Hypnosis

What is it? What can it do? Who can it help?

 Hypnosis is a natural state of consciousness that we all use daily. It is a state much like the state
we are in as we are falling asleep, or when we are driving a car on the highway lost in thought.
A hypnotist uses the state of hypnosis to communicate directly with the subconscious mind using
suggestions that reflect the client’s goals in order to solve problems, change habits or beliefs,
improve relationships, change perceptions, among many other things. It has been used to speed
healing after surgery, for addressing pain during childbirth, for anesthesia. A powerful and effective,
yet often misunderstood tool, research shows that 93% of clients achieve their goals after 6 sessions,
some need less.  

How does it work? Hypnosis is really two things: the state of being in hypnosis and
the power of suggestion.
When suggestions are carefully crafted to match the client’s goals, the subconscious mind readily
accepts them. The result is lasting change.

 It works very powerfully because our subconscious minds are really in charge of much of
what we do. Think about it this way: when we first learn something,
like driving a car or riding a bike, it takes our conscious minds a lot of effort.  
At first, it can seem like there is too much to think about, too much to remember.
As we practice, though, it becomes easier. And then we get to the point where we do much of it without
thinking about it.  This is because our subconscious mind has taken over much of the task.

Our subconscious mind is in charge of everything of which we are not immediately aware,
from our heart beating and breathing, to healing, to reacting when we touch a hot stove, to walking home
while having a conversation with someone; much of what we do is relegated to the subconscious mind.

Our subconscious mind’s primary goal is to keep us safe and alive. It creates fears to protect us.
It creates beliefs to help us understand our world and direct our behavior in a way that keeps us safe and
protected. It is a literal thinker, yet understands symbols and stories.

Very often, we learn behavior patterns when we are very young,
and do not have the ability to think critically about things.  
These beliefs and behaviors become ingrained in our subconscious
minds, and become our fall back pattern.  So, even when the behavior is no longer serving our
needs, we tend to fall back on it, especially when we are distracted, stressed, tired, overwhelmed,
or out of sync somehow.

 Hypnosis allows clients to make changes quickly by directly communicating with the
subconscious mind. The subconscious mind can learn and change, and hypnosis helps it do that.
It allows these unconscious behavior patterns and beliefs to be brought to awareness, examined, and
changed. It also allows the subconscious mind to think about beliefs and habits in a different way,
so that a new fall back behavior can emerge. Fear can be reduced, symptoms of anxiety,
depression, stress and worry, which cloud our ability to see solutions, can be reduced.  
The perception of pain can be reduced. New solutions to problems can be discovered,
as the subconscious mind is prodded to see the problem in a different way.

Hypnosis is a powerful tool that can effectively help anyone overcome problems, such as:

Smoking cessation

Weight loss

Chronic Pain Management/Headaches

Improving habits and lifestyle

Increasing confidence and performance

Improving relationships

Improving symptoms of depression and anxiety

Removing Fears

Goal Setting

Improving outcomes for surgery/improve healing

Eliminating Bed Wetting

Improving Concentration

Improve Study Habits

Improve symptoms of Stress, Anxiety, Worry

Reduce or Eliminate Insomnia

Improve Motivation

Relaxation and Stress Reduction

Habit Removal

And Many More

What Happens During a Session

During a hypnosis session, the hypnotist and client first talk to determine the goal for the session.
The hypnotist will also talk to the client about what hypnosis is like, what it can do, and
what to expect, as well as answer any questions.

  After the goal of the session is determined, the hypnotist will discuss strategies for meeting the goal,
and they will work together to make a plan of action with the client.  The hypnotist will then assist the client
in entering a state of hypnosis, and once that is accomplished, the hypnotist will talk to the client about
the goals and changes determined during the session.

The client is always the one in control. The hypnotist is the back seat driver.
The client can control their level of hypnosis, which suggestions they accept, and even end the session.
The client can reject any suggestion.

8 Steps to Hypnosis
Preliminary: Client and Hypnotist determine goals and strategies.
Hypnotist answers questions and explains what will happen. The Goal of the Session is decided and
Suggestions agreed upon.
Progressive Relaxation: A state of relaxation is reached so that it becomes easier to enter a hypnotic state
Induction technique: a form of guided imagery and further relaxation. The state of hypnosis is induced.
Deepening Technique: creates a deeper state of hypnosis if necessary.
Depth testing: Hypnotist determines if client is sufficiently in hypnosis,
and will either do another induction or another deepening if necessary.
Hypnotic Script: using imagery, direct suggestion, and guided meditation,
the hypnotist will suggest the changes that were agreed upon during the preliminary discussion.
Post hypnotic suggestions: Hypnotist will offer suggestions that will support the changes after the
session is over.
Exiting: the hypnotist brings client out of hypnosis.

Important Hypnosis Facts:

Anyone can by hypnotized, with a few specific exceptions: very young children,
the severely cognitively impaired, and the severely mentally ill.

A client can reject any suggestion, and is always in full control. They can come out of hypnosis
whenever they want to.  No one can be hypnotized to do anything they don’t want to do.

The ability to be hypnotized is not a sign of a weak mind.  

A deep state of hypnosis is most often not necessary to meet most client’s goals.

It’s not a truth serum. Anyone can lie or refuse to answer a question under hypnosis.
In fact, it can be used to fool lie detectors.

Hypnosis does not replace medical or psychological care.
It can support clients in making changes and improving outcomes, but is never intended to
replace any kind of treatment that may also be necessary.

Sleep, Weight, Heart Disease, Diabetes

Sleep, Weight, Heart Disease, Diabetes

        

            Does a lack of sleep, or sleeping less than 7 or 8 hours a night, directly contribute to weight gain? Does it also directly contribute to other diseases that plague so many, such as heart disease and diabetes? The answer, according to recent research, seems to be yes.

             Sleep is more important, it has been recently found, that most of us have thought.  Sleep is important for healing, learning, mood, memory, motivation, managing appetite, and preventing obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and even Alzheimer's.  The repercussions of not getting enough good, high quality sleep on our physical and mental health are devastating.  Sleep and good sleep hygiene are both catastrophically neglected curative and preventative treatments for many of the chronic ailments that plague us all.
 
          Did you know that there is a direct relationship between poor sleep and obesity? Obesity problems and sleep problems go hand in hand.  When we don't get enough sleep, our appetite increases, our cells process blood sugar less effectively, and we have lower impulse control.  So, we are hungrier, less capable of processing what we eat, and less able to make good decisions about what it is that we are eating.
        In 2003, a group of researchers coordinating from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Health, and other organizations working on health research concluded a thirteen year long study about sleep. They found that in otherwise healthy young adults, a 95% correlation between short sleep (or not enough sleep) and obesity. They also found the reverse to be true, those subjects that slept an adequate number of hours were far less likely to be overweight, or to gain weight over the course of the study.

      This study was published in SLEEP in 2004, and concluded that improving sleep was an important tool for preventing and reversing obesity and the health problems that can go along with it.  This study took a look at people over the course of thirteen years, checking in on them at different ages.  Those with the shortest average sleep times had the highest body mass index by the end of the study, those that had the longest sleep times had the lowest BMI by the end of the study. They also found a correlation between short sleep and diabetes, with those sleeping fewer hours more likely to go on to develop diabetes later in life.  Why?

        When we are short on sleep, the cells of our body become more insulin resistant.  Insulin is released when glucose, or blood sugar, is present in our blood streams.  It is released by the pancreas to tell our cells to absorb the glucose out of our blood.  This is because, while cells can use glucose for energy, it is highly inflammatory to to the body, it is damaging to our circulatory system and the body needs to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

     When we are short on sleep, our cells can't absorb glucose as well.  They resist the call of insulin to absorb glucose.  The last cells to become resistant to insulin are fat cells, so our fat cells can absorb the sugar, turning it into more fat, but the rest of our body doesn't.  We end up staying hungry, and also increasing our fat cells.

    Inadequate sleep decreases the levels of the hormone leptin, which allows to feel full and burn fat.  Inadequate sleep also  increases the levels of ghrelin, the hormone that makes us feel hungry.  Inadequate sleep makes us, therefore, ravenous and not good at burning extra calories or fat reserves.
       Research shows that people who are short on sleep ate, on average, more than 300 more calories a day than they did when they had had a full night's sleep.   Trying to get by on 6 hours sleep is enough to cause this uptake in eating.  Based on evidence gathered through sleep studies over the past few years, not sleeping enough is very likely to be a key contributor to the obesity epidemic.

    Short sleep has also been shown to be hard on our hearts.  24% more heart attacks occur right after Daylight Savings Time ends, when we lose an hour.  The days after Daylight Savings Time begins, when we add an hour, see fewer heart attacks and strokes than any other time.

    Sleep is imperative for learning.  During sleep, our brains "empty out" our hippocampus, which stores short term memories, and decides what is important to remember, and important to process, and then stores what we need in long term memory.  Sleep helps us to put new information into context with things we already know, link memories, and solve problems.  Good sleep is crucial to learning.
  Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist who has been studying sleep, says, after years of intense research, "Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our lives, wellness, and longevity."

Sleep fights infection and illness by ramping up your immune system, which is why your body demands more rest when you are ill or recovering from something.  A few nights of not sleeping enough, less than 7 to 8 hours, renders the body more vulnerable to viruses, infections, even cancer.  Even a few nights of being short on sleep can reduce cancer fighting immune cells.  One study showed that in healthy young men, one night of sleeping only from 3am to 7am reduced the natural killer cells circulating in their immune systems by 70%.

Simply put, in order to feel well and to be well, we simply must sleep well.  The trouble is, how?

1.  The first step is to practice good sleep hygiene: Get up in the morning, stay up during the day time and go to sleep at a decent hour: 8 hours before your wake up time.  This is an important first step because you can only sleep when you are tired.

   2. The second step is to make sure you see natural light and get outside during the day to help signal to your brain when wake up time and sleep time are: your brain uses light to keep track of what time it is, and to keep track of when it's time to start to feel sleepy.
 
3. It's also important to sleep in the dark, for similar reasons, your brain only knows it's nighttime when it sees darkness. Exposure to bright light, especially overhead light in the evening throws off our body's signals that it is time to sleep, and delays the onset of sleep.  Think low light in the evening, and complete darkness at bedtime.

4. Sleep in a cool room.  Sleeping in a room that is too warm reduces sleep quality, as well. Our bodies are designed to lower their temperature while sleeping. Turn the heat down at night and sleep in a cool, dark room.

5. Reduce Alcohol.  While alcohol may make you feel drowsy, it actually impairs sleep.  Alcohol literally interferes with our ability to dream, so drinking before bed impacts learning and memory. It also interferes with our sleep cycles, so we end up waking up frequently during the night.  This disrupts how deeply we are able to sleep, so we do not get the full benefits of sleep when we have alcohol in our systems.

6. Eliminate Caffeine later in the day: Caffeine allows us to ignore signals that we are tired. It keeps the receptors in our brains for the chemical that builds up during the day, making us sleepier and sleepier the longer we are awake, busy. So we don't know how tired we are.  It takes at least 6 hours for caffeine to be cleared from the body, so eliminate caffeine after lunch time to improve sleep onset.
 
       Getting up early in the morning, getting outside in natural light, getting plenty of exercise during the day, avoiding napping,  reducing alcohol and caffeine, and getting to bed in a cool, quiet, dark room 8 hours before we have to get up can go a long way to positively impacting our mental and physical health.  If this does not improve your sleep, it might be time to see a doctor and have a sleep study done.  Ailments such as sleep apnea or other problems disrupt sleep and are also linked with obesity, diabetes, heart failure and stroke, as well as cognitive and memory problems.

    Improving sleep and protecting your sleep hygiene are major cornerstones of a lifestyle that allows you to be in your best shape mentally, physically, and emotionally.  If you have trouble sleeping, see if you can put any of these suggestions into practice.  Also, hypnotherapy can have a powerful impact on sleep. An experienced hypnotist can help not only uncover what might be impacting your ability to sleep, but will also be able to reduce physical and emotional symptoms that prevent falling asleep easily.  A good hypnotist will also be able to teach you how to use self-hypnosis at night in order to allow yourself to fall into a deep, restful, restorative sleep.

  If you are interested learning more about how hypnosis or hypnotherapy can help you improve your sleep, contact me!  Send me an email, comment on this post, or find me on facebook: @Tina M Grasso!