Hypno Hype

I’ve always had this uncomfortable memory of my high school boyfriend clucking like a chicken (or something stupid, I can’t actually recall the specific details) on stage in front of the whole school at one of those corny group hypnotist sessions. A complete sceptic at the time, I was pretty embarrassed with how far the “act” went. How could he be so phoney!?   

Over time however, I’ve become very open to exploring....well anything really....even the possibility of hypnosis. Where many people become more defined and narrowly pronounced in their routines and ideas, I seem to drift with each new experience. Not to say that I`m ambiguous, but for interests sake and to ensure I keep growing, I function best with a little randomness and a lot of grey. So, a while ago I went to a hypnotist for the first time to challenge my lingering teenage doubt.   

Not wanting to spend $200 for a private session, I joined a group workshop focused on enhancing personal prosperity through hypnosis. The objective was to unravel doubt (fitting, given my motive for being there in the first place) in order to dissolve sub/unconscious barriers to believing that anything and everything is achievable.

The fundamentals of hypnotherapy suggest quite simply that episodes in our life impact our subconscious (emotional), reside in our unconscious (immune system/auto response) and manifest in our conscious mind (logic/belief) as “reality”. Presenting a whole bunch of cool questions about how closely health is linked to thought, I started thinking about my own anxieties and times in my life when I felt healthy or unhealthy and what level of “prosperity” I was experiencing at the time. No surprise, there’s been a pretty direct line between the two.  Without going into the gory details though, I’ll jump to the juice...the session ended with a group hypnotism meant to lead us to acknowledge the core of our doubt (self, financial, success - whatever).  No one made farm animal sounds or fell off their chair, especially me, but it was certainly affecting. I cried.  Weird, I know.

As with all of my Firsts I try to suspend expectations and just live the moments, so while I won’t try to fake that I had some hypno-revelation, I will say that every time I visit a new experience, I feel less and less a tourist. I obviously accept that hypnotherapy is legitimate and finally take comfort in knowing that my high school hunk wasn’t a total dweeb ;)