Hypnosis can dramatically help with improving performance, health, confidence, relationships, sports, concentration, recall and creativity; chronic or acute pain control; overcoming habits, addictions, fears and phobias; self-discovery, stress reduction, healthier self-expression, and therapy for past traumas. Compared with traditional therapeutic modalities, the results of a relatively brief series of hypnotherapy sessions are often faster and more effective and lasting. No wonder why so many professionals already in the healing arts are implementing hypnosis within their practices.
Hypnotic Phenomena
Within a therapeutic setting, hypnosis is often induced through various methods of relaxation. As a result of this process the critical factor of the conscious mind is bypassed, giving the hypnotherapist and subject direct access to the deeper mind, the subconscious, which has been called "the other 90% of the mind."
Generally, the most well known characteristic of hypnosis is increased suggestibility. Though there are varying degrees of this heightened responsiveness to suggestion, the potential power of this direct access to the subconscious should not be underestimated.
For example, I worked with a man named Gino who had been a three-pack a day smoker for over 20 years. He had never been able to quit for even a day since his early years as a smoker. After his first hypnosis session, he called his wife from work later that day. "I can't believe how easy it is. It's like I never smoked," he exclaimed. "I can remember smoking, of course, but there's no desire at all!" While I cautioned him during our follow-up session not to be overconfident, he continued to do fine, including no negative side effects. To the contrary, he was constructively redirecting his energy, and had dramatically increased confidence and vitality.
I remember Gino vividly because after referring many of his friends and acquaintances to me for hypnotherapy, he came back a few years later to take my training to become a hypnotherapist. He introduced himself to the class with a twinkle in his eye, saying, "Randal helped me quit smoking, but I've never been hypnotized." In spite of his results, he had a hard time accepting that he had entered hypnosis, even though he knew he must have, because his hypnotic experiences were so subtle to him. Initial doubts about the hypnotic state are not unusual, and more about the subjective experience of hypnosis will be discussed later in this chapter. What was unusual was the immediate ease of his results, although such a response is not rare in the practice of an attentive, skilled hypnotherapist.
While varying degrees of initial struggle are the norm for addiction or habit cessation through hypnosis sessions, my experience has been that more than ten percent of such clients will achieve the desired results and more, with astonishing ease from the beginning. It is not rare for a skilled hypnotherapist in rapport with a motivated client to produce such profound suggestibility that it can have the effect of an imprint. An imprint is a powerful, emotional, single impact learning experience that can affect a person (or an animal) in many cases for a lifetime. But even when results are not exceptional, responsiveness to suggestion is routinely greatly heightened during hypnosis.
As important as increased suggestibility can be, it is only one of many kinds of value that can result from access to the subconscious. Concentration typically increases dramatically during hypnosis. There are many benefits from this. For example, many indigenous cultures have kept oral records for centuries or millennia. Successive generations of historians would enter hypnotic trances and recite detailed, prolonged ancestral records.
Within the context of therapy, heightened hypnotic concentration has value as an inherent aspect of trance and is a partial explanation of the effectiveness of hypnotic suggestion. In addition, specific issues such as improved study habits and various achievement goals ranging from public speaking to improved sports performance, are addressed directly by this hypnotic phenomenon. The subject can actually re-enter a state of self-hypnosis later while studying or performing, to gain further value from the concentration inherent to the hypnotic state.
While sometimes directly associated with concentration (as in some of the above examples), heightened recall during hypnosis has many functions. Revivification of significant events, whether or not they were previously repressed, can be combined with many therapeutic modalities. Also, many persons have used hypnotic access to buried memories to find missing objects of value. Although the use of hypnosis for solving crimes has been restricted in recent years by the courts, hundreds of crimes have been solved by the use of forensic hypnosis, such as when Ed Ray's hypnotic recall of the license plate after the Chowchilla kidnapping led investigators to the kidnappers. Victims and witnesses to crimes have hypnotically recalled crucial memories, whether buried because of detail or time or trauma.
A person can be taught to re-enter hypnosis to access stored memories while taking examinations or, in certain situations, to improve job effectiveness. Therefore, persons developing memory recall skills are supported by the value of increased suggestibility during the initial hypnosis sessions, as well as by the later heightened concentration and recall natural to the state of self-hypnosis. (Other values of hypnosis will also apply to improved recall, such as various uses of therapy for test anxiety.)
The pain threshold changes dramatically during hypnosis or self-hypnosis. Hypnosis can provide great relief for chronic pain sufferers referred by their physicians for such complaints as back pain, arthritis, headaches or recovery from injury. As with any issue, the good hypnotherapist will work comprehensively and holistically toward lasting results, dealing with life-style, stress, emotions and personality factors, as well as possible secondary gains. self-hypnosis can often provide some immediate benefit, while any underlying emotional and life-style issues are addressed during hypnotherapy sessions.
In deeper levels of hypnosis major surgery can, in many cases, be painlessly performed with no other anesthetic agent. In addition, physiological functions normally controlled by the subconscious can be effected, such as by suggestions from a dentist to a hypnotically anesthetized patient to control salivation and bleeding.
Increased access to the emotions during hypnosis has many uses. Often hypnotized persons later report having experienced feelings of bliss, joy or euphoria, sometimes spontaneously and other times as a response to post-hypnotic suggestions or therapeutic methods. Such feelings can be very meaningful and have substantial therapeutic value. When a person has been struggling with feelings such as fear, grief or anger, there are various therapeutic methods during hypnosis to help him or her access those feelings when appropriate and express, release or transform them.
