I want to talk today about a modality I’ve been adding to treatment sessions. I’ve been inspired to do this because it works so beautifully with acupuncture and other body/energy work.
I’m referring to hypnotherapy.
When I bring up hypnotherapy, for many people it conjures up memories from mainstream popular culture from earlier times. For our entertainment, hypnotists would put a volunteer in a hypnotic trance and then have them perform something embarrassing like cluck like a chicken. Once snapped out of the trance, the person would have no recollection of what had happened.
This has led many people to be suspicious of, or fear, hypnotherapy. Unfortunate yet understandable.
No one wants to be unwittingly and unknowingly controlled by some puppet master.
If you count yourself among the skeptics and even fearful, there are two aspects to this I'd like to address.
First, I'd ask you to consider the many ways we are already controlled by the patterns wired into our subconscious long ago and beyond the awareness of our conscious minds. In other words, we are very likely already clucking like a chicken so to speak in some area of our lives.
This is sometimes why we struggle with the same (often damaging) habits and activities over and over again even as we promise ourselves we will stop or change. And we may find success for awhile and then fall back into the same old pattern again.
In hypnotherapy sessions, we do some sifting through your core desires and your challenges. Together we create a new and empowering script for your subconscious mind to take on.
This brings me to the second point I want to make: in a hypnotherapy session, you are a partner in creating the change you want to make in your life.
While a person might fall asleep during a hypnotherapy session (and that is ok!), it is not the goal nor especially desired. In hypnotherapy you are guided into a very relaxed state which is sometimes likened to a trance state. In this state, our subconscious mind is a lot more open and suggestible thus able to receive the new script.
This new script is something we create together in support of you reaching your goals and desires. You will also receive this script after your session with me and my encouragement is to record it in your own voice to listen to in your own time as often as you like. In other words, you are fully aware and in agreement to the content of the hypnotherapy being used.
Hypnotherapy can take some time to take hold in our minds. What we’ve wired into our subconscious has been put there for a reason - usually to keep us safe from perceived threats from when we were very young. When we were young, this strategy was important because we weren't able to rationalize our fears or protect ourselves. As we grow older we are better able to think and protect ourselves but these old programs from childhood may still be operating and thwarting us in living fully.
This is also why I like to mix hypnotherapy with other modalities. When we address all of ourselves - body/mind/soul like the unified being we are - we are more likely to find the healing that we seek.
If this sounds interesting to you, please call or email me for more information or to book your first session. I look forward to assisting you on your journey.