Sign up for this free audio event and get access to talks by experts on stress management. The event takes place July 20 through July 26 and promises to be terrific. I listened to several recordings from the last summit on hypnosis, and they were terrific. Click here to sign up and see all the topics that will be covered.
This is a terrific free online event for hypnotherapy practitioners and those who are curious about how hypnosis might help them. Sign up here and gain access to daily 60-minute audio interviews with experts in the field. Each interview can be accessed for free on the World Summit site for 24 hours. A collection of all of the interviews can be purchased for download. Here is the schedule of speakers.
I’m really enjoying this and hope it will be an annual event.
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.
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.
If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, I would love for you to join me at my upcoming workshop, Tools for Coping with Stress. For more information, please visit the Hypnosis Workshops page of my website.
My husband and I have a birdbath in our living room that we have filled with sand and enjoy as an ever-evolving art project. Here is its latest incarnation—my homage to Hypnos, Greek God of Sleep, and Morpheus, Greek God of Dreams. You can read more about Hypnos and Morpheus in this previous entry.
I was happy to see “Hypnosis: Beyond Mumbo-Jumbo” by Bob Pargament in the Huffington Post (8/18/09). Here is the opening paragraph:
Arianna Huffington, while speaking on Bill Maher’s show last week, made a wonderful point about the over-medication of kids today and I couldn’t agree more. In this pharma-crazed culture we are overlooking some of the most effective means of natural calming and focusing and the best of all may be hypnosis. That’s what I do as my life’s work and it’s great for kids. Many people unfortunately are completely confused by this amazing modality.
Read the rest of the article here. It’s a good read!
I’m taking a quick break from my first day at the annual National Guild of Hypnotists convention in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The three workshops I’ve attended so far, from Don Mottin, Calvin Banyan, and Addie Kania, have all been fabulous! I’m so excited to be here and am blown away by how many offerings there are. Each hour there are 14 different workshops to choose from.
Okay, break over! Heading to “Habitual Smoking—Slaying the Three-Headed Dragon with Richard Kania.
Tonight I was reminded of a story that I heard Sandra Ingerman tell on Caroline Casey’s KPFA radio show, The Visionary Activist (4.26.07). The story, from indigenous traditions, is included in her book How to Heal Toxic Thoughts:
“A grandfather was talking to his grandson about many things. He said, ‘I feel as if two wolves were fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, angry, violent, and the other is loving, compassionate and strong.’ The grandson asked the grandfather, ‘Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?’ And the grandfather replied, ‘The one I feed.’”
I love this story because it demonstrates our nature as multifaceted beings. From time to time we all face internal conflicts in which the best part of us goes head to head with the not-so-best part of us. We can choose to “feed” or cultivate the part that speaks to our highest interests, and hypnotherapy is a wonderful tool for this.
From ScienceDaily’s June 6, 2009 article, “People Who Wear Rose-Colored Glasses See More, Study Shows:”
A University of Toronto study provides the first direct evidence that our mood literally changes the way our visual system filters our perceptual experience suggesting that seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses is more biological reality than metaphor.
‘Good and bad moods literally change the way our visual cortex operates and how we see,’ says Adam Anderson, a U of T professor of psychology. “Specifically our study shows that when in a positive mood, our visual cortex takes in more information, while negative moods result in tunnel vision. The study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience. Read the rest of the article here.
