The First Time with Michael Raugh
It was a dreary, gray, miserable Saturday morning … or maybe it just seemed that way to me as I drove down the highway to the home office of Marcia Proctor, a lady I’d corresponded with over email but not yet met. A virtual stranger. A hypnotist.
She met me at the door, led me to her consulting room, and listened while I told her a rambling tale about a dying marriage and various related crises. I remember telling Marcia that what I hoped she could do was give me a way to draw the emotional poison, so I could deal with things without going (further) off the deep end.
We talked about hypnosis: what it is, how it works, what it can and can’t do. I actually knew a fair amount because I’d had an interest for a long time, but hearing her confirm what I knew and add to it was comforting. And then came the induction … a short, gentle, permissive induction that is one of my favorites to this day. Marcia has a great voice; in just a minute or two I was drifting on it, hearing but not quite following the stream of soothing words. I nodded repeatedly, though I wasn’t quite sure sometimes what I was nodding about. Something about a ring gesture with my finger and thumb, and letting tension and frustration and anger drain through it. Yeah, right.
And then I was back, not really sure how much time had passed, not really sure anything significant had happened — after all, I more or less remembered everything Marcia had said. Surely I wasn’t all that hypnotized, right?
“Go ahead,” she told me. “Make your finger ring.”
Right, the finger ring. I remembered that. So I touched my thumb and forefinger together in a circle, and gently rubbed the tips together. And I felt it — that sensation of stress and tension draining away, and at the same time calm and peace and contentment flooding in to take their place. I did it again, and again, while Marcia watched my face and grinned. Six tons of emotional weight dropped away in a few moments, just like that.
I left Marcia’s office with my shoulders up, my head high, and my spirits soaring. For the first time in weeks I felt as if I had a say in how my life would unfold. I was thinking clearly and in command of my feelings instead of the other way around. That proved to me the amazing power in every person’s mind and showed how a good hypnotist can teach someone to focus that power and use it for good.
It was an awakening.
<MR>
