Energy Hypnosis Article

Healing Hypnosis

Hypnosis & Healing - Is It Possible?

by Silvia Hartmann

Healing With Hypnosis - Is It Possible? | Healing, Hypnosis & Stress | Hypnosis Self Healing | Hypnosis Higher Power Healing | Hypnosis & Healing - Conclusion

Healing With Hypnosis - Is It Possible?

A lot of hypnotists and hypnotherapists are scared of talking about healing.

This is because when a person in the last stages of terminal cancer who "has tried everything else" comes to their door, we look at that and think, "How am I supposed to heal you now? It's impossible!"

It isn't held to be a good idea to give people false hope that something might come of it; indeed it is legislated against.

So we have a lot of negativity, a lot of pressure and a lot of reversals on the topic of hypnosis and healing.

This seriously gets in the way of something that has the potential to actually really be quite miraculous.

Hypnosis is magical in nature - meaning that we really don't understand what's going on, what it is, what it does, and how it does that.

We have observed certain phenomena that happen with people when you hypnotize them, and then there's the whole business of hypnotic suggestions which is frankly, quite freaky and impossible to explain with today's psychology and science paradigms.

Can you heal a person with hypnosis?

Who knows?

And yet, there is a glimmer of possibility there, a potential that SOMETHING might happen, some good might come of it, because we cannot actually say for certain that HYPNOSIS CAN NOT HEAL.

If you just look back at that statement, don't you get a small sense of excitement? A tingle of - wow, that would be really something ...

That feeling you're having, that could be called hope.

In and of itself, hope is one of the most precious states for any human; for when that goes, you could say that all is lost.

I am going to back up now from there and look at the most basic, simple and PROVABLE effects of hypnosis on healing and we can start from there - nice, rock solid reality.

Healing, Hypnosis And Stress

A person who is ill with anything at all, and never mind terminal cancer or such, is going to be under IMMENSE physical stress.

There is the stress from the illness, and then on top of that, the stress from the treatments.

But they are also going to be under the most extraordinary MENTAL stress, and EMOTIONAL stress.

Put that together with the physical stress, and you have a totality environment THAT IS NOT CONDUCIVE TO ANY FORM OF HEALING.

This environment, you could even call it a toxic environment, is going to make it a whole lot harder for the self healing abilities of the body to do what they can do.

IT MUST, MUST, MUST BE THE FIRST AIM OF TREATMENT TO REDUCE STRESS ON THIS PERSON.

The body MUST heal itself; there is no doctor who can creep around in the blood vessels, no machine and no chemical which can do that for the body - it is ONLY the body who can save our lives if we are ill.

We can only ASSIST it - and removing stress, all and every kind, as much as possible, as often as possible, is the really the first and foremost strategy to help the body, and the whole person.

This is something, perhaps the ONE thing, we really do have control over - to reduce stress as much as we can.

The body must be kept supported as much as possible with outstanding food that is easy to digest and contains ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING that can help in its endeavours to restore itself; and the mind and emotions MUST be kept calm, clear and flowing gentle because having massive amounts of adrenaline in your system, day and night, actually puts self restoration and self healing processes ON HOLD.

Adrenaline is for fight or flight; it is for imminent danger and shuts off all manner of other processes to retain energy for fight and flight.

Hypnosis is the easiest and most profound way known to human kind to make a person fully and deeply relaxed; to give their bodies a chance, even just for a time, to enter a state of being where restoration and healing is THE ONLY AGENDA.

That is the absolute baseline of using hypnosis for healing - the immediate and intense stress relief as the hypnotized person enters states of deep calm and relaxation, and remains there for the duration of the induction. If there is no other factors involved, the deep hypnotic trance states will turn automatically into sleep; sleep is once again, essential for well being and something that is so precious and hard to come by for people who are seriously ill, and possibly in a tremendous amount of mental, emotional and physical pain.

EVEN A FEW MINUTES OF HYPNOSIS INDUCED SLEEP ARE BETTER THAN NO SLEEP AT ALL.

To sum up this section, the most important points one more time.

• Hypnosis is THE instant stress reducer and for as long as it lasts, will allow a person to relax much, much more deeply and quickly than anything else other than knock out medication.
• Hypnotic trance leads naturally into sleep. Sleep is of the essence to allow the body to use all its powers of regeneration and self healing. Especially delta sleep, which HARDLY NO-ONE WHO HAS A SERIOUS ILLNESS gets to experience any longer, produces the greatest amount of potential for self healing.
• THERE ARE NO DOWNSIDES OR SIDE EFFECTS to using as much hypnosis as you want, and for as long as you want or need. Instead of becoming less effective, hypnotic trances become MORE PROFOUND as the person learns to go into trance more easily, and to go more deeply as time goes by.
• ANY amount of time spent in a hypnotic trance, or the sleep that follows, IS GOING TO HELP THE BODY - and the mind, and the emotions.

So that is the absolute base line of benefits of hypnosis in healing.

But what about the mysterious part?

Hypnosis Self Healing

Is it really possible to heal oneself of a major PHYSICAL illness with hypnosis?

I have the funny feeling that if I said, "Oh, sure, of course, YES!" there may be law suits brought against me for "giving desperate people false  hope" and "promising quack cures" and all sorts of "professional misconduct" charges.

So I am not going to say that.

What I am going to say instead is this.

• The true reality of the so called "mind body healing" of which hypnosis is a sterling example is A TOTALLY UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.

We don't know the first thing about any of it.

Is there really an aspect of us, each one of us, "the light within" or "the higher self" or even "the magical child within" that COULD assist in real physical healing?

As at the very beginning of this article, I would state absolutely once more that it HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN SCIENTIFICALLY THAT SUCH A THING DOES NOT EXIST.

It is possible that there is.

Many people will swear by this, and say that they believe; others go further and they will say that they KNOW these things exist, that they are really real, and that we CAN call upon these sleeping resources to wake up and come to our assistance.

For us, right here, right now, me typing on my laptop on a beautiful sunny day in February 2008, and you reading these words in your time, in your place, it is THE POSSIBILITY that should interest us.

If someone is really seriously ill, terminally ill even, what do we have to lose?

It's not as though there was something better to do than to make a sincere attempt, even if it is driven by fear and need to begin with, to try and rally these mysterious forces and have them go to work on our behalf, be by our side, help and support us in every way possible.

Please note that I am NOT talking here about calling in the healing powers of Jesus, the angels, or other forms of EXTERNAL entities; this a different story and a fascinating one as well.

I am talking about the extra-ordinary abilities and powers that reside INSIDE EACH HUMAN BEING by right of birth - these undiscovered and underused abilities of our systems that MAY exist and that MAY VERY WELL help us out if we can get them back on line.

Monks and holy people over the ages have practised to activate these systems in prayer and meditation; hypnosis is a short cut and an aid to make these kinds of activities a whole lot quicker, easier and more reliable, as the processes of hypnosis themselves create the right environment for such mental, emotional and spiritual activities to take place.

The Energy Mind, Hypnosis & Healing

In the past, people used to talk about the "unconscious mind", some part of us that lies mostly dormant, is little used, and contains all manner of strange things and mysterious abilities.

In my work, I call this "the energy mind" - a very simple metaphor, for I just say that our energy body has energy hands (healing hands!), a heart of energy, energy veins and arteries (meridians!) - and an energy head.

That is the energy mind.

We communicate consciously with the energy mind by using so called "metaphor", but that's a misnomer because we really communicate with it by full on, real life-experience like mental movies, complete with feeling, soundtracks, sensations and the full realism of a lucid, living dream.

Once again, for a beginner, and most importantly, for a person under highest stress, such as is the case in illness and even more so, in a terminal illness, it is near enough IMPOSSIBLE to enter such states of lucid clarity and absolute awareness, Zen states of the highest order.

With hypnosis, however, it IS  possible - that's what hypnosis is particularly good at, in fact.

Now, the hypnotic healing adventure is not "only" about the desperately needed relaxation, but it has a purpose - to somehow stimulate the energy mind, to ask it to act, to make it bring about changes and healing, to wake up the magical healing powers within, as it were.

This is a very important aspect of self healing. People with a purpose and people who have hope have statistically a better chance of recovery. The very act of choosing to undertake hypnotic self healing journeys is a powerful sign that we haven't given up, and that we will do what we can from our end to affect restoration and healing.

All this is already given - and before we even start to implement meditation exercises, creative hypnotic healing techniques and healing metaphor work which are all things that occur in healing hypnosis programs, and where the greatest potential for healing exists.

Hypnosis, Healing & Higher Powers

We have already observed that relaxation when you are distressed and in  pain is near enough impossible without serious help from hypnosis.

One other thing becomes very difficult - and that is prayer to higher powers.

It is a lot easier if a person has been practising entering a state of connection to their personal guardians and higher powers BEFORE they became ill, but in this day and age, a lot of people become ill who do not have such practice since childhood.

Using hypnosis and the hypnotic process to gain access to a calm, clear state whilst the body is resting produces powerful prayer states, where one may reach out to higher powers and receive their blessings in return.

I personally believe that this is a very important aspect in healing and one that is often overlooked.

The higher powers, forces beyond life and death, have a unique effect on a person's outlook, especially in illness, and especially in terminal illness.

Such intimate, personal connections with higher forces have the power to profoundly soothe a person's emotions, to turn their thoughts from negativity and fear towards hope and there being "more", as well as this "more" being beautiful in essence; and to provide much needed extra energy and support during even the darkest hours.

Hypnosis & Healing - In Conclusion

I believe that hypnosis is currently vastly underrated as a valid, important and UNIQUE treatment that runs alongside any other intervention to really HELP PEOPLE in a profound, positive and absolutely measurable way.

At the bottom line and in its simplest version, hypnosis helps to relax the body. If it didn't do any more than that, that would be already a HUGE GIFT in and of itself.

But there is more to using hypnosis, and altered states to reach out AND IN to muster all our resources towards true healing, than just relaxation.

How this "more" plays out in each individual case is impossible to predict at this point.

Perhaps in some cases, it slows down the processes of the disease as the body has more fight left in it when it is less stressed. Perhaps in some cases, it helps with reducing side effects, reducing distress, reducing pain, or helping someone to sleep better.

Perhaps in some cases, a healing in the true sense of the word is within the realms of possibility.

I don't want to give anyone "false hope" or promise a miracle of healing.

• All I am saying is that there is so much left unexplored and that we have NOTHING to lose and EVERYTHING TO GAIN by using much, MUCH more hypnosis in healing, much more regularly, much more often.

It is as simple as putting a portable CD player by the side of your bed, inserting a favourite hypnosis CD and pressing PLAY.

If only for a time, we get to walk in beautiful gardens, calling on our own strength, or communing with our guardians and prophets instead of just lying there alone in the dark, shaking with fear and terror and in huge grief and pain.

I cannot help but think, my God, that must be worth something ...

Silvia Hartmann

February 2008

Healing With Hypnosis - Is It Possible? | Healing, Hypnosis & Stress | Hypnosis Self Healing | Hypnosis Higher Power Healing | Hypnosis & Healing - Conclusion

Hypnosis & Healing - © Silvia Hartmann 2008. All Rights Reserved.