The Transparent Hypnotist

Photograph by Kent K. Barnes / kentkb

As you are sitting there reading this, maybe drinking something of worth (tea, coffee, what have you), think about your insurance for a moment. Are you happy with it?  Or are you a bit disgruntled like myself?  If you will remember (or not) last winter, I lost my health insurance for a few months. It got reinstated, though…but I can never have a claim that involves headaches or allergies.  Why?  Because those were two things that appeared without resolve on my records. And gosh forbid, the insurance company is just protecting their little ol’ selves from potential insurance fraud. Yeah.  Whatever.

Originally, I was angry.  Then I realized my headaches are pretty much just related to my hormonal cycles (yeah, that is on my health records as well and has been for over a year), so they are controllable without medical attention (beyond what little I had before). So…that left allergies. Heck.  Maybe this is a blessing in terrible disguise? Twenty years of allergy shots did nothing for me. Then while in college a new allergist put me on pills. This has been good, until the company stopped making the pills….so…here I am.

Well, I have maintained my allergies very well with some self-hypnosis.  Whenever I feel like they are about to blossom in the form of a red and runny nose, I take a deep breath, count myself down and I open up to the allergy.  I do not try to fight it. I do not try to deny it. Instead, I try to soften it and let the moment pass. And this has been working really well…until recently. I am thinking of going to another hypnotist to tackle this one.

I know this is not the Sunday Question, but have any of you out there had success working with allergies through hypnosis?

Sooooooooo….did you all read my silliness as a guest blogger at Wisdom Hypnosis on Friday? Many thanks to Debbie for letting me have some fun on her blog!

Answering yesterday’s question

Do I give into my temptations and lie to clients with ideas about gaining their trust?

I suspect I am guilty of a few white lies here and there or perhaps spinning the truth would be a better answer. These maybe in the form of slight exaggerations and such - I am human.

However, in relationship to how this question came about - the temptation to lie to clients who come to me for help with smoking cessation so I can commiserate with them - I do not lie. First, I am not sure I could be that convincing and unless you have got a really strong personality and conviction, I am not sure such a lie would add rapport. I feel like it might change the balance of the pre-talk, with the energy spent making the lie consistent and convincing, thus taking me away from concentrating on the client.

What I do say if I feel they need me to relate to them more (and any smokers out there are probably going to laugh here) is that I have had coffee addiction. No, I know it is not the same. However, for my own health I needed to cut back on my coffee consumption (and switch to decafe more). My heart did that lovely racing thing and meditation proved to be ineffective. When I tried going cold turkey, you guessed it, headaches abounded, I had the energy of a slug, and from what my loved one’s say, I was unbearable. My doctors said I did not need to give it up completely, just knock it back a lot (the equivalent of two and a half to three pots a day was a bit over the top). So, do enter self-hypnosis from the wings and throw in some nice affirmations, you now are reading the words of someone who has less then a cup of coffee a day and no more than three cups of tea (that includes mint and herbal). No headaches. My energy is good. And no one seemed at the time of the cut back to shy away from me.

It is the closest I can come to a smoking addiction (or other addictions), but I can speak honestly and also use it as a testimony of my own thoughts on the value of self-hypnosis. Did I become a hypnotist just because of that? That is a story for another day.

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

Do you ever have Mondays when you feel like it much surely be Wednesday? I have not been awake for long, but it feels like the middle of the week. More tea for me.

And it is hard to believe that it is October and has been so for a little while. Are any of you out there doing anything specific for Breast Cancer Awareness month? I am still compiling my thoughts on it, and though this is last month’s news, if you have not heard about the study on hypnosis and breast cancer, than read on. This is very positive for both hypnosis and those suffering from breast cancer, and going out on a nice sturdy limb, any one who is about to undergo surgery.

On August 28, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute substantiated hypnotists claims that hypnosis, prior to breast cancer surgery has a few benefits. These include reduced amounts of anesthesia needed during the procedures and lessened the amount of pain endured after the procedure, as well as the amount of recovery time and the cost of it. Hypnosis helps the later by also reducing the need for medications after the surgery.

Here are the details:

• Dr. Guy Montgomery of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (New York) and colleagues conducted the clinical trial.
• The trail was to research the effects of hypnosis given within one hour before surgery.
• 200 women participated.
• The control group was given 15 minutes to talk to a psychologist.
• The test group was given 15 minutes of hypnosis.
• The hypnosis consisted of suggestions for relaxation, guided visualization, pain reduction, nausea reduction, and fatigue reduction. These participants also received instruction on self-hypnosis.
• The use of pain medications and sedatives during surgery, as well as pain levels and side effects were monitored.
• Results: The test (hypnosis) group needed less anesthesia and reported less pain and side effects after the procedure. An average of 11 minutes was shaved off of their time in surgery and medical costs were reduced by about $733 per patient (mainly from needing less time in surgery).

Sources
Science Daily

Putting down the tea cup, what I want to know is how many of you have worked with lucid dreams using hypnotic suggestion, either as a hypnotist giving the suggestions or as the person being hypnotized? Or…have you used self-hypnosis to lucid dream?

I have to begun to think (and I may be slow on the uptake here) that maybe to become proficient with lucid dreams, the techniques are all self-hypnosis with maybe the exception being the use of the dream machines…but that seems hypnotic, too, just not so vocal based.

All this comes into my mind from perusing Bill Perry’s Lucid Blog. Bill was kind enough to respond to the Sunday Question about lucid dreaming, and I am so glad he did. His experiences are pretty interesting, as is his approach. He uses an anchoring technique and it is as follows:

• As you are lying in bed, simply visualize the dream you would like to have. Experience it as you would like to experience it. Get as far into the visualization as you can. Hear the sounds, see the sights, smell how it smells. As you are getting into this visualization, clench your hands into fists. Not tightly, but relaxed fists. Use it as an anchor.
• Allow your brain to tie the feeling of clenching the hands into fists with he feeling of what your prospective dream feels like.
• Next time you are lucid, clench your dream fists and remember the dream you want to have. Much like running a computer program, your dream will now “load up” for you.
• And, since you are now altering the content of the dream, you don’t have to stick exactly to the “script” you’ve made in your visualization. You can now make things happen by the power of sheer thought.
• Dream on!

This was taken from his blog posting How to Control Your Dreams. Using both self-hypnosis techniques and NLP, is this just another fabulous tool of hypnosis? When I was debating using the home-made sunglasses dream machine to use the lights as an anchor to remind you that you were in a dream and now could take control of it, Bill’s technique does this without all the gadgetry. Definitely worth exploring.

Today is a little more leisurely oriented. I had early morning task to attended to but here I am, actually taking a water break, rather than the caffeinated breaks I favor.

So, I guess this post will be about the leisure time of a hypnotist. I was discussing busy days with another hypnotist and he mentioned that he tends to schedule in four meditation breaks per day during office hours. It is how he rejuvenates.

I tend to try to put an hour between all sessions. It gives me time in case I run over a bit on a client, and time to clear my mind and start fresh for the next. This means my client load is less, but I feel much saner and effective than I would cranking people through. Though I know this is not necessarily the favored method of those trying to make high figure incomes.

When I first started out, I would find myself drained after doing a session, but as time has progressed, I find I often have more energy after working with certain clients. There are still some clients that can be a little tiring, usually the ones where rapport does not come naturally and I have to really work at creating a comfortable and trusting environment. These are the clients where the hour in between really pays off. I can take a short walk (to a coffee shop) and I do self-hypnosis on the way, clearing my head and just being an observer of my surroundings. I guess you could call this a walking meditation. By the time I have my coffee (or cafe au lait for the very difficult times) and am back at the office, unlocking the door, it feels like I am starting fresh.

How about you? Do you have ways in which you regroup between sessions or work?