Hypnosis By Any Other Name

(I’m joining my two websites (PR and one dedicated only to hypnotherapy) so from now on please search here for articles on hypnosis, life coaching and how they can help. )

About 20 years ago a friend asked me, if I want to do visualization.

I must have asked a question or two about what it is and I than agreed.

I closed my eyes and he started telling a story.

Within few moments I was enchanted… I found myself in a different world, I saw magical landscapes, had great adventures (the story was along lines of searching for a treasure) The feeling of blissful relaxation was something new and powerful to me.

I started sharing the visualization with friends; I had only one text of this type and I wouldn’t know what to look for exactly, if I wanted more variety.

Several years later, already in Phoenix, another friend introduced me to a wonderful lady, who did ‘guided visualizations’. Again, the effects were incredible. It was so relaxing, like nothing else out there, so beautiful and uplifting.

Fast forward to 2011

When I first learned that my Mind Body Wellness program at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts will include hypnotherapy, I wasn’t happy.

I didn’t believe in that ( yet… the paradox was: I had no clue what exactly I didn’t believe in).  I just wanted to get over the basic required course and focus on something more “substantial”. Hmm…

What was my surprise during the first class… “so this is hypnotherapy?” Isn’t it guided meditation? Guided relaxation? Visualization? Guided imagery?

Yes! It is and this is it.

The terms MAY be used alternately. I was hooked and made it my specialty.

There is a possibility that, just like me, you have experienced hypnosis a long time ago and you liked it, but it was called something else.

It is being used every day in different fields to help people, including in the medical field. So why do so many of us say…“I wouldn’t do it”, “don’t believe in it”, and so on…

That’s ok actually.

I like that one size doesn’t fit all. I may not enjoy wearing a parachute, someone else may feel out of comfort zone at a hypnotherapist office. We all reject things on a daily basis, things that would be good, healthy for us, only because we don’t believe or understand them (read: don’t have enough knowledge to make an intelligent decision) I know, I do that as well.

And yet thousands people have a bit more courage to try something new, usually because other methods of dealing with a problem failed.

Our knowledge about hypnosis / hypnotherapy often comes from movies, youtube.com  (I watched some scary “hypnosis” myself) and entertainment. The difference?

They present stage or entertainment hypnosis, where the purpose is to excite or scare you. It’s just for show. Showing clinical hypnotherapy in movies would be way too boring for Hollywood. That becomes obvious once our questions are addressed before we sign up to do anything.

If you are interested, read here how hypnosis works.