Hypnosis -- or hypnotherapy -- uses guided relaxation, intense concentration, and focused attention to achieve a heightened state of awareness that is sometimes called a trance. The person's attention is so focused while in this state that anything going on around the person is temporarily blocked out or ignored. In this naturally occurring state, a person may focus his or her attention -- with the help of a trained therapist -- on specific thoughts or tasks.
How Does Hypnosis Work?
Hypnosis is considered an aid to counseling because the hypnotic state allows people to explore thoughts, feelings, and memories they might have hidden from their conscious minds. In addition, hypnosis enables people to perceive things differently, such as a belief or habit.
Hypnosis can be used in two ways, as suggestion therapy or for patient analysis.
- Suggestion therapy: The hypnotic state makes the person better able to respond to suggestions. Therefore, hypnotherapy can help some people change certain behaviors, such as stopping smoking or the reduction and elimination of anxiety.
- It can also help people change perceptions and sensations, and is particularly useful in treating pain.
- Analysis: This approach uses the relaxed state to explore a possible psychological root cause of a traumatic past event that a person has hidden in his or her unconscious memory. Once the trauma is revealed, it can be addressed and resolved.
What Are the Benefits of Hypnosis?
The hypnotic state allows a person to be more open to discussion and suggestion. It can have a significant positive impact on the following:
- Phobias, fears, and anxiety
- Sleep disorders
- Depression
- Stress
- Post-trauma anxiety
- Grief and loss
Hypnosis is extremely effective pain control; overcome and change habits, such as smoking or overeating. It can also be helpful for people whose symptoms are severe or who need crisis management.
What Are the Drawbacks of Hypnosis?
Hypnosis might not be appropriate for a person who has psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, or for someone who is using drugs or alcohol. It should be used for pain control only after a doctor has evaluated the person for any physical disorder that might require medical or surgical treatment.
Is Hypnosis Dangerous?
NO, hypnosis is not a dangerous procedure. It is not mind control or brainwashing. A person in hypnosis cannot be made to do something embarrassing or that the person doesn't want to do.
HOWEVER ---
in the hypnotic state you can learn to do the following:
QUIT SMOKING
INCREASE MOTIVATION & FOCUS
ELIMINATE STRESS & ANXIETY
LET GO OF BAD HABITS
NO MORE PHOBIAS or FEARS
BETTER SLEEPING
STOP THAT ARGUMENT IN YOUR HEAD
OPEN INTUITION & CREATIVITY
OVERCOME ADDICTIONS & GAMBLING
NO PAIN - NO STRESS - NO DRUGS
The following text is from Rothman's Benson & Hedges Website regarding Smoking
Health Effects of Smoking
Cigarette smoking causes serious disease and is addictive
When a cigarette is lit, the tobacco burns and creates smoke.
In cigarette smoke more than 8,000 chemicals or “smoke constituents” have been identified.
Approximately 100 of them as causes or potential causes of smoking-related diseases such as lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, and emphysema.
These constituents include among others arsenic, benzene, benzo[a]pyrene, carbon monoxide, heavy metals (e.g. lead, cadmium), hydrogen cyanide, and tobacco-specific nitrosamines.
Are all cigarettes harmful and addictive?
Yes, all cigarettes are harmful and addictive.
Although there are a variety of cigarette brands available on the market with different features (e.g., the cigarette blend style, diameter, length, as well as tar, nicotine, or carbon monoxide yields), smokers should not assume that any of these features means that one cigarette is less harmful or less addictive than another.
While it can be very difficult to quit smoking cigarettes, millions of smokers have succeeded in doing so.
Tar, Nicotine, and Carbon-Monoxide Yields
Tar
Tar is the residue of particles that are contained in cigarette smoke. It is not a single chemical, but instead a mixture of several thousand smoke constituents.
Tar is measured under laboratory conditions by trapping the particles on a filter and then subtracting water and nicotine.
Nicotine
Nicotine is a naturally occurring chemical in the tobacco plant.
When tobacco is burned, nicotine is transferred into the smoke.
Nicotine, while addictive, is not the primary cause of smoking - related diseases.
Carbon Monoxide
Carbon monoxide is a gas that is formed in cigarette smoke.
Carbon monoxide has been identified as a leading cause of cardiovascular disease (heart disease) in smokers.
Secondhand Smoke
Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is a combination of the smoke produced from the lit end of a cigarette and the smoke exhaled by smokers.
Public health authorities, including the WHO, have concluded that secondhand smoke causes diseases, including lung cancer and heart disease, in nonsmoking adults, as well as conditions in children such as asthma, respiratory infections, cough, wheezing, otitis media (middle ear infection), and sudden infant death syndrome.
In addition, secondhand smoke can exacerbate adult asthma and cause eye, throat, and nasal irritation.
Smoking and Pregnancy
Pregnant women should not smoke and should not use any other nicotine products.
Women who smoke before or during pregnancy are at increased risk for:
premature births, pregnancy complications, and still births
having low birth weight babies.
Low birth weight babies are at greater risk for childhood and adult illnesses and even death.
babies suffering sudden infant death syndrome
babies having reduced lung function If you are pregnant, or think you may be, do not smoke.
