This is one in a series of brief articles aimed at students of hypnotherapy and professional hypnotherapists.

The use of imagery in psychotherapy has a long tradition. Freud placed great emphasis on the ‘dream content’ and mental imagery of his analysands. For Freud, what seemed most important was to bring ‘a state of evenly suspended attention’ to the analysand’s free-associations of words, images and feelings, avoiding ‘as far as possible, reflection and the construction of conscious expectations,’ trying not to ‘fix’ the things he heard but instead ‘catching the drift of the patient’s unconscious with his own’ (Freud 1923:239).

In other words, and at least in the early stages of his career, Freud believed that the role of the therapist was to enter into a free-floating reflective state alongside the client and allow some kind of meaning to emerge.

Hypnotherapy has long made use of mental imagery to enable people to achieve a cognitive restructuring of their inner experience. The prevalence of the use of imagery in hypnotherapy might be because it seems to become easier for us to follow guided visualisation processes or become more aware of our spontaneous mental imagery when we close our eyes or begin to relax.

Sensory deprivation or distortion

The changes in the way that we experience ourselves proprioceptively in space that are commonly associated with hypnotic phenomena, seem to make it easier for us to shift our attention inward and practise visualisation techniques or become more aware of our own mental imagery.

In neuroscientific terms, studies seem to point to decreased activity in the parietal lobes and a deafferentation of the posterior superior parietal lobule (PSPL). The functional deafferentation suggests a decrease in the arrival of distracting stimuli to the striate cortex and PSPL, enhancing a sense of focus and producing an altered perception of self-experience. This PSPL deafferentation is supported by three neuroimaging studies of subjects engaged in meditation (Newberg and Iverson, 2003) but is not without controversy.

Guided imagery or visualisation

Guided imagery or visualisation might involve asking someone to imagine themselves in a number of situations or contexts, feeling calm, confident, relaxed and having already mastered a particular task that previously challenged them. It might involve them visualising themselves in a situation, whilst ‘borrowing’ resources from a role model (real or fictional) who does this task with total confidence, and then doing the task themselves.

Hypnotherapeutic techniques for physical healing make use of other applications of guided imagery: for example, imagining an affected area and then changing its colour or shape or sensation or using visual metaphors that represent the body healing itself. There are a number of studies looking at the use of guided imagery in physical healing such as: Roffe et al (2005), which suggests that guided imagery may be ‘psycho-supportive’ and may ‘increase comfort’ and recommends further research.

One area of research into hypnotherapy using guided imagery is in the treatment of IBS. A systematic review by Wilson et al (2006) found that out of the 20 studies (18 trials of which four were randomized, two controlled and 12 uncontrolled) and two case series evaluated, over half of the trials (10 of 18) indicated a significant benefit.

Imagery used in research studies includes ‘gut-directed’ scripts such as those developed by Whorwell at the Wythenshawe Hospital, including imagining the digestive system as a river and adjusting the river’s flow.

It is interesting to note that guided imagery can be more or less guided, according to the style and approach of a particular therapist. For example, in the gut-directed work cited above, it might be more appropriate to suggest that a client connects with her own experience of her digestive system – its look and feel and colour or any images or metaphors that come into her mind – and work with these. Other clients may benefit from more specific suggestions: ‘Imagine your digestive system as a river…’ I would suggest that this is an area for further research.

Ability to visualise

One of the common issues encountered in hypnotherapy around the use of mental imagery is the client’s ability to visualise. Some people will tell you that they find it very difficult to ‘picture’ things in their minds.

Visual mental imagery, or ‘seeing with the mind’s eye’, has been the subject of considerable controversy in cognitive science. Scientists do not yet fully understand whether images are fundamentally different from verbal thoughts, whether they share underlying mechanisms with visual perception or how the information contained in images is represented.

What might be helpful in enabling clients to work with mental imagery is to help them to think of imagery in terms of imagination – the ability to form mental images, sensations, sounds and concepts. In this way, mental imagery becomes more than ‘pictures in the mind’ and encompasses the entire spectrum of our experiencing. (The literature on synesthesia may form useful clues in the future to understanding the rich and multi-modal ways that we process and structure our inner worlds.)

One of the assumptions made by NLP, despite a current lack of evidence, is that people structure their experience primarily according to visual, kinaesthetic, auditory (or digital) processes and that a therapist can deduce this sensory preference through subtle ‘eye accessing cues.’ Given the lack of evidence, it my be  preferable to use language that enables someone to make use of the entire spectrum of sensory experience in their mental imaginings.

Further benefits

In addition to the kinds of cognitive restructurings that can be achieved through the specific content of guided visualisation (the specific tasks and contexts visualised), it seems that the process itself of repeated visualisation brings further underlying benefits.

As we continue to learn to connect with the inner world of our mental imagery or imagination, we tend to gain an increased sense of ourselves (what the traditional hypnotherapy literature might describe as ‘ego-strengthening’).

In the 1970s, the psychologist Jerome L. Singer, conducted an analysis of the use of mental imagery techniques in psychotherapy (1974) and concluded that clients who practice visualisation techniques develop an underlying sense of confidence and self-control which seems to correlate with their increasing sense of mastery over their own mental imagery (Singer, 1974: 132). Don Robertson provides a very helpful overview and discussion of Singer’s ‘cognitive-affective’ theory of mental imagery in his excellent article here.

It’s interesting to note Singer’s use of ‘affect,’ suggesting that mental imagery is as much about working with and mastering our bodily affects and emotions as it is about ‘picturing’ things.

The process of consistent and repeated visualisation or mental imagining seems very similar, in this sense, to Jung’s key therapeutic practice of ‘active imagination.’ Jung saw his technique as a way of granting the psyche freedom and time to express itself spontaneously, without the habitual interference of ‘ego’ (or of social and cultural constructs and expectations). Jung also called this process ‘the art of letting things happen.’

According to Jung, the client makes himself more and more creatively independent through the method of active imagination. No longer dependent on his dreams or his therapist’s knowledge, he gives shape to himself in a new sense, by actively imagining himself (Collected Works of C. Jung. XVI para. 106).

References:

Newberg A.B., Iversen J., (2003), The neural basis of the complex mental task of meditation: neurotransmitter and neurochemical considerations, Med Hypotheses, 61 : 2, p 282-291.

Roffe et al. (2005) ‘A systematic review of guided imagery as an adjuvant cancer therapy.’ Psycho-Oncology Volume 14, Issue 8, pages 607–617, August 2005 which

Singer (1974) Imagery & Daydream Methods in Psychotherapy & Behaviour Modification. New York.

Wilson S, Maddison T., Roberts L, Greenfield S., Singh S. 2006. ‘Systematic review: the effectiveness of hypnotherapy in the management of irritable bowel syndrome.’Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics.Volume 24, Issue 5, pages 769–780, September.

Copyright Sophie Nicholls 2010. All rights reserved.

Exactly. Which is why a new study led by Chien-Ming Yang from the National Chengchi University in Taipei, and reported here in the wonderful Mindhacks blog, is so interesting.

The new study investigates the early phases of sleep, the transitions between wakefulness and sleep often referred to as the hypnagogic state.

The way that our mind works in this phase is, as yet, poorly understood – just as the phenomena of hypnosis are poorly understood from anything other than a phenomenological level. As yet, neuroscience can’t explain hypnosis, just as it can’t yet fully explain the complex mechanisms of sleep and dreaming.

This new study took a very small sample size – 20 people – and asked them to take an afternoon nap in the lab whilst wired up to an EEG monitor measuring electrical activity in the brain, eye movement,  heart rate and muscular movements. It combined this data with accounts from the participants themselves about their experiences. Here is how Mindhacks reports the study:

‘As the participants drifted off they were awakened at different times: either just after eye-closing, the onset of ‘stage 1′ sleep where you’re still aware of the external world, the onset of ‘stage 2′ sleep where awareness starts to diminish, and after five minutes at ‘stage 2′ where awareness should have largely disappeared.

After wakening, participants were asked questions about their perception of being asleep and the experience of their own minds: “Did you fall asleep?”, “Did you see any visual images?”, “Were you able to control your perceptual experiences?”, “How real did any of the experiences seem to you?”, “How well were you able to control your thoughts?”, “Were your thoughts logical?” and several questions to try and capture the conscious experience of sleep onset.’

The study found that the experience of having control over their own thoughts, and how coherent and logical these thoughts appeared to be, began to change almost as soon as the participants closed their eyes. As time went on, the thoughts appeared increasingly unusual and autonomous.

However, as soon as ‘stage 2′ sleep began, participants seemed to experience a marked change into a state of mind where thoughts became much more freewheeling and seemingly illogical, almost as if they took on a life of their own.

Participants’ awareness of the outside world remained largely present until ‘stage 2′ kicked in, at which point it quickly dropped off.

It seems that, when woken, people largely reported the experience that ‘I was asleep’ when they felt that they no longer had control over their increasingly illogical thoughts and not when their awareness of their surroundings was reduced.

This is very interesting on a number of levels for a hypnotherapist. Firstly, as hypnotherapists, we will have experienced our clients returning to full conscious awareness of the room, reporting things like: ‘That was weird. I know I wasn’t asleep. I could hear everything you were saying but it was as if my thoughts kept drifting around.’ Or ‘I was aware of everything and I could hear your voice but I can’t quite remember now what you were saying. I went to all kinds of places.’

If I were to guess, I would say that the ‘stage 1′ phase of hypnagogia certainly seems quite similar to that of hypnosis – with the marked difference that the hypnotherapist is using language and suggestion that is designed to enable the client to  experience a more focused quality of awareness, with their thoughts directed towards particular imagery, ideas, feelings and sounds.

Another way of interpreting the test data might be that thoughts become less consciously directed as participants drift from ‘stage 1′ to ‘stage 2.’

I often feel that these fascinating studies are just barely touching the surface of some of the richest and most mysterious experiences of our inner life: thought, day-dreaming, fantasy, creative imagination, trance.

What I like about this small study is its methodology – correlating EEG data with interviews with the participants themselves. I think it’s only when we start to put the two kinds of research together  that we begin to get a picture of what happens when we turn our attention inside ourselves.

As I blanched, chopped and stir-fried, I stuck my iPod in our speaker-gadget thingie (technical term) and whacked up the volume. It wasn’t long before I was dancing around the kitchen to tunes I hadn’t heard in a very long time: Morcheeba, Moloko, Goldfrapp and one of my all-time favourites, ‘Instant Pleasure,’ by Rufus Wainwright.

I had my music on the shuffle setting and tracks popped up that I hadn’t listened to in a couple of years. It was very interesting to me that, as each song came on, images from the past would pop into my mind.

Some of the songs were powerfully associated for me with the last long hot summer I spent living in London; others revivified for me the experience of driving around in Tom’s car through the Yorkshire countryside in the first months after we met.

It reminded me of just how powerful music is for me in inducing these trance phenomena. To be more specific about it, you might say that music has the ability to trigger a series of age regressions in which I revisit specific scenes and feel in my body some of what I felt back then combined, in a particularly potent way, with my emotions about remembering those scenes from my past.

Fragrances and scents do that for me too:  the smell of old books with a certain kind of paper can regress me right back to particular moments from my childhood; the smell of a cocoa butter body lotion I like to use still carries with it a memory of my first holiday in France. I am leaning out of the window of an old house on the coast, looking at the sun making long shadows between the olive trees, stretching my arms above my head.

Of course, I have cultivated that particular association, perhaps deepened it over the years, because I enjoy experiencing it so much. I can still connect with the sense of excitement, of my life opening for me, that I felt as a thirteen-year-old in France and I want to reconnect with that feeling, from time to time.

The iPod-induced trance phenomena I experienced last night was a powerful reminder of the ability of our minds to create these associations. Sometimes it is extremely pleasurable to revivify and reconstruct the happy, life-enhancing memories and experiences that nurture deep parts of our selves.

You know, I think that sometimes, as hypnotherapists, we can easily forget that spontaneous regression as a phenomenon doesn’t have to be difficult or unhelpful. We might spend a lot of time working with people who need help in stopping the unhelpful regression to and endless reconstruction of incidents and events in their past that are troubling them in some way.

And yet there are all kinds of powerful positive memories and associations that we can draw upon as resources to help us to strengthen aspects of our selves.

I don’t think that’s what Rufus Wainwright actually means when he sings about, (ahem!) ‘Instant Pleasure,’ but it works for me.

I feel I need to warn you. This myth is a Big Myth. In fact, this myth is so pervasive in the world of therapy, hypnotherapy and hypnosis that perhaps it should carry a health warning.

I mean that seriously.

The problem, as I have come to understand it, is that there are many therapists out there – working in many different disciplines – who will tell you that it is necessary to understand why you feel the way you do in order to feel better. Let’s call this myth the Big Myth of Why.

But first, let me ask you something. Are there things going on for you right now that you understand perfectly well – and perhaps you may even have had a couple of years of soul-searching and/or therapy to understand where those feelings come from and you have a very good intellectual understanding of these problems – and yet you still seem to be experiencing them, all the same?

I meet people every day who have an incredibly finely honed and articulate understanding of the history of their problems. They have spent years thinking about it and analysing it. They can understand why that something is happening and yet the why doesn’t necessarily help them to change the behaviours, habits, emotions and responses that they want to let go of. The why doesn’t necessarily change anything.

My feeling is that ‘why ‘doesn’t serve us particularly well when we want to make changes in our lives.

And, indeed, I have met people who are on a search for why. They are on a big mission of why. They are making why their life’s work. Their internal script goes, ‘If I can just understand why this is happening, I will feel better…’ and they have been trying to understand why for the last two or twelve or twenty years. And this trying to understand why has become a painful and tortuous journey in which they find themselves feeling worse than when they started. Maybe they are now obsessed with the idea of wanting to know why or caught up in endless rumination and questioning that is creating a lot of anxiety and feelings of somehow not being good enough.

And this search for why brings them to the consulting room of a hypnotherapist. Because the Big Myth of Why says that a hypnotherapist can go inside your mind and discover why. A hypnotherapist can regress you to the exact time and place in your life where the problem started – and then you will know and then you will feel better. Right?

Well, erm, actually, not necessarily. In fact, probably not.

It’s a seductive notion, this concept of ‘deep underlying causes’ for our problems and issues. If we could neatly pin it down to one formative event – for example, the day our primary teacher told us off in front of the class for getting a word wrong and then we suddenly became unable to read aloud in front of others -  that might certainly be very convenient. But is this a little over-reductive?

Problem One: Now, I am not saying that some issues that people experience do not carry with them the resonances and echoes of prevous experiences. Of course, they can do. Over the years, we can form beliefs about ourselves as the result of our experiences, the things we hear around us,  our interactions with significant others, for example.

However, fears, problems, phobias and habits tend to fade away over time unless we are actively keeping them fuelled with our own thoughts and worries and beliefs and the way that we talk to ourselves inside our minds.

So our primary school teacher may have introduced us to the notion of fear – but that is only part of the story.We have somehow kept the fear going. In order to let go of the fear, we need to understand how we are still doing it to ourselves twenty-five years later, so that we can start to change things.

Problem Two: Even if a hypnotherapist can help us to indentify the so-called ‘root cause’ of a particular issue, this doesn’t mean that it actually happened  or happened in the way that we experience it now in hypnosis.

We still do not sufficiently understand the way that memory works, for example, but it is thought that, in order to experience a memory, our brains need to go back and reimagine or recreate that memory in order for us to experience it again. And we may not recreate it in exactly the way that it actually happened.

Have you ever experienced a situation that really didn’t bother you until you began to go over and over it in your head and it gradually assumed all the proportions and details and colours of a horror story? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.

In a similar way, dreams and fantasies can be re-imaginings and re-workings of what we have experienced in the day. And although our dreams can feel very ‘real’ to us when they are happening, we wouldn’t dream of supposing that they are representations of truth.

We can’t be sure that how people experience things in hypnosis is how things actually happened either. There may be a feeling-tone, a sensory theme of the hypnotic experience that carries emotions and  memories and associations from way back. But things can get a little blurry and what actully happened and how we re-experience it can get a little mixed-up.

But what really concerns me about the Big Myth that goes, ‘there must be an underlying cause somewhere in a person’s past for the problems and challenges that s/he might be facing in the present,’ is that this assumption can result in long (and often expensive) periods of fruitless searching, over-thinking, rumination and anxiety.

If you’re asking yourself why something is happening for you, a well-trained hypnotherapist can help you to understand how you are doing that thing in the present and what you can do differently to change it as well as any possible emotions, associations and habits you’ve been carrying from the past.

So, I think this is good news. Because if it’s possible that there is no why,  no single pin-downable ’cause’ for what you are feeling, then you may simply have been looking in the wrong direction. The search for why may have been holding you back from becoming more consciously aware of how you can do the problem differently.

This week, let’s look at the one that goes: ‘Hypnosis is weird/ scary/ mystical/ mind-control/ utter hippy nonsense/ what that bloke off the telly does/ brain-washing/ something you do to me to fix my head  *

* or a combination of the above.

Firstly, I want to let you into a secret. Noone knows exactly what hypnosis is. Nope. Hypnotherapists don’t know what hypnosis actually is, and neither do researchers looking at people’s brains whilst in this apparent state of hypnosis with MRI scans and other neuroimaging techniques.

In MRI scans, we can see parts of the brain either ‘light up’ or get ‘turned off’ when people are apparently in hypnosis. Here is an example of the kind of research into hypnosis that neuroimaging is making possible, carried out by Amir Raz, who wanted to look at how hypnotic suggestions might affect the regulation of pain in the brain. This particular research gives us fascinating data about how hypnotic suggestions ‘turn off’ the area of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which would normally get activated when performing certain tasks. It has many interesting possibilities for further research and application.

But it still doesn’t really tell us what hypnosis actually is.

The question of whether hypnosis is an actual state of attention (state theory) or a set of beliefs, attitudes and expectations (non-state theory) is hotly contested in the field of hypnotherapy and hypnosis. In fact, you will find people arguing about it all over the internet.

The state theory maintains that hypnosis is an actual change in the quality of our attention and awareness, a kind of experiential shift or hypnotic ‘trance’ state that is often described by people in terms of changes in temporal and spatial awareness (‘My body feels so heavy,’ ‘My hands feel so huge’ or ‘Has that really been half an hour? It felt like ten minutes’).

The non-state theory of hypnosis claims that there is no such thing as this altered state of awareness or hypnotic ‘trance’ and that the effects of hypnosis can be explained by the motivation, cognitive set and expectation of the person being hypnotised and the way that he or she is prepared to work towards a therapeutic goal.

You will notice that, so far, there has been no mention in either of these theories of a sleep-like or unconscious state, nor of vaudevillian stunts. Contrary to popular misconception – and I do still meet people who think of hypnosis in this way – hypnosis is not like being asleep or unconscious. It is not something that a hypnotist or therapist does to you.

In hypnotherapy, the therapist does not go inside your mind and flick levers and switches or make things disappear or convince you that something you previously thought true is now suddenly untrue. (I don’t know about you but I would personally find that rather unnerving. I wouldn’t go anywhere near a hypnotherapist if I believed that s/he could do that to me!)

We know that hypnosis is something that you actively need to co-create with the therapist you choose to work with. The therapist guides you through the process of going into hypnosis (state theory) or you yourself create the mindset and beliefs within which the changes can happen (non-state theory) because you want to make the changes you want to make. Or a combination of these two.

To illustrate this more clearly, we know that if a person sits in the chair with their arms crossed and says, ‘Humph. Well you’re not going to put me under. You’re not going to hypnotise me, matey,’ well, then they are right. They will not be experiencing anything very soon except their own desire not to go into hypnosis. And maybe their own fear, which may be what is preventing them from making the changes in the first place.

So if we assume that most people seeking the help of a hypnotherapist actually want to make some changes in their lives, is hypnosis a state that therapists guide them into or a description of their set of beliefs and expectations that will make it possible for the therapist to work with them?

Personally, I think it is a combination of these two.

Many people who come to work with me are worried that they won’t be able to ‘do it right’ or relax sufficiently (see last Monday’ Myth-Busting) or go into hypnosis but, despite these fears and apprehensions, they learn exactly how to use the power of their minds and the power of self-hypnosis in helpful ways.

Whether you think that hypnosis is a weird (or mystical or in some way spiritual) state or non-state really depends upon your own set of beliefs around turning your attention inside yourself in a focused way. Some people think this is a very ordinary thing to do. For others, it is actually something quite special.

What I do know and continue to notice all the time in my own practice – both as a hypnotherapist and as someone who regularly uses self-hypnosis – is that it’s so easy to be carried away by the busy-ness of our everyday lives so that making time to direct our attention inwards in a focused way and really notice what we are feeling and thinking and how, in a sense, we are doing or creating or imagining our lives can feel strange, weird, pleasant, a relief or even slightly scary at first. It may be something we haven’t done for a long time.

When we begin to learn and understand how to do our lives and thoughts and internal experience in more helpful and progressive ways, I do personally think that is a very powerful experience. Learning to relax deeply or notice our thoughts or the way that our body feels in the midst of our busy-ness can be a kind of special or transformative experience.

There are some who would say that all our experiences are kinds of ‘trance state,’ either positive, neutral or negative, until we become consciously aware that we are doing them. So we find ourselves going into the trance of a particular relationship (he says that, she says that, you say that) or the trance of work (everything is so hard and it will never get any better) or the one about money (I need more and never seem to have enough and if only I had more my life would be so much better), for example.

Hypnosis, then, in this regard, is a kind of waking up from the trance of our everyday lives.

Over the years, I have researched conceptual metaphor theory extensively and used it consciously and subconsciously in my own writing. I am fascinated by the way that we all use metaphor, every single day of our lives, to describe our experiences.

We have spatial metaphors: I feel so down today.

We have metaphors that suggest that we experience our body as a sort of container for our emotions: I was seething with anger. I thought I might explode.

These metaphors seem convincingly universal, across languages and cultures (Kovesces has done some fabulous research on this).

And then we have those personal metaphors that mean something particular to us alone, like a special kind of secret language.

When we become more consciously aware of the metaphoric language we are using to describe a feeling or a situation, we often realise that our metaphor is limiting in some way. And as we become more consciously aware of it, we can change it.

And so to the story of my new bed.

Yes, my new bed is a kind of metaphor for some of the changes I’m experiencing in my life. Or at least, that’s how I have come to understand it over the last few days.

We bought a new bed. In fact, it was a Christmas present from my partner’s parents and we looked forward to the arrival of this new bed with eagerness. It was delivered at the beginning of last week, I made it up with our new, specially-purchased king-size bedding. We lay down on our new bed together and… yes, dear readers… I am a little embarrassed to tell you on a public blog about hypnotherapy exactly what happened next.

What happened next was that we both shouted at once, ‘Oh, no! This bed is so hard. This is not the bed we tried in the shop! Surely?’

It seems (because after several very uncomfortable nights on the new bed, I called the shop to ask them about it) that it takes time to get used to a new bed.

It seems that it takes time for a new bed to, erm, bed in (for that is the technical term used by the manager of the bed department to whom I spoke).

It seems that I have been given a metaphor for the way that we can experience change. I don’t like this new bed but I will have to get used to it. It doesn’t feel like the old bed. I want the old bed back. But now that I know that it is just a matter of time and everything will be OK and we haven’t wasted our money, it already feels so much better.

Yes, I even think the bed feels a teensy bit more comfortable now that I know that it can take about a month for a bed with 1200 pocket-springs to soften. Suddenly, it is not that I have ‘made my bed and now I have to lie in it.’ Suddenly it is that this is just a metaphor for change. It takes cognitive effort to make changes. And already this bed is feeling a little more familiar. Pretty soon, I know that I won’t even notice that it’s new at all.

Sometimes, when I’m working with new clients to gather information for the work we’re going to begin together, they will say something like: ‘I am worried that you won’t be able to hypnotise me because I just can’t relax.’

In other words, hypnosis and relaxation are often thought of as more or less the same thing. Well, whilst it’s true that many people experience hypnosis and self-hypnosis as a deeply calming, centring or grounding experience in which their mind and body begin to feel more relaxed, we do not need to actually feel relaxed in order to go into hypnosis.

In fact, here’s the thing: You do not even have to empty your mind of thoughts in order to go into self-hypnosis.

I remember that this was a revelation to me, when I first began my training in self-hypnosis and hypnotherapy: What, you mean I can work with my monkey mind that is always jumping about all over the place? I can actually use all this restlessness and jumpiness and my mind that is making connections and asking questions all over the place, in order to enter a hypnotic trance?

Wow!

And, in fact, you can go into trance with one arm raised in the air – not that you would generally want to do that, (unless, of course, you were entering a national ‘who can hold their arm in the air the longest? competition’). I merely use this, rhetorically-speaking, to demonstrate my argument.

You can go into hypnosis in a doctor’s waiitng room or before an exam or driving test or before giving The Most Important Presentation of Your Entire Life or in just about any situation that you might previously never have imagined that you could ever feel relaxed.

What’s more, there is a feature of the hypnotic trance state, which is often referred to in the hypnotherapy and hypnosis literature as ‘proneness;’ that is, an observable quality about the arms or legs or neck or hand or other such part of the person in the ‘trance state’ that can sometimes develop and is powerfully indicative that the person is in trance.

This ‘proneness’ is a certain quality of the way in which the person holds or adopts a position that, out of hypnosis, we might naturally experience by fidgeting or moving around. But, in hypnosios, it’s almost as if the person’s brain has said,’Oh, I’ll just leave that arm there for now. I don’t need to be thinking about it anymore. It’s just there for now but I’ve got more important things to be thinking about,’ and their mind focuses on other things.

So hypnosis can be a very effective way to retrain our minds and bodies from anxious and restless and discomfort to calm and focused and comfortable. When someone says to me, ‘I don’t think I will be able to relax,’ I think ‘Yes! Hurrah! You’ve come to the right place. Because I can help you to learn how to relax deeply if that is what you want to be able to do.’

However, it is also important to remember that we can use hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis to cultivate the state of awareness that is approrpiate for the task in hand. For example, it might not be appropriate for you to feel all floppy and heavy if you are preparing to run a marathon or compete in a game of grand-slam chess. But it might be helpful for you to feel calm and focused, with the parts of your mind and body that you need for peak perfomance all working beautifully in their optimum state, whilst the rest of your body feels comfortable.

So, for today’s Monday Myth-Bust: Hypnosis is not relaxation and hypnotherapy is not necessarily ‘relaxation therapy.’ The consistent practice of self-hypnosis will help you to train your mind and body to cultivate deeper and deeper calm – which may include a feeling of relaxation. You don’t need to feel relaxed in order to use self-hypnosis or benefit powerfully from hypnotherapy. If you are a person who has found it difficult to relax, you may be surprised to discover the changes you ntoice when you expereince hypnotherapy and learn self-hypnosis.

Before I continue, I’d like to issue a warning here that I am going to be talking about a certain bodily process today. Yes, the title of my post is a bit of a clue. I am talking today about all the crap, poo, shit, whatever you call it, that we carry around… and how to let go of it.

I find Russell Brand absolutely fascinating (the ‘character’ he talks about creating for himself in order to do stand-up, his use of language) and I nearly dropped the iron when he talked about the pre-gig ritual that he goes through to prepare himself for a stand-up audience, in order to ‘empty his mind and feel more open, more focused.’

Basically, what Russell Brand does is to take himself off to a toilet cubicle and do some self-hypnosis. He gets himself into a relaxed and focused awareness, if you like, a way of being that I would call a kind of ‘trance’ or doing ‘self-hypnosis.’ Oh, and pardon my crudity here but he also, so he told us last night, usually does a big poo at this point too. And that’s where Frank Skinner, his interviewer pointed out that most stand-ups do. Apparently, it’s called ‘the comedy shit.’

Now, one of the reasons I laughed out loud at this idea of Brand sitting doing self-hypnosis whilst also evacuating his bowels is that, just a couple of hours previously, I’d been having a conference call with some of the students on my Word Sauce Online Writing Programme. We had been talking about the phase in the writing process that they have been exploring over past weeks, a phase that I call ‘Letting Go.’

This Letting Go – of physical tension, or pre-conceived ideas, of learned narratives or, not to put too fine a point on it, of all your shit – is an important part of a process of reconnecting with what it feels like to be you, what feels right for you as opposed to what you think you should be doing, for example.

And several of my students over the years have mde the connection between letting go of stuckness and other unhelpful crap and the daily bodily process of… ahem.. evacuation.

Some students have used words like ‘emotional constipation.’ One student told me that his daily morning practice of free-writing – of letting go of whatever happens to be on your mind onto the page – was closely associated for him with his morning bowel movement. He took his journal into the loo with him. Each was just as necessary.

So here, as I ironed my pillowcases, was Russell Brand, talking about the very same thing: his pre-gig Letting Go ritual in which he frees himself of shit on a physical, mental and even spiritual level. Hmmmm… Very interesting.

You know, I am always reluctatnt to over-psychololgise physical health issues (sometimes things just happen) but I do suspect that there is some correlation between the way that our bodies process food and the way that we process emotions. Perhaps that is why there is a growing evidence base for hypnotherapy in the treatment of IBS and ulcerative colitis, for example. After all, emotions produce complex chemical reactions in our bodies – oestrogen, cortisol, adrenaline – that need to be processed in the same way as the chemical reactions in our food. Or is it simply that we understand the two processes in similar metaphors?

And did you know that there is far more serotonin in your gut than in your brain? Or that your colon is a muscle and can, therefore, be subject to muscular tension?

So letting go – through daily self-hypnosis, deep physical relaxation and writing or through your personal toilette; through the morning ‘dump’ on the loo or onto the page  – could be more significant than you may even realise.

If you’re feeling a little stuck, it might be worth asking yourself what you’re holding on to.

One of the most common reasons for people to choose to work with me is because they are fed up with diets that don’t work. I am very used to hearing the words, ‘Sophie, you are my last resort.’

And I completely understand that. Most people I have worked with have tried every celebrity diet, consulted nutritionists, read countless books, even bought very expensive supplements and generally imposed dull, boring ways of eating upon themselves in an attempt to shift the pounds. It is only after years of yo-yo dieting that they begin to realise, ‘Hang on a minute. I need to do something different here.’

And that’s where hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis comes in.

It’s the way that we think about food, eating and our bodies that changes everything. My You Can Have the Weight and Shape You Want programme is not a diet but simply a system of learning to use the power of your subconscious mind to enjoy the variety and flavour of healthy foods and regular exercise, but here is the interesting thing…

When I’m working with people, I often find that in the first week or so, they are so used to following diets and eating plans that they want me to tell them what to eat every day. Or they put themselves on a self-imposed diet of eating quick convenience diet foods, those specially packaged products on the supermarket shelves, unsatisfying stuff with ingredients that are closer to cardboard and polystyrene than actual food. And then they find themselves feeling hungry and longing for a chocolate bar.

Are you on a self-imposed diet?
I think we are all so used to reading about and hearing about the latest diet – and the food that is ‘naughty’ and that we must not allow ourselves to eat – that we think that diets and self-deprivation are the way to lose weight successfully and permanently. It makes me so cross to flick through a magazine in a waiting room or walk past a news stand and see all the hypnotic images of this ‘hot diet’ or that ‘bikini body plan.’ Grrrr…

And, of course, much of this is sandwiched between airbrushed images of models who actually don’t look like that in real life. More grrrrr… Was it Cindy Crawford, one of the ’80s supermodels, who once said, ‘It takes five people and a photographer to make me look like this. I don’t get out of bed looking this way.’ She felt it was important that women knew that.

You may have guessed that I feel passionately about this subject. In my teenage years and early 20s, I struggled terribly with my body-image. I remember a particular ‘light-bulb’ moment when I realised that I was never going to look like Cindy Crawford in the pages of Marie Claire. Why? Well, for a start, because she is over 6′ tall and I am just about 5′ 3″. Almost. If I stand up straight.  8-)  And that was a liberating realisation for me.

Love your body… yes, really…

From that point on, I have been gradually learning how to love my body for all its little foibles and fluctuations. You know, holding an imaginary gun to my head and screaming at myself, ‘Do not eat that chocolate’ wasn’t really very motivating. And it certainly wasn’t much fun.

This is celebrity bikini-shot season. Please, please, women everywhere, I urge you to be kind to yourself. And men. These days, there seems to be a little more pressure on men too. Although, if you are a man, you can always choose to aspire to models of successful men such as Michael McIntryre rather than Brad Pitt, of course. There seems to be a somewhat wider range…

Your brain

How we think about our own bodies and other people’s bodies and how we think about ourselves is so bound up in our ability to choose and really enjoy healthy, nourishing food and exercise. Our brains are the most important element of healthy eating.

Here is a celebrity story that I came across on the ‘Now!’ magazine web site. It’s the story of ex-EastEnders star, Natalie  Cassidy, who has dropped from a size 16 to a very healthy and toned size 8.

You have to look carefully for the key message of the story. It is hidden amongst the adverts for slimming supplements and pics of ‘celebrity bodies.’ But the message is simple and clear.

How did Natalie lose the weight? She says:

‘I changed everything. It was more about exercise than diet. I cut out rubbish. I cut down on alcohol, too – even though I love white wine – and laid off savoury stuff. Cheese, crisps and dips were my downfall… Over the years I’d dabbled with exercise, but I’d never stuck to anything. I hate being all red-faced and sweaty in the gym, so I always preferred to do DVDs at home.’

Ah. But here’s the thing. I can’t help wondering how many people have bought Natalie’s best-selling fitness DVD and are now feeling like failures because it is still lying in a drawer?

Natalie’s key message seems to be: Eat healthily and do regular exercise consistently… in your way, a way that you feel comfortable with. Which may not be a DVD. It might be walking, running, the gym, horse riding, rebounding. But the important thing is to do something.

Stories like Natalie’s are inspiring and might compel you to begin to do something differently in your own life. But I think it is so important to do it in your way. The way that is right for you. And you may need some support to make that happen.

The only ‘rule’ that matters
It’s time to roll out my all-time favourite concept from NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming): ‘There is no failure. Only feedback.’

Stop beating yourself up for what you haven’t done, or didn’t do ‘right,’ for falling ‘off the wagon’ or ‘letting yourself down.’ Think about what you have learned from your experiences and from what didn’t work for you so that you can use that feedback to do things differently in the future.

There is only one way to achieve the weight and shape you want. Your way. And that’s the way that works best for you. If you don’t know what that is, maybe it’s time to chuck out the celebrity diet books and the diet ‘rules’ and begin to find out?

It’s interesting to see media all over the world picking up on this story. Here’s a link to the Ahlan! Live in the United Arab Emirates version of the story. They also mention other recent celeb stories:

Mel B, last week revealed she sought hypnotherapy in a bid to boost her body-confidence, Fergie to quit biting her nails, and nicotine addicts Charlize Theron and Drew Barrymore to kick the habit by being “put under.”

And there’s the annoying thing. It seems that hypno-lingo is pretty universal too. Phrases such as being “put under” – even with the inverted commas – or the headline of this article ‘Look into our eyes..’ seem to be getting far too ubiquitous for my liking.

Maybe I should announce a campaign, right here and now on this blog, for better and more accurate reporting of hypnosis and hypnotherapy stories.

I mean, harrumph! Using words like ‘going under’ or ‘look into my eyes’ is not only tired and unimaginative but also very misleading. Hypnosis is not like being ‘under’ as in anaesthetised; and we hypnoptherapists do not ask people to look into our eyes or at our swinging pendulums and watches.

I had a client a while ago who opened his eyes and said ‘But I was aware of everything you said to me…’ He felt cheated and a little disappointed about his first experience of hypnosis, even though we did some great work together, got a great result and I had explained to him at length beforehand that hypnosis would not feel like being asleep. 

Now, I happen to think that the natural trance state is pretty magical and powerful in and of itself. Being able to access your subconscious and allow it to find solutions to your problems is rather awe-inspiring when you think about it. I don’t know about you but, when I’m entering hypnosis, I like to know that I am fully focused and in control while this amazing process is happening. I don’t want anyone putting me ‘under.’

One popular application of hypnosis that I have, however, been enjoying recently is the TV show, ‘The Mentalist’. If you haven’t yet seen it, the show stars Simon Baker as Patrick Jane, an independent consultant with the
California Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Jane (and I must admit that it is a little disconcerting when his colleagues call him that) has a remarkable track
record for solving serious crimes by using his razor sharp skills of
observation. Within the Bureau, Jane is notorious for his dapper dressing and his blatant lack
of boundaries and protocol. His semi-celebrity past as a psychic medium also adds a whiff of scandal because he now admots that he feigned his
paranormal abilities. I just love spotting his use of hypnotic language patterns and they way that he ‘enables’ suspects, crime victims or witnesses to recall or reveal things about themselves.

I think that, most of all, I like his wearing of waistcoats on California beaches. I think you can catch it in the UK at 9pm on Thursdays.

So less tired old miselading hypnosis lingo and more hypno substnce, please. Or at the very least, can we have more amusing hypno crime-solving programmes? If anyone is asking, I wouldn’t mind playing a crime-solving hypno-cop… and I wouldn’t even need a waistcoat.