by Celeste Hackett
I love hypnosis. I do sessions full time for a living and would guesstimate that I have near or around a 95 % success rate, maybe better. It’s rather fascinating how this has come about since I’m no psychologist or academic scholar. I don’t even have a college degree, but, weirdly, I do have a state licensed career school for hypnotism. Twisted, isn’t it?
I’m not the only one of my kind either. There are a lot of very fine hypnotists getting incredible results with all sorts of issues. Issues that usually people have tried everything else for first before coming in to see us. Our clients come in to see us, depressed, feeling as if they are reaching for straws, hoping against hope that hypnosis will bring them relief, and it does.
Just yesterday I was listening to a video news cast about Catherine Zeta Jones and her bi-polar disorder. As hypnotists we don’t work on bi-polar disorder (or any mental illness), but we do help clients become emotionally balanced and often times, these clients have been diagnosed as bipolar. Once they are balanced and at ease, it’s not unusual for their doctors to see that lowering or eliminating the medications entirely is reasonable and will begin to help them to do that. Imagine what it must feel like for both the doctors and the patients, who thought they’d have to be on medications for life.
On the news cast I was watching about Catherine Zeta Jones, the interviewer was speaking with a mental health provider and he asked, “Is this something that can be cured?” This seemed to take the doctor back a bit as he smiled and moved uncomfortably in his chair. Finally, this was his answer. He said, “I think when you talk about mental illness you talk about it being controlled and managed and something she will probably be dealing with her entire life.”
Watching this video, I just had to wonder why so many doctors have come to that conclusion so quickly. Why aren’t they looking for a cure? When did they stop looking? Cancer has been around longer than Bipolar and “they” are still looking for a cure for that. Why aren’t they finding the people who have gotten off their medications and learned more about how they did that? I’ve heard that the big pharmaceutical companies are greedy and behind the whole thing. I do have to wonder if that could be true.
Hypnotists are people who are willing to believe that human beings have the ability to change just about anything in themselves with a little bit of support, insight, time, and motivation. Those of us who get these very high percentages of success are all about being persistent in our procedures. We don’t back down. We don’t throw our hands up and we don’t’ give up easily. My guess is, that this is the reason our clients benefit so much from our services. Funny, no one is beating down our door to find out how we are doing it though.
So, you may be wondering what techniques hypnotists getting these sorts of results are using. Hypnotists are an interesting breed of people. Within our circle are circles and circles of different sorts of helpful techniques, a sort of smorgasbord of healing balms for the mind. Most of these techniques have gotten incredible results at one time or another. Since you can not learn all of them at once, it’s not unusual for a hypnotist to have a bit of tunnel vision about their own bag of tricks. They get attached to the first one that works a “miracle” for them and sometimes they’ll think its’ the very best and every other one just can’t be as good. It seems to be part of the growth cycle for us.
In fact, this whole delusion can even get a little ugly at times especially when egos flare. On at least one popular social networking sight for hypnotists, practitioners from different schools of thought have been known to argue and scoff at procedures they don’t use and nastily defend those they do. At times like this I feel a little embarrassed that my colleagues can’t just open their minds a bit and learn something, share something, or disagree in a respectful way. Pride goeth before a fall and all of that, you know?
Recently on a regression site I love for its fresh and insightful postings, a hypnotist posted a link to a video on an EFT variation that I hadn’t seen before. The practitioner on the video seemed to get great results really fast which made many of us wonder if it was really possible. I read all the posts and went to bed.
I wondered about it as I went to sleep. Then, I guess my subconscious must have been working pretty hard as I slept because I woke up suddenly and a sort of quote emerged into consciousness along with a strong urge to write it down, “It is the realization and the acceptance of the truth that brings healing, change and ultimately even spiritual awakening to people. The way you get there is just a way.”
When I woke up, I posted it along with some semblance of the following:
Yogis say that you can pick any object and if you meditate on it long enough you will find God. In that same way I often have found in my work as a hypnotist that if I just put myself in the right mental space with my client eventually some understanding of what to do or some special way of reaching them will come to me while we are “meditating” or musing over their problem. I love the quote by Albert Einstein, "It’s not that I am all that smart, it’s just that I stay with a problem longer than other people." .
INFORMED CHILD –This is an awesome technique, brilliantly taught by Cal Banyan and one of my favorites. It works great allowing the client to have an “aha” moment of realization or a shift in belief, that moment when the truth sets him free.
RELEASING OF EMOTIONS – There are various ways to facilitate getting the subconscious emotions out and this getting them out, gets them out of the way and allows for the truth to be glaringly apparent. When this happens the hypnotist doesn’t even have to say anything at all! So many great hypnotists have styles and tools to do this. Most of them involve hitting a pillow, EFT or a combination. Randy Shaw and Matt Sison are two hypnotist who take releasing feelings into a pillow to all new heights.
SIMPLY ASKING YOUR CLIENT QUESTIONS – This also can be very effective as your client hears his answers and realizes the beliefs he’s held onto are NOT the truth. Knowing what is not the truth causes an open space for the real truth to arise. After a while, as your client pokes around in his mind for answers, and as questions continue, the truth eventually becomes apparent to him. He recognizes this new truth as like a little sage child before him. You can try this out with the works of Byron Katie. Once your clients are in hypnosis, try simply asking them questions, and asking them to allow the answers to arise from within.
DIRECT SUGGESTION – Direct suggestion, according to famed hypnotist, Don Mottin, will work indefinitely, or until the mind is bombarded by negative internal or external thoughts. All you have to do is find the right words and way of saying those words so your client can accept them as truth and have a realization and/or possibly come to a resolute decision. Either way, error is the problem. Truth is the answer.
DESENSITIZATION – used in various ways, such as taking a client through an event (in regression) over and over again will also work because once a client is taken through a painful event enough times they often will get a realization such as, "well, it’s over", or "I didn’t die" etc. That realization is the realizing of the truth that sets them free.
EFT, EMDR, NLP, PSYCH-K, METOPHOR, Z-POINT, ULTRA HEIGHT, ULTRA DEPTH, ETC, – From all I have experienced, seen and heard, they are all very good techniques, but how do they work? Don’t ask me, but the clients do seem to get, and quite obviously so, the realization of some truth pertinent to the change needed and when they accept that truth, they do change.
Personally, I find it extremely helpful to use a methodical practice, a sort of shell or outline for my sessions. This way I always know what to do next. I use 5-PATH® for this because it is so powerful in and of itself. Generally, not much else is called for. However, weaving in other things as intuition tells you to can speed up or expand the internal processes.
Using these methods within the methodical approach of 5-PATH® bypasses unconscious and unhelpful protective measures, and allows for even greater attention to go more freely to places where answers come to clients with very little effort on the part of the hypnotist. I’ve even had clients talk back and forth to themselves, as if there are two of them, unprompted by me and fix their problem!
In closing, I think what helps us Hypno-Pros is we just try to always be curious, respectful and open to learning different ways of doing things. Remember in just about any endeavor there is more than one way to get the job done. For instance, you can make coffee with cold brew, French press, percolating, drip method or by boiling it in a sock! Speaking of, it’s time for a little latte’ break now before my next client is here. Thanks for reading and good luck with your sessions!
