Hypnotic Thoughts.

Small Changes Can Mean a Big Difference

This will sound silly, almost trivial, at first, but stick with me.

I've had a house for seven years.  I have eight separate gardens on my property, ranging from tiny little shade plots to a 900 square foot vegetable garden.  Each year those gardens have to be maintained, along with the lawn, which I mow and weedwhack.  

I actually like it.  Gardening gives you a way to get outside, get some sun, and to create something you can point at and say, "I did that."  Sometimes, however, I don't feel like doing it.  It becomes routine rather than creative.  This spring in particular, I have been struggling to get myself into the process of gardening.  And then today I just had one small idea, and everything changed.

This morning I woke up and thought about how I needed to stop putting off the gardening or things were going to get really behind and ugly out there.  The weather was beautiful, but I still didn't feel like going out there.  I asked myself, "What would you tell a client to do?" and the immediate answer that came to me was, "interrupt your pattern."

We have so many patterns, so many ways of thinking about our daily lives and the mundane chores and activities we have to do.  If we get into a negative pattern of thinking, that pattern tends to hold.  If you want to get different results, you have to interrupt the pattern.  But how do you interrupt a pattern around something like gardening?  How do you shift your energy?  You create a different experience.

In this case, I turned to music.  When I'm in my office, I like to listen to Pandora Radio.  Pandora is a free music service that lets you create customized music channels based on the music you enjoy.  No DJs, no talk, and less commercials than normal radio.  I loaded the Pandora Radio app onto my iPhone, which allowed me to log into my Pandora account with all of my pre-arranged radio "stations."  Since I was working in my own yard, I could connect to my wi-fi signal and stream Pandora without using any of my phone's data plan.

I popped my earbuds in, fired up the weedwhacker, and away I went.  It was amazing.  I don't use that word casually.  It was actually amazing.  I was used to the loud whine of the machine, but instead that sound was far away, and instead I was listening to 80's music.  One simple element changed my working experience.  The music provided a tempo to my work, and the nostalgia of the songs gave me a boost in my energy.

After weedwhacking, I got out the hoe and started weeding, and before I knew it an hour had flown by.  By changing the routine, I changed the way I experience the activity.  One little change.  Big difference.

Think about how you might interrupt a pattern and improve an experience in your life.  You might be surprised what a difference it makes.

Boston Police Warn of Chinatown Hypnosis Robberies

In an earlier post I explained that there have been unethical hypnosis techniques used to rob people or scam people.  Usually the stories come in from outside the United States, but occasionally I'll hear about something here in America.  Well, this is one of those times.  

Boston Police have issued a community alert about a scam going on in Chinatown that apparently has also been reported in the Asian communities in New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.  The scammers target older women.  Typically, they approach an elderly woman and start asking her questions in Cantonese.  The next thing she knows, she has gone home, gotten money and valuables, and given them to the scammers, without really knowing why.

This fits the profile of the stories I've heard before.  There are more than one person in the scam because they are using a confusion technique, bombarding you with questions at the same time so that you are overwhelmed.  When we get really overwhelmed we are more open to slipping into a trance state and taking the first suggestion that ends the confusion and makes sense.  Once the operators have coaxed you into trance, they give manipulative suggestions for you to hand over your valuables.

If you want to see a great example of how this works, but in a different setting, check out this video of a hypnotist getting out of a speeding ticket by using confusion techniques.  If you watch the whole video, you'll hear the hypnotist himself admit that it doesn't always work, and he'll show a ticket he got from a time when he tried and failed.  It's the same way with the scammers, I'm sure.  They probably fail more often than they succeed, but all it takes is the one success to keep them going.

Finally, I want to point out that this isn't really the best application of the term "hypnosis."  It's more of a case of confusion trance, but that's not a broadly accepted term, so of course the journalists are going to use a term that is more widely recognized: hypnosis.  Some hypnotists will deny any connection between hypnosis and these robberies, but that's silly.  "Hypnosis" is a broad term for a state of increased focus and heightened suggestibility.  Well, isn't that what's happening in these scams?  

Share your thoughts with me! 

Woman Gives Birth Before EMTs Can Arrive, Uses Hypnotic Childbirth

Miranda Richardson had given birth once before, but her second time was quite different.  When her contractions got to the point that she knew she should go to the hospital, Miranda went to use the bathroom before leaving, and while in there she realized the baby was coming much, much quicker than she thought.

"I went to the bathroom, and then I felt his head," she said.

Miranda's husband and best friend came into the bathroom, helped her to the floor, and her friend Susanna began helping Miranda with her hypnotic childbirth routine she had practiced.  

"Miranda started to come out for a minute, and she was like ,‘oh it's starting to hurt,’ and I just put my hand on her forehead and I said peace, which is one of her key words, and it put her right back into hypnosis," said Susanna.

By the time paramedics arrived, Jude Lee Richardson had already been born.

"We just finished the process ourselves. And everything went well. He's really healthy, he started nursing right away," said Susanna.

Hypnotic childbirth has been practiced for decades, but is just starting to get more attention.  There are a few different "brands" of hypnotic childbirth, each using a slightly different approach.  Because the process involves teaching expectant mothers how to relax during their delivery process, delivery times are often, but not always, shorter than average.  In a more relaxed state, the mothers' bodies can work more efficiently with less effort.  Also, the awareness of pain is often reduced.  Women often report a sensation of pressure, rather than pain.  Since the hypnosis is being used in place of drugs, mothers are more lucid and tend to remember the experience more clearly than women who use drugs during childbirth.

Study Shows Hypnosis Can Provide Lasting Relief from IBS

Researcher Magnus Simrén and colleagues at The Sahlgrenska Academy have conducted two studies to evaluate the efficacy of hypnosis as a modality for treating irritable bowel syndrome.  Both studies report positive results when hypnosis is used.

In one of the studies, 138 patients with IBS received hypnosis treatment for one hour a week over 12 weeks. The study showed that 40% registered a satisfactory lowering of symptoms, compared with 12% in the untreated control group.

"The treatment involves the patient learning to control their symptoms through deep relaxation and individually adapted hypnotic suggestions. The idea is for the patient to then use this technique in their everyday life," according to Magnus Simrén, one of the researchers.

Notice the words "individually adpated" in Simren's statement.  This is a component of hypnosis research that is often missing.  Hypnosis works best when it is individualized to the subject, but research is supposed to be consistent and reproducible as part of the scientific method, so many past studies make hypnosis look less effective becasue the exact same approach was used with every person in the study.

In the second study, 208 patients who had previously received hypnotherapy were examined.  85% of those who had been helped by hypnosis still felt the benefits of the treatment up to seven years later.  The majority of those patients still actively use the technique in their everyday lives.

It's great to see more and more studies come out that show hypnosis is a safe, natural and effective remedy for many disorders and wellness issues.

Hyundai Continues Hypnotic Car Campaign

In 2011, Hyundai launched a cool ad campaign based on the theme of their cars being hypnotic.  They produced several commercials that featured Hyundai models in kaleidoscopic formations with trance-like music.  It was pretty fun, and I was impressed with their creativity at the time.  Well, now they've taken it one step further.

To promote their new I30 model in the Netherlands, Hyundai has hired hypnotist Peter Powers to do a hypnosis routine using the actual car.  Powers hypnotizes three women who volunteer for the "experiment" and he takes them through a bunch of fun routines that you might see in a stage show.  They sit in the car and think they're driving it, even though it's sitting still.  Powers makes himself invisible and then opens the doors and starts the engine, to the astonishment of the women.

At the end of the video, Powers invites viewers to try "the online experiment" for yourselves.  There's a 15 minute video that is intended to be watched full-screen on your computer and with headphones to give you an immersive hypnotic experience.  There is a disclaimer you have to check off first.

Once again, Hyundai shows originality and creativity in promoting their products.  I must admit, I'm a little sad that they chose to go with Powers as their hypnotist.  I mean, didn't they read my other piece on the Super Bowl campaign?  I clearly volunteered to be their official hypnotist.  Oh well.  Maybe next time. (Did you see that, Hyundai?  "Maybe next time?" Wink, wink.  NOD, NOD.  JAB, JAB, Hyundai!!!)

Could Conversion Disorder Turn to Mass Hypnosis?

A fascinating case in Le Roy, New York has drawn national media attention lately, and it is a great example of the power of suggestion.  In October of 2010, a high school cheerleader named Katie Krautwurst woke up after a nap with what she thought were muscle spasms.  Her head and neck kept jutting forward uncontrollably.  Katie met her mother at the emergency room, and doctors checked her out.  They told her she was probably having an anxiety attack.  Katie went home, and the symptoms continued.  

About a month later, Katie's best friend wakes up from a nap, and she finds herself having difficulty speaking.  She stutters and struggles to speak.  Two weeks later, a third girl develops a stutter after waking up from a nap, and her symptoms progress to arm flailing, numbness in the legs, even blackouts.  Eventually, the condition spread to 18 different girls, all in Le Roy.

The story gets picked up on the news wire, and environmental activist Erin Brockovich hears about it.  She sends a team to Le Roy to test the soil.  It turns out that there was a train derailment decades ago that spilled chemicals, and Brockovich wanted to know if it was causing the illness in the teens.  No conclusive results are found from the soil tests to point at a cause of the girls' symptoms.  Tests get done in the high school to determine if there are chemicals in the classrooms or the hallways, etc., causing the problem.  None are found.

Doctors label the cause of the behaviors the girls exhibit as "conversion disorder." Conversion disorder is basically a situation in which a person exhibits symptoms that would suggest there is a neurological problem, yet tests find no neural damage or dysfunction.  Conversion disorder is a psychological illness, usually driven by stress.  In this great article, Dr. Charles Raison explains how the diagnosis of conversion disorder makes sense in this particular situation.

What would cause a group of people, all in the same town, all female, all within a similar age range, to develop the same illness?  Bacteria and viruses attack people regardless of age or gender.  Toxins and poisons don't discriminate.  And go back to the beginning of the story.  The first three girls to get the symptoms all new each other well.  This is an example of psychological contagion, waking suggestion on a group scale.

I saw a television news piece about the girls in Le Roy, and the reporter spoke with a couple of the affected women.  Both made it clear that they were not making their symptoms up.  This is a common concern with people who suffer from psychosomatic illness, the concern that they will be labeled as "crazy" or as a faker, as if they are pretending to be ill when they are not.  

We have to make a cultural shift in how we view psychosomatic illness.  When people suffer from such disorders, they are not pretending.  They are genuinely suffering from the symptoms, and those symptoms are created by the mind.  That's how powerful our minds are!  To get a better understanding of this, read "The Divided Mind" by Dr. John Sarno.  There's a review of the book here on the blog.

There are examples throughout our history of people doing amazing things just because of "the power of suggestion." Scientists and medical professionals have even dismissed hypnosis in some cases because what it achieves with people seems to just be "the power of suggestion."  But if a suggestion can be that powerful, doesn't it deserve our attention, and demand further exploration?

Manchester United Player Turns to Hypnosis for Help

Manchester United's Darren Fletcher has struggled with his health, and it's kept him off the pitch.  The midfielder has disclosed that he has ulcerative colitis.  Flethcher's health was poor enough to cause him to miss all but two games in the last three months of last year's season, and he has played in only ten games this season.

"It's a week-by-week situation so I've not got any timescale on recovery, but the target for me is next season now," said Fletcher.

Ulcerative colitis is an inflammatory bowel disease that affects the large intestine and rectum.  The cause is unknown, but it can affect any age person and is often exacerbated by stress.  Ulcerative colitis increases the risk of colon cancer.

While hypnosis doesn't cure people of disease, it can often help people reduce their symptoms when the disease is made worse by stress.  Learning how to manage your stress with a self-hypnosis routine is an excellent idea.  It takes practice, but once you've got the hang of it you can use self-hypnosis just about anywhere.

If you would like to learn self-hypnosis, you can visit a hypnotist and have them teach you, you might read a book about self-hypnosis, or you could model the techniques of a hypnosis audio program.  Hypnotic trance is a state the human brain is naturally used to creating, and people go into trance several times a day, usually without being consciously aware of it.  It is safe, natural, and effective.

If you are experiencing bowel problems, consult with your physician.  Once you have a diagnosis, then ask your doctor if hypnosis for stress relief might help reduce your symptoms.

Secrets of Hypnotism: Theft by Hypnosis

One of the most common themes about hypnotism that comes up again and again with the broader public is the fear that people can be hypnotized against their will and be made to do things they don't want to do.  There's a recurrent fear of mind control that I run into again and again when talking to people about my profession.  I have not found any evidence that this is possible, although conspiracy theories about old government programs like MK Ultra get referenced quite often.

What I'm about to discuss may seem, at first, like an exercise in semantics, or an effort on my part to be cheeky in framing the issue a different way, but I'm not joking around.  I'm trying to address the topic as honestly as I can.  To my knowledge, you cannot be hypnotized against your will.

But you can be hypnotized without your awareness of it.

Think carefully about the difference in the two ideas.  Any time you discuss the notion of will, there has to be awareness.  Will involves choice.  To be hypnotized against your will, you would have to be challenged, in some way, to resist being hypnotized.  You would have to know that the hypnotic operator was going to make an attempt to put you in the hypnotic state, and then you would say (internally or externally) that you refused to do so, and then the battle would begin.  Could he or she do it?  Could you resist it?

In my years as a hypnotist, hypnotizing over a thousand people a year, I have never had a single person at one of my events who didn't want to be hypnotized go into hypnosis.  I have, however, had many people, who never officially decided whether they would or would not volunteer, go into hypnosis.  How?

It's the difference between getting mugged and getting your pocket picked.  Getting mugged is about force; it's a confrontation in which the mugger and the victim are opposed to each other.  When it comes to hypnosis, nobody wants to get mugged, right?  And if that's how they perceive hypnosis, as a sort of risk, as a way that they might get taken advantage of by another person, they're going to fight it, and they're going to win every time.

But a pickpocket doesn't confront the victim.  A pickpocket sneaks in and out of your pocket, or uses confusion to distract you while they lift your wallet.  The same concept applies to hypnotizing someone without their awareness.  It's not presented as a choice.  It's sneaky.  It happens without you even knowing it.

All the evidence that this can even happen is anecdotal, because how could you study it scientifcally?  But there is anecdotal evidence that is worth consideration.  Take this article from Russia, in which a woman was allegedly hypnotized to give over $81,000 to a woman she met on the street.  I find stories from Europe once or twice a year in which Gypsies use hypnotic tactics to rob people at bus stations, sitting on park benches, etc.  There is, apparently, a skill set in their community that has been handed down from generation to generation of how to use confusion techniques to get people into a hypnotic state and literally get them to hand over their wallet or purse.  Obviously, not all Gypsies do this, but the stories I find come back to some members of that community over and over again.

It has also happened right here in America, in my own home state, no less.  In 2007 a store clerk handed over $1,000 to two men who hypnotized him conversationally.  There is a security video in which the men can be seen, and the clerk simply opens the drawer and gives them the money.

 

Some people will argue that this isn't hypnosis at all, that it's simply a scam.  "Hypnosis" can be an ambiguous term, and some professionals even go so far as to argue that hypnosis itself doesn't exist, that the we just exist in different states of trance throughout the day, and that no one state is hypnosis.  But if you train in hypnotism, confusion techniques are part of what you learn.  When you confuse people, they open up to new suggestions, new directives.  

Some hypnotists don't want to talk about this.  They worry that it will add to the fear that the public already has about hypnosis, but that's silly.  For every story like these ones about theft by hypnosis, there are 50 stories of people who have had the quality of their lives improved with hypnosis.  Hypnosis helps people quit smoking, lose weight, get rid of bad habits, experience natural childbirth more comfortably, and a host of other good things.  Hypnosis isn't evil.  Hypnosis doesn't steal from people.  People steal from people.

What are your hypnotic thoughts?

Kids May Benefit from Hypnosis, Reduce Tummy Aches

Researchers led by Dr. Arine M. Vlieger, of St. Antonius Hospital in the Netherlands, have reported that hypnosis sessions, combined with at-home self-hypnosis, helped children in their study reduce the amount of stomach pain and irritable bowel symptoms they experienced.  The findings are based on 52 children and teenagers who were randomly assigned to either have gut-directed hypnosis or stick with standard care alone, like diet changes and fiber.

Of the 52 children with tummy troubles in the study, the ones who had six hypnosis sessions and who practiced at-home self-hypnosis were still doing well five years later.  More than two-thirds were free or mostly free of abdominal pain, compared to just 20 percent of kids who were given standard therapy alone.

Functional abdominal pain refers to persistent stomach pain that cannot be traced to a particular disorder. It is thought to affect about 20 percent of children.  IBS involves abdominal pain too, but people also have bouts of constipation, diarrhea or both.

Gut-directed hypnosis uses suggestions and imagery to help the client relax and release tension from the gut.  We've known for years that there is a link between the gut and the nervous system.  People often internalize their stress and feel it in the stomach and intestinal areas.  In hypnosis, imagery can have a more powerful effect on your state, so imagining your intestinal area as a smoothly flowing river, or a beautiful wave of color moving through that area of your body can signify a state change to your mind that actually has a physical effect.

If you have pain in your body, or are having difficulty with your bowel functions, consult with your physician.  They will tell you if your situation is one in which hypnosis might help.

The Importance of Interrupting Your Patterns

I've had a home office for seven years, and that office has been set up the exact same way for seven years.  My business has grown and changed, and I've taken on new intiatives and beliefs and strategies as I've accumulated experience, yet the space I work in has remained the same--until this weekend.

This weekend I blew it up.  I didn't just move some small items; I moved the whole thing around.  Before I started making changes, I thought about what I really needed my office to do for me that it hadn't been doing as well as it could have.  I thought about what I wanted to get out of my office that I just wasn't getting, and how I could make changes that would make the space, the environment within those walls, a space that promoted me getting things done that I hadn't been getting done.

I believe that modern day hypnotists, as small business owners, need to put themselves in a position to reach out to the world and share their skills with as many people as possible.  While I have a segment of my business that is based in the local population, I don't see my business as a local business; I see it as a world-wide enterprise.  

The internet puts modern hypnotists in a unique position.  Technology allows me to record my own audio products, shoot my own videos, and distribute those products and videos to the world without seeking the approval of a publisher or professional distributor.  Free platforms like Skype and Google+ Hangouts allow us to host video conferencing, for free, with anyone, anywhere in the world.  

Now, I've known this for years, and I was taking advantage of these platforms to a certain extent, but I wasn't putting myself in a work space that really promoted the use of these opportunities.  My pattern was to sit in an office that was pretty traditional in its design--desk, bookshelf, filing cabinet--and do what most people do most days in their offices.  But I don't want to be that kind of professional.  I want to be the kind of professional who really takes advantage of what the world is offering me that can help me be successful, and I want to take advantage of anything that helps me share what I know and what I can do to help others lead happier, more fulfilled lives.  It was time to interrupt my pattern and establish a new one.

I purchased two BIG pieces of acoustic foam, the kind used in radio stations and recording studios, and I mounted those on my walls to make the office quieter when I'm recording.  I purchased two lighting stands that use compact fluorescent bulbs (very little heat, energy efficient) so that I'll have good light in here when I shoot video, and I purchased a set of stands with a cross pole and a chroma key green backdrop so that I can create green screen effects with my videos using the standard video editing software that came with my Mac.

I moved the desk across the room so that it directly faces one wall covered in foam.  My computer is on that desk, with a digital interface box that connects a microphone to it.  The microphone is on a boom stand right next to the desk.  The desk also has a CD/DVD duplicator on it, a printer, and an external hard drive.  So my desk is now basically an audio/video production station.

On the other side of the room, one whole wall is covered by foam, which is also covered by the green screen.  This gives me a nice space to shoot video, and that space is directly across from my desk, so I can set up the camera right in front of that desk and have it directly connected to the computer and not have to move things all around from shooting space to editing space; it's all together!  No set up and break down.  Ready to go all the time.

Now I come to a space every day that is set up for creating and producing, and it's a startling difference to walk into a familiar space that is now unfamiliar.  This is the pattern interrupt that I need.  I need to have a sense that things in this office aren't going to be like they were before, and that's not to say that things were bad; they weren't at all.  But if I want to create new and different behaviors, I need to have new and different patterns.  Sometimes that's not about me, but about the space I'm in.

When you interrupt your patterns, your mind has to seek a new behavior.  Human beings have a tendency to get into patterns and want to stay in them because it creates a sense of certainty.  Certainty provides a feeling of security, but what if the pattern that's been created is negative?  Or just plain unnecessary?  We still want the feeling of certainty that comes from the pattern, so we keep indulging in it.  If you want to get different results, you have to create different patterns.  Here are some good ways to interrupt your patterns and create positive change:

1. Change your physiology.  The mind and the body are linked.  Thoughts and emotions trigger the release of chemicals in the body.  Take advantage of this, and keep in mind that it works in both directions!  When you get stressed, your body gets tight and your breathing gets shallow.  Breathe deeply and stretch your body or get a massage, and your mind will get peaceful again.  That's a pretty simple example, right?  Well it's not the only one.  Your state changes follow patterns in your life.  Break the pattern and force yourself to change state, and you'll be surprised what happens.

2. Change your focus.  The human mind has an amazing ability to move us toward what we clearly see and focus on in our mind's eye.  It also has an amazing ability to adopt our external language patterns as internal "rules" or "laws" about ourselves.  Sometimes that's a bad thing. If your focus in life is seeing what's not going as well as you'd like in life, or you focus on talking about negative perceptions of yourself, then these points of focus become your patterns.  When you focus on other truths about yourself, about the skills you possess, the resources you have, and the qualities you exhibit that are positive, you will develop new, more postive patterns.

3. Change your environment.  We don't live in a vacuum.  We have patterns of inhabiting certain spaces most of the time of our lives.  Home. Work.  Even the car.  It can get easy to take for granted the effect these spaces have on us.  Are they clean and healthy?  Does the space suit the activities that go on there?  If not, break out of the pattern of doing those things in that space.  Either go to a different space, or modify the existing space so that it better suits your needs.

Patterns get easy to live in, easy to take for granted.  When you increase your awareness of your patterns, and take bold action to interrupt them, you'll be amazed at what happens.