Did You Know...?

In 1946, hypnotist Peter Casson was invited to the BBC's Alexandra Palace Studios to take part in an experiment into hypnosis. He was invited to hypnotise 12 volunteers on camera, and succeeded in putting 6 into trace.

However, only 5 of these were the volunteers. The sixth was a technician in the station's control room who was watching the recording on one of the monitors. It was this that led to the revelation that hypnosis could be induced "over the airwaves", and in turn, led to the worldwide ban on hypnosis inductions being filmed and broadcast via TV networks.

These days, with the introduction of technologies such as Skype, we can take advantage of this phenomenon to perform hypnotherapeutic inductions in clients who cannot get to the therapist's place of work, either because of the issues they face, or simply due to geography. I regularly induce trance in a client of mine who lives over 100 miles from me.

Medication and Hypnotherapy

A lot of people ask me why I need to know about their medication when first taking on a client. After all, I'm dealing with their mind, not their body. But it is more complex than that.

The mind is a strange and wonderful thing, that is not only responsible for the way we act and think, but also for the way our bodies behave.

Take a little thing like pain killers. If a prospective client is on a high, regular dose of painkillers, especially of the anti-convulsive type, then I need to know this for two reasons. I need to be aware of any adverse reactions to look out for when the client is under, and, if the clients fails to take these, they may not even go under as they are not sufficiently relaxed enough.

Everything that happens in our bodies, from the way we perceive things, to the way we feel and act, has to go through the mind and the brain first, or else we simply do not notice it. There is the old philosophical question of Bishop Barclay that goes; "If a tree falls down in the woods, and there is no-one to witness it, does the tree make a sound?"

This is the way the mind works. If we can't perceive something happening, how can we be sure that it did happen. All we can do is extrapolate from our knowledge. We have seen objects fall over before, and they all make a sound, therefore we can be fairly certain the tree will in fact make a sound. BUT, we cannot know for sure that it does.

And it is precisely because medication affects the way our body, and therefore our mind perceives things, that, as a hypnotherapist, I need to know what my clients are taking, even if it feels as though it isn't relevant. It could just be the missing piece of the puzzle that helps me, to help you, to deal with your issues.

Psychoneuroimmunology?

PNI is the scientific study which postulates that what you are thinking and feeling (psycho), directly affects your brain and central nervous system function (neuro) and from there your body’s immune system (immunology) In other words: your mental state directly affects your physical wellbeing. 

This is by no means a new claim. Most people have heard of the mind/body principle. Indeed, it has long been a controversial theory in the medical world. But it may ease the disbelief to consider that your endocrine (hormonal) system, is undoubtedly effected by your thoughts. Just think about something wonderful or remember a time when you experienced something wondrous. It takes conscious effort to focus your thoughts on that one single thought. But, in just a few seconds you will have a wonderful feeling flooding through your body just at it did before. Feelings are caused by hormones in your blood stream, and in the case of good feelings, they are endorphins. It is impossible to have any wonderful feeling without these endorphins in your blood stream. And they are real, detectable molecules, they can be measured and named. And they are only released through messages directly from your brain. So, if you can accept that, then the concept of psychoneuroimmunology may not be as much of a stretch as you imagine. 

This branch of neurology proves that the mind, nervous system, and immune system are all connected. Not only that, but that there is no specific sequence to the connections - each is interconnected. If anything goes wrong in this system, and it gets out of balance, it becomes a vicious cycle. And in order to heal, you need control. Medical doctors obtain this control through the use of drugs or surgical intervention. For the rest of us, the question is: which of the three elements of psychoneuroimmunology is the only possible point of control? Nervous system? … Immune system? … Mind? I think you’ll agree, it’s the mind. 

So, what happens when we lay the elements out as a linear cause and effect sequence, beginning with Mind, which you CAN LEARN TO CONTROL. What you think and feel (psycho) causes your nervous system (neuro) to function accordingly. Eg: stress and negative thoughts or emotions cause anxiety. Anxiety causes abnormally fast neural processing resulting in mental overload, that impedes normal functions like digestion and sleep This in turn, causes forgetfulness and exhaustion, resulting in a pendulum swing in neural processing to an abnormally slow rate. Hence depression - slow reflexes, oversleeping, and dullness of intellectual ability. Whereas: positive thoughts and emotions cause optimal neural processing - quicker reflexes; good memory recall and sharpened intellectual ability. The state of your neural processing (neuro) causes your immune system (immunology) to function accordingly. Abnormal (fast or slow) neural processing impedes the normal functions of your immune system - cell repair and white blood cell count and function. Optimal neural processing stimulates the immune system - rapid cell repair; effective white blood cell count and function. 

When we lay psychoneuroimmunology out, as a sequence of cause and effect, there remains only one more question: How can you learn to focus your mind on what you want? My hypnotherapy sessions are designed to give a successful self-belief system and focus your mind into the state that you choose to be in, every day.

As someone who was a professional photographer in earlier times, this rings so true to me. Hypnosis not only brings things closer to the surface, but bring issues into focus so they can be identified and dealt with.

9:34AM

Why almost everything is to do with stress

Stress is one of the worst conditions the human body has to deal with. It permeates life with an invisible thread that links almost every bad thing that human beings have to deal with.

Take ill health for example. Whilst physical ill health may seem separate, it has long been known that the immune system gets interrupted when we feel down. And nothing gets up feeling down more than stress.

Relationship issues can be caused by stress. Physical ones such as premature ejaculation, or more ephemeral ones such as the break down of a marriage, can all be caused by stress.

Phobias are the minds way of avoiding stressful situations where an irrational fear causes a stress response.

Insomnia, anxiety and temper problems are all symptoms of stress.

As such, stress doesn’t have one list of signs and symptoms that can be matched to cause a diagnosis. Each and every variable can lead to a diagnosis of stress, and a multitude of parallel problems that, at first seem to be the cause, but are in fact the symptom of the problem.

So, if we can deal with the stress itself, then the other issues are a lot easier to cope with. And under hypnosis, there are a multitude of ways to help cope with stress and eliminate it altogether.