I was reading an article the other day on a medical website about the top approaches to pain management. Among those listed was Self-Hypnosis. The writer went on to say that even though it oftentimes successfully works, how it works is not understood.
I have specialized in teaching clients and students Self-Hypnosis techniques for over 20 years and I can tell you from experience not only that it works but how it works for managing pain.
Self-Hypnosis assists a person in moving their attention away from the pain to another place in time. Most people that I see that have pain are needlessly focusing on the pain. I teach them to bring their focus and attention someplace else: a relaxing place in nature, a past memory of something pleasant, a future image of doing something that brings joy or success, a future image of being without the pain and enjoying life. When I suggest that a client think about a positive image, once their unconscious brings forth an image, I suggest that the person bring all their senses into the experience: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory. Bringing all the senses into the picture expands and deepens the good feelings associated with it. As a person does this, he is altering his brain chemistry with hormones and neurotransmitters that stimulate, support, and bring about good feelings. Once these chemicals enter the bloodstream, the entire body positively responds. This response set brings about feelings of harmony.
Spending time in the future in your mind and imagination thinking about pleasant experiences and feel-good experiences goes a long way in reducing and healing pain. Again, learning to train your mind in the sojourns it takes is an awesome skill that will help you to positively alter your own brain chemistry and will bring about greater health, harmony, and peak performance.
Hundreds of medical research studies using placebo medicine or sugar pills report that the placebo oftentimes works as well as the actual medication. This confirms one very important principle of medical self-hypnosis and that is the power of suggestion should not be overlooked or underrated as a healing agent. I have worked with thousands of students with pain and have helped them use the power of their own mind and imagination to not only manage pain but in some cases to completely rid themselves of it.
Self-Hypnosis works upon the principle of reframing. Reframing is taking an image of something that you have seen as unpleasant and changing it into something that is pleasant. Your mind and imagination have the amazing ability to transcend time. You can be in past time, present time, and future time in a matter of seconds. When you picture something from your past, present or anticipate something in your future that bothers you, through the power of your own creative imagination and thoughts, you can alter that image or thought so that it doesn’t affect you negatively anymore. Since how we see and experience our past determines how we see and experience the future, spending time clearing away those old memories is important to our health and well being and to mitigating pain.
Much of the pain we experience is directly tied to past hurts, disappointments, and losses that have not been properly and effectively addressed. Self-Hypnosis can help you address these issues in two ways: seeing them for what they really are and by seeing them differently and thus experiencing them differently. In terms of the latter, it has nothing to do with avoiding feelings and everything to do with seeing things in a different way from a new and healthier vantage point. Much of the past that haunts us only haunts us because we are accepting responsibility for it. Many people suffer unnecessarily by accepting the blame or the guilt associated with childhood events that were clearly not their fault. Self-Hypnosis works on the principle of separating truths from untruths. When we live with untruths, we needlessly suffer. Once the truth is uncovered, we are free. This state of freedom is the ultimate goal of Self-Hypnosis and meditative practices.
Another approach is locating the pain within the body and breathing into that painful place. As you breathe into the painful area the pain typically subsides. Asking a person who is experiencing a stress headache to describe what the pain looks like helps transform the pain into a metaphor that represents the pain. Once the metaphor is created, “It looks and feels like a rope tightening around my head”, the person can then go in and loosen the rope or untie the rope. This gesture can slowly relieve the head pain with the added suggestion that the pain is lessening as the rope is loosened more and more.
It is always important to make certain that you do not have a medical condition that needs to be addressed. Research does confirm, however, that most health issues are stress related. Learning to effectively deal with stress via Self-Hypnosis or meditation, therefore, are outstanding ways to help you dramatically improve your overall health and well being.
Another principle of why and how Selh-Hypnosis works is, “Where the mind goes the body will follow.” The 2000 Olympics is a perfect example. Olympic diver Laura Wilkinson was in 8th place when I turned on the TV. Chinese women’s divers were in 1st and 2nd place and then Laura began diving perfect ‘10s’ and slowly moved from 8th place to 1st place. By the time the event was over, Laura Wilkinson won the Gold Medal. When the interviewer asked her how she regained her composure and did this amazing feat, Laura told him that she began to see herself in her imagination diving perfectly, moving towards the water with perfect form, and entering the water perfectly. In her imagination she saw the judges hold up signs with a 10 on each one and heard the roar of the crowd enthusiastically applauding. In future time, Laura saw perfection and her brain chemistry, feelings, and body responded with perfection.
Deep breathing, relaxation, reframing, creative imagery, traveling through time in your mind and imagination, metaphor, separating truths from untruths are all effective Self-Hypnosis processes. Self-Hypnosis, creative imagery, and imagination can work miracles as you learn to use the inherent God-given power within you to effect change. These are but a few of the dozens of techniques and Self-Hypnosis processes available for us to learn and use on a daily basis.
John A. Tamiazzo is the author of Returning to the Land of Oz: Finding Hope, love, and Courage on Your Yellow Brick Road available at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and barnesandnoble.com. Returning to the Land of Oz is also available at Amazon.com as a Kindle e-book. Visit his blog-site and click on Events and Lectures to see when he will be offering one of his programs near you!
No comments:
Post a Comment