Hypnotherapy - Prana Vaidya

With more and more people becoming aware and turning to alternative medicines and treatments, Hypnosis is fast becoming a Key Factor in helping people in their day-to-day lives. Science now recognizes Hypnosis. Professors Posner and Amir Raz (USA) released scientific research factors features in the New York Times 2005. The misconceptions created by stage shows, cultures, beliefs and an uninformed public have created a Fear Factor that has prevented many people from using the healing power available from Hypnosis. A visit to our professional centre, will not only provide you with a very enjoyable, relaxing 60 – 90-minute session, but also give you an informed insight into what treatments and techniques would best suit your needs. The total confidentiality creates a trust factor between Client and Therapist that enables the Client to feel safe, secure and motivated to achieve a positive result. At our Treatment Centre, total professionalism combined with modern day techniques and research provides you with an opportunity to improve your Lifestyle.

Hypnosis can be tremendously helpful in uncovering and resolving long-held and deep-seated patterns of limitation. As children, many people take on erroneous belief systems that then affect their lives in many ways. With the use of various hypnosis techniques, limiting beliefs can be identified, acknowledged and worked with so that release can occur and people become free to create more fulfilling lives. Vash works according to the principles of client-centred therapy and their years of practice as a social worker, counselling others, adds to her competency as a hypnotherapist.

What is Hypnosis?

The term “hypnosis” comes from the Greek word “hypnos”, meaning “sleep.” Hypnotherapists use exercises that bring about deep relaxation and an altered state of consciousness, also known as a trance. It may be surprising for many to learn that we experience trance states often and naturally during the course of our daily lives; reading a book, watching a film, even passing into ordinary sleep involves a kind of trance state. The experience of hypnosis can seem like a state of neither asleep nor awake and a little like daydreaming, with a pleasant feeling of deep relaxation behind it all.

Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, when you are in a focused state of concentration and are able to access your subconscious mind to bring about a positive change. Hypnotherapy helps you gain more control over your behaviour, emotions or well-being. When we are able to concentrate and focus, we are able to use our mind more powerfully. In laymen’s terms hypnosis is the introduction of suggestions into the powerful subconscious mind. The Therapist will get the conscious mind quiet or passive so he or she has access to the subconscious to introduce the suggestions.

How does Hypnosis work?

When something happens to us, we remember it and learn a particular behaviour in response to what happened. Each time something similar happens, our physical and emotional reactions attached to the memory are repeated. In some cases, these reactions are unhealthy. In some forms of hypnotherapy, a trained therapist guides you to remember the event that led to the first reaction, separate the memory from the learned behaviour, and replace unhealthy behaviour s with new, healthier ones.

During hypnosis, your body relaxes and your thoughts become more focused. Like other relaxation techniques, hypnosis lowers blood pressure and heart rate, and changes certain types of brain wave activity. In this relaxed state, you will feel at ease physically yet fully awake mentally and may be highly responsive to suggestion. If you are trying to quit smoking, for example, a Hypnotherapist’s suggestion may help convince you that you will not like the taste of cigarettes in the future. Some people respond better to hypnotic suggestion than others.

There are several stages of hypnosis

• Re-framing the problem
• Becoming relaxed
• Dissociating by letting go of critical thought patterns
• Responding by complying with a hypnotherapist’s suggestions
• Returning to usual awareness
• Reflecting on the hypnotherapy experience

What happens during a visit to the Hypnotherapist?

Before you start, your therapist will ask questions on your goals and past history. You will be asked about your medical history and what why you wanted a session. You will also be asked what condition you would like to address. This helps the hypnotherapist understand your personality and needs to decide on the best method to use during your session. The Hypnotherapist may explain to you what hypnosis is and how it truly works. During our pre-induction interview, I will explain how hypnosis is an interactive experience between us. I will also explain how your subconscious will lead you to just the right depth of trance to accomplish your goals. This is also the time to find out what type of induction will suit you best and what suggestions will be appropriate for you. We’ll establish trust, build rapport, build your sense of positive expectation and correct any misconceptions you have. Each subsequent session begins will begin with a pre-induction interview to determine the goal for that particular session.

How many treatments will I need?

As a general rule perhaps 4 to 6 sessions would do the trick, and the hypnotic experience may need to be modified to better suit a persons’ personal and therapeutic needs. Once you’ve had your sessions, the hypnotherapist can record the script for you so that you’re able to utilize the recording at home and in your own time.

What illnesses or conditions respond well to hypnosis?

Hypnosis is used in a variety of settings, from emergency rooms to dental offices to outpatient clinics. Clinical studies suggest that hypnosis may improve immune function, increase relaxation, decrease stress, and ease pain and feelings of anxiety.

Hypnotherapy can reduce the fear and anxiety that some people feel before medical or dental procedures. For example, studies show that dental patients who underwent hypnosis had a significantly higher threshold for pain than those who were not hypnotized. Hypnosis may also improve recovery time and reduce anxiety and pain following surgery. Clinical trials on burn patients suggest that hypnosis decreases pain (enough to replace pain medication) and speeds healing. Generally, clinical studies show that using hypnosis may reduce your need for medication, improve your mental and physical condition before an operation, and reduce the time it takes to recover. Dentists also use hypnotherapy to control gagging and bleeding.

A hypnotherapist can teach you self-regulation skills. For instance, someone with arthritis may learn to turn down pain like the volume on a radio. Hypnotherapy can also be used to help manage chronic illness. Self-hypnosis can enhance a sense of control, which is often lacking when someone has a chronic illness. Clinical studies on children in emergency treatment centers show that hypnotherapy reduces fear, anxiety, and discomfort.

Other conditions that may respond to hypnotherapy include:

• Stop smoking
• Focus and concentration
• Weight loss
• Stress/anxiety/self esteem
• Sports performance
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Rape and abuse – child/adult
• Building Confidence
• Relaxation
• Treating Phobias and fears
• Sleeping disorders
• Interpersonal Problems
• Psychosomatic Complaints
• Post Trauma Relief
• Pain Management
• Asthma
• Alopecia
• Insomnia
• Labour and Delivery
• Cancer related pain
• Indigestion Controlling anger and rage
• Coping with HIV/AIDS
• Nail biting
• Bed wetting
• Past trauma
• Stress Management
• Academic Performance
• Athletic Performance
• Help with Life Transitions
• Preparation for Medical/Dental Procedures
• Blocks to Motivation and Creativity
• Treatment of Grief and Sudden Loss
• Addictions
• Depression
• Headaches
• Phobias
• Fibromyalgia
• Skin disorders
• Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
• Past Life Regression

Brief History of Hypnosis

The origins of hypnosis go back many millennia. Indeed, many ancient cultures and civilisations knew of hypnosis and used it as a therapeutic device. Documents from the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Indians, Chinese, Persians and Sumerians show extensive studies in hypnosis, altered states of consciousness and parapsychology. Hypnosis was considered as a cure for many physical and emotional ailments and disorders. In other words, hypnosis is at least more than 6,000 years old; some scholars claim that it could be as old as Prehistory as certain cave paintings show priests apparently in state of trance as well as geometrical designs thought to depict visions seen in an altered level of consciousness.

In the 18th century the most influential figure in the development of hypnosis was Dr Frantz Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician who was a charismatic and at times controversial personality. He used magnets and metal frames to perform “passes” over the patient to remove “blockages” (i.e. the causes of diseases) in the magnetic forces in the body – nowadays we call such forces “life energy” – and to induce a trance-like state. He soon discovered that he could reach equally successful results by passing his hands over the patient which he did for hours at times. He named this method “animal magnetism.” After Mesmer’s’ death in 1815 one of his disciples, Armand de Puysegur, carried on his work and took it one step further. He discovered that the spoken word and direct commands induced trance easily and noticeably faster than “mesmeric passes” and that a person could be operated upon without pain and anaesthesia when in trance.

However, the record for surgery under trance belongs to Dr James Esdaile, an English physician, who performed his first operation without anaesthetic in India and reached an incredible tally of 300 major operations and a thousand minor operations using hypnosis or mesmerism as it was still called at the time.

The next impulse in the history of hypnosis was given by the Scottish optometrist, Dr James Braid who discovered by accident that a person fixating an object could easily reach a trance state without the help of the mesmeric passes advocated by Dr Mesmer. In 1841 he published his findings, refuted Mesmer’s work and inaccurately named his discovery “hypnotism” based on the Greek word “hypnos” which means “sleep”; it was a total misnomer as hypnosis is not sleep; yet the name remained and mesmerism became hypnotism.

Another precursor of modern hypnosis and self-development was Dr Emile Coue who, at the end of the 19th century, was a believer in auto-suggestion and in the role of the hypnotist as a facilitator of changes/healing in the client’s condition by involving the total participation of the client in the hypnosis process. His well-known self-help statement: “Day by day in every way I am getting better and better”, is still used in most self-improvement therapies. Around the same period Sigmund Freud, the father of psycho-analysis, used hypnosis in his early work but soon became disillusioned by the concept.

In the last 3 to 4 decades of the last century we have witnessed an abundance of self-help and positive thinking therapies and methods, some of them openly using hypnosis, others more covertly. Technological advancements, such as television, cassette recorders and tapes, video tapes and the globalisation of information through the Internet, have made the various uses of hypnosis – from hypnotherapy to stage hypnotism – better known, more accessible and popular.