Relaxation, Visualization and Healing
Taking Hypnotherapy Classes and Trying it on Mom
Story by Elizabeth Gonzalez

A few weeks ago I began taking hypnotherapy classes. It's not this crazy, “You're getting sleepy” deal where you end up doing something silly in front of a laughing audience. Hypnosis is a natural state that all people go into several times a day, like when we are driving and forget how we actually reached our destination, we are in a light state of hypnosis. Also, when we read or watch TV we can be in a light trance too, where our conscious mind wanders off and our subconscious mind is in control.

Hypnotherapy is something that has interested me for a long time as a way to help not only myself, but help others heal as well. Hypnosis can be used to help people in many ways, such as helping them end bad habits such as smoking, to help people loose weight, be more confident, and ease pains.

At one of the first classes, the instructor talked about how the school doesn't do a lot of advertising because the students often find them. I agree with that because the class feels like a meeting of like-minded people, where it's okay to believe in things that some people look at as make believe kind of stuff. With hypnotherapy however, it is not make believe because there are real results and it is even proven that in using our imaginations (or what some would call ‘visualization') the brain acts as if what we are visualizing is really happening, because the same parts of our brain are in use when we are doing something like playing tennis or imagining that we are playing tennis.

Every class is a positive experience with a lot of encouragement. Not only are we reading and practicing at home, but also in class we always try the techniques ourselves to get comfortable and get feedback on how to improve what we are doing. The classes are small and most of the people are older than me; they are all women, and a few are studying hypnotherapy with the intention of using it to help someone they know specifically.

With each class we are learning how to think differently because an integral part of being a hypnotherapist is building up the self-esteem of others at every chance you get. When interacting with clients we don't ignore their negative talk, but respond to them with positive statements to increase confidence. We have to retrain ourselves to not use words like no, can't, try or don't because the subconscious mind doesn't respond to those type of words. We have to train our minds to be quick in changing negative talk into the positive statements that we will say to a client while they are in a trance.

All the suggestions we make come from the clients themselves based on how they see the issue they are dealing with -- from how it makes them feel and behave now, to what their lives would be like without that issue affecting their lives negatively.

I had never been hypnotized before and was kind of nervous about it, but it was just a feeling of shutting out everything going on around you and relaxing deeply. When we are in a relaxed state, our conscious mind is not in the way to refuse and interfere with the positive statements. The intellect is not what we are speaking to, rather it is our subconscious mind that hears these positive statements and sees them as they are already happening.

I closed my eyes, got comfortable in my chair and took some deep breaths. Then I listened to the words that the instructor said and I could feel like I was beginning to release all the tension in the different parts of my body as she said I would and then there was a deep feeling of calm. I just felt my head not wanting to support itself anymore and falling over to the side. I felt like a heavy, unmovable lump. After you are taken into deep levels of relaxation the hypnotherapist says positive statements to increase your confidence, creating new images of how your life is as if it were already happening with details so that the image can be very real for the client.

I've practiced the relaxations on my reluctant family members and found perhaps the best critics. My sister did not hold back in saying that she was unable to relax until towards the end and that my slight stuttering jolted her relaxation. Later I tried it on my mom—not suggesting anything, but just relaxing and her reaction was surprising to me. I don't know if she was exaggerating, but it seemed to me that how she was feeling was just unreal. Right before we started she was flipping through the TV and looking for something to stuff in her mouth. She sat down in a recliner and I read the relaxation to her. When she opened her eyes she was feeling relaxed and not wanting to just watch TV and waste her time anymore. Even the next day she told me how good she was still feeling and that she had slept better than ever. I didn't know what to say, but I didn't let on that I was in a bit of disbelief. Now of course, she asks for me to help her relax more often.

It's a bit nerve wrecking to think of how the meetings with real clients will be because we have to think quickly and go through a lot of things in our initial meeting. But with the training at the school I'm sure that when that time comes my classmates and I will be more than prepared.