Experience positive, powerful, permanent change
By Jeanne Meyer Caverly, M.Ed., CH
As the new year progresses, are you finding it more and more difficult to stick to your resolutions? Is the stress of everyday living getting you down? Are there roadblocks that just seem to keep cropping up, blocking your way to success—in your relationships, in your work? If so, there’s good news! There is a way to make it easier to reach your goals and achieve your dreams. Whether you want to attain and maintain your ideal weight, stop smoking, improve your golf or tennis scores, increase memory and concentration, deal with other nagging issues, or become the world’s best public speaker—a unique blend of hypnosis and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) just may be the answer!
Based on the ancient principles of acupuncture, EFT is a simple tapping procedure that gently realigns the body’s energy system, without the needles. EFT was introduced in 1995 by Gary Craig, a Stanford Engineering graduate in lifelong pursuit of personal well-being.
Simply stated, negative emotional experiences disrupt the body’s energy system. The physical changes we feel from those disruptions, like nausea, anger, or “butterflies” in the stomach, become attached to the memory of that experience and affect the way we see the world and interfere with our thinking— until we heal that disruption. Properly applied, EFT quickly realigns and balances the body’s energy system with respect to a specific negative memory, disconnects the physical discomfort attached to it, and quite often removes the resulting symptoms. EFT often works where nothing else will. Once negative emotions have been cleared away using EFT, hypnosis can then be used even more effectively to implant positive suggestions in the subconscious to assist in reaching specific goals.
Hypnosis is very similar to the state of mind we experience every day just prior to going to sleep at night and getting up in the morning—the “twilight zone” between being awake and being asleep. It is a natural state of mind we go into when we daydream or “zone out” while watching TV or attending a boring meeting. Induced under the guidance of a hypnotist or by yourself in self-hypnosis, hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation which quiets the body and the conscious mind so that the subconscious mind can be reached through suggestion and visualization to effect change.
How hypnosis works
Your conscious mind is the part of your brain that looks, listens and learns. It reasons and judges, analyzes and criticizes, accepts and rejects, and makes decisions. Your willpower is a function of your conscious mind.
Your subconscious mind is the part of your brain that runs all your bodily functions, like breathing your lungs and beating your heart. Like a computer hard-drive, the subconscious also stores your permanent memory—all the ideas, experiences, and emotions you have ever seen, heard or experienced. Your subconscious mind also acts out any image, idea or concept you allow to be implanted in it, especially for 30 consecutive days or more. Your imagination is a function of your subconscious mind.
If you think of your mind as a computer, the only document you can work on is the one in the foreground, which, most of the time, is your conscious mind. Right now, your conscious mind is actively reading and interpreting this information.
Your subconscious mind is in the background most of the time. However, stored data in your subconscious may be sabotaging or interfering with your success in a particular area of your life (see sidebar). In order to re-program data in your subconscious mind so that it supports your rational conscious decisions, you need to send your conscious mind to the background and bring your subconscious to the foreground. This is exactly what hypnosis does!
Sabotaging your success
Let’s say you decide to eat a “good-carbs only” diet in order to lose that last 15 pounds and keep it off. Even though you’ve been unsuccessful in past attempts, this time you’re determined to use your willpower and make it work! That’s your conscious mind making that decision.
Meanwhile, your subconscious mind is saying: “Right! Like that’s going to work! You love pasta, you love bread, and you love chocolate. And you’ve been eating that way for 50 years! You really think you’re going to give all that up? I don’t think so! That’s not ever going to work.” And it doesn’t.
We all have programming in our subconscious minds from a lifetime of experiences from childhood through adulthood that has the potential to sabotage our wellness and success. Hypnosis can turn that around by replacing that negative programming with positive suggestions so that your conscious willpower and your subconscious imagination are “in sync”— working together to achieve your goals.
Facts about hypnosis
• You cannot be hypnotized if you don’t want to be.
• You are not going to blurt out any deep, dark secrets.
•You are always in control and cannot be made to do things you don’t want to do.
•You always have the choice to accept or reject any suggestions.
•You cannot get stuck in hypnosis —you can stop it or leave it at any time.
•You are not asleep—you are very aware of yourself and your surroundings at all times.
• You will remember everything you choose to remember about the session.
•Most people with IQ’s of 70 or higher can easily be guided into hypnosis as long as they want to be hypnotized, trust the hypnotist, and are willing to follow his or her instructions.
• Typically, hypnosis is not recommended for persons with severe mental illness.
Can hypnosis and EFT be used for pain management?
Although hypnosis and EFT often eliminate or minimize pain, you should not ignore the body’s warning mechanisms. Pain is a symptom of a problem and you should first check with your doctor before using hypnosis or EFT for pain management. Prior to teaching you how to use hypnosis or EFT for pain management, a Certified Hypnotist will ask you to sign a release to obtain your physician’s approval. In 1958, hypnosis was recognized by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association as a healing modality. Since then hypnotism has become a valuable addition to conventional medical and mental health treatment programs.
By bridging the body-mind-spirit gap, Hypnosis and EFT work hand-in-hand to empower you, the client, to take charge of your life—physically, mentally and spiritually—to rally your subconscious troops to support your conscious decisions. Change your mind, change your life! Program yourself for wellness and success in 2006!
Jeanne Meyer Caverly, M.Ed., CH, is a Reiki Master, EFT Practitioner and Certified Hypnotist through the National Guild of Hypnotists. She works at A Peaceful Place for Massage and Wellness, Route 9, Clifton Park. To reach her call 371.2225, 573.7453, email applace@aol.com or visit www.apeacefulplace.com.