The Transparent Hypnotist

As you may know, I do occasionally partake in paid blogging. I participate in programs that I control what I write about and how I do it.

But, there is a new resource called the frogpond. Basically what this is is a site where one can participate in reviewing sites and sources. It is not direct paid marketing, but more about true experience. The last post I posted on this blog involved one such example.

You might enjoy being involved with it, as well.

So, have you added heavy whipping cream to your coffee beverage yet? LOL. Today, I am back to tea. One can only indulge so much…Moderation.

Thank you to all the well-wishers who watched my silly video yesterday morning. It is off the topic a bit, but alas, it is part of my blogging life. Hope you enjoyed it.

With weather changes and winter months upon us in the States, I always wonder how many of our colds and flu symptoms may be caused through the act of suggestion. Could it be more than cemetery weather? I have had an influx of clients who are suddenly facing depression (sun light deprivation, maybe?) and it seems like once those sad thoughts enter into the mix, their immunity for staying well seems to decrease. It seems a common phrase around here “It’s that time of year, you know how it is.” (Hence the expectation to get sick). I would love to say, “No, I don’t,” but that would be untrue. Whether it is my own personal stress of holiday expectations (did I get the right gift for that person), more contact with people (those holiday parties) or picking up on how others feel, I do experience a little less than optimum heath opportunities. I suspect I am not alone.

I have been reading Virtual Juice Daily, a web site that offers tips and information on maintaining a healthy lifestyle. On Tuesday, they ran an article called Bah-hum that Bug that I feel is particularly poignant for all of us. It offers ideas such as drinking rosehip tea (guess that is right up my alley - how about you?) to the idea about making sure you get enough exercise and wash your hands (do not rub your eyes). My partner feels that this last idea may be a bit trickier. He believes that by carrying around hand sanitizers and using them every time you come into contact with others, this lessens your natural immunity to germs. I still find myself preferring to avoid sickness, though.

Oh, this same web site also mentioned something interesting that may helps those of us who are involved in the weight loss industry. It is a food craving chart. It talks about typical cravings and what they may be a sign of, or what it is that your body really needs.

Visit Vital Juice Daily and try a glass of rosehip tea.

Also, if you have any suggestions on keeping the body and mind healthy during the holiday season, we would love to hear your suggestions or thoughts.

We are still puttering along our exploration of forms of hypnosis. So far, we have covered traditional hypnosis and elements that are inherent in it and other types of hypnosis. These include intake procedures, the pre-talk, and testing a person’s hypnotizability. We have also covered a few types of inductions including progressive relaxation and those that are analytical.

If you are blinking at this screen and wondering when I discussed hypnotizability, you will find the beginnings of it in my posts on analytic testing. To sum that up, there are test that help the hypnotist know how the client is dealing with certain information, in other words, do they think and analyze the suggestions or do they tend to be more suggestible.

Bill balked a bit at this discussion, and I have to say I tend to agree with him. He mentioned that the way I described it, it sounded more like personality typing, which really is not the case most of the time. As I have come to learn, I am not so sure the idea of analytic testing is the correct idea.

Sometimes the testing is done under other names and ideas, which I find more appropriate. These include permissive, authoritarian, and or resistant (a word that several hypnotists feel should be removed from the hypnosis glossary). Testing may also be done to understand how you process information.

So, stay tuned as we discuss all this and more.

Since we are exploring the subject of analytic minds, here are my five favorite analytical scripts (this week) with you. When you look at these, you may notice that they are a bit different from the progressive relaxation inductions I posted a few weeks ago. These involve a form of giving the conscious mind a task to focus on or adding an element of confusion to the mix and thus stopping the mind in its tracks and causing it to take a coffee break.

1. Healing Stories and Scripts - Chaplain Paul G. Durbin - An Induction for the Analytical and Indirect Suggestible Client. This is Paul’s adaption of a script by Gordon Boyd. It is based on the idea of referencing the client’s experience of the hypnotic process and with a touch of little guided imagery suggestion.
2. Alliance Self-Empowerment, Inc. - Roy Hunter - Inductions for Analytical Resisters - Roy is one of my personal heroes in the world of hypnosis. I have learned so much from all his books that I just had to include him. This link takes you to his theories and ideas about analytic resisters and how to create an induction for them. It is not a straight script in that you can just print it out and read it to your next client, but it takes each section of the induction and explains it.
3. Hypnosense.com - Terrance Watts - Seven Plus or Minus Two. Michael and I are both big fans of this particular script. It is based on the idea that the conscious mind can hold a certain number of separate thoughts at one time. There is much thinking and maintaining in this induction.
4. Andy Moore Hypnosis - Double Dice Deepening or Induction. Andy presents an interesting script here that keeps the mind occupied with visualizations and tasks, along with suggestions for relaxation.
5. The Blackboard. This is one of my favorite inductions that I actually use for a deepener. It works really well for most people, no matter what personality. You will notice no link to this. It is because I could not find a free version of it in which to include. Just do an internet search for it and consider buying it from someone. It involves visualization, asking the client to pay no attention to your words, and suggestions for relaxation.

Here we are again. The start of another week, and yet, the same old tea. Perhaps a slice of sweet potato pie for breakfast would be a nice change.

One person answered my pole this week on intake sheets (thank you for that). Did the rest of you find it uninteresting, not clear, or could not relate to it? Hmmm. Perhaps I should keep the poll more general? Any thoughts? It really is my goal to keep this interesting for those returning. If there is something else you would like to see here, please let me know.

I do like to keep the polls going with a similar theme to things that are happening on the blog. So maybe, this new one will be about the internal mind processes.

The recent postings here have been about the analytic mind. I may have done it a great disservice by throwing in the word “creative.” Though testing for the analytical mind may sound similar to Myers Briggs, it really is not. It all has to do, I believe, with how one processes information given by a particular hypnotist. And it may also have to do with time. There are times personally when I do extremely well, if not better, with analytic inductions. This is usually when I am in a group session or feel uncomfortable. However, with others, I do really well with relaxation processes and visualization.

When I get a little more time, I will post what I really think about analytic testing and such.

P.S.
I am receiving many comments that I interrupt as spam. If you have commented and had it rejected and think it should be posted, please let me know (ellie.blunt at gmail.com). Also, the one criteria I have for including comments is that it have something to do with the posting for which it is attached. Advertising does not count. If you have a subject you think would make a good new topic, please email me and I will consider it.

If you have been reading the comment section for the recent discussion on analytic typing in hypnosis, you will know that Bill and I are honing in on the semantics of this idea.

So, this has me wondering if any of you other hypnotist out there test for people who are more susceptible to analytic hypnosis inductions? Or if you are a person who has experienced hypnosis, do you prefer analytical inductions? If so, we would love to hear your thoughts or experiences with an analytic inductions.

One of my dearest friends, who has just received his certification in hypnosis(NGH), lives in California. A recent phone conversation between us became a brain storming session. He is one of those souls who got into mental health and addiction counseling because he felt the angry bite of drug addiction. Chasing dragons grew tiresome for him and he spent a few years in various programs and treatment centers, and this made him weary. What turned his life around was, you guessed it, hypnosis. Since then he has been devoted to hypnosis and preaching its good word.

In looking at the Los Angeles Criminal Defense Blog | California Criminal Attorneys Law Blog, I was pleased to find their posting on how they deal with their clients who have drug related offenses. They work toward getting the client treatment as part of the sentencing as opposed to just allowing clients to be thrown into jail. There may be cynics reading this who smirk at the idea (I have a few clients who went this route, thought rehab was a joke, but the eventually ended up at my doorstep looking for help).

On a side note, the above mentioned blog is interesting because it does not rely on legaleses to get their points across. It is written for the “everyman” and is quite informative. That is the positive thing about the blogisphere, it makes complicated subjects more understandable and in the case of the blog in question, it makes the lawyers seem less intimidating. (P.S. the above photo is the lawyer who writes the blog).

So, in talking to my friend, he was such a person who did avoid jail time and embraced the recovery process. In our brain storming, it became really clear that he should make himself know to lawyers. How often we forget that they might refer clients our way. We got lost in the whole issue of regression hypnosis somewhere. But there is so much more we can offer, such as being part of the addiction cessation processes, anger management, and probably much more.

Ah, breathing time. Coffee time. Life is good.

And as promised, I am back for an Esoteric Saturday. The topic of today’s post is one of hope and mind set. It also heralds from the news, but really is not trivial.

Today’s topic is the story about PC Hilario Riviero, a police officer. His is a positive story (hopefully) about self-healing. When responding to an incident in Buen Intento, Princes Town, he was badly beaten and is now at the San Fernando General Hospital. He has been there for a month with spinal and renal injuries after attempting to intervene in an attack on a woman and instead was beaten himself by a father and son team.

Because his injured leg has gone numb, surgery seems a likely consequence. However Riviero is working on self-healing through having a positive mind set and using hypnosis techniques. He has been reading books about the subject. Both he and others believe they see improvement. Where he was not able to move, there is some movement now.

When I read stories like this, I have the huge urge to locate the person involved and voluntarily offer my services to help them. But in this case, it is huge urge with no funds to do so. But…but…maybe just maybe…one of you might be in a position to help? If you are in the Trinidad area, perhaps this is an opportunity to provide a random act of kindness…The hospital’s phone number is 1-868-652-3581.

Source:
The Trinidad and Tobago Express

Good morning, All!

No time to breathe or have coffee this morning. A terribly crazy day lies ahead for me. So,no normal blog programming today. We will be back tomorrow with Esoteric Saturday.

until then I leave you with a recent quote from a daily calendar.

Each one of you is perfect as you are. And you all could use a little bit of improvement.

SHUNRYU SUZUKI

When you think to yourself, do you want a cup of coffee because it is warm and comforting or do you want a cup of tea because it is refreshing, your decision is based on a series of analytical processes. For instance, I am drinking tea this morning because my analytic prowess’s say that I am too lazy to make a pot of coffee. LOL.

When I learned about various hypnotism theories, it was stressed that there is an analytical scale on which everyone can be charted. Finding out a client’s place on this chart would help the hypnotist know what sort of induction to use that would benefit the client. If the client was found to be very analytic, relaxing in general might be difficult for that person, so progressive relaxation would not be the best way to begin to bring about a state of hypnosis.

The Analytical Scale
On one side of the analytical scale is a person who is a hundred percent analytical, which seems to mean totally rational and not so prone to uses of the imagination. On the other side is the exact opposite of this. It is a person who is extremely creative and very imaginative. Often this is shown as a line chart, but I think the idea of scale is much better. A scale has to balance and it creates a whole. In a line chart, this does not matter and so how can a person be balanced?

Testing for the Analytic Client
Sounds ominous, does it not? Really, it is very simple stuff that is more fun than not. This sort of thing may also be called testing for hypnotizability (is that even a word?), which is often done during stage hypnosis shows. Perhaps you have seen or experienced the whole “clasping your hands together and not being able to separate them” phenomenon?

The Old Balloon and Sand Bag Test
One of the most famous test is that of closing your eyes, holding your arms straight out in front of the body, one palm turned up and the other down. Imagine or think about a balloon being tied to the wrist of the hand that is facing upwards. It is light and airy and begins to pull that arm upwards. Now, on the other wrist facing downwards, a bag of sand is looped over it and the weight drags the arm down. Mind you, the hypnotist guides you through this, also employing his or her voice to give the suggestions of the balloon pulling the arm up and the bag of sand pulling the other down. You are then asked to open your eyes and look at your arms. If the balloon arm is higher than then the sand one, it is believed that you are able to bypass the analytic side of your mind and use your imagination to image the weight changes. If your arms remained the same, it may mean that your analytic mind kicked in and said something to the affect of “there is no balloon or bag of sand, so why move the arms?”

So, what does this all mean? If the hypnotist believes that you are more analytical, the suggestion work of the session with revolve around giving your conscious mind tasks to focus on and occupy it while the hypnotist inputs the suggestions.

Also, confusion may be added into the mix on purpose to help bring about a new state of consciousness. What these procedures do is more of less catch you off guard and move you rapidly into a hypnotic state. They work on an element of surprise. Another confusion techniques is to overload the conscious mind to a point where it basically gives up critical thought processes and essentially takes a coffee break.

Where Words Fail
Some hypnotist use a form of hypnosis they term analytical hypnosis. To the transparent hypnotist, this would mean using the idea of keeping the mind focused on certain activities to create change. However, in researching this a bit, it sounds more like a hypnotherapy process of analysis, rather than analytic process. So, I will not be discussing “analytical” hypnosis because I disagree with the terminology, though I may cover the same concepts under a different title.

What say you?