Area 03
Medical hypnotherapy means inducing a state of deep relaxation in which attention narrows sharply and it becomes easier to work with patterns the waking mind defends. It is done in a medical practice, towards a goal set at the outset, and it looks nothing like what you see on television.
Working with a state of deep relaxation, in a medical practice, towards a goal agreed in advance. It has nothing to do with stage hypnosis.
The hypnotic state is not sleep and it is not a loss of control. You hear everything, you remember everything, you can talk to me and you can stop whenever you want. The difference from ordinary waking is how tightly attention gathers around one single thing, rather like what happens when you are reading a good book and stop hearing the conversation in the room.
I am a medical hypnotherapist, certified in the United States. "Medical" is the important word: I use it as one tool within a consultation, with a person whose history I know, not as a method on its own and never in place of treatment prescribed by someone else.
The first part is an ordinary consultation: history, current treatment, what brings you. Then together we set a concrete goal and the signs by which we will know we have reached it. Without a goal I do not start.
You settle comfortably with your eyes closed and I guide you by voice into the state of deep relaxation. It takes a few minutes. There is nothing for you to do and nothing to "get right".
In that state we work on what we agreed: suggestions we phrase together, imagery, sometimes returning to a particular situation. You can talk to me throughout.
I bring you back gradually and we talk about what happened. You usually leave with a short self-hypnosis exercise for home, the part that holds the result between sessions.
Call and tell me briefly what brings you. If your situation calls for something other than what I do, I will say so in the first conversation.