Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is a safe and natural therapy to increase motivation or alter behavior pattern, desired by the Client, through hypnosis. This trance state is really a pleasant feeling of relaxation that will allow you to accept desired and beneficial suggestions offered by the therapist to your unconscious mind. This part of the mind is a cavernous basin of knowledge that we draw on continuously to achieve automated responses to daily challenges. Hypnosis can be extremely beneficial and life-changing to recipients. The BMA advise all physicians and medical students to receive training in hypnosis.

What can Hypnotherapy help with?

The unconscious mind has been continually storing and filtering information from the moment of our own creation. It protects and promotes our wellbeing by drawing on our experiences to create habitual behaviour. Unfortunately, some of the learning experiences have not always been positive. However, both the positive and negative experiences have shaped our belief in how we view the world and how the world views us. These experiences have also taught us how to behave in any given situation. Sometimes our behaviour is inappropriate and leaves us at odds with; ourselves, others or situations.

Fortunately, a skilled hypnotherapist is able to gain access to your unconscious mind and by so doing will facilitate a change so you can once again experience behavioural freedom. Hypnotherapy is extremely versatile and can be used in many areas. So, if you think you would like to find out if hypnotherapy is for you and get more advice. You can leave a message here and Andrew will call or email you back. So, make sure you let him know your preferred choice.

THE HYPNOTHERAPY EXPERIENCE

Hypnotherapy is a gentle therapy that is completely natural and safe. It provides every Client with an opportunity so you can make changes to areas of your life you wish to change unconsciously.  The experience is carried out in a warm and comfortable environment so you can begin to feel relaxed and more comfortable now that you are considering taking positive steps forward. All our consultations and practices are strictly confidential so you can feel secure in the knowledge that only the people you choose to tell, maybe friends and relations, about your positive experience need know.

Once the nature of the change has been determined the therapist will explain to the Client the hypnotic states. There is nothing to be fearful of because trance has already been experienced by us all. You might have driven to a distant location and been unable to recall sections of the journey or you might have suddenly become aware of your surroundings and wondered where you are!

The hypnotherapist will create a tension-free environment so that you can positively relax. This pleasant feeling of relaxation will allow you to accept desired and beneficial suggestions offered by the therapist to your unconscious mind. This part of the mind is a cavernous basin of knowledge that we draw on continuously to achieve automated responses to life challenges.

It is an unfortunate reality that most people’s first encounter of hypnosis is through watching television and stage hypnotists at work. This can lead people to believe that they may be controlled or manipulated. Nothing, could be further from the truth. The Client is always in control and can accept or reject any suggestions offered.

HYPNOTHERAPY - A BRIEF SELECTION OF HISTORY

Hypnosis for health seems to have originated many years ago with the Hindus of ancient India who often took their sick to sleep temples to be cured by hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotic-like inductions were used to place the individual in a sleep-like state, although it is now accepted that hypnosis is different from sleep and more a trance.

The idea of this type of healing soon spread to the West through Egypt and Greece and was first entertained by Dr Franz Mesmer, a western scientist in 1770. His investigations of hypnosis included the use of magnets and he named this 'new' healing procedure ‘animal magnetism’. This name derived from Latin animus-breath (a life force that only resided in animate beings) and magnetism because of the magnetic force created by the magnets.

James Braid a Scottish neurosurgeon rejected Mesmer’s idea that hypnosis was induced by magnetism, and credited the ‘Mesmeric trance’ to a physiological state achieved through a process of ‘Mesmerism’ which is still a popular name in use today. Braid claimed that prolonged visual  fixation fatigued certain parts of the brain and caused a state of trance or a nervous-sleep. He named the process neuro-hypnosis which derived from the Greek neuro-nervous and hypnos-sleep. Finally, and after many investigations he realised that his patients were not asleep but in an altered state of consciousness and sought to change the name from hypnosis to ‘monoideism’. In 1843 he wrote his first book on hypnosis called Neurypnology.

The Annual Meeting of the British Medical Assosciation (BMA), in 1892, unanimously endorsed the therapeutic use of hypnosis. Later, in 1955 the BMA advised all physicians and medical students to receive fundamental training in hypnosis. Pope Pius XII gave his approval from the Vatican in 1956 and two years later in 1958, the American Medical Association (AMA)  approved a report on the medical uses of hypnosis. A further two years passed before the American Psychological Association endorsed hypnosis as a branch of psychology  and supplies the following definition:                                                     "Hypnotherapist -- Induces hypnotic state in client to increase motivation or alter behavior pattern through hypnosis. Consults with client to determine the nature of problem. Prepares client to enter hypnotic states by explaining how hypnosis works and what client will experience. Tests subject to determine degrees of physical and emotional suggestibility. Induces hypnotic state in client using individualized methods and techniques of hypnosis based on interpretation of test results and analysis of client's problem. May train client in self-hypnosis conditioning.

Milton Erickson, MD was born in 1901 and specialised in medical hypnosis. He was long considered the father of modern clinical hypnosis and was noted for his approach to the unconscious mind as creative and solution-generating. His approachto therapy was molded by his early career research into the nature of suggestion, hypnotic states, the mental mechanisms underlying psychodynamic processes, and the psychophysiological aspects of trance. He developed many ideas and techniques in hypnosis and is best appreciated today as a psychotherapy innovator. Erickson had a pivotal realization that even as a hypnotherapist, he could be most effective when not using formal or directive hypnosis. The nondirective, naturalistic style he invented is called Ericksonian hypnosis, and his revolutionary psychotherapeutic approach is called Ericksonian psychotherapy. He conceptualized what he was doing as actively catalyzing some new possibility, not as passively awaiting change or as commanding, prescribing, or controlling the ultimate outcome. His style of therapy has greatly influenced many modern schools of medicine and is now predominant.,

HYPNOTHERAPY AND THE PRESS

The Times on Line have their view on hypnotherapy here.

The Daily Telegraph report  in 2009 on hypnotherapy.