Children can be taught to use their imagination to tackle frequent bouts of stomach pain, research shows.

A relaxation-type CD, asking children to imagine themselves in scenarios like floating on a cloud led to dramatic improvements in abdominal pain.

The US researchers said the technique worked particularly well in children as they have such fertile imaginations.

It has been estimated that frequent stomach pain with no identifiable cause effects up to one in five children.

The research, published in Pediatrics, follows on from studies showing hypnosis is an effective treatment for a range of conditions known as functional abdominal pain, which includes things like irritable bowel syndrome. – (BBC)

Hypnotherapists have known this for years – science is finally ‘catching up’. I’ve used these same hypnosis techniques on adults as well. The hypnosis bit helps to remove the ‘layers of adult conditioning’ and they can re-access their imagination to help them with pain control.

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When something suddenly interrupts an automated unit of behavior a strange but interesting thing occurs. There is a pause – a blank 1 or 2 seconds – where the brain doesn’t know what to do. The conscious mind hasn’t fully engaged again and there is essentially a blank slate as far as a hypnotist is concerned. If you give a suggestion in that pause – it is more likely than not that the brain will act on the suggestion.

If you then carry on as if nothing has occurred then quite often the person will have total amnesia of that 2 second pause. So here is the 2 second hypnosis secret in order.

1. blah blah blah blah (normal conversation)
2. pattern interrupt (just something unexpected during an automatic habitual action)
3. suggestion – in a different tone of voice if possible (you got 1 or 2 seconds)
4. blah blah blah (carry on with you conversation in the same tonality and pace as before the interrupt

That’s it folks. There is more to it than this, but this is the core underlying principle things such as the ‘handshake interrupt’. I teach this stuff in seminars on influence to business groups. It works. I just had a lady give our group some feedback … she interrupted a kiss from her boyfriend just before their lips touched by turning her head away and whispering that she wanted some sunflowers (this boyfriend had only bought her flowers twice in the last 4 years). A few days later he turns up with sunflowers. She asked him if he had just done this because she said so … and he flatly denied it. He had no recollection of her saying anything to him.

So, I’ve let the cat amongst the pigeons here in exposing the sneaky little 2 second hypnotic session. Have fun. Don’t do anything silly with this – and remember you can’t get anyone to do anything that goes against their core principles (contrary to what a lot of hype out there is suggesting). And this takes practice to get right. Good luck on your journey in learning how to hypnotise.

Happy trips

The Wandering Hypnotist

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New research at the University of Geneva suggests that hypnosis alters neural activity by rerouting some of the usual connections between brain regions. Such neurological detours don’t happen when subjects merely imagine a scenario.

Check out this new article from ScienceNews. Too much information to repeat here but for those of you who think hypnosis is made up … read on!

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One way to set up rhythm in the beginning is simply using the pace of your voice. This can take a little practice and one way to experiment with this when you start to learn to hypnotise is to use a metronome (you can get a real one or use a software based one with earphones – I’ll post a blog on how to do this if you are interested at some point). Using a metronome and pacing your script delivery in-time with the beat can work wonders on the impact and effectiveness of your hypnosis induction technique.

It’s almost like poetry … and as you play with a metronome … do a little self-hypnosis and set-up your own internal metronome that you can gently turn on in the background as an internal rhythm generator for your hypnosis techniques.

I have a few other secrets but before getting to them, go away and play with rhythm. Even within this one area there are some really sneaky ways of introducing rhythm in your ” learn to hypnotise ” journey.

Happy journeys.

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Too many hypnotherapists out there have been trained that they need to relax their client as part of the hypnosis induction routine. There have been a number of discussions in the last couple of weeks in various online hypnosis forums from newbie hypnotherapists asking questions about clients ‘resisting’ their hypnosis induction. Further investigation suggests that ‘going deeper into trance’ is being resisted because the client fears ‘letting go’.

Now, the thing is you see, that hypnosis does not equate necessarily to a ‘relaxed’ state. If you’ve only been taught a set of hypnosis techniques that rely on ‘letting go’ then you are basically stuck as a hypnotherapist if you get someone who polarity responds to your hypnosis routine.

This is where the quality of the training you took really begins to shine through. If you’ve been given a set of techniques and not the principles then you are already in a less flexible situation as a therapist. If you’ve been taught the belief that you need to ‘relax’ the client to effect a hypnotic state then you are even less flexible.

Take care to learn principles and check out if you can the quality of the training you are getting if you are learning how to hypnotise for therapy purposes.

Happy trips

The Wandering Hypnotist

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Underlying most of the techniques you will be exposed to as you learn how to hypnotise is this simple yet complex hypnosis secret:

Grabbing and directing attention (whether conscious or unconscious attention) is THE secret behind every induction.

I can already hear some objections so let me share a couple of observations.

1. Most beginning hypnosis techniques are about gently guiding the conscious awareness on a little journey while you ‘establish communication’ with subconscious resources without the ‘critical judge’ of the conscious mind so much in-the-way. As you advance you might also be introduced to ‘rapid induction’ hypnosis techniques … there are plenty of twitter ads and search engine ads out there promoting those “how to hypnotize someone in 60 seconds” type of products and courses. In my opinion, these are still of this the ‘grab and direct’ conscious attention hypnosis techniques (I’ll give you a run-down on how these work at some point).
2. The other class of hypnosis techniques are about grabbing and directing the attention of the unconscious mind. These are a very different (and powerful) type of hypnotic induction. The conscious mind is secondary … you might not even care about directing the conscious mind … the conscious mind might not even know that the induction has already taken place, the suggestions made and the interaction complete. ‘Conversational hypnosis’ techniques are some of the ways in which you can begin to do this — BUT this is not the be-all or end-all of this class of hypnosis techniques. There are in my opinion much more powerful means of inducing hypnosis unconsciously than conversationally. But this is advanced stuff.

I went through the classic path of learning to hypnotize by going through the first class of techniques above, then the second class … and only realized some fundamental underlying secrets in the last few years. I’ve begun to talk about some of them in these posts … but not all has been revealed yet .

So, as you go forward and learn how to hypnotise keep an eye and ear out on whether you grabbing and directing the conscious mind or the unconscious mind … and as you develop more skill begin to figure out which is more effective generally for you.

Happy trips

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Phobias can be debilitating. Desensitization is a classic phobia technique – hypnosis and NLP work better in my personal experience – and are usually quite permanent. I specialized in phobias for a number of years getting between 3 and 5 phobics a week on average. If any of you are suffering from a phobia that is impacting your quality of life or well-being … GO GET IT SORTED!

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And then again, revealing this now may or may not have any impact whatsoever – at least not right away. But as you gain your hypnosis skills this one simple insight will transform your ability to work with a much wider group of people. There are layers to this secret. What you take away from it now will be different than what it means in 10 years time.

Are you ready?

The most powerful way to hypnotize someone is to go there first!

Richard Bandler repeats this point over and over (Richard is this amazing genius of human communication who co-invented NLP). I didn’t really understand it at first. However, now I do – and I am still staggered at the implications of this secret. But like any knowledge, I could give you the secret to the universe and it would be meaningless unless you claim it as your own – you need to go out and experience this information as directly experienced knowledge.

So what does it mean … you really need to go and test it to understand the implications … at its most basic level it means that if you can learn to ‘go into the right hypnotic state’ yourself, then it is much more likely that the person you are working with will ‘follow’ you.

When you stop and think about this it makes sense. When someone walks into the room who is really happy … everyone’s mood is lifted. If someone comes into the room all ‘doom & gloom’ … it impacts everyone. Same goes for excitement, laughter, anger … in fact any strong emotional state … that state ‘jumps’ from person to person. Hmmmmmm … does this work for other states … hypnotic states, meditative states, curious states?

I’ll leave you to ponder this hypnosis secret – and I’ll really encourage you to really go out and learn how to hypnotize yourself first … and then ‘play’ with the state in yourself and observe its impact on others.

Have a good trip …

The Wandering Hypnotist

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OK, just came across this wonderful demonstration of silent hypnosis. Whoever thought that hypnosis was about what you said … think again!

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Just about all courses you go to will teach this basic hypnosis induction and we’ll do just the same. It can quite literally have an enormous positive impact on your life learning this particular form of self hypnosis. It is used in various guises with:

• stress management,
• meditation practice,
• as an exercise in helping people sleep
• hypnosis sessions
• as an introduction to guided imagery
• preparation for sports and martial arts
• etc. etc.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Yes, you’ve probably heard of or even experienced this for yourself. It may not have been under the ‘hypnosis’ label but it is a classic hypnosis induction technique. I’ll give you my version of it here:

(Warning – if you have high blood pressure or a heart problem you might want to skip the tensing part … just imagine tension flowing out into the floor as you progressively go through the muscle groups below).

1. Get into a comfortable chair or couch (you can even to this lying down … but you might fall asleep )
2. Loosen any tight clothing you may have, remove your shoes if they are tight.
3. Center your balance by gently rocking backwards and forwards, side-to-side, making the movements smaller and smaller until you feel perfectly centered.
4. Take a deep breath … and as you breath out gently close your eyes.
5. Starting with the top of your body (e.g. your eyes), as you breath in, tense them more than you are now (e.g. scrunch up your eyes), hold for a count of 3 … and release … let go … as you breath out.
6. Repeat for your cheek and jaw muscles … breath in … and as you breath in tense your jaw muscles more than they are now (don’t go overboard with the tension people … we trying to relax, not stress you further) … hold for a count of 3 … and as you breath out …. feel as if all the tension is melting out of your face … dripping onto the floor. Move your jaws … make sure it is relaxed. Repeat this if necessary.
7. Move on down for all your muscle groups … your shoulders, your biceps, your hands, your stomach, your buttocks, your thighs, your calves and your feet/toes.
8. Don’t go overboard on the tensing … the key is to begin to notice the difference between tension and relaxation … and to consciously let go … we often don’t realize just how tense we are holding our muscles.
9. Remember to tense as you breath in … release as your breath out …
10. When you have reached your feet … you should be totally relaxed. You could consider this to be a mild hypnotic state.

Practice this at least once a day … after a couple of weeks you should be able to just ‘intend’ to relax, take a deep breath and let all the tension go as you exhale (you can skip the progressive muscle bit – that’s just to make you aware of the difference between tension and relaxation).

Have a good trip!

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