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Have you Ever Been Hypnotized?
Was it For Fun or For Therapeutic Purposes?
A close college friend and former lover died suddenly when I was 20 years old, which threw me into a year-long emotional tailspin . My stomach ached constantly, I couldn't eat, and I dropped weight at such an alarming rate that friends began insisting that whatever diet I was on I should stop now. It went on for so long I stopped even connecting the physical distress to my grief. Finally a radiologist friend of mine who was concerned about my dramatic weight loss sat and talked to me during a long night shift. He wrote me a prescription for 5 Valium pills to see if that would relax me enough to help me eat, making me promise I would get to the root of the problem rather than relying on the pills.
"You're doing this to yourself," he said.
I was a remarkably dumb 20 year old, emotionally speaking. I had no clue what he meant. How could I make my own stomach hurt all the time? Why would I even do such a thing? But a few days later as I walked across the college campus I thought about my lost friend, and when my stomach instantly seized up in pain I finally made the undeniable connection between what my brain was thinking and how my gut was responding. I was doing it to myself, which meant I should also be able to stop it. I detoured to the college bookstore and found a book called Stress and the American Woman, which explained the physiological effects of stress and how the sympathetic nervous system's fight or flight response shut down the digestive process. The remedy was to guide the body back to the relaxed, parasympathetic or "rest and digest" state. This was what the Valium had done, but I didn't like how groggy it made me feel. I wanted to be able to control and direct this response myself.
The book went on to offer three practical methods of relieving this physiologic stress: Progressive relaxation, meditation, and self-hypnosis. I found the first two methods frustrating and difficult, but the third....ah, that taught the use of my own imagination to relax and then vividly tell myself a story about how I wanted to feel.
I studied the instructions carefully and spent the next half hour imagining myself walking down numerous flights of stairs (going deeper), descending 10 floors in an elevator (going deeper), gliding down an escalator (going deeper still), and then writing numbers on a giant blackboard and erasing them until I worked my way down to zero (so deep now, so relaxed and at peace). Then I gave myself my set of suggestions. I am hungry. Food smells wonderful. I enjoy nourishing myself with good food. I imagined myself in every detail sitting at my little table, eating macaroni and cheese, savoring each bite. In this relaxed state my stomach didn't rebel. I imagined eating an entire serving and even licking the bowl, and then counted upwards to five and brought myself back into the room and opened my eyes. I felt light and at ease. My stomach was calm.
I quickly made some boil-in-a-bag mac and cheese and ate several blissful bites until my stomach rejected the process and clamped down again. But I kept repeating the exercise daily, gradually teaching myself to eat and enjoy food again. This took time. It took a year to gain five pounds back. But at the end of that year I'd learned a skill I would use for the rest of my life in many situations. Eventually I studied hypnosis formally with a wonderfully playful and intuitive teacher who taught me how to throw away all the rules and just improvise. I went on to professionally record a series of hypnotherapy CD's and to incorporate principles of positive suggestion into my practice and into my life.
As my gift to anyone who is interested, kosmail me and I will be happy to email you one of these soundtracks. I've been told I have a relaxing voice, and it makes me happy to be able to share this gift of relaxation and focused intention with you.
There are, of course, plenty of notions about hypnosis and what it can and can't do, and I'll be happy to answer any of those in the comments. To put it simply, anything you create in the physical world begins with a plan, an intention. You wouldn't just start randomly piling up bricks and claim you're building a house; you'd draw up a blueprint first, however rough. Hypnosis is that stage of visualizing and planning where you decide what it is you want to do or be. Do you want to be a non-smoker again? A more peaceful person who can release worry, fear or pain? A student who can take a test and effortlessly retrieve the information you've carefully studied? Your mind can be trained to make the blueprints for these goals and guide you towards them.
The greatest fear people have about hypnosis is that it is some kind of mind-control; that someone could take over your will and make you do things you would never otherwise do. I can assure you that no one could ever make you do something that goes against your grain or your conscience (I know this because someone tried it on me and it utterly failed..I stood up and walked away). The state of hypnosis is simply one where your body is relaxed and your mind is receptive to positive suggestion. The part of you that decides what is right and wrong never relinquishes vigilance or control. If you don't trust the person you're with you will not accept their suggestions. No one could hypnotize you and make you rob a bank unless you truly wanted to and thought you actually could. People who get up on stage and cluck like a chicken for a professional hypnotist are more than willing to take part in the fun and accept the "permission" to do so...but nobody could ever force an unwilling person up on that stage!
Or,
Have you ever successfully taught yourself to do something in your mind until you actually did it?
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