Hypnosis: How It Works with the Brain

Spring 2005 • Around Here Magazine Feature Article

Most of us first learned about hypnosis from a nightclub-type performance. The subject was put into a deep sleep only to become the fool for the watch-swinging

Svengali's ridiculous post-hypnotic suggestions: "Whenever I say the word 'cat,' you will crow like a rooster."

This false image of hypnosis embodies most of the myths which prevent people from enjoying the healing power of hypnosis. Hypnosis does not require a heavy-lidded dullness on the part of the subject; in fact, the "trance' state" is a condition of focused concentration, and most people in trance state are unusually aware and responsive.

Secondly, hypnosis is not in the control of the hypnotist but of the subject. Psychologist Stanley Fisher, who has worked with thousands of patients in trance state, insists, "All hypnosis is self-hypnosis; the subject is always in control; the choice of whether to cooperate is his alone."

Although hypnosis may involve suggestion, suggestibility is neither the primary attribute or the primary advantage of trance state. Milton H. Erickson, who developed the major 20th century breakthrough in hypnotherapy, promoted hypnosis as the most efficient method of identifying, accessing, developing, and utilizing strengths. Most importantly, hypnosis does not require a hypnotist; virtually anyone can learn easily to place himself in a relaxed trance state.

The Brain's Subconscious

Current understanding of how the brain works reveals the importance of communicating with the subconscious. Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo describes the brain as a "phenomenal double agent." It does one thing while convincing you that it's doing something else altogether. The brain, it seems, is not a single unit of mind, but rather a confederation of highly specialized compartments, or "mind modules," each dealing with a separate topic, he points out.

For instance, there is a part of the brain devoted to recognizing faces, but another devoted to remembering names, and yet another specialized in storing past conversations. Atop this jumble of sometimes coordinated activity sits a region in the left side of the brain that is called the "interpreter." It is this function which explains our behavior to ourselves, and which gives us our sense of choice and identity. The interpreter works overtime to provide coherent explanations for what we do.

The interpreter is precious to us. It gives us our sense of self; but it often does no't know why we really do things this, the subconscious knows. By dissociating from the conscious mind and its interpreter, hypnosis allows communication with the subconscious mind, which truly "understands" the reasons why we do things, without intellectualizing them as the conscious mind does.

Bad Habits

Thus, hypnosis is highly effective at eliminating bad habits like smoking and overeating. It allows a person to bypass the conscious rationalizations and "cover stories" that permit self-destructive behavior, and to directly address the part of the brain that "benefits" from the habit. Hypnosis also eliminates value judgments, which often reinforce bad habits. The person who says. "I hate myself for eating this ice cream," is actually strengthening her feelings (anger, frustration, weakness, self-doubt, etc.) that promoted the urge to smoke or overeat in the first place. A person cannot successfully command her subconscious not to allow smoking. However, she can enlist the good instincts of the subconscious as part of the process of choosing not to smoke.

Pain Control

Hypnosis is also effective for pain control.

Experiment after experiment demonstrates that people in a trance state experience pain far less even than when they're not in this state. In one example, a young woman kept her arm submerged in a bucket of ice water without describing her discomfort as greater than level I (on a scale of 1-10).

Her non-hypnotized counterparts had reached "10" many minutes before and removed their arms from the water. Hypnosis and its counterpart "biofeedback" are standard elements of the treatment regimen for chronic pain.

Healing Benefits

Hypnosis has been shown to speed postsurgical recovery in many patients. Case studies and research indicate the following benefits from preoperative hypnosis and suggestions given under anesthesia. They include: a reduction in the normally required amounts of anesthesia and pain killers, more rapid wound healing, earlier return of physiological functions, and shorter convalescence.

It is one physician's view that this occurs because "your body can't tell the difference between a surgeon and a mugger, unless you help it to do so." That is, hypnosis persuades the body to cooperate with the surgeon, reducing the tension and stress which lead to postoperative pain and slow recovery. Stanley Fisher makes this interesting observation:

"Patients who have used self-hypnosis tend to end up with the thinnest scars. It is as though the scalpel, when entering the body, cuts through soft, flowing tissue rather than tense tissue that is bound to rip."

Establishing Its Place

Hypnosis has emerged from the shadows of psychology, and other healing disciplines. Its usefulness as our means of communicating with the subconscious seems unlimited. With minimal training, practically anyone can learn and apply the simple steps of self-hypnosis .... a healing art for everyone.

In hypnoanalysis, a trained therapist uses gentle suggestions to help remove limillng beliefs and construct positive, life-affirming ones. Whatever goal is set, therapy is decided upon and self-directed by the client wilh the counselor acting as a guide. Step by step, a hypnoanalyst guides each person in uncovering the origin of the person's problem, undoing the subconscious knot, and freeing himself to live a healthier, more productive life.

Around Here Magazine • 2005

Mid-Term Thoughts Positive Strokes Can Help with Homework

The school year is about half over. Your school-age children are meeting many new challenges and you would like to help. What can you do?

Most important, take an interest. Ask them to show you their work. Talk with them about what they are studying. Think of family activities or expeditions to enrich your children's learning experiences. Talking with them increases their fund of general knowledge, develops their listening skills and sparks their interest level.

Respect your child's work. You can demonstrate the value you place on it by setting aside priority time when your child can do homework in an unhurried way without distractions. Be open to help. Give positive strokes frequently and encourage independent thinking. Young children need help in planning ahead. Even older children need guidance on how to study or manage time for long-term projects. You can help them set up a flexible structure. Kids feel cared about when receiving appropriate limit setting, encouragement and nurturing.

Parents can teach children about achieving high standards without requiring them to be perfect by unduly pressuring them to perform beyond their level-headed best. Ask them to redo a sloppy job or elaborate on a too-brief assignment. Consistency and thoroughness are important qualities to develop.

One word of caution: don't become overly invested in your children's performance. Be realistic about their ability. A child pressured to succeed beyond their capability creates low self esteem and eventual disappointment for all. Also, remember that our children will imitate our habits frequently whether good or bad. The adage "D0 as I say, not as I do," if communicated non-verbally, might set parents up to lose respect in their children's eyes.

Change: a matter of fate or of planning?

Many people let change happen to them, rather than taking an active role in evaluating goals, planning ahead and taking the risks necessary to achieve goals and, possibly, upsetting the status quo.

Some people feel so scared of losing what they have that even tentative moves toward change frighten them. Others fear taking responsibility for making a choice, preferring to wait until life "forces" them to move, which displaces responsibility onto Life or somebody else. Many feel so badly about themselves and assume nothing they do will work out, instead sloshing around in the quicksand of Victimville, U.S.A.

On the opposite side, some people take action too quickly without the careful evaluation which makes change positive. An individual who moves from job to job, or mate to mate, may also be resisting taking responsibility for his or her choices in life. Others, wishing for things to be better, see the answer to their troubles in that new man, or new town.

Successful change requires knowing what you want, gathering relevant information, evaluating the risk involved, making a plan and then taking action. However, there is always a price for getting what you want. Are you willing to pay it? Do you know what it is? Also, if you see yourself repeating patterns that end in failure or bad feelings, you may need professional help.

Remember, there are no easy answers all the time, but inside, deep within your feelings, you can discover your true self - the one free from "shoulds," "ought-to's," guilt, false beliefs and assumptions, devoid of delusions and illusions that, when listened to in silence, will show you your way.

Stress Accompanies Joy : Baby Makes Three Can Add Problems

Preparing for the arrival of ;a first-born child by buying a crib and stocking the house with diapers, bottles and formula is not difficult and can be fun. However, preparing for the emotional changes that you and your Spouse must face when baby makes three, is an unknown and more difficult job. Your new arrival is a significant source of joy and celebration. At the same time, it is a substantial source of stress, too. Recognizing this may make you more ready to deal with the upsetting, and unexpected, feelings which follow.

Fathers, sometimes hard-pressed to appreciate the fatigue and intense involvement which the first few months of motherhood demand, may feel, even knowing better, abandoned to a new love. Resentment is not unusual and preparation for the change from couple to family is essential.

A baby brings with it a seemingly endless assortment of chores, and upsets the previous family balance. Partners who valued an egalitarian division of labor may develop resentments as they find themselves slipping into more characteristic, traditional roles. Somehow, mom seems to be the one Who hears the baby cry at night and who gives up work to slay home with the infant. Couples must consciously re-evaluate their situation and spell out new agreements in adapting to new demands when baby makes three.

Wellness Seminar-goers find hypnotist spellbinding

By: Chris Daley - Mountain Democrat

originally published March 4th 1985

Pssst, guess what? Zap You've all been hypnotized! Heh, heh, and you didn't even know it. But don't worry, no one is going to make you cluck around like a chicken or eat an onion and say it tastes like an apple. You're still in control.

According to Dr. Richard Ward, Placerville hypnotherapist and metaphysician, you have experienced hypnosis every time you daydream. How about when you're driving along thinking about something else, and you miss your turn and wonder where you've been and how you managed to get where you are without running off the road. A form of hypnosis, he said. Your subconscious knows how to handle the car while your conscious mind takes its little detours.
Ward said this and lots of other intriguing things before he wove a hypnotic spell over about 50 students and guests at last week's seminar on Health and Wellness at El Dorado High School.

The "group induction," as he called it, culminated his presentation on hypnosis and health and left some of the audience "relaxed as a rag doll," and others charged up and "ready to put in another eight hour day."

The hypnosis workshop was the sixth in a seven-part series of lectures and seminars coordinated by El Dorado chemistry teacher Mark Detzer as part of an ongoing program investigating the concepts of wellness.

"Hypnosis," Ward said, "is recognized as an effective way to realize and to utilize potential we have but never use. It is a tool that facilitates success by allowing you to transform negative aspects of your subconscious in qualities of personal strength."

Hypnosis is used with some patients as an alternative to chemical anesthetics, in treatment of burn victims, in psychotherapy, criminal investigations, in athletics and in personal development.

Ward described an experiment in which basketball players were divided into two groups. A control group practiced shooting baskets .for two weeks, while the experimental group remained in a room for the same amount of time and imagined themselves shooting baskets. At the end of the test, the group that had simply used imagery had achieved the same level of increased skill as the group that had been physically shooting the ball day after day.

"Many American Olympians use these techniques," he said, "and the East Germans and Russians rely heavily on hypnosis, imagery and visualization as an integral part of their athletic training.

"Almost everyone, with the exception of the severely mentally handicapped, can be hypnotized to some extent, however." he said.

"Just like playing the piano or anything else, it takes a lot of practice. "

There are three distinct personality types recognized in hypnotherapy by their "suggestibility." They are the physical, emotional, intellectual, and they each respond to a different technique or approach.

"A physically suggestible person is one who walks closer to you, looks you straight in the eye and is comfortable being touched. These are people who respond readily to a direct style of induction such as "eye fixation". They can gaze at an object while being told their eyes are becoming heavy, as though there were little lead weights attached to their eyelids. Because the eyes were not meant to stare continuously at only one thing, they see it working right away and that helps to continue toward the hypnotic state."

The emotionally suggestible must be approached indirectly, Ward said, because they tend to be more protective of themselves, particularly of their emotions. For these types of people imagination, rather than will power, is the key to their suggestibility. Arm levitation is an effective induction technique that lets the "hypnotee" imagine that as he raises his arm slowly, he becomes more and more relaxed.

"Imagination is 20 times stronger than will power," Ward said. "And when the imagination is in conflict with the will, the imagination will always win."

The intellectually suggestible, must be approached with reasons and explanations for everything, or in the last resort, shock. Ward told of a noted hypnotherapist in southern California who wanted to demonstrate for a group of high powered doctors and university medical staff. He skipped all the preliminary relaxation procedures and simply grabbed the unsuspecting volunteer and yelled "Sleep!" and the high powered doctor went out like a light.

"In the hypnotic state," Ward assured a number of questioners, the hypnotee is really more alert than the hypnotist, in a heightened state of awareness, because the subconscious is taking control. This is why people never do anything they don't want to do or would not normally do as a result of Hypnosis." As an aside he cautioned that "If there are people sleeping in your house, don't think they don't hear a lot of what's going on, because they do. Your conscious mind may be an 8 to 5 worker, but the subconscious is like the police and fire departments: on duty all the time."

The question was raised several times in various guises; Ward noted that only two main conditions prevent successful hypnosis. '

"Fear" he said, is the most common and comes out when there is no rapport between the hypnotist and the hypnotee. It is a lack of trust and it can be felt just in the 'vibrations' coming from one or the other's thoughts. Their fear is that they won't 'wake up' or that they will tell something they don't want to tell. Both are just the fear of being out of control."

The other main block to experiencing hypnosis he called the "reverse effect." In this case the individual does not succeed because he is trying too hard, like trying to remember an answer in Trivial Pursuit that only comes to you after you move on to another question. In hypnosis, he said, an example is the overweight person who says to himself, "I've got to make this work" so often and with such intensity that it then does not work.

Ward brought the issue of health and hypnosis straight to the audience with the statement that, "Man is the only animal that is a creator. He can create an ulcer or high blood pressure or even cancer or any number of the two thousand or so diseases we recognize. He can create things good and bad: happiness, good health and success, or negative things: misery, unhappiness and bad health."

In short, he said, "He draws to himself the things he thinks about. Man is the sum total of his own thoughts. "

A few moments after Ward's formal presentation, the audience seemed to become the "sum total of his thoughts," all of which were positive and quite relaxing.

Speaking softly and rhythmically, he inducted the group into a quiet state of alert relaxation. And except for a couple of students who whispered constantly throughout much of the session, nearly everyone went "under." At least, I think they did. It was hard to tell, because I was so completely relaxed, I couldn't make myself notice what others were experiencing.

Ward described a wave of relaxation that started at the head and scalp and slooowly flowed down through the entire body .

"Every muscle, every nerve is limp' and loose, laaazy and relaxed," he intoned in a soft singsong voice. And by the time the wave of relaxation got down to the chest there was hardly a sound in the room except his voice. .

"Your body feels like a rag doll, limp and loose, laaazy and relaxed," he said. And he was right.

He brought us back to a fully conscious state with the suggestion that we would feel very good, rested yet energized, and that in the future we would be more attuned to the positive aspects in life and less influenced by the· negative.

The moment we "surfaced" the room seemed to explode with exclamations and excitement.

"I felt great."

"I felt like my feet were so heavy they were sinking right into the floor."

"I wanted to sleep."

"I was ready to get up and put in another eight hours work." .

I was limp and loose, laaazy and relaxed.

Post-Partum Blues a Part of Childbirth

Following the birth of a baby, women may experience a period of depression.

The depression symptoms may 00 relatively mild, moderate or require treatment, even hospitalization. Physiologically, postpartum blues are related to the abrupt shift in hormonal balance when the pregnancy ends. Psychologically, these feelings become tied up with whatever emotional Issues a woman brings to motherhood.

Many women don't recognize postpartum depression for what it is when they are experiencing it. Instead, they interpret their stress and unhappiness as their own failure and see it as evidence of their unsuitability for motherhood.

With more and more women returning to careers after the birth of their babies, many women do not take the time they need to adjust to tile change they are going through.

Nature did not mean for women to go through the process of motherhood alone. It is a vulnerable time for mother and infant. The availability of support from her husband, family and friends is essential. It is important to remember that the first experiences a baby has, set the tone (or whether the infant feels okay about being in the world. Emotionally, the infant bonds with its parents and the parents, both parents, with the infant.

Remember, those things that need taking care of that take you away from your infant can wait. Take your time, other distractions will still be there, but your child's infancy only happens once.

Parents who feel good about themselves are happy, and parents who take good care of themselves are often able to do more than just feed, change and hold an infant. They communicate to their infants the most needed feeling, love.

Couples Need Own Time: Daily Demands can Take Marriage Toll

Frequently, one of the habitual problems regrettably told to me by spouses concerns a lackluster relationship. The romance and excitement that once characterized their relationship faded as family, domestic and business commitments tugged on their time.

Very often, couples in this predicament spend their best energy and time giving to other people and then wind up at the end of the day with nothing left for the spouse. The result is couples

spend less and less quality time Dr. Richard P. Ward

together replenishing and nurturing their relationship.

Quiet resentment and grievances, if unexpressed and not worked through, fester and infect the relationship. A pattern can then emerge and become entrenched, where spouses do not meet each other's needs. The rest is not difficult to imagine. The remedy is to nip this in the bud. The honeymoon always wears off.

By planning for relaxed, uninterrupted quiet time together, couples can provide the environment to stroke the emotional coals that once burned so intensely. By making appointments with each other for nurturing, for sex, or for sharing, the relational fire will not go out.

One assignment I give couples is to agree to talk to each other for just 15 minutes per day about their feelings towards one another at the same designated time daily. If your marriage is in trouble, give these suggestions an opportunity to work.

For a marriage to meet the emotional, physical needs of the partners and children, It should be more than a well-oiled machine or a fully functioning business. Although business principles may apply, remember that your people and spouse are important.

Do you want to let fate take charge of your most important relationship, where a little TLC goes a long way?

Dr. Ward Is a Medical Hypnoanalyst, and a Organizational Consultant In a private practice In Pollock Pines, Ca.

Admitting Problem is a Big Step in Emotional Health

"Hello. Is this Dr. Ward?"

"Yes, who's calling?"

"Well, uh, my name is Mrs. Smith and I'm Just calling to ask a question. "

"Okay, go ahead."

"Am I crazy to come see You? You see I've been feeling so unhappy for three months now but I don't know what to do about It. A friend of mine told me to call you."

I frequently get calls Just like this one, or people will ask me this question on their first visit to my office. I always reassure them that seeking help (an emotional or psychological problem is not a sign of craziness but a sign of health and strength. Admitting and facing a problem signifies inner strength and demonstrates an investment In living a healthy emotional life.

Taking care of yourself by getting help for yourself or someone in your family is an open expression of love and caring. We don't hesitate to get our car or refrigerator or furnace or TV fixed but often when It comes to our personal life, we believe that 'being strong' or maintaining the image of a 'rugged individual' will somehow solve the problem.

Frequently our solutions simply don't work or make the problem worse. Persistent and nagging problems such as alcohol and drug abuse, feelings of guilt or helplessness, irrational fears, marital and sexual problem.s, poor school performance, rebelling against authority are areas where professional attention can help.

The news media has plenty of examples of people who wouldn't ask for help. But most people don't have the type of life and death problem that gets into the news. However, many good people will wait until disaster looms before seeking help.