Centering Tools

Hypnosis For Healing – Benefits and A How-to Guide

An Integrative and Multidimensional Healing Practice

Hypnosis is a wonderful integrative and multidimensional healing practice that supports physiological innate healing responses, relieves pain, boosts the immunological system, and improves circulation, oxygenation and elimination.  It supports better balancing of the metabolism and all aspects of the endocrine system, and profoundly de-stresses on all levels.

Therapeutically hypnosis is an empowering self-help practice.  We know how to hypnotize ourselves, and in fact, all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. 

Profoundly Therapeutic and Creative

Hypnosis supports and extends insight, relieves anxiety and depression, and heals emotional trauma.  It is a central practice of recovery from post-traumatic stress syndrome through regression.

It is wonderfully creative because it “floats” through opening our imaginative capacities, which allows us to transcend dis-ease.  Hypnosis builds inner strength and can deepen one’s own individual sense of spirituality and one’s own sense of one’s own unique spirit, which can “open the door” to miraculous healing responses.

A Mental, Emotional, Physical and Spiritual Regulator to Relax, Release, Recharge

Hypnosis is a primary mental, emotional, and physical regulator, and we experience its wonderful effects simply by settling back into a comfortable position, closing our eyes to remove external distractions, and allowing our breath to quite easily and naturally deepen.  There are no side effects from hypnosis. 

Hypnosis fully and extensively at a core level induces relaxation, which research tells us that fifteen minutes of a hypnosis treatment provides the equivalent of eight hours of restful sleep.  It also centers body, mind and spirit, so we feel we function at a higher, clearer and more energized level.

Five Simple Steps for Hypnosis for Healing

1.  Settle back into a comfortable position with your arms and legs uncrossed and your spine gently aligned, and imagine how easily you can allow your breath to deepen.

2.  Count to yourself five, full, deep, easy breaths, picturing your breath as an endless, rising and falling, even wave of healing, vitalizing energy washing over you – flowing everywhere throughout your mind, everywhere throughout your body.

3.  Imagine your endless, full, even breaths as an infinite ocean of body, mind and spiritual healing, enveloping you, lifting you up higher and higher; and for these next several breaths, each and every time you inhale, and each and every time you exhale, say the word healing to yourself.

4.  Now picture a peaceful, beautiful, healing place in as much detail as you can possibly imagine, and feel yourself fully drawn right into that picture – the place with you wonderfully experiencing it comes alive through seeing it, hearing the sounds, smelling it, tasting it and feeling it.

5.  Finally say to yourself, as you continue to be so relaxed and fully present in this healing universe that you have been so completely drawn into, I am healing . . . I am continuously, infinitely healing - and slowly imagine your endless, flowing breath, as you’re ready, returning you to full, waking consciousness, feeling relaxed, recharged, and released into a place of ease, rather than dis-ease. 

Assert and Accept in the Great Circle of Being – Finding An Authentic and Inalienable Space of True Belonging

Overcoming the Hard Core Foundation of Identity Crisis

I attended a planning committee for a local group of natural health practitioners over the weekend and once again reflected, after the off-agenda, extended discussion that ensued about what to name it, on how little-supported we are in our culture to be fully present and accepted in our own space of belonging.  We really don’t know who we are and what we are in our world, so it’s no wonder we don’t easily allow another the right we can’t give ourselves.

This can lay a pretty hard core foundation of identity crisis, which profoundly sets the stage for everything from violence to racism.  In my work I hear again and again clients’ complaints that they are hopelessly stuck with being unable to accept or even know who they are, blaming and feeling victimized,  experiencing unsolved challenges to forgive, and engaging in ongoing power struggles. 

How to Experience and Express Your Real Identity

Like the end of The Ugly Duckling  fairy tale, we do have our authentic and right identity, it is real and meant to reflect and shine to ourselves and the world who we are and what we are, and we perfectly “fit” in our great circle of belonging.  In that wonderful story by Hans Christian Anderson, the hero as the labeled “ugly duckling” struggles against a wrong label thrust upon him by the society he found himself in as an unrecognized swan.

Fortunately for the character, he is ultimately outcast from that blaming circle, which gives him the critical opportunity to surprisingly see who he really is and where he really belongs.  He and his newfound “mate” live happily ever after, supported, affirmed, asserting and accepting who they are and what they are in a fully reflecting and affirming universe.

You Have a Sacred Place of Being

There is a place for everyone.  Everyone is meant to be accepted and invited to share who they are and what they are in a greater circle of mutual respect and belonging.  What would the world be like if we could finally fit over our respective I’s/eyes clear, strong lenses that made sure we saw each other and affirmed each other in this way? 

We could not violate anyone in such a great circle of belonging, nor would we allow anyone to violate us, or tell us we were something we weren’t.  If such an attempt were made, we would easily and definitively assert ourselves, coming from a center of profound identity and self-acceptance.

Honor All Diversity as Expanding Perceptions

Prejudice, racism and denying in any way another’s innate, equal and common humanity would disappear like the dinosaurs.  Instead we would welcome and appreciate each other’s core beauty, equal power and unique and sharing gifts. 

Power struggles would disappear, and the world would bear its great fruit of welcoming the diverse and great gifts we all yearn and are meant to share for everyone’s betterment and well-being.  I imagine the phrase, “All for one”  as the new language of an endlessly loving, abundant universe – coming from a spiritual understanding that we are all unique and common expressions of the divine, that we are all part of the Source and can well and rightly express infinite power – and freely, wholly create with it from a center of loving to give to the common good.

Meet the Challenge to Trust Yourself and Act Accordingly

We can only assert ourselves when we know and affirm ourselves as spiritual beings of multidimensional, aware consciousness, who are well capable of expressing divine power because we identify ourselves as being able to take full responsibility for it, particularly its outcomes.   All that you yearn for regarding love represents your real challenge to assert and accept yourself, trusting (always the great recovery challenge) that your unknown vision will lead you into your great circle of inner belonging.

That is the magic, transformational portal that will offer enough power and courage to lead you to your corresponding outer circle of fulfillment, right relations, creative appreciation, abundance and true joy.  Higher, extended balance results and real miracles occur.  

Technorati Tags: empowerment,empowerment counseling,identity,identity counseling,self-identity

Thanks

Thanks for your interest.  And if there’s a specific reason why you didn’t go through with the entire transaction, please let us know why by emailing support@centeirngforwellness.com

Options

• Go back to the homepage
• See main product page again

Top Ten Survival Tips to Sail Through a Crisis

Crises Leave Multiple Energetic Imprints

The Chinese translation means both “danger” and “opportunity”.  We live in a time of multiple global crises which can even more intensify individual crises. 

In the course of a well-lived lifetime one will experience serious, multiple crises.  The all leave their significant traumatic imprints in our psyches and, I believe, in our energetic fields. 

Top Ten Tips to Sail Through a Crisis

The clinical diagnoses for this is literally called post-traumatic stress syndrome, currently of pandemic proportions in returning military from combat zones.  Here are my top ten survival tips to sail through a crises:

1. Know how much sleep you need as a baseline foundation and prioritize getting it as an average – don’t shortchange yourself, because you are already at risk for illness, accidents and general decompensation.
2. Ditto eating nutritiously.  Try to keep the emotional eating of empty calories at a minimum. 
3. Make a “top ten list to nourish myself” with simple directives that are pleasing and soothing to you and that don’t require a whole lot from you if at all possible, meaning costing a lot of money, requiring complicated planning and time, or depend on multiple other elements, including people to carry out.  Two examples would be taking a bubble bath or calling up a friend who will listen lovingly and attentively to you without offering advice unless you specifically ask for it.
4. Drink a lot of water – being stressed out in a crisis creates subtle levels of dehydration.
5. If at all possible get outside every day, or as much as you can, and try to move while you’re out there – like walk, bike, swim, etc.  You will both energetically recharge and rebalance your body, mind and spirit, and discharge anxiety.
6. Journal if you’re at all willing to do so.  Simply write down your feelings for five minutes or less without analyzing yourself or trying to force any conclusions.
7. Get in a maximally objective and reflective space and consider what, if anything, about the crisis you’re experiencing that fundamentally threatens your survival.  Because experiencing crises throws us into a full-blown stress response, we go into “fight or flight” mode, which pushes us into assuming that our life is being threatened when that may not at all be the case. 
8. See if you can hear from a source who has experienced a good resolution from a similar or thematically similar crisis, whether this source is someone you know, or a famous person who has been interviewed or written a book to tell their story.  This can be practically helpful as well as offer you a central source of support and guidance.
9. Take some uninterrupted time – twenty minutes or more – and consider whether you have ever experienced a similar crisis or situation that seems to offer a similar thematic challenge to your current perceived crisis, and review the resolution that occurred.  This remembering typically stimulates more expansive brainstorming, and can inspire your intuition to offer excellent guidelines that frequently lead to real resolution.  It also  reminds you that  “this too shall pass”, and you will survive.
10. However you understand what 12-step programs call your “higher power”, once a day for a minute or longer settle back into a comfortable position, take three full, even, deep, cleansing breaths, and imagine you can contact this divine source – whereupon you turn your crisis over to it, asking your higher power to help move you to wherever real resolution exists.  Additionally imagine affirming you are open to any way this can occur through the direction of your higher guidance.  When you’ve finished this meditative exercise, imagine letting it all go to your higher power, and tell yourself this is all being most effectively, and on an ongoing basis, worked on.  Then focus on something mundane and completely unrelated to the crisis.

These top ten tips will highlight the “opportunity” part of the Chinese translation of the word “crisis”, and derail the “danger” part. 

Technorati Tags: meditation,relaxation,imagery,hypnosis,survival tips,crisis,crisis management,crises

Courage is the Key to Assertiveness

Courage and Cowardice

The key that unlocks the door to becoming assertive is courage.  Have you ever stopped to think about what that word really means?  How about it’s opposite – to be cowardly?

I always think of the Wizard of Oz, just finished playing in my hometown of Rochester, New York as part of a national touring company, to rave reviews.  Without courage we are reduced to cowardly behaviors which strips us of our rightful heritage and claim to be who we are and what we are.

We Can Recover Our Central Essence of Function

We might understandably think, before reading the story of  how Dorothy and her surprising companions managed to accomplish their seemingly impossible vision, that there can be no such thing as a cowardly lion.  Then he centrally appears, making us laugh at his completely out-of-character behavior. 

Then the lion seemingly transforms before our eyes, organically and in key increments, to become the “king of the forest”.   We are now able to realize this can only be possible from a central place of activated courage.

How can this transformation from being so traumatized that one loses one’s essential, central essence of function, to being fully actualized?  Every time we acknowledge our fear and successfully shift to being the visionary observer of our life, we regain, in mysterious and surprising ways, our innate courage.

The Truth About Fear and Functioning

Courage doesn’t exist without fear – in fact, fear catalyzes courage.  So does the desperation that comes from crisis.  As I’ve said a number of times in  earlier articles, the Chinese translation of crisis means both danger and opportunity.

Fear never stopped anyone from doing anything.  Only turning away from courageous choice-making stops us from being fully actualized.  Courage snaps us out of our “box” of ego-driven woundedness and correspondingly restricted, compromised problem-solving that always fundamentally interferes with real resolution.

Key Steps to Courageous Choice-Making

Becoming assertive create, builds and extends courage.  Here are my key recommendations to recover your essence courage and be assertive in any situation:

1.   When struggling about how to respond, begin by closing your eyes, taking several full, deep, cleansing breaths, and then imagine how you can ask your heart what it wants and needs to be set free.  Record your experience.

2.  Write down what in your heart of hearts you believe to be true about the concerning situation.  Then take a few moments to read over all that you have written, sit with it a bit, and then record whatever insights occur.

3.  In a deeper reflective state, ask yourself the following question:  What am I most afraid of here?  Stay as fully present as you can with whatever comes up inside you in response, and then record your experience, as well as whatever insights occur.

4.  Imagine you can view the whole experience from a detached, focused place.  As this occurs, ask yourself the following questions:  Who, What, Where, When, Why and How is this happening?  Record all your answers, and then read through everything and record any insights that occur.

5.  Read through all that you have recorded and use all of it to correspondingly list all possible courses of action in a brainstorming journaling exercise.

6.  Ask yourself, in reviewing the above possible choices of response, which one feels like the most courageous choice anyone facing this situation could make, and put an asterisk (*) next to it.

7.  As an experiment in assertiveness emerging from courageous choice-making, commit to carrying out that choice within a reasonable time frame, do it, and see what happens.  Keep notes on all that occurs.

8.  Congratulate yourself for having the courage to extend, in ways beyond your current level of functioning, your capacity to be present, empowered and fully assertive.

Keep me posted!

Rochester, New York Hypnotherapy Referrals

An Increasing Request for Services

I am getting more and more requests from people who are unfamiliar to my Centering practice for hypnosis, even requests to speak about hypnotherapy from area high schools, hospitals, and organized sports.  I continue, throughout the scope and now-22 years of my Centering practice, to expand and experiment with the power of hypnosis to transform lives. 

Major Rochester, New York health insurance providers still do not cover hypnotherapy, although when I present seminars to their staff, there is always a tremendously favorable response.  Flexible spending through employers, though, does cover hypnotherapy, and I feel the day is coming sooner rather than later when there will be baseline coverage of this powerful self-help, therapeutic and integrative healing practice.

There continue to be many misconceptions about hypnosis and hypnotherapy.  Here are the most common that I continue to hear about:

Top Four Misconceptions

1.  Hypnosis requires giving over control to the person hypnotizing you.

All hypnosis is self-hypnosis, and only happens through the direction of the person’s will who is experiencing the hypnosis.

2.  You will lose consciousness and not remember anything that happened.

Generally a person experiencing hypnotherapy will not lose consciousness and will remember everything that happened during the experience.  They will be in what is called a light trance, said to be the optimal state to experience the  greatest benefit of hypnotherapy, fully aware of their surroundings and what is happening, but remaining primarily focused on activating the hypnotherapist’s suggestions in a deeply relaxed state.

3.  I can’t be hypnotized.

Everyone can be hypnotized.  As we’re all individuals, the challenge for the hypnotherapist is to offer an individually-designed hypnosis exercise to fit the particular individual, requiring hearing from the client as to their wants, needs, goals, and visions.   

4.  Hypnosis is some goofy entertainment where people volunteer to go up on stage and are made to do equally goofy things such as barking like a dog, which they never remember.

Hypnosis is actually an old clinical practice for psychotherapy, extensively used by Freud, Jung and Erikson to effect core, integrative healing responses in patients.

Hypnosis Heals

Here are some of the significant results I have experienced through offering hypnotherapy to many hundreds of people in Rochester, New York through all the years of my Centering practice:

Stop smoking

Lose weight

Resolve phobias and compulsions

Heal anxiety

Erase pain

Heal significant childhood trauma including physical, mental, and sexual abuse

Achieve peak performance in sports

Jumpstart motivation

Lower blood pressure

Resolve migraines

Improve responses to many chronic illnesses including cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and depression

“Imagination is Everything” – Einstein

What we dream is what our deeper consciousness wants us to become.  When we create a compelling, deeply desired daydream in an equally deeply relaxed state we reseed the subconscious to become our most powerful ally in achieving our goals.

Insight improves and evolves, creativity and motivation accelerate, and we transcend whatever gets in our way or allows dis-ease to fundamentally balance and inspire us to wellness, empowerment and achievement from a new place of ease.

Technorati Tags: Rochester hypnosis,Rochester NY hypnosis,hypnotherapy Rochester NY,hypnotherapy