Applications of Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is an effective, rapid approach to personal transformation. As you will see, it can be applied to most of the common ways you are blocked from expressing your fullest self. By working not only with the conscious mind, which is about 12% of your mind, but also the subconscious mind, which is about 88% of your mind, change and healing can happen rapidly and effectively.
I have listed below many of the ways people have used hypnotherapy. And my approach is that, if the mind conceived it, let’s explore how hypnotherapy can help resolve it.
Applications of Hypnotherapy
» Mind/Body Healing
» Trauma and Abuse Healing
» Stress and Anxiety
» Addiction Recovery
» Self-Sabotage
» Increased Willpower and Habit Control
» Insomnia
» Life Purpose
» Pain Relief
» Other Applications of Hypnotherapy
Mind/Body Healing
Illness and disease often have an emotional component to them. When unresolved emotions are stored in the body, they can interfere with your body’s ability to heal itself. By accessing and releasing emotions related to the physical symptom, as well as releasing any self-sabotage related to healing, you can clear any blocks to healing on the mind/body level. Trauma and abuse are often a source of these emotions; so as you heal on a trauma level, you are allowing the body to heal on a physical level as well. This enhances the body’s ability to return to its most optimal state. ↑ Go to Top
Trauma and Abuse Healing
Trauma can take many forms. Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse are well-known examples. Physical harm and emotional fear related to accidents, war, and disaster are other examples. But trauma can also be subtle and more covert. It can be how you interpreted reactions of others in a negative way that blocks your sense of self-love or competence. Trauma can be broadly viewed as anything that happened to you, large or small, that is interfering with your free-flowing sense of well-being and your ability to achieve what you want. In this way, trauma often underlies our most vexing issues, whether it is PTSD or procrastination or blocked creativity or negative thinking. Once these traumas are brought into conscious awareness and acknowledged, your energy can shift, and behaviors and emotional states will shift as well. ↑ Go to Top
Stress and Anxiety
Stress and anxiety are probably two of the biggest challenges we face to our well-being. Hypnotherapy is an excellent modality to change your perceptions and reactions to your life so that you feel bigger than the challenges you face. The simple yet very powerful ability to completely let go of tension and fear in the body and mind dramatically changes things on the level of body chemistry and hormonal output. When your body and mind are in a state of peace and spaciousness, you have access to your more resourceful state of mind. You can see things in different perspectives, think of new solutions, and let go of emotional stress. The ability to do this will give you a tremendous benefit in living your life in a more even-keeled way.
Anxiety is also often the result of trauma that has left the body and mind in a heightened state of wariness and agitation. Releasing the traumatic emotions and beliefs as well as learning deep relaxation is a powerful combination that can be life-changing. ↑ Go to Top
Addiction Recovery
The causes of addiction are often varied and complex. However, there are usually themes of self-soothing due to stress, unresolved traumas, and self-sabotage. With hypnotherapy traumas can be released from the mind/body; deep and profound relaxation can be achieved, thus relieving stress; and self-sabotage can be resolved. Then willpower can be enhanced, and habit control will be more effective. This kind of work can be very effective and complement other forms of recovery work you are doing. In my work with addiction, I have seen the power of this kind of approach achieve wonderful and amazing results over and over again. ↑ Go to Top
Self-Sabotage
Have you ever been frustrated by your attempts to make a change and then watch yourself revert right back to old behavior? If you find yourself in this dilemma, self-sabotage is probably at play. What this means is that on a deeper level, often outside of conscious awareness, your mind is more comfortable with the old behavior, even when it appears to be a destructive behavior. Working through self-sabotage means exploring the benefits to any entrenched behavior and releasing and reframing their hold on the mind. Often when self-sabotage is released, change becomes more effortless and permanent. ↑ Go to Top
Increased Willpower and Habit Control
In her excellent book “The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It,” Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford University psychologist, explores how to harness self-control. Using psychological studies, research, and neuroscience related to willpower and how it works, she explains how willpower and the mind/body response are related, and that, contrary to popular opinion, willpower is not just a virtue but also a biological function. In understanding this, you can greatly increase your use of willpower to make the changes you want.
By incorporating these principles with advanced hypnotic and mind-body release techniques, you will be able to train your brain for greater self-control, productivity, and achievement. ↑ Go to Top
Insomnia
Insomnia often is the result of a habit of the mind. A habit has been created that, when your head hits the pillow, instead of the mind shutting down and drifting into sleep, it revs up and uses this time to think and process. Since we all go through hypnosis to fall asleep, practicing hypnosis is also practicing how to fall asleep. One of the most powerful benefits of deep-state hypnosis is learning how to let go – let go of thoughts, let go of mental stress, and let go of physical tension. Through the use of a recording to practice this at night, you can retrain your mind into a new habit.
Sometimes trauma underlies the origination of the habit. Because of the trauma, you may have developed a state of hypervigilance and hyperawareness. The mind is in the fight-flight state of anticipation of a threat. When the trauma is healed and released, the mind can feel safe letting go into relaxation and sleep. Trauma release combined with the practice of letting go with hypnosis is a very effective approach to re-teaching the mind/body what it has always known. ↑ Go to Top
Life Purpose
Two of the most important and deeply personal questions people ask when doing past life regression and Life Between Lives work is, “What is my life’s purpose? Why am I here?” By accessing your higher self and seeing the journey you have taken over different lifetimes, you can see the themes you are exploring that will give you a deeper understanding of what your spiritual goals are and how this can be manifested in your current life.
Also by doing deep relaxation hypnosis, the mental clutter is cleared away. This gives you clarity and perspective. You can open the channels to your deeper self, that inner voice that is often ignored, and get access to your more creative, knowing self. At this level inspiration and intuition can give you answers that the conscious mind doesn’t always have access to. ↑ Go to Top
Pain Relief
Hypnotherapy can be a powerful adjunct in managing pain. There can often be a large mental/emotional component to your perception of pain that can exacerbate it. How you hold pain in your mind – the images, the colors, the intensity, the beliefs, the tension, for example – can affect the way the body reacts to the pain stimuli. The emotions associated with all this also affect your body’s reaction. With emotional release work and internal imagery processes, this can be cleared and reframed.
Another gift of the state of hypnosis is the ability to change the perception of physical sensations and, in some cases, to block or numb sensations to a level of increased comfort and manageability. And deep relaxation helps to release tension stored in the body down to the cellular level, which also increases comfort and promotes accelerated healing. ↑ Go to Top
Other Applications of Hypnotherapy
Because much of our behavior starts in our mind – and hypnosis is a powerful tool for working with our mind – the uses and benefits of hypnotherapy are many. Below are some of the ways hypnotherapy can be effectively used. Think of this list as a way of expanding your understanding of how hypnotherapy can help. If what you are looking for isn’t here, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done. This list is simply a jumping-off point to spark your imagination.
- Enhanced Creativity and Performance
- Enhanced Memory and Focus
- Enhanced Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence
- Depression
- Releasing Negative Patterns of Thought and Behavior
- Fears and Phobias
- Fear of Success/Fear of Failure
- Procrastination and Motivation
- Motivation and Future Planning
- Inability to Move Out of the Past and Worrying About the Future
- Test and Performance Anxiety
- Behavior and Habit Change
- Successful Eating Habits
- Hypnotic Gastric Band for Weight Loss Without Surgery
- Smoking Cessation
- Pre- and Post-Surgery Preparation
