HYPNOTHERAPY: THE SKINNY, THE SMOKE, AND THE MIRRORS

Yesterday the SASKATCHEWAN ROUGH RIDERS won their LABOUR DAY CLASSIC against the WINNIPEG BLUE BOMBERS, and I was there at game end, busking at KINGSWARD exit, reaping the munificence of my consumers, half of the 30,000 as they passed by, basking in their glorious cheers of victory (pun intended) ‘neath the summer five o’clock sun.

As I said my thank-yous, Thanks man, Thanks ma’am, Thanks a lot, Thank you … thank you … thank you, my mind was not there, but elsewhere, thinking about my brand new HYPNOTHERAPY PRIVATE PRACTICE.

I WANT TEN VOLUNTEERS WHO WISH TO LOSE WEIGHT OR STOP SMOKING.

GET SKINNY OR BREATHE FREELY THROUGH HYPNOSIS.

CALL NEIL CHILD (HYPNOTHERAPIST) AT (306) 591 – 7131.

This is the advertisement I’ll be running in KIJIJI over the next few days.  I’ve already had several volunteers from my workplace, females wanting to lose weight, one male wanting to stop smoking.

My advertisement could have read: 

YOUR LIFE IS ONE OF RUNNING IN CIRCLES?   

DO YOU LACK CONTROL IN YOUR LIFE?   

TRY HYPNOTHERAPY.

HYPNOTHERAPY can help you change the way you think about things, the way you feel about things, and the way you behave about things.

Here is my Q & A skinny on HYPNOSIS and HYPNOTHERAPY:

• WHAT IS HYPNOSIS?

HYPNOSIS is a contrived (but based on a natural) induced state of deep relaxation and focused attention. Subjectively engrossed in a good book or television program, a mind adrift in day dream, the automaticity of driving home, are all habitual and natural occurrences and very much akin, if not examples, of hypnosis.  The action of Hypnosis is to enter an altered state and then receive suggestions, as designed by both the therapist and client.

• WHAT IS HYPNOTHERAPY? 

HYPNOTHERAPY is abstruse, simply, it is a psychotherapy that uses hypnosis as part of the treatment.

• CAN ANYONE BE HYPNOTIZED?

Yes, anyone can be hypnotized as long as they are willing.  You need only to be smart enough to achieve concentration and clever enough to know what is good for you to be hypnotized.   

• WILL I REMAIN IN CONTROL IN HYPNOSIS?  

Yes, when you are hypnotized you are aware constantly and will succumb to activities you desire, and succumb only to what is consistent with your belief system.  You will neither permit nor act upon any suggestions that are against your personal values.

However, if you go to a stage hypnotist, you might embarrass yourself, quack like a duck, get your hand stuck on a wall, do the moon walk, that sort of thing.  A stage hypnotist is there to give the audience members a good time at your expense.  A hypnotherapist is there to help you change direction in your life. 

Stage hypnosis is not a profanation of clinical hypnosis, but rather just that other road in the wood, the one most people take on the hypnagogic highway; HYPNOTHERAPY rather, represents that road less traveled by, the one that has the potential to make all the difference in a person’s life.

• HOW DEEP WILL I BE WHEN IN A HYPNOTIC TRANCE?

In a hypnotic trance, you are not sleeping.  You are conscious of everything around you.  You are awake. You are alert.  You are responding to the suggestions of the hypnotherapist, who is in turn, merely responding to your own suggestions of your life improvement (that have been discussed beforehand).  When you acquiesce to hypnosis, your immediate actions and behaviors are never the whims of the hypnotherapist, but rather the responses to the whims of yourself.

• HOW MANY SESSIONS WILL I NEED?

Unlike conventional therapies where four to six sessions is the norm, Hypnotherapy, typically, takes just one session. Smoking is a one-time session.  Weight loss could be a couple sessions. Other desired changes take certainly no more than four sessions.

• WHAT IS THE FREQUENCY OF SESSIONS? 

Ideally, sessions should be spaced a week apart. Each session is usually 60 to 90 minutes. 

• HOW WILL YOU KNOW IF IT WORKS? 

Your success is your proof.  If you accomplish what you intended to, then you were hypnotized.

And now, my skinny on my five stages of HYPNOTHERAPY:

• STAGE ONE:

Each session begins with a bright-line, so as to provide an unambiguous guideline for both hypnotherapist and client. This is the INTRODUCTION, a PRE-RELAXATION, a phatic chat to get on with …

• STAGE TWO:

This is a DELIBERATION, a DISCUSSION and DETAIL OF SCRIPTS to be employed during the session.

• STAGE THREE:

This will be an actual hypnotic INDUCTION, a formal RELAXATION cadenced one-versation focused on RELAX … RELAX … RELAX…

• STAGE FOUR:

This stage is a DEEPENING of the INDUCTION, where the prescribed SCRIPTS are ENACTED, UTILIZING an ALTERNATE REALITY through cap-a-pie IMAGINATIVE IMAGERY, the light or energy on your body from head to toe for example.  

• STAGE FIVE:

This is the RE-AWAKENING, usually to wherever left during a preliminary INDUCTION SCRIPT.

HYPNOTHERAPY is both a cathexis and a catharsis, demanding an investment of emotional energy and imagination, whilst purging an habitual defective behaviour in exchange for a psychological benefit.  Very few individuals have nothing in their lives they wish to improve upon.

HYPNOTHERAPISTS WANT ONLY FOR THE CLIENTS WHAT THE CLIENTS WANT FOR THEMSELVES.

The bread-and butter-client-market for hypnotherapy, the two improvements most people desire seem to be are to STOP SMOKING and to LOSE WEIGHT.

Everyone knows that smoking is bad for the health.  Smoking, like most maladies, is an addiction, and one that can be overcome mostly by changes in behavior.

Everyone knows that skinny has been the glam in the last few decades of our commercial world.

LOSE WEIGHT means to change eating habits.  

Hypnotherapy will help clients resist cravings for nicotine.  Hypnotherapy will help clients develop a more relaxed relationship with food.  Hypnotherapy will help clients develop new habits that will become part of their everyday lives.

TRUE CONFESSIONS: 

I’ve a couple of acquaintances (and so do you), both of which are female, who WANT to get SKINNY, not so much for their physical health, but for their physical and sexual presentation (surprise, surprise); one an Elizabethan beauty, the other an Amazon warrior.  Both regard themselves as zaftig, one says she is “chunky” the other says she is “fat.”   And having several discussions with each, both want skinny for reasons sensual and sexual.

Your past is a ghost.  Each new day is a tabula rasa for personal success.  Stop smoking.  Get skinny.  Look in the mirror.  Mirror, mirror ...  on the wall .... who has the power ... to fix it all.  

IT WAS YOU ALL ALONG!