About Hypnotherapy
Resources
A good overview from the respected Mayo Clinic, freely available on the Internet, is Hypnosis in Contemporary Medicine by James H. Stewart, MD.
Today's world is full of stress. Hypnotherapy is very effective for relaxing you and teaching you to relax yourself.
It's well-known that stress interferes with the functioning of your immune system (see Segerstrom and Miller, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 130, No. 4, 601–630), and puts extra strain on your heart and vital organs. It can raise your blood pressure and cause headaches and muscle pain. Stress increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Dr Herbert Benson and his colleagues at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital have published extensive research on the benefits of relaxation for many problems including anxiety, cardiac issues, headache, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), infertility, insomnia, menopause, somatic medical symptoms, pain, surgery and woman's health issues.
A 2008 article, in fact, describes the role of stress in just about everything.
A hypnotherapist can teach you how to relax and lower your stress levels so that you are healthier, happier and more in control of your life.
See also Physical Health, below.
We all need extra motivation from time to time to attain our goals in life, whether they are career success, personal change or completion of a project. Hypnotherapy can help you overcome motivational barriers and pursue what you really desire.
Whether it's public speaking, dating, or standing up for themselves in work or interpersonal situations, many people lack confidence in themselves and their ability to succeed. Hypnotherapy can help you to change your negative patterns of thought and behaviour to positive ones and be the confident person you want to be.
Habits such as nailbiting can be socially embarrassing and personally distressing. Addictive habits such as smoking or overeating also threaten your health.
Hypnotherapy has enabled millions of people to overcome their unwanted habits. It's known, for example, to be the most effective way to stop smoking (apart from being diagnosed with heart disease), according to an analysis of more than 600 studies covering almost 72,000 people from America and Europe (University of Iowa, Journal of Applied Psychology, volume 77, No 4, August 1992; also reported in New Scientist, 31 October 1992). A more recent study found a well-planned programme using hypnotherapy to be more effective than a standard behavioural approach (Hypnosis for smoking cessation: A randomized trial, Carmody, Duncan, Simon, Sulkowitz, Huggins, Lee & Delucci, in Nicotine & Tobacco Research Volume 10, Number 5, May 2008, discussed in detail on my blog).
For addictions to alcohol or mind-altering drugs such as methamphetamines, heroin or Ecstasy, we suggest first contacting a recovery programme such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. Once you are "sober", hypnotherapy can help to deal with other issues surrounding your use of mind-altering substances, but it is difficult to do effective hypnotherapy work with people who are currently abusing these substances.
Many of the difficulties we have in life arise from traumatic events in our past, whether or not we are aware of the connection (though we are usually aware of the event itself).
Often, the past emotion is "frozen", left unresolved, and keeps emerging in the form of habits, physical symptoms, fears or phobias, anxiety, anger, sadness or depression, guilt, lack of confidence, lack of motivation, stress and tension.
The New Zealand Herald reports (19 September 2006) that a major Ministry of Health survey shows that nearly 46 per cent of New Zealanders will meet the criteria for having a mental disorder like some of those just mentioned at some time in their life, which puts the country at the high end of the scale internationally for mental disorder.
Hypnotherapists are trained in safe and simple techniques which help you to access and resolve past emotional distress. This generally leads to recovery from other symptoms.
If you have severe or long-lasting depression it is advisable to consult a doctor or psychiatrist, as there can be physical causes for depression which are best treated with other therapies.
You can get more information from Out of the Blue.
As mentioned above, just learning to relax will benefit your physical health, making you less likely to get sick and reducing your risk of heart disease.
Hypnotherapy can also help you learn to control, or in some cases even eliminate, physical symptoms. Symptoms which may be helped include:
Although in-depth scientific studies have not been undertaken, there is also evidence that hypnotherapy can help people to cope physically, as well as emotionally, with diseases such as cancer and the side-effects of treatment.
You should always consult a doctor first about any physical symptom which:
The use of hypnosis and self-hypnosis to control pain (and bleeding) during surgery is well-established and has been shown to help with improved surgical outcomes and quicker recovery.
Hypnotherapy can assist with both the motivation and the concentration to study and remember what you study.
Many procedures of hypnosis are similar to meditation or guided visualization, and undergoing hypnotherapy, or learning self-hypnosis, can help you to deepen your spiritual practice and self-understanding. Hypnotherapy is itself non-religious and is not tied to any particular spiritual expression, but can assist people of all faiths to improve their chosen spiritual disciplines.
Some people are able to experience what seem to them to be "past lives" under hypnosis. Whether these are actually past lives or are vivid metaphors created by the mind is not established, but experiencing them and resolving traumatic events within them often has a therapeutic effect.
Motivation, concentration and self-belief affect sports performance markedly. Hypnotherapy can assist with all these aspects and with nerves and anxiety which can inhibit performance under pressure.
"The Effects of Hypnosis on Flow States and Golf-Putting Performance"
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