Neurofeedback and Guided Imagery for Athletes

February 7, 2010 by Susan Gold

I found this interesting article posted on Futurehealth.org on 2/6/10: “How Neurofeedback Therapy Can Help Athletes Reach Peak Performance Levels” by Dr. Clare Albright, a psychologist and neurofeedback practitioner in Orange County, CA. Here’s an excerpt:

Whether you are a professional athlete, or simply want to achieve your own personal best at your chosen sport, neurotherapy can help you reach new levels of performance, not just for a few fleeting moments, but more often, and for longer periods, than you have ever experienced before.

The Italian soccer team recently discovered this when they focused on retraining their thinking by using neurofeedback, along with guided imagery and other cognitive restructuring techniques, in a glassed-in room that became known as the “mind room.” Their use of these training methods drew much media attention when they won the World Cup in 2006, largely, it is believed, due to neurofeedback therapy.

Neurofeedback was instrumental in helping these athletes to free themselves from the stress and anxiety produced by self-criticism and by replaying past failures. Many athletes use positive imagery and visualization to center their focus on the desired outcome. Still, it can be a struggle to keep the mind from going over mistakes, in effect reinforcing them, and possibly causing a repetition of the regretted performance. Read the rest of the article here.

FOX 26 in Houston does a piece on hypnosis

February 3, 2010 by Susan Gold

See, “Fox 26 Anchor Hypnotized for Health” posted on 2/2/10. Here is a description the FOX site provides with the video:

Some people turn to different methods when they try to lose weight and get into better physical shape that go beyond diet and exercise. For some people, their preferred method is hypnosis.

Dr. Scott Lewis explains on FOX 26 Morning News Extra the difference between clinical or medical hypnosis and the kind performed at comedy clubs.

FOX 26 News anchor Tom Zizka also allows Dr. Lewis to perform hypnosis on him.

Hypnosis for weight loss on Dr. Oz

January 12, 2010 by Susan Gold

Today, 1/12/10, Dr. Oz did a segment on the effectiveness of using hypnosis for weight loss. On 1/11/10, an article related to this segment was posted on his website. I’ve included the first few paragraphs below:

Many of us go on a diet this time of year, but few lose weight. Studies show dieting only has a 5 to 9% success rate. For the rest of us, restricting what we eat slows our metabolism and leads us to binge down the road (a recipe for weight gain and the #1 diet mistake.) Instead, experts say the key to maintaining a healthy weight is to change how we think about food.

One way people successfully do so is with hypnosis. Though scientists don’t understand exactly how it works, it seems that hypnosis brings your brain into a trance-like state in which you tune out the outside world (much like when you’re reading a book or watching a movie). In that state, you’re highly suggestible. Your conscious mind (the part that likes to over-think things) shuts off, and your subconscious, the part responsible for impulse and imagination, takes over. Hypnotists take advantage of your open mind, and train your brain to follow different impulses, changing your eating behavior from the inside out.

The goal of weight loss hypnotists is to make healthy eating a natural instinct (replacing that familiar compulsion to eat an entire bag of chips). Below are the 4 main ways they retrain your brain. The good news is that you don’t have to be hypnotized to make them a part of your routine. Just start today, and, with repetition and practice, you can change your relationship to food. Click here to read the rest of the article.

Herbert Spiegel, renowned psychiatrist and advocate of hypnosis, dies

January 10, 2010 by Susan Gold

Below are the opening paragraphs of  the 1/9/10 New York Times article, “Herbert Spiegel, Doctor Who Popularized Hypnosis, Dies at 95.”

Dr. Herbert Spiegel treated pain, anxiety and addictions by putting people into a trance. Broadway actors sought his help to overcome stage fright, singers to quit smoking, politicians to overcome fear of flying. For years he had a regular table at Elaine’s, as well as his own place on the national stage.

A New York psychiatrist, Dr. Spiegel, who died on Dec. 15 at the age of 95, was far and away the country’s most visible and persuasive advocate for therapeutic hypnosis, having established it as a mainstream medical technique. Click here to read the whole article.

I’m sighing and rolling my eyes again

January 10, 2010 by Susan Gold

Take a look at the opening of this 1/5/10 article in the Telegraph:

“Trainee hypnotist puts himself in trance using mirror”

Helmut Kichmeier, 27, was found by his wife, Joanna, staring into thin air after the bungle in their north London home as they prepared for a tour.

Mr Kichmeier, whose stage name is Hannibal Helmurto, had learned the skill to put himself into a somnabulistic trance to help him swallow multiple swords on stage.

He had been taught the skill by hypnotherapist Dr Ray Roberts to assist in a new act for the Circus of Horrors show.

But as he practiced the skill in front of the mirror at 10am he set himself into a deep sleep until 3pm, when he was found by his wife.

It was only after she phoned Dr Roberts and put the receiver to Mr Kichmeier’s head that he was able to be talked out of the trance. Click here to read the rest of this article.

Puh-leeze! A person does not get stuck in a trance state as this article implies. Nor does a person enter a “deep sleep” from hypnosis, unless perhaps self-hypnosis is being used as a tool for overcoming insomnia. A trance state is a natural state, and while the goal of hypnosis is to access the subconscious mind, there needs to be enough conscious awareness present for the subject to participate in—or, in the case of self-hypnosis, to direct the process.

Some of my clients are surprised to hear that they will not feel so deeply altered while in trance and will maintain a sense of control and awareness during the experience. Some glaze over when I go through my “pre-talk” because they have already been educated, but with the media and stage hypnotists feeding into so many misconceptions, hypnotherapists can’t risk a client going into trance without fully knowing what to expect.

Kichmeier’s wife said that her husband looked like a zombie, staring at himself in the mirror.

“I tried to ask him what was wrong but he didn’t answer and it was then I looked at the sofa behind him and saw a book named Hypnosis Medicine of the Mind.

“It was opened on page 45 and a chapter named hypnotic anaesthesia and I realised there was something wrong.

“At first I panicked and tried to talk to Helmut but he didn’t respond.

“It was only then I noticed a letter next to the book a letter from his mentor, Dr Roberts, and I knew what I had to do.”

How convenient that there was a letter next to the book so that she knew what to do. Gee, maybe I’ll draft a letter to give to clients when I teach them self-hypnosis. “If you notice your loved one is despondent, call me immediately.”

And here’s another myth in the article:

A person under hypnosis only responds to a voice of authority and as Dr Roberts had taught him the skill he was able to talk him down.

When physician Franz Anton Mesmer discovered the practice of hypnosis—what was then, in the 1700’s, called mesmerism—he didn’t really know how it worked. He assumed he had a special power to control others, had a big ego, and, unfortunately, developed a pompous authoritative style, which he taught to his disciples, and they taught to theirs. Luckily more enlightened contemporary hypnotists came to realize that, in fact, some clients will be put off by a voice of authority, in which case a permissive style is more appropriate and effective.

This may have been a great publicity stunt for Mr. Kichmeier, but it does damage to a legitimate field that is aiming to empower and heal.

Great article on hypnosis by clinical psychologist, Michael Yapko

January 8, 2010 by Susan Gold

See Michael Yapko’s 1/5/10 Huffington Post article, “Your Focus Shapes Your Life” for great information on how hypnosis works and its effectiveness.  Below is an excerpt:

The field of clinical hypnosis has undergone a quiet revolution from seemingly being little more than a party gimmick to an established and vital component of behavioral medicine programs in the finest academic and clinical institutions you can name, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford. There are sophisticated scientific journals dedicated solely to advancing clinical practice on the basis of research into hypnotic phenomena. There are national and international meetings devoted entirely to the subject of how hypnosis informs clinical practice and illuminates complex mind-body relationships. Someone unfamiliar with hypnosis might be surprised to discover that hypnosis has been subjected to a wide variety of empirical investigations, particularly clinical and neuroscientific ones, attempting to better understand how a clinician’s words can become the basis for seemingly remarkable experiences in a focused client. Click here to read the whole article.

Techniques that help athletes properly channel aggression

December 18, 2009 by Susan Gold

See Jeff Deitz’s 11/21/09 New York Times article, “Athletes Struggle to Channel Aggressive Nature” for an interesting discussion of the challenges an athlete may face in controlling his or her anger. Below is an excerpt, which suggests helpful techniques.

Champions must learn to control aggression under game conditions. Visualizing what lies ahead is crucial because being caught off guard by unexpectedly tenacious opponents drives the instinctual brain into fear mode, increasing unhelpful aggression. Sports psychologists offer many tried-and-true techniques, including attention-focusing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, meditation, deep breathing and yoga.

Biofeedback studies confirm that physiological arousal is lowered by mental exercise. Finding it, as opposed to losing it, means taking the thinking brain’s strength and agility out of the mental workout room and onto the playing field. Read the whole article here.

Study shows that mental imagery training is effective

December 18, 2009 by Susan Gold

See ScienceDaily’s 12/4/09 article “Learning by imagining: How mental imagery training aids perceptual learning” for the results of an interesting new study.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

Practice makes perfect. But imaginary practice? Elisa Tartaglia of the Laboratory of Psychophysics at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and team show that perceptual learning — learning by repeated exposure to a stimulus — can occur by mental imagery as much as by the real thing. The results, published in Current Biology, suggest that thinking about something over and over again could actually be as good as doing it. Read the rest of the article here.

A client’s story

December 1, 2009 by Susan Gold

A client has written a personal blog entry about her journey in overcoming an eating disorder—or, rather, “ordering her eating”—as she powerfully puts it. In the entry she discusses our work together and how hypnotherapy made a difference. She has generously given me permission to repost her entry here.

I should mention that before we began our work together, and with the client’s permission, I spoke with the practitioner who diagnosed her condition to make sure that hypnotherapy would complement and not contraindicate her existing treatment plan.

Beauty and the Beast: My Victory over Eating Disorders and Why I Love My New Voluptuous Shape

It all started when I was a very little girl. For some reason, I was never really big on eating.  I rarely had an appetite, and I often saw sitting down to eat as something that was an inconvenience that interfered with doing other, more “important” things (like playing with my sister or friends, talking on the phone, singing, getting into trouble, etc.).  When I was very, very young, I didn’t understand the physiological need behind food and often questioned my parents’ and grandmother’s authority, “Why do I have to eat if I am not hungry?” I would often ask. It didn’t make sense to me.  I won’t get into all of the drama of old wounds – I’ll just say I went through a lot as a child, and there were times where my nutritional needs were not met, and this only complicated my already distorted relationship with food and caring for myself through eating properly.  I forgive the adults in my life for the mistakes that they made when I was very young. I can only think that they had similar experiences and did not know any better. I feel fortunate to have “woken up” from the cycle of things and to have become aware of this unhealthy pattern so that I will not pass this on to anyone in the future.

As a teen, my body image and relationship with food worsened.  Even when I was 92 pounds, (and a little over 5′, or 1.524 meters tall), I thought I was obese. Yes, OBESE.  I was so critical of myself and saw someone fat when I looked in the mirror. Nowadays, I still cringe when an occasional photo from my teen years resurfaces (there aren’t many out there, but my mother does have a few).  My cheeks were so sunken. I was so emaciated.  My skin tone was even a little bit yellow.  But I thought that trying to live on 600-1500 calories a day and limiting my fat intake to under 20 grams per day was the healthy way to go, and I literally starved myself for many years.

All of it, it turns out, was an unattainable attempt to be perfect and to have control over SOMETHING in my life.  In so many ways, my life felt out of control. I ended up in a girls group home for teenagers, and my father died when I was 16 of AIDS, and my mother and I did not get along.  I developed OCD, which fed into the need to have everything a certain way and to obsessively count calories and track fat intake.  Controlling what I would and would not put into my mouth, subconsciously, was my mind’s way of trying to exert some sense of control in what I thought was otherwise an out of control life.

In my early 20s, I met the man who I thought would be my prince charming.  It was with him that I tried Taco Bell for the first time (which to this day is a guilty pleasure, lol).  In fact, I began to eat meat (which I hadn’t done since I was much younger), and I went buck wild.  I ate everything I wanted to, whenever I wanted to, and I enjoyed every single second of it.  It was like I was making up for all that time of self-deprivation when I thought I was the one who was in control.  Then I began to gain weight. Lots of it.  I went from about 98-105 pounds at the time to 130 pounds.  I barely noticed as it happened, but my ex sure let me know.  He said things all the time about it and drew my attention to the cellulite I had on my legs (I’d never had cellulite before).  I felt bad about it but told him that he either needed to love me whether I was skinny or heavy, or else I didn’t need him.  We broke up for other reasons, but I am so glad that I took that stand for my body.

Since then, I have had episodes of anxiety where I have completely lost my appetite.  In fact, a few years ago, I was just so not interested in food that I ended up losing a lot of weight and went down to 103 pounds. That’s when my boyfriend (who I am with to this day) told me I needed to get help.  I sought out therapy and followed their suggested regimen of counseling and medication.  Eventually I got well, but I would have repeated incidents over the years (luckily not to the same extreme with the excessive weight loss).

If you look at some of my YouTube videos, you will see that there is a drastic difference between my weight in May of 2009 when I started on YouTube, to the present.  That’s because in December of 2008, I had one of these episodes. I lost complete interest in eating and just could not bring myself to eat a healthy amount of food to take care of my body.  This time, I realized that I really, really needed to get to the root of the loss of appetite and address it directly, or else the source would keep causing these symptoms and episodes to resurface.  I decided that, in addition to checking into a daytime hospitalization program and meeting 1-2x a week for intensive counseling, that I would also try medical hypnosis.  I found a woman who is certified in hypnosis and arranged a consultation.  The work we have done has been amazing, and I have since been able to handle the episodes when they begin to arise.  I remind myself that at one time, my body/mind reaction or impulse not to eat served my best interest for survival (in the abusive settings I experienced and when there were times when I went hungry from lack of food).  My mind now needs a new “tape” to pop in when it is triggered by stress or uncomfortable situations.

Now I love myself through such episodes, which now last a maximum of 3 days, and I am able to function just fine during those days. I eat whatever I feel in the mood for – and I monitor calories, but for a DIFFERENT reason altogether from the reasons I did earlier in my life.  I watch to be sure that I am caring for my body well and taking in enough nutrition to nourish my body and keep me in optimum health. Read the rest of this entry »

Hypnosis shown on brain scans

November 22, 2009 by Susan Gold

Below is an excerpt from the 11/16/09 BBC article, “Hypnosis has ‘real’ brain effect.’”

Hypnosis has a “very real” effect that can be picked up on brain scans, say Hull University researchers.

An imaging study of hypnotised participants showed decreased activity in the parts of the brain linked with daydreaming or letting the mind wander. Read the whole article here.