Basics about Hypnosis and How it Can Heal: AN EXPLANATION OF HYPNOTHERAPY (Script made for a brief marketing cassette tape)

This is Del Morrill. I'm a counseling hypnotherapist. What that means is, that in my counseling practice, besides counseling, I use hypnosis and other methods for reaching the subconscious mind, in order to help people. I have been a counselor for over 30 years. I have been using hypnosis and other altered-state methods since 1986. Because, as a counselor and hypnotherapist, I have many methods at my disposal to assist people, my success rate is very high. As I tell my clients: I have a big tool-kit; if one thing doesn't work, something else will. When I use the term "hypnosis", I mean, by that, any method that reaches the subconscious mind, where the real urges and decisions and long-time habits lie. The conscious mind deals with short-term memory, short-term motivation, evaluating situations and making decisions. When your conscious mind wants to do something, or make a change, but the subconscious mind has made a different decision, that subconscious self wins. For instance, if someone wants to get rid of extra weight on their body, but the subconscious self feels comfortable with that weight, or has gotten used to certain ways of eating and certain choices of foods, then it becomes difficult to get rid of the weight. The subconscious self wins out. If a smoker wants to quit, his conscious mind is saying, "This isn't good for my health." But the subconscious self, which has that younger self within who began to smoke because he wanted to be "cool" with the other kids, is still there within, and doesn't want to quit. So, guess who wins again! Your subconscious, or unconscious, self wins, because it makes up more than 95 percent of your mind. It has many programs within it that come from imprints made throughout your lifetime. These are imprints of experiences and beliefs that you have received throughout your existence. It takes a hypnotherapist using hypnosis or other such tools to reach into what I often call that deeper mind, in order to change that programming. The word "hypnotherapy" merely means "the use of hypnosis for therapeutic purposes." This differentiates it from stage and other entertainment-type hypnosis. Hypnosis has use far beyond being a stage entertainment phenomenon. More and more people are becoming interested in whether the use of hypnosis can help them solve their problems or meet their goals in life. Hypnotherapists can help with such things as smoking and chewing tobacco, biting fingernails, pulling hair and other unhelpful habits. They can help you get rid of unwanted weight and maintain your ideal size, in a healthy and easy way. Hypnotherapists help people get over their fears and phobias. They can help you improve your golf game, and your athletic or stage performance. They help prepare someone for an easy surgery and quick recovery. They can help you heal relationships and change attitudes. They can help you go through difficult interviews or other potentially awkward situations. Hypnosis can ease pain and alleviate headaches. It provides a means to relax and handle stressful and difficult situations. It can free your creativity, including such problems as writer's block. It helps with study habits, focus, and passing exams. It can help with memory and other learning problems. There are so many issues that hypnotherapists and hypnosis can help with, far beyond most people's awareness. Let me explain hypnosis and other hypnotic methods work so well. The unconscious (or subconscious) mind is responsible not only for running our automatic body systems, but for holding our beliefs about life, love, ourselves, other people, other cultures, religion, ethics, etc. It takes care of everything we ever learned consciously. We've had to learn everything since we were born--how to eat, how to walk, how to brush our teeth. All of this began at a conscious level, until it became automatic and was taken over by the subconscious part of the mind. If we had to think through every little action that is required to do every little thing we do, we would go crazy. So it is a most important part of who we are. The subconscious mind is like a big stew pot of carrots, celery, potatoes, peas, meat, etc. In that stew is anything that's ever happened to us, everything ever said to us, everything we ever learned, everything that done to us, whether real, imagined, or even misunderstood. It houses our emotions, all the various parts of our personality, and all of the roles we play in life. In my counseling practice, I find that using hypnotic, or other trance-creating methods makes it possible for me to help people more permanently, than I can by using just talking-type counseling. These types of methods (or processes) are able to reach into that "stew-pot" filled with all our memory and beliefs, and actually change how we perceive and do things. It can even help our bodies work better, thereby helping us become healthier. Many people are either confused or even fearful of hypnosis. But that is only because they misunderstand it. Some think it means "mesmerism"--that is, controlling someone's mind. But their negative attitude about it comes from misunderstanding what it is and is not. Hypnotic states, or trance states, are "states of being" between being awake and being asleep. That is, anything other than being fully awake or fully asleep. The stages you go through from waking to sleeping, and from sleeping to waking, are hypnotic or trance states. These times are called "hypnogogic" states, which means that at those times of the day and night, you are most receptive to suggestions. What you watch on television before you fall asleep may be impacting you far more than you are aware. So everyone gets "hypnotized" every day. Or, another way to speak of it is that we got into trance-like states often. Such times are natural and normal. They are times when you become entranced. That is, you find yourself in a trance-like state. You?re driving and suddenly realize that you have missed your turn because your mind was somewhere else. For a few seconds, you had been driving without thinking about it at a conscious level. That, too, is a hypnotic state or "trance." That is, you were en-tranced about something else than your driving. When you're wrapped up in a book or television program, and someone calls your name, and you don't hear them, you?re entranced by the story. That is, you're in a hypnotic state. When you "day-dream" you are in a trance-state. When you try to fight from dozing off from the lights at night when driving on a straight-of-way, you are trying to fight off becoming "en-tranced," or being "hypnotized." Many times in our lives we become en-tranced by something or someone. And if we accept it into our belief system, then we are hypnotized by it. When we?re in that state, we?re more open to suggestion. Now, we can often decide whether or not we want to accept the suggestions given. For instance, we can absorb, without conscious thought, the suggestions given by advertisers to convince us of our need for certain products-- We'd be more loveable if we use the right deodorant. We'd have more fun if we drank the right soda. We'd be free if we had the right car. I don't think of having a pizza until it's advertised on TV. Sometimes we? re hypnotized by inference, rather than words - We women would be more acceptable if we were thin as rails like the actresses and models on television, movies and in magazines. Men would be happier if they were more muscular with great pecs and abs. All of these suggestions can be received as beliefs, or we can announce to ourselves that these are not what we believe. The difference is great, as to whether these become part of our belief system--that is, whether they hypnotize us. Deep prayer, or meditation, is a form of "trance," and therefore a kind of hypnotic state, in which you can become more aware, receive new insights and directions for your life, and are receptive to the suggestions for your life. This, too, is what I mean by a "trance" or "hypnotic" state. Mass healers, such as those on TV, are participating in this when they captivate a whole room of people into trusting them, believing, etc. to the point that people are healed. What has happened, is that they have become open to suggestion. Since most of our ills are caused from our mind, that is, what we believe or think or feel, then, it is important that our mind be changed, then to be well requires that we believe, think or feel differently. Now, let me clear up some frequent misconceptions about hypnosis and hypnotherapy: 1. The idea that a hypnotist can control you, can make you do what something you don't to do: Stage hypnotists, movies and TV often can give false impressions about hypnosis. Yes, they do remind us of the power of our own minds. But, they often give the impression that a person has some special power over a person, making them do something against their will. Nothing could be further from the truth. All of us have far more mental and physical ability than we use on a daily basis. The hypnotherapist acts as a kind of "guide" into your own interior to your greater ability, that is your deeper resources (that is, a greater part of your mind). It is a 100% consent state. But he can't MAKE you go where you don't want to go or use resources you don't want to use. A hypnotist can't make you do anything you don't want to do, or that goes against your own morality or ethics (despite Mission Impossible and other television and movie stories). If hypnotists could make people do what they don't want to do, we would be running the world and have all the money we wanted. In 13 years of working with this, I have never yet convinced any client to lay their savings account at my feet!!! A stage hypnotist may get very receptive people to do the most ridiculous things, because they're having fund, it's safe, and they trust him. if he said, "Pretend to take off your clothes," they might pantomime that action. But if he said, "Now, take off all your clothes in front of these people", they simply would not do it (unless one is an extreme exhibitionist, anyway). They would quit playing the game. The hypnotist would have stepped over the line, in his request. So each of those people on the stage are actually able to stop at any time to accept or reject any suggestion that makes them feel unsafe, or extremely humiliated. Being able to accept or reject suggestions is just as true in a hypnotherapist's office, where people come to get help. We are not out to get people to do silly things for the amusement of others. 2. The idea that your mind becomes "vacant" and therefore open to anything that comes along (including the devil): When you are hypnotized, all that is happening is that you are becoming more focused, or en-tranced. You are shutting out all the usual chatter that comes into our conscious minds. Contrary to being vacant, then, the mind is actually "filling up", bringing all its ability into the moment, to participate in making changes. You are putting all your mental ability at work. Because you are actually "in charge," you will accept only that which is right and helpful for you. 3. The idea that all your secrets will come tumbling out: Hypnosis is not a "truth" serum or other drug that lets Pandora's box fly open. You will not reveal all your secrets. Nothing comes forth when you are hypnotized than what you need to get the particular problem resolved. Anything else remains "hidden." In other words, even when you are hypnotized, if I asked you a question that you did not want to answer, you would be just as free to not answer it, as you are when you are NOT hypnotized. 4. The idea that hypnosis is a form of "brain-washing": Brain-washing involves things like being confined, for long periods, to small spaces with bright lights night or day, or no lights at all, going without sleep or being pulled out of sleep regularly, with little or no food, etc. In other words, a combination of lengthy deprivation and, often, drugs. This is certainly not what would happen in my office! As a hypnotherapist, I believe that each person possesses within himself or herself a deeper knowledge of what their problems are, and how to solve them. So, I use methods that help people go into that part of themselves to use more of their mind and capabilities to solve their problems or change their habits. Sometimes I do it with just positive suggestions that can change how they perceive something. Sometimes I help them discover the original cause of their basic attitude or belief that is keeping that problem in their life.