The Healing Power of the Mind - Using Hypnosis
Few people even begin to be aware of the tremendous power that resides in the human mind. Hypnosis has been used to "cure" almost every disease known to man. Even cancer! A partial list of modern uses includes:
Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Phobias & Compulsions, Sex Abnormalities (flashing, etc), Asthma, particularly asthma in children, Ego problems, Weight Control, Smoking, and even Breast Augmentation for women! This is a very small list, but it illustrates just what might be done with hypnosis. I successfully used hypnosis in my practice for all of these and more.
While hypnosis is able to sometimes quickly access the unconscious mind and change some erroneous data, often the unconscious mind is either very resistant to either change or hypnosis itself. In such cases, use of subliminal messaging is a very good way to change unconscious mind data. While not fast, this "beneficial brainwashing" technique is a very good way to retrain "wrong" data in the unconscious. It can also be used as an adjunct to either hypnosis, self-hypnosis, and even EEG Biofeedback.
As a psychologist who has worked with hypnosis and subliminal messaging for many years, I am awed by this power. I have seen it work what appeared to be miracles. In fact, I am convinced that no doctor ever "cured" any patient at all. If the doctor is good enough or lucky, what s/he does assists the patient's mind in fixing what is wrong in the body, or even the mind itself!
In his book (1), Dr. Simonton wrote on a variety of cancers that were cured by using hypnotic visualization. One of the procedures that seemed to work especially well for children and some adults was to imagine the body as a castle with the blood stream as a moat protecting the body. The cancer was a black dragon, and several small white knights of the immune system attacked the dragon and cut off pieces of the dragon which were taken away by the moat. Amazingly successful!
This, and other visualizations picked out by the patient with the doctor's help were repeated several times a day using a hypnotic state of relaxation. Besides cancer, many other forms of illness were treated with the same basic technique of visualization with great success in Dr. Simonton's clinic.
I have helped two "terminal" cancer cases to complete remission by using a combination of hypnotic visualization and huge doses of vitamin C - up to 70 grams per day. Terminal means between 2-6 months of life left. Both were colon cancer cases given up on by their MDs.
Most physicians tend to try to separate the mind from the body. This is a real mistake. Think about it! The body exists only to provide the brain with input devices (senses), transportation, and manipulation of objects. The brain is all! The rest of the body is just appendages that evolution has found useful for this brain.
For convenience in understanding, let's separate the brain into two portions - one the portion that we use all the time - the conscious mind. The other, a mysterious place which we only dimly understand - the unconscious or subconscious mind. We do all our waking thinking generally with the conscious mind. Our dreams, our desires, our unspoken thoughts are often derived from the unconscious.
This unconscious portion also is the real worker! It does all the basic tasks required for life. It controls breathing and oxygen intake. It provides hunger feelings when it needs nutrition. It controls the blood throughout the body, and controls the immune system - an immense system of checks and balances. It controls all the balanced systems of hormones and chemicals which are necessary to our survival. Somebody once figured that we use only 10-20% of our brain. Is that a wonder when so much needs to be done that we don't even realize with our conscious mind.
Let's not even go into some of the more esoteric theories such as Jung's "Universal Mind", although I tend to believe that one. Then there's all the psychic phenomenon which can't be simply ignored. But, those are another bunch of subjects which are beyond this article.
Using hypnosis, it seems that we can connect, somewhat indirectly, with this unconscious mind to some extent at least. Mesmer is credited with being one of the first with his magnetic theories. (That theory was discredited by a board of prominent men, including Ben Franklin, but lo and behold, magnets are now coming into medical practice - so who knows?) The literature from the 17th century to the present is full of case histories where hypnosis was used successfully to "cure" some person of some illness.
You think some of these statements are outrageous, and cannot be true. Well, here's one you can look up that is really outrageous! It cannot be true, yet it is! Dr. Ted Barber(2) reported on several successful hypnotic experiments. These included raising a blister using a pencil eraser with the suggestion that it was a hot iron, and a few other experiments. The real shocking experiment done by at least three different teams of college experimenters was increasing breast size in flat chested females by hypnotic visualization!!! (I once won money from a fellow psychologist who didn't believe my narrative, and was amazed when I showed him the paper in the scientific journal of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis - July 1978.)
Think about this! This goes against nature, or so it would seem. Even if we ignore increase of the actual mammary glands, and consider only the increase of fat tissue, how can it be done so selectively? Since none of the women seemed to gain much, if any, weight, how was this fat tissue put there, and only there?
An interesting sidelight. When a similar experiment was tried to REDUCE breast size, it was not significantly successful. Why? My opinion is that in this "mammary conscious" world, there is little or no advantage in small breasts, and a large advantage in large ones. So, we are working against the unconscious mind in the second case, but with it in the first case. That's only my opinion - you can formulate your own. After reading Dr Barber's paper, I made a special tape using those techniques, and while I didn't insist on feedback, I got enough to know that the technique worked for some at least.
Another sidelight - the success rate of weight loss for most hypnotists is around 50% or even less. This compares to that 80%. Why? Again, the unconscious mind is working against the action. There are some advantages that the unconscious mind may be aware of that we (consciously) are not. As just one example, a woman might be punishing herself for some real or imaginary "sin", or, perhaps, punishing her husband for something. The unconscious mind is a murky place at best. Using subliminal messaging with self hypnosis worked well for me in my practice.
Several years ago, a woman came up to me at a seminar I was conducting, and hugged me, saying "Thank you Dr. Bate". She saw by my uncomprehending look that I had no idea who she was. She then explained that she had seen me in my office 2 years previously. She went on to say that it was a one time visit, and I had taught her The Bate Relaxation Technique, and given her a tape of the session using visualization to lose weight. Since I'm fairly good on remembering faces, I was at a loss until she explained that she had lost more than half of herself. When she had come to me, she had weighed 310 pounds. She now weighed 140, and she looked good, as she was tall. Needless to say, I walked on air for the rest of the day, even though I knew that I had only helped her unconscious to do it.
There is always logic in the unconscious, albeit it may seem twisted logic to our conscious minds. For example, one bedwetter boy under hypnosis recalled that one night he was frightened by a robber trying to get in, and he wet the bed. The robber gave up about then. The logic in the unconscious mind was simple! Since the robber gave up when he wet the bed, bedwetting actually protected him. Thus, he became a chronic bedwetter for protection against robbers! Logic indeed, even if not the conscious type.
Phobias also give some insight to this unconscious logic. Phobias (or compulsions) are usually formed by some traumatic event. There is a fear for the life, and thus, the unconscious creates a phobia of anything that might create the same life-threatening event. Not really a good logic since it "cripples" the person in some way, but very logical.
I was the first to connect a hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) episode with adult phobia generation. It started with three women in two weeks that had all developed driving phobias. By questioning, I found that all three had diabetes in their families, and all had eaten a sugary breakfast. Further, on a Glucose Tolerance Test, all had "panic attacks" of sorts. I reported this connection between sugar and anxiety attacks to the "Behaviorist", the journal of the American Assn of Behavior Therapy. I got several letters, most of them very critical, but two confirming my connection.
The logic here is simple. When driving, a hypoglycemic episode of low sugar causes an anxiety attack, or a near fainting. This is very dangerous to life, and thus a phobia of driving is logical. (My mother couldn't drive thru a tunnel for many years due to such a phobia.)
Perhaps the worst phobia of all is agoraphobia. Some persons with this can't even leave their homes! I've helped many agoraphobics lose this phobia with a combination of relaxation behavior modification along with sensible eating for persons who are hypoglycemic. In my book, I have some more case studies, including one of a married couple who were on the brink of divorce because of unsuspected hypoglycemic episodes.
I have "cured" (all doctors like to say this, even if it isn't true) dozens of children with the asthma symptom of allergy. Since the asthma symptom is a muscle reaction that blocks the outputting of air, it seemed to me that if the patient could relax those muscles, the symptom known as asthma could be alleviated or cured. I used a hypnotic based Relaxation Technique and it worked on virtually all kids between 6 and 16. I also used the same technique with modifications of the visualization for all types of behavior modification. These included smoking, weight control, ego buildup/self confidence, breast size, phobias, compulsions, etc.
The bottom line is this - you can use self-hypnosis and/or subliminal training to improve your life in many different ways!
(1)Simonton, Carl O "Getting Well Again" Publisher - Tarcher
(2)Barber, Ted X - July 1978 Journal of the American Assn of Clinical Hypnosis - paper on hypnotic phenomena.
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