What you need to know about online Hypnotherapy

First, hypnotherapy online is no different than a traditional hypnotherapy office visit. Prior to COVID many hypnotherapists were already practicing online. There are many benefits over the person to person hypnotherapy experience.

For example, online hypnotherapy negates that additional time and stress getting to an office visit.

Arranging your appointment around family and friend commitments is usually simpler. And if medical conditions and mobility are a limitation, online hypnotherapy is a wonderful alternative.

In so many cases the anxiety of making it to an office hypnotherapy session can outweigh its benefits. These anxieties produce VERY real emotions, both subjectively and physiologically. In the medical field, practitioners are trained to recognise White Coat Syndrome . In more extreme cases, Latrophobia and Agrophobia or social anxiety may also prevent clients from travelling or spending time in new environments.

Online hypnotherapy can remove many of these types of anxieties because you are in a familiar environment. You can also have friends and family present (as long as they do not disturb you).

How does online hypnotherapy differ to traditional hypnotherapy?

There is no difference. As long you commit to the process then the results will be exactly the same,  (without that additional stress of getting to the hypnotherapists office). 

Due to the coronavirus, many therapies have moved online, however telemedicine has been around since the 1950s with remarkable success.

Hypnotherapy in many ways is far easier to prescribe online than traditional medicine as the hypnotist prescription tool is his voice. As long as your audio settings are good then you are ready to go.

What conditions can online hypnotherapy treat?

Everything that a traditional office visit could help with. 

In today’s coronavirus environment, anxiety has become the norm for many. One of the greatest benefits of hypnotherapy is creating a relaxation response.

Whatever condition you choose from the list below, you will feel a sense of peace and tranquility. The following list is just an example of what can be helped with hypnosis. Click on the green highlighted link for up-to-date evidence-based hypnotherapy treatment. 

 Hypnotherapy For Anxiety

The tremendous volume of research provides compelling evidence that hypnosis is an efficacious treatment for state anxiety (e.g., before tests, surgery, and medical procedures) and anxiety-related disorders, such as headaches and irritable bowel syndrome. – quote from the study.

Hypnotherapy For Weight Management/Weight Loss

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This study indicates that hypnotherapy in obesity treatment leads to weight loss in obese patients, and thus, to considerable changes in leptin, ADP, and irisin levels. Hypnotherapy is easy to apply, cheap, and effective; has no potential for side effects; and can be applied both alone and in combination with other treatments. – quote from the study.

Hypnotherapy For Smoking Cessation

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Efforts to stop a tobacco habit have components that are both physical and emotional in nature; and which produce periods of discomfort and high relapse rates. Hypnosis can be supportive for both the physical and emotional aspects necessary for successful cessation. – quote from the study.

Hypnotherapy For Phobias

There is a significant change in the decrease in phobia symptoms, by 51.87% after hypnotherapy. This study concluded that hypnotherapy was effective in reducing phobia symptoms with 2 therapy sessions in 4 meetings. – quote from the study.

Hypnotherapy For Nail Biting

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Results for all subjects indicated an immediate and dramatic increase in fingernail lengths concomitant with the introduction of treatment. At 3-month follow-up, subject 1 demonstrated a moderate reversal effect while the remaining two subjects continued to indicate substantial progress. These findings were discussed with regard to the efficacy of hypnobehavioral treatment strategies and utilization of single-case experimental designs in future hypnotherapy research. – quote from the study.

Hypnotherapy For Sports Performance

This paper focuses on using hypnosis as a technique to enhance performance, reduce anxiety and increase self-efficacy in coaching and coaching psychology settings. – quote from the study.

Hypnotherapy For Pain Management

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Reviews on hypnosis for internal medicine topics are impressive, with demonstrated efficacy for migraine headache, irritable bowel syndrome, and anxiety. Hypnosis improves procedural pain and emotional distress and reduces medication consumption up to 40%—in short, if hypnosis were a drug, it would be standard of care. quote from the study.

Hypnotherapy For Exam Preparation 

In the test-anxiety categories, emotionality, worry, interference, and lack of confidence were evaluated. The effect of clinical hypnosis on test anxiety was observed in this study. The global test anxiety and lack of confidence scores were reduced significantly over time in the group that underwent clinical hypnosis, while not so in the control group. - quote from the study.

Hypnotherapy For Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)

Hypnotherapy has been shown to be effective at relieving global gastrointestinal symptoms (GGS) in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). This study examines the impact of hypnotherapy delivery and participant characteristics on IBS outcomes. - quote from the study.

How to a determine a reliable online hypnotherapist

You have a huge choice of hypnotherapists from all over the world to choose from. 

However, Hypnotherapy is currently UNREGULATED in the UK and USA. There is no national or international organization that is solely responsible for hypnotherapy accreditation. In reality, anybody can self-accredit, and they do!

So, how do you navigate through the minefield of hypnotherapists? 

Begin by finding a professional organization that has academic standards.

UK

The British Society of Clinical and Academic Hypnosis

bscah.com

USA

1. Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis www.sceh.us

2. American Society of Clinical Hypnosis www.asch.net

3. American Board of Medical Hypnosis www.abmh.info

What are the technical requirements for online hypnotherapy?

Multiple platforms are available that can be used for online hypnotherapy and, typically, all are free.

   Please ensure that you have the following:

• A high speed internet connection e.g., cable or DSL broadband.

• A computer with integrated microphone or a headset with microphone.

• A webcam for face-to-face therapy sessions and adequate lighting.

• A valid online platform, Zoom, FaceTime, Skype etc. (or other application) account and the latest software. Keep these apps and your computer updated.

• A location that is private (free from any distractions if possible). This includes pets that do not want to be away from their person. If a pet is not used to being isolated, they may cry. Let friends and family know ahead of time that you will need this block of time not to be disturbed. Turn off the notifications from your devices.

• A location that is comfortable (sitting or lying position) and still in view of the webcam, phone or tablet video camera.

• Prior to a hypnotherapy session it is always advisable to do a sound and picture testcheck.

Which are the best online hypnotherapy platforms?

I am going to cover four platforms. If you are interested in other formats, I have included additional companies. There are some great tutorials on Youtube, so rather than reinventing the wheel, I have included some of the most popular. They are all free for one to one communication and similar in their use.

Facetime

Skype

WhatsApp

Zoom

Additional platforms are GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts, join.me, and ON24.

How do I know if hypnotherapy online will work for me?

To begin with lets reiterate that online hypnosis is just as effective as a traditional office visit, so the question really is: “Can I be hypnotized?” 

I am going to refer you back to one of my blogs: Hypnosis, what we know . What we do know, is that some people are more hypnotically gifted than others. A hypnosis facilitator looks for physiological signs that indicate hypnosis. These signs are not necessarily consciously experienced by the client.

One of these is called an eye roll developed by Dr Spiegel .

You can try this out with friends and family, and although it is not a DEFINITIVE test, it is a great indicator. 

1. Hold your head looking straight forward ;
2. While holding your head in that position, look upward toward your eyebrows— now toward the top of your head (UpGaze) ;
3. While continuing to look upward, at the same time SLOWLY close your eyelids slowly (Roll) ; I say try and close your eye lids over your eyeballs, it is a good image to visualise.
The amount of sclera visible ( White of the eye ) between the lower eyelid and the lower edge of the cornea is the most practical measurement.

Spiegel Eye Roll

 Simply, the more you see of the white of your eye measures your level of hypnotisability. 

If your eyes start to flutter you may be experiencing what is called REM or rapid eye movement

You may also notice a change in body temperature and a tingling sensation in the extremities, neither pronounced.

During hypnotherapy, we skip the first three stages of sleep. A hypnotized person is intensely focused but not worried about what they are doing. They are not worried about evaluating instructions, but are simply following those instructions, and they have a more direct connection between their minds and the physical function of their bodies.

Stage 1 non-REM sleep is the changeover from wakefulness and daytime wakefulness patterns into sleep. 

Stage 2 non-REM sleep is a period of light sleep before you enter deeper sleep. You spend more of your repeated sleep cycles in stage 2 sleep than in other sleep stages.

Stage 3 non-REM sleep is the period of deep sleep that you need to feel refreshed in the morning.  It occurs in longer periods during the first half of the night. Your heartbeat and breathing slow to their lowest levels during sleep. Your muscles are relaxed, and it may be difficult to awaken you. Brain waves become slower yet. 

REM sleep first occurs about 90 minutes after falling asleep. Your eyes move rapidly from side to side behind closed eyelids. Most of your dreaming occurs during REM sleep, although some can also occur in non-REM sleep.

TRY THIS AUDIO TO SEE IF SELF-HYPNOSIS WORKS FOR YOU

Go to www.barryjones.com to book an online appointment. For self hypnosis audio downloads go to the STORE

For more clinical information you can also go to TAVISTOCK HYPNOTHERAPY

Does Hypnosis work to lose weight?

Does Hypnosis work to lose weight? Is hypnotherapy a good investment? The answer is yes and no. Let me explain

Should a hypnotherapist understand nutrition to create a more successful outcome? In my opinion, they should. But it is also my belief that they should have a good understanding of any therapy they are facilitating. Hypnosis is not a panacea, as medications are not to a physician. In fact, many medications mask the original problems and cause additional side effects.

A hypnotherapist prescribes words, however, unless they understand the power of those words, then most long-term therapy will not work. Especially so for weight management/weight loss.

With most hypnotically talented clients, you will get favorable short-term results. Yet, as with ANY hypnotherapy, long-term results will have greater success if your vocabulary is precise and relevant.

You would think if we could put a man on the moon that we would be able to figure out this ‘nutrition thing.’

Our governments are aware of the health issues caused by poor nutrition AND have the power to make changes. Consider the huge amounts of profit made from the fast food and sugar industry via investment as well as sales. Their lobby in Congress is powerful.

Another great benefactor of our rampant obesity is the Pharmaceutical companies. The pharma industry makes billions on statins and blood pressure medications… conditions, especially obesity, that poor nutrition causes. Piggybacking them is the diet industry, which in the USA market is estimated at $71 billion. That is a lot of money being made to confuse us into thinking we have no control over our lives!!!!!!!

As a hypnotherapist, we are in a unique situation to make a profound difference, but generic hypnotic weight loss dialogue is only going to take your client so far. I still hear the word fat consumption being used in a negative context… when taking in healthy fat is ESSENTIAL for a healthy lifestyle.

I do not have a degree in nutrition, but I have extensive knowledge in health education, a subject that I taught at University/College.

If somebody approaches me to discuss a specific way of eating, I feel prepared to alter my dialogue to accommodate their needs. I am blessed to have a wife who is a Nurse Practitioner with specialised knowledge of nutrition. www.stilljanet.com

If I feel stuck with anything then this is my go-to person. 

Weight loss/management can be a complex problem especially if medications are involved. If you are unsure about a nutritional situation, you can refer out, or work in a partnership with a health care professional.

We all have individual constitutions and lifestyle circumstances, so it would only make sense that every hypnotherapy dialogue would be different.
Resources
Glycemic index for 60 plus foods

U.S. obesity as delayed effect of excess sugar
Obesity and overweight-World Health Organisation. While many population health studies have invoked sugar as a major casual factor in the obesity epidemic, few have explicitly explored the temporal delay between increased sugar consumption and rising obesity rates.

Obesity and overweight
Obesity and overweight-World Health Organisation.
In 2019, an estimated 38.2 million children under the age of 5 years were overweight or obese

Hypnotherapy Accreditation In The USA?

In America, hypnosis is an unregulated profession and there is no accreditation.

I read an article by a hypnotherapy school that said, “You don’t need a license, you just need to meet certain criteria.” There is NO criteria!

Only three States require registration, but anybody can do that as long as you pay the fee.

Similar in the UK, there are many “accredited” schools, and also an abundance of minefields to go through to find a course that meets your needs. If you can pay, you can take a course!

Your best alternative is to go through a professional organization. 

Here are three I would suggest:

1. Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis www.sceh.us

2. American Society of Clinical Hypnosis www.asch.net

3. American Board of Medical Hypnosis

Also, look into: Hypnosis/Dental Hypnosis/Psychological Hypnosis and Social Work Hypnosis/Nursing 

If you want to learn hypnosis, find like-minded minded people. Facebook has an abundance of forums you can join. Get involved with Skype/Zoom practical sessions and read! The only way to become good at hypnosis is by doing it. Once you become proficient, then decide if a course is worth the investment. So many are padded with irrelevant information and redundant techniques. KIS (Keep It Simple).

Hypnosis: What we know!

Some people are more hypnotically gifted than others. We still do not know the reason why, but scientific research is getting us closer.

A landmark study by Dr. David Spiegel, and colleagues, found a distinctive signature in the brain when a patient has undergone hypnosis. Functional and structural MRI scans of the brains were performed on 12 adults with high hypnotisability and 12 adults with low hypnotisability.

“Our results provide novel evidence that altered functional connectivity in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex may underlie hypnotisability.” Spiegel also said the work confirms that hypnotisability is less about personality variables and more about cognitive style. “Here we are seeing a neural trait.”

I have calculated my own hours in the field of hypnosis: in 35+ years, I hypnotized well over 100,000 people. As a result, I have become acutely aware of the subtleties and nuances for successful outcomes in hypnotized subjects.

My experience of how people relate to hypnosis:

• To a degree, everybody can be hypnotised

• Success is primarily based on the facilitator

• Even those with low levels of hypnotisability can improve their ability 

• Those who say they cannot be hypnotised typically have a high desire to experience it

• Most peoples’ fear of participating is about loss of control and revealing personal information

• Every research article has limitations, hypnosis has it in abundance

Related research articles

Attention or instruction: Do sustained attentional abilities really differ between high and low hypnotizable persons?

Relationship between hypnosis and personality traits in participants with high or low hypnotic susceptibility

Can hypnotic suggestibility be measured online?

Past Life Regression: My Experiences

This post is to share a subjective account of what I observed in two experiences that could be called Past Life Regression.

I do not claim that these are past life regressions. I am describing these to expand awareness of unanticipated levels of consciousness that can occur under hypnosis.

In the first, I was presenting a keynote address in San Diego on reprogramming the mind for cognitive performance. As I always do during these presentations, I have my audience experience hypnosis. During this group hypnosis, one of the audience members stood up and started to speak in a foreign language. If anybody else in the group was experiencing hypnosis, his vocalizations snapped them out! His face was expressionless, and his speech was constant without any inflection. This went on for about a minute and then he just sat down and closed his eyes. As you can imagine I was somewhat surprised and caught off guard! 

I quickly made a light joke of it by saying, "everybody will have their own experience," and moved on with the presentation.

At the end of the presentation, a few people gathered around the gentleman. One of the individuals talking to him was an older Asian man who understood parts of what the first said during his hypnotic state but could not understand the context of what was said. The Asian gentleman stated the language spoken was a Chinese dialect not much used currently. He also stated that the sentences were broken and the thoughts without cohesive relevance. When asked, the subject as mystified as all of us, saying that he never learned a second language, and had never been to Asia. He also had no awareness of any Asian heritage. And, most interesting of all, he also had no idea what had happened.

My second experience happened with a gentleman that was already an acquaintance of mine. He was in his mid-70s, an extraordinarily successful businessman, and had always felt as though he had experienced something significant in his past. 

To be honest, his request was somewhat surprising as I had never imagined that he would be open to this type of concept.

In explicit detail, he experienced a dog fight with a triplane from what I presumed was from the first world war. He was in the middle of aerial combat and although he was seated for the session, his body was twisting and turning as though he was being thrown around. Then he said he had been shot in the leg, just before or simultaneous to snapping out of whatever was happening to him. His wife was there during the session, appearing as transfixed as I was. The only thing remotely connected to the experience was a lifelong leg pain the origin of which had never been diagnosed. At no stage during the session did I interact with him other than to guide him into hypnosis. The last I spoke to this man, years later, he maintained that the leg pain left that day and never returned.

Is Past Life Regression Ethical

Is Past Life Regression Ethical (Part 1-4)

Above, is the title of an article written by Gabriel Andrade from the Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine.
Gabriel Andrade’s argument is two-fold.
First, she states that past life regression is not evidence-based.
Second, she states, “past life regression therapy has the great risk of implanting false memories in patients, and thus, causing significant harm. This is a violation of the principle of non-malfeasance, which is surely the most important principle in medical ethics.”

I am going to be the devil's advocate on this one and ask some questions. 
First, let us consider the following:
Reincarnation is a central belief of many religions

• Hinduism 1.2 billion

• Buddhism 535 million

• Jainism 6 million

• Sikhs 25 million

• Kabbalah Judaism?

• Americans and Europeans ( estimates from various countries range from 12% to 44% )
  If you do the numbers, this adds up to approximately 2 billion out of a world population of 7.8 billion. 

As reincarnation and past life regression are closely related, I would hypothesize that both concepts also include unique, distinct, belief systems. It is also not within the scope of this review to discuss how each religion views reincarnation.

The article, to me, reads that since there is no scientific proof of reincarnation, then past life regression does not exist. 
My first question: As religion is not evidence-based, is it unethical?
If we look at her second reason, i.e. “it implants false memories,” then I would ask the question -  does the process of past life regression therapy require you to implant false memories?

This is such an interesting subject, so I have decided to divide it up into four parts. The last part will be my personal experiences of facilitating PLR and my theory of what is happening during such sessions.

In Part 2, we will look at some history of PLR and look at the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson MD and Dr. Brian Weiss MD. These two respected scientists are the leading authorities on PLR.

Hypnosis Induction, Fastest Progressive Technique

How many types of induction should you learn? I can only give you a subjective answer based on my experience. To me, the Spiegel Eye Roll technique (which I adapted) is the panacea of progressive inductions, and I see no reason to use anything else.

Notice that I use the term progressive, but in reality the way I use it quite often only takes a few seconds.

Adapted hypnosis eye roll technique

One of my favorite books is Malcom Caldwell’s book, Outliers, in which he looked at the Story of Success and what criteria one must meet to be an expert. He and others surmised that the number of hours for any master in a field of endeavor is at least 10,000. Because of Caldwell’s book, I’ve worked out my own hours in the field of hypnosis: in 35+ years, I hypnotized well over 100,000 people. As a result, I have become acutely aware of the subtleties and nuances for successful outcomes in hypnotized subjects.

Adapted Eye Roll Induction by Barry Jones. For more about clinical hypnotherapy education go to www.barryjones.com