Eugene / Oregon / United States
What is Hypnosis? Hypnosis is a state of relaxed awareness and increased suggestibility. It is similar to being engrossed in an interesting novel, in that it is a concentrated focusing of your attention. If you want to look up from your book and see whats going on around you, you can. You just usually choose not to. This is an important point about hypnosis. There is a popular misconception that a person in a hypnotic state is under the hypnotists power. This is not true. A person in hypnosis is not unconscious or under anyone elses control. Rather, he or she is in a state of concentrated yet relaxed mental awareness and chooses to focus on what the hypnotist is saying. It is truly a cooperative effort between client and therapist towards a desired goal. Suggestions given during hypnosis are very effective in bringing about wanted changes. It simply seems to make it easier to do whatever it is you truly want to do. lose weight, stop smoking, relax.etc. In addition, it is usually perceived as an extremely pleasant and relaxing experience, with the sense of calm lasting from a few hours to a few days. What is Creative Visualization? Have you ever heard noises in the middle of the night and imagined it was a burglar? Your heart pounds, you begin to sweat, your body gets ready to flee or fight. Simply by visualizing something in your minds eye and believing it to be true, your whole body was set into motion. This is because in some senses, our minds work as computers. The ideas and beliefs we feed into these computers, whether real or imagined, determine how we behave. A person is what he or she believes they are. If you believe you can do something, you can. If you dont think you can, you usually cant. With creative visualization, you give your mind a boost through your imagination At the University of Chicago a mental programming experiment was done with three groups of students. The first group practiced shooting basketballs for one hour every day for a month. The second group simply imagined shooting basketballs for one hour every day and the third group acted as a control and neither played or imagined playing the game. At the end of month all three groups we tested. The control group showed no improvement However, the players who practiced daily increased their performance by 24% while those who merely imagined shooting basketballs increased their performance by 23%. Creative Visualization at work! When a person considers setting new goals or changing old habits, he or she often focuses on the negative aspects of change. I cant eat this, I cant do this, what will I do without a cigarette. With creative visualization, the person creates his or her own personal picture of success, with all its benefits and sees it as already accomplished. The belief in their ability to achieve the goal is reinforced. They set themselves up for a self fulfilling prophecy. Why Use Hypnosis & Visualization Together? I use creative visualization and hypnosis together because I think it is important for my clients to create their own personal vision of success. My therapy is based on building a positive self image in which a person sees themselves as the director of their own life, the responsible person who looks forward to each day knowing he can make positive choices for himself. It is my experience that people who believe in themselves.
