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There are some perceptions about hypnosis. From the classic “The Twilight Zone” series to your high school graduation night in which willing participants were plucked from an audience to eat an onion on stage thinking it was an apple: there’s a key word within these scenarios – willing. With true hypnosis, there’s no just sitting back in a chair while a hypnotist dangles a swaying watch in front of your face telling you how sleepy you’re getting. There are noun wanted subliminal messages piped into your mind that inadvertently make you return to your office as a slacker, like in the movie “Office Space. ”Unless, of course, you’re willing to see a hypnotist for that reason. The point is, hypnosis helps you unlock your willingness to make better choices. Whether it’s to lose weight, to quit smoking or drinking or to reduce overall anxiety, the choice is always ours, and hypnosis helps us become willing to make those decisions.
WE HAVE THE POWER“I don’t have powers over anyone,” said Michelle Holman, hypnotist and owner of Bayside Hypnosis. “A lot of people when I tell them I’m a hypnotist, their eyes get really big and say ‘I’ve never met one of you before,’ like I’ve got powers. ”Holman elaborated that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. “I can’t do anything to you. I can’t make you quack like a duck when it rains. I can’t make you do anything that you do not want to do. ”This goes back to a desire to achieve something, or to be willing. Hypnosis helps us store and sort those desires into our individual belief systems. These belief systems are influenced by a number of factors, and as we take in information from the world, we, in turn, begin to act and live according to that information. What do we call this storage system? Our subconscious. “It’s your control center – your subconscious mind,” Holman said. In addition to storing information like when to blink and breathe, the subconscious mind also stores memories and the feelings attached to them as well as your habits, good or bad. “Your subconscious mind is your feelings and how you feel about something,” she said. “So when you learn something, you have to make a decision how you feel about it. ”This is ultimately how those good or bad habits are formed, along with repetition, repetition, repetition. “For example, let’s take someone who wants to lose weight. If you need to lose weight, you know exactly what to do. And if you don’t, you can Google it,” quipped Holman. “You can Google anything. ”Her point is that information such as healthy recipes, exercise routines, blogs, articles and podcasts is far and wide, but what is keeping us from making those arguably “easy” choices among this wealth of information? “If you don’t believe you can lose the weight, if you don’t trust yourself to lose the weight and feel as though if you lost the weight, you’d have to hold yourself accountable, then it’s going to be hard for you and you’re going to have self-doubt,” she said.
FORGIVE BUT DON’T FORGET We can all admit that we’re often hard on ourselves. Societal standards are changing at breakneck speed, and sometimes we find ways to cope, which can ultimately lead to bad habits. But no one is unique in developing a habit, but the reason for developing it certainly is. “Everyone’s habits and belief system worked at some point in their life, or they wouldn’t have it,” said Holman. “Say you have someone who’s smoked for their entire life, and now they want to quit smoking and they don’t believe that they can because they believe they are addicted. ”Maybe you just wanted to be part of the “cool crowd” as a teenager or you went through a stressful time in your life, our reason for developing a habit is definitely a personal one. “Once you realize that maybe you ‘needed’ the smoking and that maybe you needed that to relieve some stress in your life because you were going through a lot of negativity, you used smoking as a tool to change the way you feel at that moment,” she said. But just with any aspect of life, there’s always room for improvement, especially with ourselves. It’s just important to go easy on ourselves while we make those improvements. “You don’t have to beat yourself up over it. You don’t have to feel as though you’re such a bad person because of the way you used to do things,” she said. Which brings us a perfect opportunity to truly forgive ourselves. To understand that those choices aren’t working for us now and that we’re incredibly strong for even coming to that conclusion. Forgiveness provides a foundation to sorting through that belief system and moving in the direction of forming better habits. “What if you knew that to stop smoking was just a decision,” asked Holman. “And what if you made a decision now that you would like to live a smoke-free lifestyle and just forgive yourself for ever doing it in the first place? You can now see what life would really be like if you didn’t smoke. You would smell good; you would be able to kiss your partner; you would probably live longer. You can breathe and go on walks. ”Thus, by forgiving ourselves, it gives us the comfort and courage to take the next step by focusing on the potential for success rather than the despair of failure even before we’ve begun the process.
IMAGINE YOUR GOALS What is achievement without goals? How are we measuring success in our lives, both personal and professional? In order to accomplish a task or goal that we’re willing to take on, we need to imagine that as a reality for ourselves. It always seems easier said than done: “just make better choices.” But as complex as our minds are, they are equally as creative. “It is all about your life and what you want, so I am extremely goal-oriented,” said Holman. “As your hypnotist, I have to know what you want and what do you see if you could be successful. ”She asks questions like: what would that be like for you? What would you be doing? What would happen? What would it feel like if you were getting what you wanted because of the actions that you were taking? She compares this feeling to “taking off the shackles,” meaning we are no longer a prisoner of what we haven’t accomplished, but instead given the freedom to visualize success for ourselves. “In here we teach you how to use your imagination, to visualize them and see yourself following through,” she said. One example might be imagining your clothes fitting right and appearing beautiful when you look in the mirror. Or perhaps it’s during a shower and imagining how you feel your body being the size and shape you want it to be. “When you use the imagination to feel what it’s like putting on the size pants that you want, at that moment, we are training the subconscious mind to want that. And when you want something, you will find a way to make it happen. ”So you’re ready to sit across from a complete stranger and immediately open up about your deepest desires, horrible habits and private past? Unlikely. But that’s OK, because as they say, anything worth doing is doing slowly. Hypnosis usually takes place over a number of sessions, and the reason has to do with trust. “I don’t believe in single sessions. There has to be trust between the client at the hypnotist,” Holman said. Beginning with the aforementioned foundation of forgiveness, other themes are discussed like leveling, love, awareness and many more during sessions. Regardless of your journey, it always begins with the willingness to begin. Even reading past this article’s title means you’re willing to at least learn more about options to improve your life, but it has to begin with you. “You’re already admitting that you want change in your life. You may not know exactly what it is, and you don’t have to know. The mind will only change if you want it to. If you don’t want change, it won’t happen.”
My Perspective
A few years ago, and with the support of some family and friends, I decided to make some changes. I’ll be the first to admit that at the time there was definitely tremendous opportunity to make some improvements to my body, mind and soul. It’s always easy to look back with hindsight, but the key to these changes was realizing we’re all doing the best we can with what we have at any particular moment.
Like anyone, I’ve had my share of trials and tribulations, but that’s a story for a different day over a mocktail. Let’s just say that my therapist has shed tears for me on a couple of occasions, but the takeaway from that is the feeling of being heard. But what was I trying to say all those years I was making arguably self-destructive decisions? I had the words but the inability to express them. That’s when these loved ones suggested hypnotism: a way to touch base with my subconscious to get to the root of why we make the decisions we do.
I subscribe to the belief that our bodies are temples, and I was treating mine like a late-night, smokey dive bar that served copious amounts of fast food. I knew how to live a better life, but why wasn’t I making the decisions to live it? For some reason, this question overwhelmed me, and along with other external factors we all face, it forced me to shut down at times, punting any action required to make these undoubtedly life-saving changes.
My first meeting with Michelle at Bayside Hypnosis will be one I’ll never forget. Her effort and dogma to establish full trust with clients went a long way as I sat nervously in her office recliner, but as the sessions commenced, so did my comfort as her words wrapped around me like the fabric in that comfy chair. She listened and made it all about me as she does with all her clients. Not in a conceited way, but in a way that made me feel worthy regardless of my past “mistakes.”
Not only did she teach me how to move forward, but also how to actively imagine what forward looked like. I wasn’t happy with how my clothes fit; I was tired of waking up glassy-eyed and not functioning at 100 percent, and I knew deep in my heart I could be a better person for my friends, family, community, and most importantly, for myself.
Hypnosis helped me to unravel the feelings I accumulated about these external factors along the way. Personal and family life, careers, relationships – you name it – all had influenced my life in very specific ways, but were those feelings congruent with those influences? A lot were not. But, over time, Michelle helped me work through these feelings, and she’ll be the first to tell you she has nothing to do with her clients’ success and that it’s us who possess the power to make the changes.
That’s what hypnosis is – it’s not someone telling you what to think, it’s someone helping you think your own productive thoughts, to put it very, very simply.
At the time of publication, I will have lost and kept off close to 100 pounds, and I haven’t had a sip of alcohol in 1,173 days. That’s my journey, and everyone’s is different. Sometimes we don’t know how to read our own life maps, but hypnotism is more than just a compass – it’s a personal tour guide while using our own feet to take each individual step.
It doesn’t matter how big your stride is, as long as you’re envisioning where you want to go, you’ll get there because believing in yourself is quite possibly the best destination you’ll ever have.— By Bradley “Beej” Davis
