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September 2014 | Read this issue and more at www.healthandwellnessmagazine.net |
Healthy
Hypnosis
By Charles Sebastian
The image we have today of hypnosis is much the same as it was a
hundred years ago: a stage performer
putting people “under,” and making
them do things they wouldn’t normally do. While many stage hypnotists
still play into that image for drama
2 HAMBURG JOURNAL
and effect, the field of hypnotherapy
has been moving forward in the last
fifty years, helping many patients with
problems as yet unsolved elsewhere.
Smoking, drinking, chewing,
overeating, and many other activities
which can easily lead to addiction are
prime candidates for hypnotherapy.
Over time and with years of unconWWW.HAMBURGJOURNAL.COM
scious practice, the mind has focused
on these activities, been obsessed to
some degree with them, derived some
payoff from their ongoing use, and at
some point feels it cannot willingly
detach. Most times, this inability to
detach from these habitual activities
remains within the realm of functioning adulthood, but when people
become less or non-functional due
to these intrusive elements, the term
“addiction” is applied. Hypnotherapy
works so well with many of these
issues due to the process of hypnosis working off of mental focus
and intent. A certain mental focus
is brought about during hypnosis,
entraining the mind to one topic or
focus and excluding all others. This is
why when someone is indeed “under,”
they lose their physical sensations to a
large degree.
Hypnosis is now being used to help
pregnant women with the pain of
delivery, to anesthetize patients during surgeries, and to change the mental process for higher performance in
sales and business.
Hypnosis was first brought to
attention in the 18th and 19th centuries by the likes of Franz Mesmer and
James Braid. The former, of course,
brought about the term “mesmerism,” a popular and mystical power
ascribed to healers as well as charlatans. While the process of hypnosis
was described by these figures as well
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as many of their contemporaries, the
quantifiable aspects remained elusive.
Some people seemed to have a greater
propensity for going “under,” while
others barely felt its effects. Some
people would remain partially in control while others would not. There
was such an unexplained disparity
between those who partook of hypnosis that Stanford University decided to develop the Stanford Hypnotic
Susceptibility Scale (SHSS), which
measures a person’s likelihood of
being hypnotized. Some ascribe a
higher IQ to being more easily hypnotized, yet the proof of this claim is
not verified.
Regarding hypnotherapy, perhaps
the greatest detracting argument
would be that hypnosis creates a
placebo effect i