SF Giants manager, Bochy, bullpen catcher, Bill Hayes, and equipment manger, Mike Murphy all have successfully used hypnosis to be free of their chewing tobacco habit.
For details, see David Brown’s 8/8/11 Big League Stew article, “Bochy, Giants staff hypnotized into quitting chewing tobacco habit.”
I’m honored to have been selected to speak at Imagery International’s Annual Conference, September 30 through October 2, 2011, at The Mercy Center in Burlingame, CA. My topic is “Using Imagery to Overcome Creative Blocks.” Below is a list of the other speakers. It promises to be a fantastic weekend! I can’t wait!
Robin Gayle, PhD, MFT, “Metaphoric Dialogue: Bringing Hope Alive”
Carl Hendel, MD: “The Neurobiology of Hope”
Lea Houston, MA: “Move, Breathe, and Imagine: Activating the Triple Power Keys to Body mind Healing and
Transformation!”
Jenny Garrison, RN: “Expanding Open-Heartedness: Imagery as a Spiritual Practice”
Jose Said Osio: “Getting to a Newer, Richer Self by Accessing a Deeper Guided Imagery Pattern”
Jeanne M. Schul, PhD: “Dancing the Dream Image: Out of the Nightmare, Into the Light”
The conference welcomes all professionals interested in the practical application of guided imagery for healing and personal growth, including, but not limited to, nurses, doctors, psychotherapists, social workers, hypnotherapists, and somatic workers. Trained Guided Imagery practitioners will add to their techniques and strategies, and other professionals will gain an overview of how Guided Imagery may be used as a complementary practice in their work.
Continuing Education Units are included in the registration fee.
To learn about Imagery International, click here.
To learn more about the conference and to register, click here.
See Margarita Tartakovsky’s 5/9/11, PsychCentral article, “Psychology’s History of Being Mesmerized” to learn about mesmerism—precursor to hypnosis.
Interested in how hypnosis is being used to complement traditional medicine? See Lesley Alderman’s 4/15/11 New York Times article, “Using Hypnosis to Gain More Control over Your Illness.” Here’s an excerpt:
Used for more than two centuries to treat a host of medical problems, particularly pain management and anxiety, hypnosis is now available to patients at some of the most respected medical institutions in the country, including Stanford Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, Mount Sinai Medical Center and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. Read the whole article here.
For an excellent explanation of hypnosis, see Llyod Glauberman’s 12/3/10 Huffington Post article, “Trance-formation: The Therapeutic Value of Hypnosis.”
Here’s an excerpt:
…hypnosis is the ability to use the brain’s unique information processing capacities that occur routinely, in a systematic and targeted way to help people make important shifts in thinking, feeling, sensing and behaving.
So how are these capacities accessed? The answer is through language. Hypnosis, more than any other therapeutic intervention, is built upon linguistic skills. In order to get people into a more fluid state, you have to use words in ways that differ from everyday conversation. It is about what you say and how you say it. Hypnosis is first about altering pace… slooooowing things down… triggering the body’s relaxation response automatically. Read the full article here.
I recently learned about All Things Healing, a fantastic site that offers a thriving community and vast resources for those interested in all facets of the healing arts, including hypnotherapy. ATH also focuses on sustainable and healthy living, and other ways individuals can help heal the planet. What I love most about ATH is its collaborative spirit. Contributors include a host of writers, teachers, and practitioners, who offer a wide array of voices, perspectives, and approaches.
For a great explanation of hypnosis and a lovely reflection on inner beauty, see Raven Keyes’ 9/30/10 Psychology Today article, “Creating Beauty From Within: Investigating how beauty manifests from within.” Here’s an excerpt:
What you “think” shows on your face in more ways than one! You may not wear your heart on your sleeve, but I assure you, if you do not think of yourself as beautiful, then your beauty is diminished, no matter how perfectly your body and face might be put together.
As my Grandmother always used to wisely say, “Beauty comes from within!”
Hypnotherapy can shift your subconscious so that your face shines with true gorgeousness. As we get a little further along here, I’m going to give you a “hypno-tip” that you can use to unleash your own physical beauty! Read the whole article here.
For an interesting article on hypnosis and the brain, see Vaughn Bell’s 9/30/10 guardian.co.uk Science Blog entry, “Hypnosis reaches the parts brain scans and neurosurgery cannot.” The beginning of the article discusses how hypnosis has been used to reverse synaesthesia. Here’s an excerpt:
Whenever AR sees a face, her thoughts are bathed in colour and each identity triggers its own rich hue that shines across her mind’s eye. This experience is a type of synaesthesia which, for about one in every 100 people, automatically blends the senses. Some people taste words, others see sounds, but AR experiences colour with every face she sees. But on this occasion, perhaps for the first time in her life, a face is just a face. No colours, no rich hues, no internal lights.
If the experience is novel for AR, it is equally new to science because no one had suspected that synaesthesia could be reversed. Despite the originality of the discovery, the technique responsible for the switch is neither the hi-tech of brain stimulation nor the cutting-edge of neurosurgery, but the long-standing practice of hypnosis. Read the whole article here.
I just read Deirdre Barrett’s 1/1/01 article in Psychology Today, “The Power of Hypnosis.” (The article was last reviewed on 9/2/10.) In it she gives the results of a study she did on what makes a person highly hypnotizable. She concludes that
“About 95% of all people are susceptible to hypnosis, to varying degrees. Whether you use it to relieve stress, stop a headache or get over a bad habit, hypnosis is a tool for better health that practically everyone can use–some to dramatic effect. How well it will work depends on you” (Page 4).
I was most interested in her profiles of two types of highly-hypnotizable subjects: “fantasizers” (pages 2-3), and “dissociaters” (pages 3-4).
Here are three of Barrett’s eight bullet points on fantasizers:
o The memories that fantasizers have begin unusually early in life. Fantasizers’ recollections are also highly detailed. Of course, we cannot gauge how accurate fantasizers’ memories might be. One subject, for instance, recalled watching glowing alphabet letters popping one by one out of a shower drain. This might be a memory of a childhood dream, but also might well be a complete fantasy–or a drug-induced hallucination (Page 2).
o In childhood, fantasizers had had at least one, but usually many, imaginary companions often drawn from storybook characters, real-life playmates who had moved away, and pets and toys whom they believed could talk. One of my subjects had seen the movie Camelot as a child and, for two years, imagined being the son of Arthur and Guinevere, commanding the King’s court (Page 2).
o Parents of fantasizers encourage imaginative play. Fantasy occupies much of these people’s adult lives, too, getting them through boring chores and free time. Some fantasizers superimpose their daydreams onto their daily tasks. “I’m listening to my boss carefully,” recounted one subject, “but I’m seeing the Saturday Night Live character `Mockman’ next to him, imitating all his gestures (Page 2).
Dissociaters make up far less of the highly hypnotizable population. Here are two of Barrett’s six bullet points on dissociaters:
o Many such subjects reported a history of child abuse. Although some remembered this directly, some had been told by others that they had been battered, and one suspected it was because of multiple childhood bone fractures of dubious origins. Other dissociaters who had not been abused had suffered childhood traumas such as prolonged, painful medical conditions and before the age of 10 experienced the deaths of their parents. Some dissociaters say that they have developed the ability to “not think about” unpleasant things–a skill that they grow to use more and more frequently and subconsciously. They seem to evolve this adaptive talent for coping to ease the pain and difficulty of their early lives (Page 3).
o While fantasizers have excellent recall for daydreams, movies and stories that have captured their imagination, dissociaters are usually unable to recall them. They are often startled when called on unexpectedly by a teacher or a boss and often state that their mind has been “somewhere else,” though they can’t describe that place. They get intensely absorbed in books and films, losing track of time, but their memory of the stories is vague shortly thereafter (Page 3).
Judith Orloff, M.D. has a great article in the 7/21/10 Huffington Post, “The Health Benefits of Tears.” Here’s an excerpt:
Emotional tears have special health benefits. Biochemist and “tear expert” Dr. William Frey at the Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis discovered that reflex tears are 98 percent water, whereas emotional tears also contain stress hormones which get excreted from the body through crying. After studying the composition of tears, Dr. Frey found that emotional tears shed these hormones and other toxins which accumulate during stress. Additional studies also suggest that crying stimulates the production of endorphins, our body’s natural pain killer and “feel-good” hormones.” Read the whole article here.
