once over of a situation. I suspect that the writer had little knowledge of hypnosis or was doing the journalistic thing of just providing the facts that he was able to gather quickly. So, as for the article being a hoax. I doubt that.

So then what is it? This is one of my greatest fears about doing stage hypnosis, especially in regards to a high school-aged crowd - the fear of having a participant who wants extra attention and feigns not being about to come out of the hypnotic state. Notice the word ‘feigns.’ She could have done so for the attention alone, not realizing that what she did had no creditability, could ruin the poor hypnotist (my heart goes out to that person), and set the hypnosis profession back a bit in the eyes of certain public. Or worse, maybe she did know all this, maybe it was a plot, but for now I am taking off my conspiracy theory hat.

And here is another thought, maybe it was not that she was stuck in a state of hypnosis, but had problems with how she acted during the show. Perhaps she was embarrassed, or had some odd revelation that distressed her, or anything of that nature. The all knowing “THEY” say that hypnotists should not work with people who have certain mental issues, like schizophrenia, unless the hypnotist has a background (and often licence in psychology). How is a stage hypnotist to know who or what he or she is dealing with in choosing volunteers from an unknown crowd?

Any thoughts?

Since we are on the green topic today, it is always good to have resources available for those who are making lifestyle choices. A lot of times when people hear the words “green,” “organic,” or “environmental friendly,” dollar signs appear in the thought process. but there are ways to make this type of life-style more affordable.

The resource I have in mind to make purchasing these items is actually a guide to North Carolina nature, entertainment and culture, called ncnatural.com, which has
Coupon Codes for merchant coupons to several main stream companies, but often these companies feature green products. When you click on a link from their page and purchase a product, ncnatural.com receives a small referral fee. The way it works is that you find a merchant you like and click on the link. Before the site redirects you to the store, you are given a coupon code. You will need to write it down and use it at the end of your purchase transaction.

There are a couple of sites that do offer environmentally friendly products. One is Sephora, a make-up and beauty product company that has an ecco-friendly line. By clicking on the link, you will be shown Sephora coupons. Also, Zappos coupons can also be found on the site. Zappos offers several shoe brands, such as Earth shoes, that are environmentally friendly. Both of these examples are also products that are health friendly as well, in the sense that the products themselves can make you feel good.

Today is the day. Happy Blog Action Day. I am even drinking green tea to be a little greener.

The theme is environmental issues. So, the question becomes, how can hypnosis positively impact the environment.

So here goes.

How Hypnosis Can Impact the Environment in a Positive Way

• Helping people to quit smoking.
  • Less toxic pollutants in the air.
  • Less cigarette buts leaving their long-term disintegration in the earth itself.
  • Less packaging waste.
• Helping people to adapt a healthier diet of natural foods
  • More fresh vegetables means less packaging waste for the environment.
  • The waste are biodegradable and better for the earth itself.
• Helping make the habit change to living greener.
  • By helping people to change lifestyle habits, the environment can benefit.
  • These habits could include being more conscious of energy used for lighting and temperature control.
  • It could help people become more recycling conscious.
  • It could help people become more waste conscious.

If you would like to add to this list, please use the comment section. I am sure there are more.