I received a call from a gentleman who just had been told his brain cancer was terminal. Six months to live. Nothing more Western medicine could do except pain medications.
Desperate, he would do anything to resolve his cancer.
People often turn to hypnotherapy when they have exhausted other options. I had just watched a friend die of brain cancer.
I had a strong sense of what this gentleman was going through.
Research on the internet showed him the powerful mind, when used with the right training, could give him a way to think a path to recovery.
In essence, he was correct. With training a person can accomplish many things they did not believe possible. They are not so much hypnotizing themselves to be better, but de-hypnotizing themselves from beliefs that had held them back from goals.
The Way It Works
I have mentioned the brain capacity available to us. We only use 5 percent. Ten percent of that is our conscious mind, the voice we hear in our head, and 90 percent is subconscious. The subconscious holds everything about us from the moment we were born to the moment that you read this essay. Everything is there.
When I was only 15 years old, I took a summer job on a building site. I was paired with a 6-foot-4, 260-pound Irishman who could hoist cast iron bathtubs onto his shoulders and carry them up three floors all day long without breaking a sweat. He assured me I would always remember him. He was right. Any time that I smell roofing tar, his face is the first image I see. My subconscious has attached the smell of tar to him. You may experience the same kind of memories stimulated by sound, sight, touch, smell.
In the case of this gentleman, he wanted to learn to relax to focus his attention on healing himself. I gave him a visualization that seems to be helping. Visualize his cancer as a solid black mass, I said. We all know even if we do not take medications for certain ailments, ultimately they go away as a direct result of our body’s ability to heal itself.
Making It Effective
The same concept helps us heal what we want to create within hypnosis. By asking the client to see his cancer as a black ball, he was to visualize his cancer being attacked by his body so the body could heal itself, shrivel the cancer and eventually disappear.
He enjoyed our session. He pledged to try the exercises. Although not completely recovered, the doctors have noticed his cancer growth rate has slowed. His life expectancy is becoming longer by a couple of months.
His success is not due to me but to his desire to believe that he could be better in spite of what he had been told. He dehypnotized himself from what his doctors had been telling him and began to believe in the power of his mind.
I remember a young lady whose doctor referred her to me for pain management. Racked with constant pain, I met her at her doctor’s office. At the end of the session, she was pain-free for the first time in two years. When she went in to see the doctor, the office staff commented on how relaxed and happy she looked. Unfortunately, after her doctor visit, she emerged saddled again with pain. A classic example of how a person can feel better but is drawn back to her pain as a result of a doctor visit.
The doctor could not believe what he was seeing. He had to remind his patient of what she was supposed to be feeling, reinforcing her old behavior.
Hypnosis is amazing. It can help anyone to accomplish anything he or she wants. All that is needed is a belief that you can be better, then do the work within hypnosis to feel and to be better. Learn to self-hypnotize, to speak to your subconscious to achieve the results you want.
Do not hesitate to contact me by telephone, 310.204.3321, or by email at nickpollak@hypnotherapy4you.net. See my website at www.hypnotherapy4you.net
