This week I want to focus on the old cliché in a few different areas.  I want to start with Hypnosis because it’s something that has always fascinated me. Maybe I just want to be a control freak.

My dad used to say corny things to my mom like “you hypnotise me with your eyes“

When I was little my dad took me to see the stage illusionist and hypnotist Raveen who came to Montreal quite regularly. All I remember is lots of people going up on stage and then after being hypnotized, they did some crazy things like bark like dogs or cluck like chickens.  I remember wanting to find out if I could be hypnotized but not wanting to find out later that I ran around naked onstage or something equally (no; that’s the worst) humiliating.

And who can forget Woody Allen in the screwball movie Curse of the Jade Scorpion where his character is hypnotized into stealing jewels after hearing only one word by a crooked hypnotist. Case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is intriguing to think about…I mean if you had the power to actually play with people’s minds and try to control them. (not like it hasn’t been done before by some crafty players.) I would like to wave the wand and be like: you are getting sleepy, you are under my spell. Now give me your sandwich!  But realisticaly….

It’s time to put aside all the illusions about what a hypnotist can do. A stage hypnotist might, for the purposes of entertainment try to make you bark like a dog or take off your clothes (I don’t think they really do that but I would if I had the power and wanted to see someone naked) but clinical hypnotherapy is not entertainment. It is therapy undertaken in a state of hypnosis.

I’m just beginning to find out because two people close to me have started seeing a clinical therapist to experience hypnosis for therapeutic and medical reasons.   Next week I’m tagging along to see for myself how the process works. The mind is a powerful tool so if this helps someone deal with pain or a psychologically stressful issue, it can’t be harmful. It appears that it can also benefit anyone dealing with a friend or significant other who has a medical issue and the accompanying stress that goes along it.  Apparently this kind of hypnosis makes it easier for your subconscious mind to understand how you can get the results you want.

The Doorway to Your Subconscious

To be a good subject you need to want to cooperate and you need to be able to focus and follow instructions (a challenge for me but I will make a mental state of focusing attention). The reason to use clinical hypnosis is to help you become receptive to suggestions for solving your problem (s) and to help you have more control over your symptons.  It is not mind control. You cannot be made to act on suggestions that are not acceptable to you. You are not asleep during the process.  You cannot be hypnotized against your will.  It involves helping you experience a pleasant state of relaxed concentration during which your conscious mind can relax and the “doorway” to your subconscious mind can be opened with your consent.  In this relaxed state (almost a meditative state – something else I want to explore) your openness to suggestion and your mental focus may be increased.  Sensitivity to feelings, sensations, sights, sounds, smells and tastes can be made more or less intense.  Also, your imagination can often be easily used for making helpful suggestions work for you.  I have a very active imagination so this will be interesting.

Hypnosis can be used as a tool to help you:

Experience Deep Healing Relaxation, Identify what you want and how you can get it, use your imagination to help you solve your problem, become more open to helpful suggestions and ideas, gain relief from bothersome symptoms such as physical pain and anxiety, gain more control over how you deal with such symptoms, learn how to more effectively manage stress, control your mood swings, supercharge your motivation to make positive changes in your behaviour, free yourself from harmful habits such as smoking, have better sleep, become less depressed and less anxious, let go of self destructive resentment and guilt, solve emotional conflicts that hold you back from getting better, and change harmful attitudes, beliefs, feelings and behaviours.

 I will follow up on this and if it turns out that I can bend people to my will, I hope I can do some good.

 Would you consider trying this?