Hypnosis: Authoritative or Indirect?

Most people react favorably to what might be called hypnosis commands; You will find your eyes getting heavy and will begin to feel drowsy as I count down from 10 to 1. But some people, sometimes because of bad experiences with authority in their earlier life, resist such commands and appear to be unhypnotizable. Milton Erickson developed an alternative technique which hypnotherapists may use when they perceive that their client is resisting standard methods. This is an indirect suggestion rather than a command and resistant clients frequently feel more comfortable and relaxed with this approach.

A typical indirect suggestion could be something like this: You may begin to feel your eyelids getting heavy. It might happen that you will begin to feel drowsy. As I count down from 10 to 1, you may experience what will seem to you like a deep, deep sleep. Of course, you are always in complete control.

Erickson made a point of giving every patient the opportunity to resist. He felt that a patients willingness to accept one suggestion would allow him to make further suggestions and the patient would then be more open.

Erickson recognized that the patients resistance may not have anything to do with the issue but may be simply a testing of the therapists competence and willingness to accommodate the patients comfort zone.

My father was hit by a car and lost his left leg above the knee. The surgeon did not do a good job and my father was in excruciating pain for years. He finally went to a hypnotherapist who struggled to get results, finally declaring my father unhypnotizable. This was before Erickson. If the therapist had known about Ericksons techniques, he might have been able to help my father.

When you are choosing a hypnotherapist, it would be good to ask if that person is aware of Ericksons techniques so that you will have the full range of services available today.

Jack Wilson is an artist and teacher practicing in Los Angeles and Phoenix. http://www.geocities.com/galimatio/jackwilson.html Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jack_Wilson

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What is Hypnotherapy or Hypnosis?

Hypnotherapy processes interact directly with inner consciousness to find core issue causes of problems in a client’s life. Clients can examine beliefs and thought processes that are giving rise to emotional, physical, mental and spiritual problems and make changes at the core level from which the outer manifestation originates. With changes at the inner levels of consciousness the outer projection changes.
the clinical use of hypnosis, in which the subject’s powers of consciousness are mobilised and subconscious memories and perceptions are brought into consciousness. Heightened responsiveness to suggestions and commands, suspension of disbelief with lowering of critical judgments, the potential of alteration in perceptions, motor control, or memory in response to suggestions and the subjective experience of responding involuntarily are induced through hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapy is the application of hypnosis as a form of medical therapy, usually for relieving pain or conditions related to one's state of mind. Practitioners believe that when a client enters, or believes he has entered, a state of trance, the patient is more receptive to suggestion and other therapy. The most common use of hypnotherapy is to remedy maladies like obesity, smoking, pain, ego, anxiety, stress, amnesia, phobias, and performance but many others are also treated by hypnosis.