Smoking Cessation, No Butts About It
Smoking cessation. I don’t talk about it much, but it, along with weight loss, is one of the two subjects most associated with Hypnotherapy by the general public. A lot of hypnotherapists, myself included, consider it hypnotherapy 101, something you can advertise to build a clientele but something you generally drift away from as more diverse cases come your way. (And I have.)
I had a conversation with an old client the other day and it really made me take a look at my attitude on the subject. While Stop Smoking programs are relatively simple exercises, they are programs that profoundly change the lives of the clients.
The behavior of smoking is almost tailor made to be dealt with by hypnosis. The actually physical addiction, while very strong, is actually very short lived. Most of the physical withdrawal is over in a week or less. Amazingly, nicotine is not the worst culprit with cigarettes. It’s all the other chemicals that have been added specifically to add “punch” to the nicotine hit and cause the psychological addiction. Case in point, you almost never, and I have never, seen a client with an addiction to nicotine patches or gum. So the vast majority of the addiction is not physical. It has to do with the client’s mental associations to smoking, their feelings about it and how it applies to them. It is therefore able to be dealt with efficiently with hypnosis.
So, smoking is mostly a learned behavior and smoking cigarettes is literally one of the worst “lose-lose” behaviors a person can have. Smokers may believe that it: calms them down, suppresses their appetite or just makes them look cool, but it actually does none of those things. It is a stimulant that, instead of calming them down, actually “jacks them up.” It only seems to suppress appetite because it deadens the taste buds, suppresses the sense of smell and generally makes food taste crappy. It doesn’t look cool; it looks nasty and smells even worse. And of course it has the pesky little issue of causing SLOW PAINFUL DEATH. This makes smoking cessation one of the more profound programs a hypnotherapist can do. Instead of helping cancer patients with pain and the nausea of chemo, wouldn’t it be better to stop the cancer from happening in the first place?
With that in mind and with the RelaxNow program up and running, I have started taking Stop Smoking clients for the first time in many years. Since my schedule only allows for a few individual clients, I’ve also started putting my mind to creating a recorded program to take it past what can be done one on one. I’ll post more as things develop.
Psychosomatic is Not a Dirty Word
I want to reclaim the word psychosomatic. Many times when a physician, caregiver or therapist uses that word, regarding someone’s illness, condition or symptoms, that person believes that they are being accused of “faking it” That’s because, depending on the practitioner and/or their discipline, that could be exactly what they are thinking! But, it is getting better.
When the word was first coined in the 1860s, it really was a dirty 13-letter word doctors could use right in front of their ignorant patient to tell others “in the know” that the patient was a hypochondriac and it was all just “in their head.” Now, hopefully, those days have gone the way of leeches and bleedings.
The world of western style healthcare has, in the last few decades, really started to wrap their collective heads around the profound connection between mind and body. It is now accepted that some diseases have a physiological /emotional component. In some circles, my own included, the concept that all disease has a physiological /emotional component (if not cause) is being gradually accepted.
My personal belief is that the mind body connection is not a one-way street, but is in fact a circle or cycle. More exactly, in the case of ill health, it is a descending, self-amplifying closed feedback loop of stress, depression and disease. Real, physical disease.
It’s a downward cycle:
- If you meet someone with a chronic illness you can bet good money that it causes them stress.
- If you meet someone with stress, you can bet they will eventually get depressed.
- But, if you meet someone who is profoundly depressed, who wants to take the bet that a chronic illness won’t just “coincidentally” find them?
- Then, if you meet that someone with a chronic illness you can bet good money that it causes them stress.
And so on.
One disease or condition may have a stronger emotional component than another and the components of the downward cycle are not equal. They don’t affect all conditions and disorders the same, but I believe all the components will always be present to some degree. As far as how this concept applies practically, a downward cycle can start with any of the components; consequently, the repair can start with any of the components. This is particularly helpful when the disease, condition or syndrome is poorly understood by the medical community. If your local M.D. has a quick and effective solution, why not use it? If I have an infection that an antibiotic can easily cure, I use it (and I’m a real “alternative medicine” kind of guy.)
On the other hand, there are many afflictions that the medical and scientific communities really don’t have a grip on; they can’t really explain them and they can only treat the symptoms. In that case, we need to attack the other components of the cycle. Our bodies are amazing healing machines. We swim in a sea of pathogens; we defeat bacteria, viruses, mutated cells (cancers) every day and only fail when we are overwhelmed mentally or physically by the downward cycle. We just need to break the cycle somewhere, anywhere, to turn it around and eventually turn it into an ascending loop of both mental and physical, health and wellness.
All disease is at least a little psychosomatic. Hell, in many ways life is psychosomatic. So let’s reclaim the word, it’s too useful a word to be left derogatory.
Wes Graham C.C.Ht.
Depth of Trance, Who is in Control?
It is a common misconception, based on the representation of hypnosis on TV and in films, that a hypnotized subject is like a zombie under the Svengali-like control of the hypnotist. This image is also reinforced by the routines of stage hypnotists, whose use of a deep somnambulistic (similar to sleep-walking) trance states make for an entertaining show. The therapeutic use of hypnosis is quite different. In a therapeutic setting the depth of the trance is not nearly so important and mostly at the discretion of the subjects, whether they know it or not.
The hypnotherapist is basically a facilitator and guide; it is the clients that are ultimately the judge of what they need. For some, the experience they require for positive change is a deep, almost hallucinogenic trance state and that’s what they will naturally go to. For others, a simple game of “close your eyes and make believe” is exactly what they need and that’s what they will naturally go to. Both extremes and everything in-between can and will work for the clients if the hypnotherapist just allows them to go where they need to go and then just helps them deal with what comes up.
As is often said, all hypnosis is Self-Hypnosis. Either consciously or unconsciously, it is always voluntary. The process of calling, setting the appointment and sitting down with a hypnotist is a significant part of the initial hypnotic induction. Yes, I, like most hypnotherapists, will start with some basic inductions and tests. This gives me a feel for how the client responds (where they want/need to go), but more importantly, it gives the client’s unconscious mind a reference point for the tools and experience of hypnosis that has already begun just by being there.
Wes Graham C.C.Ht.
Why are we all so messed up?
Cholesterol, Hypertension, Stress Disorders, Obesity, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Nervous Disorders. We have pills for this, therapies for that, on and on and on. Why are so many of us so messed up? It seems that as we develop as a civilization, we’re collapsing as a living creatures.
I recently attended a meeting of the Dallas Holistic Chamber of Commerce . At one point in the meeting we were having a round table discussion about how our different disciplines approached the subject of anti-aging. Listening to the different practitioners talk about their different approaches, my mind drifted (as it often does) to all the different maladies collectively we seem to be suffering.
It seems the more advanced we become technologically, the worse our general health becomes. Now this brings the counter argument of “but our life-spans are so much longer now,” and that’s true, but not as much as one would think. If you negate infant mortality and basic hygiene, our ancestors were almost as long lived as us. More surprising is the relative absence of some of the modern world’s biggest health issues. Our ancestors, as far as we can tell, had very low cancer rates, not much diabetes, heart disease, a lot of today’s big issues.
The thought that came to my head was this: One of our ancestors living 10,000 years ago lived in very much the same way as one living 3,000 years ago, or even 500 years ago in much of the world. Basically, the rate at which the world changed, and the rate at which we migrated around it, was slow enough that we, the human animal, could physically adapt. Groups of people settled in different regions and their bodies changed to accommodate local conditions. After many generations, people who settled in cold climates developed subcutaneous layers of fat to help control their body temperature. People who settled high in the mountains developed larger lung capacities and higher red blood cell counts to maximize oxygen uptake. The general pace of life was slower. Their problems were just as dire and their lives were by no means as easy as ours, but it was rare for things to radically change. That all ended in the late 1800s.
Starting in the late 1800s the pace of life started to accelerate radically. People started migrating around the world en masse. Consider someone whose ancestors hadn’t traveled more than 20 miles from their village in Scotland for 10 or 15 generations. Suddenly, this someone was placed on a sailing ship and sent to the other side of the world to Australia. Someone whose ancestors had lived as rural farmers in central China for 1,000 years was now digging a railroad tunnel through the Rocky Mountains. And the pace of change accelerated. Someone who was born in the age of sailing ships lived to see aircraft carriers. My grandmother was born before the Wright brothers flew and she saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Guglielmo Marconi sent his first radio transmission in 1885. By 1985 we swam in a sea of electromagnetic waveforms, covering the spectrum from ultra-long wave transmissions used to communicate with submarines to microwaves that could bake a potato.
The reason we use so many prescriptions and have so many diets and health fads, the reason we need hypnosis, meditation, yoga, exercise, vitamins, etc., etc. is this: The rate at which our minds have changed our world has vastly outpaced our body’s ability to adapt to the changing conditions. This adaptation used to be a natural process, but in this rapidly changing world we need to be mindful and help our bodies along. As individuals and as a society we need to be mindful of what we change and make sure to slow down every now and then and let ourselves catch up.
Wes Graham C.C.Ht.
Rational Irrationality
On a recent trip to Austin TX. I visited Natural Treasures, a store that specializes in stones, crystals and various “New Age” accoutrements. They often have different alternative practitioners doing sessions in the store. On this day there was a gentlemen, Kramer Wetzel, doing Astrological readings and on a whim I decided to give it a try.
Now, I generally look at the world through what I consider a very rational, almost scientific, lens, I try to understand why and how things work. There is no way my rational mind can wrap itself around the proposition that the position of the planets and stars, cross referenced with the time and date of your birth, can tell you anything about your past, your future or your current circumstance, it’s just irrational. That being said, I received a very accurate reading. I detected no “cold reading” technic or any other misdirection or tricks.
This got me thinking, when you think about it; we seem to live in an irrational universe. The fact that some sub-atomic particles can simultaneously exist and not exist, or have no location or mass until someone decides to measure it seems pretty crazy and irrational to me but it has been tested again and again and proven to be so.
When we wake up every morning in a universe where rational logic says we should be able to walk through walls because they (and us) are 99.999999999999******% empty space, is it that much of an intellectual stretch to say that “something” ties us to the stars, or the tarot cards, or the tea leaves, whatever. I suspect that what we now consider irrational is no such thing. We have only existed as a species for an incredibly short period of time. By universal standard we only figured out fire a tiny fraction of a second ago, maybe what seems irrational now is just stuff we haven’t figured out yet.
I never want to just believe something offhand, so I always refer back to Arthur C Clarke’s 3 laws, especially law number 3.
1.When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Wes Graham C.C.Ht.
A New Age Heresy for the Modern World
The other day I was doing a walking meditation. For those of you who are not familiar, I basically put myself in a meditative state, opened my awareness to all the Qi energies surrounding me and then take a long slow walk, trying to interact with as much of the life energy around me as possible.
Now, I live in Texas and it is still very much summer here, so of course the temperature was on the high side of 100 degrees. I’ve develop a mental trick for dealing with the heat, instead of fighting against it, I envision myself being solar powered. I just accept the sun’s heat and mentally pull its Qi energy through my skin, into my body, into my core and down to power my legs.
That’s not as odd as it first sounds, when you accept the fact that inanimate objects have their own Qi energy signature, then our old friend Sol has the largest Qi signature in our little corner of the galaxy. (Note: Please use common sense when doing this. We live in physical bodies and in a physical world and you can exceed said bodies’ capabilities and injure yourself.)
I was doing my walk along a nature trail that winds through the center of my suburban neighborhood. Along the way, I kept getting distracted by the sound of traffic when I came close to major streets. This got me thinking; just as the sun’s heat and radiation can be changed from a negative to a positive, could I do the same with the traffic noise? As I continued walking I let my mind ponder the sounds of traffic and its creation by the car’s engine and its motion down the street.
Many people meditate while focusing on a lit candle. Everything that makes up the candle comes from the Earth. The flame is taking wax, either processed in the bodies of bees or refined from ancient plants and dinosaur bones, and changing it to heat and light energy. That transition has a Qi signature that we feel when focusing our attention on the flame.
Now, I’m making no judgments on the role of the automobile in modern society, pollution etc., but cars are a currently inescapable part of modern life. This may be New Age heresy, but think of it this way: everything a car is comes from the earth (no Martian car parts) and its engine is taking ancient plants and dinosaur bones and changing them into heat, light, motion and sound energy. Does that not also produce a Qi signature?
Unless you’re lucky enough to live on a mountaintop, this “mechanized” energy is going to be present in your life. So, like the sun’s energy, can this be used (energetically) in a positive way? I began to take in the energies of the traffic and it at least seems to work. I know, one experiment does not prove anything, but I intend to look into this further. I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up meditating on a freeway overpass soon, just to try it out.
I’d love to hear others’ take on this.
Wes Graham C.C.Ht.
PS below is a short clip I recorded near my home.
Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune
We are all damaged in some way, but that’s okay. Have you ever met someone who has never taken any damage? A person, who has never suffered adversity, has never had to deal with the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” is probably the dullest person in the world. That doesn’t mean it’s not proper for us to repair our damage, but we should never be ashamed of our scars. Who we are, our character, is the sum total of our accumulated scar tissue.
Change: your mind, your energy, your body, your life
“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon”-Joni Mitchell
In a very real sense there is nobody on earth who is more than 15 years old. To be more precise there is NO BODY on earth that is more than 15 years old even though every single “thing” we are has existed since the creation of the universe.
The carbon atoms that we base our bodies on are just passing through us on their long journey from their formation in the heart of a supernova to their end at the heat-death of the universe. We’re just borrowing them for a microscopically brief time.
We are what we eat.
We are literally made of what we eat, drink and breathe. The cells of our bodies continually exchanged with the world around us and eventually with the universe as a whole. Some cells, like those in our digestive system, may only live 4 or 5 days while your skin may be 2 or 3 weeks old. There is not a drop of your blood older than 4 months and your liver is less than a year. Your bones top out the list at 10 to 15 years, and even though our neurons do not replicate at the cellular level, they do exchange on the atomic scale and are probably younger than our bones. So, why are scars permanent? Why do we grow old, grow sick and die?
Three years ago I had an operation that left a large scar. I know that there is not a single molecule of that original scar tissue left, yet the scar is still there, why? The answer is consciousness and memory. Every single cell in our body is a self-contained organism with its own, albeit, rudimentary, energy, consciousness and memory. While a cell in the undisturbed skin right next to the scar has identical DNA, the cell contained within the scar “knows” to reproduce a scar cell. More than that, since skin sloughs off from above and reproduces from basal cells in a deeper layer of the skin, that scar cell must communicate the information to another cell below it, telling it that it must reproduce as scar tissue.
“Where the mind goes”
Memory, communication, consciousness and energy—to me that equals “mind” and since “where the mind goes, the energy flows” to me that equals scar tissue, cancer cells, tumors or healthy vibrant cells.
Just believe you’re getting healthier and you will. It’s a concept so utterly simple that, of course, our conscious, rational minds make it damn near impossible. The universe may live in the quantum light of Einstein and Hawking, but we (our physical bodies) mostly live our lives in the universe of Sir Isaac Newton. If you fall down you go boom, if you cut yourself you get a scar, and if something doesn’t kill you first, you grow old and die anyway. For a way around some of this, at least a way to optimize our health and energy balance beyond what can be delivered by scalpel and pill, the west must look east.
As I mentioned in one of my first postings, it has been shown that you can “think” away a wart. Our mental energy can compel a wart cell to reproduce as a healthy skin cell even though a wart cell has a virus actively “telling” it to reproduce as a wart cell, so why not other “bad” cell structures?
It might not be easy, but the humble wart shows us that the greater energies of our unconscious mind can and do influence the individual consciousness and energies of our component cells. This concept has been suspected and believed in eastern cultures since there have been eastern cultures, but even there, only rarely is it actualized. So, for us not raised with it, it may take a bit of practice.
We are basically figments of our own imagination. If we can change our minds we can change our energy. If we can change our energy we can change our bodies and change our lives.
Wes Graham C.C.Ht.
Get a Stone to Call your Own
A Habit from My Father
I guess I inherited my fascination with rocks and stones from my father. He was a desert-loving rock hound and had a collection of all the interesting stones he’d come across. These were not precious stones and were of no particular type or value; they just were interesting and “spoke” to him in some way. From time to time, he would pick one out and carry it in his pocket. He called it his “worry stone.” When he got stressed he would take it out or just stick his hand in his pocket and rub the stone. As if it were some magical talisman, he would transfer his stress to the stone. Because where your mind goes, your energy flows, for him, it worked.
Stones as Symbols
For as long as there have been humans, we have used inanimate objects, such as stones in particular, as powerful symbols. Large monolithic structures such as Stonehenge and the giants of Easter Island come to mind.
An even more striking example is the “Stone of Scone,” a small rectangular block of red sandstone that, since before recorded history, has be imbued with the power to make kings. It was used in the coronation of all the Kings of Scotland until 1296AD, when King Edward of England conquered Scotland. To enforce its submission as a vassal state, Edward took the stone and placed it in Westminster Abby and it has been used in the coronation of every English monarch since. In 1996, for political reasons it was decided that when not in use, the stone would be “stored” in Scotland. However, when Prince Charles is eventually made King of England he will be sitting on a throne placed on top of the Stone of Scone.
On a much more personal level stones can be beneficial symbols. They can remind us to place our energies where we want them.
Stones as Energetic “Batteries”
I’ve always had the habit of carrying a small stone with me most of the time. But instead of using it like some kind of symbolic septic tank, I prefer to think of it as a battery. When my energy is up, say after an exercise or a meditation, I often “push” my positive energy into the stone. Then when I feel drained, worried or just down, I take hold of the stone and imagine the energy flowing back into me. Any old stone will do, but it is better if it has a special meaning or it comes from a special place or time.
How my stone came to me
I’ve had many stone over the years, but my current “Sacred Stone” came to me in a truly special way. My path to these current projects has been interesting, personally difficult and sometimes quite odd. At one point when I was particularly stuck, I went to see a hypnotherapist. (Just like doctors don’t treat themselves, hypnotherapists quite often see other hypnotherapists.) During one of my sessions we were doing an exercise much like The Message. In this exercise I was looking for an “Inner or Spirit Guide” or even an Animal Guide. (Interestingly, quite often even people with no background knowledge or experience with Native American culture see their “Spirit Guide” as an animal.) In the trance I mentally envisioned myself in my “Happy Place.” In my case it was a picnic table in a real park I go to on the windward shore of the island of Oahu. I really had no expectation of what my guide would be; I wouldn’t have been surprised if I saw my great grandfather or if I saw a talking squirrel.
I was surprised when the guide who came to me in this trance state was actually me. A slightly thinner, long haired (my hair was shorter at the time), self-confident and, most importantly, very happy version of myself. Even in trance I was dumbfounded. He walks up to me, slaps me on my shoulder and said very gregariously, “Dude, you know what you want to do!” and showed me a vision that started me on the path to this work now. As we finished, in the vision/trance he/me smiled and handed me a small stone, which I felt and saw very clearly.
Weeks passed and the memory of the trance/vision was still strong in my mind as I worked to absorb the full meaning of it all. Now, I often order supplies and such over the Internet and one company where I get my favorite incense routinely sends little “gifts” with orders. These little things could be a string bracelet, a pin, etc., like spiritual Cracker Jacks prizes. Well, I received an order and opened the box and to my amazement they had sent me a stone. THEY HAD SENT ME THE STONE! Even in a life filled with bizarre and miraculous events this took the cake. Personally, I took it as a sign of the validity of my vision and I have treated it as such ever since.
Get a Stone to Call your Own
Below I’ve included a link to a Mindfulness exercised based on a “Personal Stone that I call “Minding the Stone.” If you don’t have one yet you should find one and make it your own. As I said, really any stone will do. It doesn’t have to come to you like some universal thunderbolt, but it should have some connection to you. Maybe you picked it up at your favorite beach or on your favorite hiking path. If you don’t have one yet just put the thought in your mind. Get in a relaxed state and mentally call for a special stone to come to you. Then just keep an eye out for it, in the next day or two you will see it; in in your yard, in a park or a parking lot, you will just know that it’s the right one. This might not be your end all, be all, sacred stone, but you can at least use it for this exercise.
You can click on it to play or right click on the 2nd link and select “Save target as” to download.
Thanks and enjoy,
Wes Graham C.C. Ht.
A Small Wager on the Nature of the Universe.
Since the Hubble Space telescope started sending back images of the far reaches of this universe, the purveyors and aficionados of cosmology and astronomy have had an issue. Up until that time, accepted cosmological models had the universe expanding at a decelerating rate. The only question was whether it had enough momentum to expand forever or would, eventually, grind to a halt and start to collapse. But observations from the Hubble space telescope put a monkey wrench in those models. The Hubble telescope was capable of looking farther into the universe, hence, farther back in time and showed that the early universe was expanding at a slower than expected rate. This means that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating.
This caused the rewrite of the standard model of cosmology to allow for the unobservable (Dark) matter and energy that would be required for the observed acceleration. According to that new model, the total mass–energy of the universe contains only 4.9% ordinary, observable matter and energy and 26.8% dark matter and 68.3% dark energy. This means everything in this Universe-the Sun, the Moon and Stars, you, your coffee table and your goldfish– are 95.1% unobservable “stuff”! You can imagine how this gives people educated in the traditional western scientific style a bit of a brain cramp. (But to the eastern mind set, maybe not so much?) This observation has given us an image of this universe that would make Obiwan and Yoda proud.
That being said, I want to place a friendly wager. I bet that when this Dark matter/energy is better understood and when the western scientific models finally wraps their heads around Qi energy, we find out they are one in the same. I’m betting that Qi is consciousness and that the expanding Qi/ consciousness of you, me, the Sun, Moon, Stars, Coffee table and gold fish, is the unobservable energy expanding the universe.
I can’t prove it to you but I wanted to get my bet down early. (Unless you consider that the Vedas beat me to it by 3,500 years. ) 🙂
hypnoenergetics 