The PATH Foundation

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March 2008

HYPNOSIS - HYPNOTHERAPY
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Hypnosis for Happiness and Success

It is always a joy to hear from former clients who have been helped by hypnosis sessions. It is always a double joy when they were able to totally turn their life in the direction that brings them phenomenal happiness. We just received an email from a former client who has been able to do that. She came to me several years ago after meeting her at a talk done by Dr. Martin in Houston, Texas.

She was in distress.

She had graduated from a major college with very good grades. She had mapped out a plan for her future which included goals for success. These were very clear goals. She was wondering why the effort was not bringing her joy now. She was getting all the accolades that clearly mark moving successfully towards her goals: good pay, good evaluations, etc. Happiness was eluding her, however. She had reached the top of the mountain that had been her achievement focus since kindergarten, and she was not happy.

In getting clear on what we were going to focus upon with our session, I used some techniques used in talk therapy to set the tone and get more clarification. I also used some art therapy. Her tree drawing showed that her subconscious certainly felt blocked. This block was not minor. It was a true stalemate. Also the inner mind was torn in two directions. The vining on her tree showed that others took tremendous life force from her and the colors showed that she was in a true dragon fight ( a term in art for parental issues). To make matters worse, her dragon fight was masked with heavy denial in order to survive.

She , at first, used what the mind tends to use in stalemate, responding in a devil’s advocacy type manner. However, when using a technique of having to choose only one adjective for questions, it became apparent that the goals were: not her goals, but the goals that had started even before kindergarten: her parent’s goals for her. They had a stereotype in mind for success and all of them had followed that to the letter for the daughter. The daughter had followed those guidelines to the letter and had expected happiness to come to her by following these goals. Her happiness had always been geared to: “ one day in the future when I reach my success goals.”

They (her parents) were exceedingly happy with her progress. My client was not however and could not understand why she was not jumping for joy.

What we decided together would be a goal for her subconscious work? We chose: removing blocks to her own self love and self esteem with the ability to set clear boundaries with others in a non-confrontational manner. She turned out to be an excellent subject. She released subconscious blocks to her own self-love going all the way back to early childhood.

She lived in another large city and was only visiting Houston at the time. We did two sessions during her visit and she began to work with two CD’s: self love and super success.

She came back at times of visiting her parents and reported major shifts:

• 1. She no longer had on-going verbal battles with her Mother. She began to understand her Mother in a different perspective and to have more empathy for the woman she had labeled as “domineering” when doing the initial adjective in the first session.

• 2. She had always gotten along with her Dad, but since her sessions she had taken him off the pedestal she had placed him on before she left kindergarten. He had been able to maintain his pedestal stance by never clearly setting a boundary and allowing the mother to always do the boundary setting and disciplining. My client still got along with him, but no longer did she judge her dating candidates from an unrealistic perspective of comparing them with her “perfect” father. She suddenly saw that he had not been that kind in leaving all the heavy parenting to her mother.

• 3. She no longer saw women supervisors in the same negative capacity she had seen them in in the past. She was miraculously getting along with them.

• 4. The men she dated were beginning to last longer than in the past and she was beginning to actually really like one man in particular.

Creating Meaningful Relationships

She decided at one of her “jumpstart” return sessions to work on what had come to her mind: releasing blocks to intimacy in relationship. She had had it come to her mind for the first time that perhaps she really needed to have more trust with people and more trust especially with those that were prospective partners in life.

She had a long visit with her parents and we did two more sessions and she took with her a CD: unconditional love of others to add to her self love CD she had listened to off-and-on for a while.

She sent an email later:

Her health had improved, she now felt happy, she was being very successful and enjoying it, she was getting along with both parents and even her brother no longer was competitive with her, and she had had a relationship for many months without finding fault and breaking it off suddenly.

What did I receive from her last week?

A notice that she is not only in a relationship which is committed and permanent, but she has successfully given birth to a beautiful baby. Her goals are now her goals. She has true success, is enjoying the success, and is happily in a marriage with a child.

When I got the news, I went through a memory timeline. I remembered the driven girl that I initially met with her goal sheet in her hand at the first session.

• I remembered her initial denial and the obsession with goals that were not truly hers.

• I remembered the unhappiness.

• I remembered what an angel she looked like when in hypnosis and how the innocence and goodness were so obvious when the mask of urgency was no longer being used as a façade.

• I remembered the quick shift due to her being a good subject, the strong desire she had to be happy, and the fact that she had learned to trust her ability to focus and through that focus she had committed to listening to her CD’s.

• I remembered how her health and appearance of health had taken hold when she would re-visit Houston.

All of this remembering and the current good news gave me again a strong feeling of wonderment over the power of this subconscious work. The subconscious is truly like a computer and the positive reprogramming of a computer brings good results without the change having to take forever to achieve. My client did this with a few private hypnosis sessions and in-home hypnosis sessions on CD.

Counselor gets a boost with hypnosis

For several years we owned a business in Birmingham with the major focus being in Houston. Over the years, when we were in Birmingham, I would have clients book private sessions. They would come to pass tests, stop smoking, weight loss, develop skills, etc. I noticed that several of these people mentioned a female motivational counselor in their talk before sessions. Her name stuck in my mind.

After we moved to Birmingham, this motivational counselor called to book a session with me. I initially thought that she was coming just to check out the competition and wondered what would ensue. However, when she came it became apparent that in the helping of others her own life force needed a boost.

I remembered in one of our classes in Houston when we were working with archetypal symbols a psychotherapist taking hypnosis training classes had had the symbol of a jackass come to help him. I was not familiar with this symbol and had to look it up. While looking it up, I thought “what if it means what the jackass terminology means in everyday life?” I was relieved to find that the jackass is a divine symbol which means “helping the helper of others.” In other words it meant that this psychotherapist who was very committed to the helping of others needed a boost himself and was taking the classes mainly because he needed someone to be a boost to him. He was tired and needed a lift-up in his life. The jackass symbol is a divine archetypal symbol because Jesus rode this animal on the ride connected to Palm Sunday.

This motivational counselor came for that help also. I was happy to hear from her around the time I received notice from the first client mentioned earlier in this writing. She had been greatly helped by the subconscious work we did and called to tell me how much it had helped her . I had just seen her picture in the Birmingham News shortly before she called me. She had done what the first client mentioned had done: private sessions of hypnosis with in-home CD’s to assist with positive reprogramming of the subconscious.

When this counselor came in for her session, she had gotten feedback from the clients I had worked with who were also her clients. She came in with the expectancy of being helped because they had been helped and told her. She was a very good subject and her expectancy of help may have been a strong assist.

Expectancy and Belief equal success

One of our former students from Houston recently sent a write-up of a scientific study connected to expectation. It appears that what we expect registers on the brain in a manner that is measurable. In other words the study showed that if a person expects better quality from a higher priced commodity such as wine, the higher priced wine will literally taste better to the purchaser than a lower priced wine will taste even if the testing agent has put in the same wine for the test. Using brain scan techniques of measuring, the researchers saw that the brain registered electrical stimulation of actually thinking the same wine tasted better when the expectancy was: that the more expensive costing wine would taste better. The reality (the two glasses held the same wine) had nothing to do with what the mind produced as result.

The results of this research was: what we expect will often be the result we find.

This is very similar to what Job in the Bible said: “That what I feared the most has come upon me”. And, he also talked of changing his life by changing the quality of the thoughts in his mind.

A recent recounting of an interview with the boxer Mohammed Ali showed that he may have used what many addiction counselors recommend for those overcoming an addiction when he set out to achieve his own success. In other words, he said the words, “I am the Greatest” over and over until his subconscious believed it.

Through that and the effort of training he did well in the boxing ring. He has now developed a major disease and is undoubtedly questioning some of the words in the Bible. He had been reading about David and asked the person he was with if even David was depressed in the Bible, could the everyday man hope to be assisted with depression. The interviewer had answered by quoting from Psalm 41 which spelled out that as humans on Earth we will experience trials of testing, but that expectancy and belief in goodness will bring us to positive resolution of those testing times.

A Bird in the Hand

Right after reading that interview, I clicked onto an email sent by a friend. It showed a woman from Mississippi sitting outside holding a red container of nectar with hummingbirds coming to eat and sit on her hand. She described it as a thought that came to her mind and she followed through. The hummingbirds responded and her husband upon seeing this wonderful sight had had the forethought to take pictures of what she described as a miraculous experience.

Email us with your email address and we will forward the pictures of the hummingbirds in her hands by email attachment.

Life is filled with glorious experiences and opportunities. I believe working with the subconscious is right up there with the miraculous experience of having a group of hummingbirds drink nectar from a red cup in your hand.

The results are quick and phenomenal. If you need more self esteem, more motivation, to stop smoking, to lose weight, pass tests, or to enhance your well-being and health, you can choose private sessions of hypnosis or in-home sessions of hypnosis. Also, right up there with the hummingbird experience is the experience of making your own oxygenated water in your home with oxywater.

With the daffodils in bloom and Spring on its way, we hope you are experiencing a Wonder-filled Life,

Cheryl Martin