[img]560|left|Nicholas D. Pollak||no_popup[/img]I have been seeing a client the past two months for issues related to his back pain. After completing his third session and booking his fourth, he called to cancel. He appreciated my efforts to help him but his pain levels were not reducing.

It was clear to me he was more comfortable living with pain rather than practicing the proven pain-reducing techniques offered to him.

He seemed to have forgotten the first caution I gave him:

I could not eliminate his pain. He would have to do that himself. When under hypnosis he could, increase or decrease his pain on command.

Making It Work

When hypnotized and asked to imagine his pain as a bright orange flame, as he increased the size of the imaginary flame his pain increased. When asked to visualize the bright flame receding in intensity and changing from bright orange to deep blue, his pain level dramatically subsided.

The last time he came to see me, he left with a pleasantly bemused look. When he was walking he was not experiencing any pain, a huge first. He had not been pain-free for over three years except for his visits to me. Even though he was able to stop his pain, he made a conscious choice to continue experiencing pain.

I have written before about the “Theory of the Mind” where it is shown that of the total available brain power, we only ever use 5 percent. Ten percent of the 5 percent is our conscious mind, the remainder our subconscious mind. Changes must occur within the subconscious because 10 percent is going to have a hard time changing the 90 percent.

Hypnosis creates a state whereby the conscious mind is bypassed and access is gained to the subconscious mind. In creating the changes, new behaviors begin to take shape and present themselves when the conscious mind asks for the old behavior. The subconscious now understands the old behavior is the undesirable one and sends the new behavior to the conscious mind. The individual acts on that change.

See the Similarities?

The subconscious is put like a hard drive. It holds all the information it has ever seen, touched, smelled, heard or experienced in any way. It does not decide whether the input is good or bad, right or wrong, but merely stores the information.

When you make a conscious decision the subconscious gives you what it has come to understand as the behavior you want with that conscious thought. Just like the hard drive. When you want some information you type out a command with the keyboard (conscious mind), the hard drive (the subconscious) gives you what you ask for. When you tire of the program you are using, you buy an upgrade, load it into the hard drive. The hard drive overlays these new instructions over the old ones so that the next time you press the keyboard keys the new program will come up in place of the old one. In hypnosis, the subconscious mind is open to allow new images to overlay over the old ones to create the behaviors. When the conscious mind asks for somethingm the new behavior replaces the old. As the hypnosis deepens over time, the stronger the conditioning, the more new behaviors come to the fore.

Change requires time for the conditioning to take hold. With deep level hypnotic subjects (somnambulists), changes take place immediately and stay in place. For persons not as deep, conditioning takes longer. This requires a commitment from to be willing to allow the changes to take hold and to be willing to work with them to allow them to take effect.

Most clients I see have a strong desire to change. They ultimately succeed. My job is to help them to gain what they want and to help them attain their changes as effortlessly as possible.

Hypnotherapy is as relaxed a method as you can find to make the changes.

Be willing to change, know the changes you want, picture them, live them, breathe them, act as if the changes already have occurred, and you will find the changes you want.

If you have any questions please 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