Learning the practice of SELF-hypnosis:
It’s not about giving your power over to others–but about releasing it from within yourself!
Hypnotherapy, or hypnotic suggestion, is a state in which you have heightened focus or concentration and inner absorption– often referred to as a trance state. Therapeutic hypnosis is used to improve your health and well-being and is different from so-called stage hypnosis used by entertainers. Although you’re more open to suggestion during therapeutic hypnosis, your free will remains intact and you don’t lose control over your behavior.
During a hypnotherapy session, you will feel calm and relaxed, while you are still fully conscious of your surroundings and what is being said during the session. You are guided in a way that allows greater concentration on a specific thought, memory, feeling or sensation while blocking out distractions. As the example above indicates, you are already “in a trance” much of the time for many unhealthy habits surrounding your life experience and thought patterns. You can learn to guide yourself toward healthier “mindful” thought patterns for better health and a richer life. As you continue to use these “mindful” self-hypnosis exercises, you will begin to effortlessly access your own healthy suggestions at a subconscious level- so your sense of healing, wellbeing, and self-empowerment will become as natural and automatic as breathing!
Enhancing or personal Dream Work:
Sometimes, our dreams really are trying speaking to us in profound ways.
We all dream in 3-5 distinct dream sessions EVERY NIGHT. This has been proven and accepted as fact through scientific sleep studies and research. Most of these dream ‘episodes’ are not remembered once we awaken, however there are times when a profound dream will stay with us–even wake us up from a sleep state. There are also techniques you can learn that will help you increase your likelihood of remembering or ‘capturing’ your dreams.
It is my belief, as well as others that have studied dream therapy work, that dreams are often not what they appear to be in the ‘awake’ translation. Experiences that are labeled as ‘bad dreams’ are often misunderstood. Since the unconscious language of dreams speaks to us through metaphors and images — events may not have a direct ‘real world’ fit. A personal example I had was a dream where I saw my youngest son fall into a swift stream. I jumped in after him in a panic, but no matter what I did, I could not reach him. I woke in a cold and terrified sweat–the first time. Every time I calmed down and slipped into sleep again, I would relive the same dream. After the third episode, I decided rather than fighting the dream, I would ‘follow it’ and applied a lucid dreaming technique that I had been reading about. I sensed there was metaphoric message here that had nothing to do with my son drowning! Slipping back into the dream this time, with the intension of seeing past my original impressions, I was able to reach my son who was casually resting on the bottom of the stream in a clam pocket of water that was swift and raging just above us. I tried to pull him up, but he wouldn’t budge. Resisting a renewed feeling of panic, I stayed open to possibilities. It was at that point that I sensed a message coming into my consciousness –had I ever considered that I could breath underwater? At that point I decided that I could breath underwater in this dream world–and as I did take a breath, the image of my young son smiled at me and the words ‘now you can get it!’ came into my thoughts. I immediately felt the message was that I needed to trust with more than my eyes what I was experiencing in the world. Later, as I meditated further on this dream experience, I came to understand even deeper meaning than this initial one. I believe that sometimes the ‘shock’ of a dream is a way of getting the conscious minds ’awake’ attention, so the more important and deeper meaning can be found.
In my dream work with clients, I help them explore the potential metaphors of their dreams and to enhance their ‘dream learning’ as part of their own personal growth.