Unresolved chronic conditions and chronic pain not satisfactorily addressed by traditional medicine may benefit from the "change in mind and heart" that hypnosis offers. *
Hypnotic states have been used for pain control and healing almost as long as there have been people to have trances. Trance states have been used by across almost every culture and civilization as a part of their “medicine” and it really only makes sense.
Afterall – The mind and the body are one.
- Your brain extends all the way down to your toes (can you wiggle your toes right now?).
- What happens to your toes, makes it all the way back into the deepest parts of your brain (Wonder if you will remember wiggling those toes while you read this- 2 years from now?).
- From the Oracle of Delphi to modern day Faith Healers; from World War Hospitals to Native Shaman; from 1950 Cancer Research Centers to the Voodoo Priest, from 3rd world hospitals without access to anesthesia, to a mother’s kiss on a child’s wounded knee. Trances states and hypnotic states can change our experience of physical pain AND facilitate physical healing.
- Trances are being clinically researched and demonstrated every day in major hospitals and medical research facilities all over the world; for example, Harvard Medical, Menniger Clinics, The Mayo Clinics, and M.D. Anderson here in the United States, just to name a few.
Hypnotic approaches can help by:
- Improving STRESS MANAGEMENT: It is said that 63% of the symptoms presented in any general practitioner’s medical office are stress related. Whether it is poor health care choices to cope with stress (eating, smoking, drinking, etc....), or the direct effects of the stress on the body (insomnia, high cortisol and other stress hormones, high blood pressure, lowered immune function, dis-regulated digestion, etc.). Similarly, the existence of disease or pain can create its own stress which increases our experience of symptoms and pain, creating a self-feeding loop of suffering and more stress. Hypnosis affords us a way out of the loop and into a more regulated emotional state.
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PAIN CONTROL: Many people have had an experience in which they found a cut or bruise on themselves at the end of the day-only to realize they did not remember getting the cut or bruise! Pain is a perception that serves a useful purpose, it tells us when something is wrong in the body but when we know what is wrong in the body, that pain is no longer necessary and there really are ways to decrease our suffering via the mind, which is where the pain is perceived. Our minds are SO CAPABLE of NOT PERCEIVING PAIN that we can even undergo surgery, or give birth, without anesthetic!
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SYMPTOM MANAGEMENT: Our minds likewise play a role in the experience of different symptoms or side effects of treatment such as insomnia, nausea, headaches, etc. Significant media attention has been given in recent years to its use in the treatment of menopause symptoms and pregnancy related morning sickness (British Princess Katherine Middleton).
- BEHAVIORAL HEALTH CARE CHOICES-Hypnosis can help make better health care choices, such as smoking cessation, weight loss or other dietary changes, and more motivation for movement. It can even help address procedural anxieties that may be preventing action on a treatment plan (for example, claustrophobia and a closed MRI, a needle phobia for someone who needs injections, etc.).
- HEALING- At it’s most basic, the profound relaxation that hypnosis fosters promotes healing all on its own. But consider this, if you were to hear just the right joke, your unconscious mind will cause a dilation of the vessels in your cheeks, which we call blushing, without any help from your conscious mind. Or consider that if you were to stop and think about yawning, watch someone yawning, or even watch your cat yawn...you will yawn, without thinking. Then there is the old trick of using running water to encourage urination. Things that happen in the mind can, and do, manifest in the body and trance work allows us to direct that manifestation. This is not “whoohoo” and it is not just a few isolated cases-there is hard data that supports the usefulness of hypnosis to effect change in the body. Whether we are improving immune system function, eliminating migraines, promoting fertility, regulating bowel or heart function, decreasing tics and tremors-you name it. Lastly, hypnotherapy affords an opportunity to explore and resolve emotional experiences that may be contributing to, or resulting from, an illness or pain.
If the mind can make it worse, the mind can make it better, and hypnosis is a exceptional tool in making the mind an powerful ally in your healing.
Tampa Bay Hypno-Therapy offers a FREE Hypnosis Introduction Group and you are invited to attend.
- Bring your questions to this low key, informal event.
- This FREE educational group meets on the 3rd Tuesday bi-monthly and is open to the public.
- Please register for the next meeting by sending us an email through this website or by joining us at http://www.meetup.com/TampaBayHypnotherapy-Community-Group/.
- An optional stress management guided imagery exercise is offered at the end of each presentation.
- “Healthy Mind, Healthy Body” is a 6 week experiential course that provides education on mind-body approaches for the effective self management of illness and pain. Based on the Stanford University Model of Chronic Disease Self Management, the course teaches a model of problem solving and goal implementation while exploring the most current findings about diet, stress, therapeutic touch, hypnosis, meditation and other complimentary health care options. There is an optional monthly support group to support health related goals and participate in medical meditations that promote better stress management and healing.
Tamera L. Fontenot, LMHC and Tampa Bay Hypno-Therapy, LLC are not licensed medical practitioners and are not approved to provide medical care or advice. A physician’s consent may be required to participate in some activities related to health related hypnotherapy.