Sanders Hypnosis Center Official Blog

Hypnosis as an Alternative to Beta Blockers for Stage Fright

2011-07-29T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hypnosis as an Alternative to Beta Blockers for Stage Fright

By Brian Sanders, MS, CH

Stage fright, which is often referred to as performance anxiety, it is a debilitating condition that can devastate a person’s self-confidence and career. Attorneys, athletes, CEO’s, and other professionals can also suffer from stage fight. However, this article will focus on stage fright from a musician’s perspective due to this author’s personal experiences with this problem.

As a young trumpet performing artist, I suffered from a very severe case of stage fright. Throughout my high school and college studies, high-pressure performance situations such as recitals and master classes would cause my legs to shake rapidly, my mouth to become dry, and my mind to draw a blank except for thoughts of inevitable failure. All this would occur despite hundreds of hours spent in the practice room, mastering and perfecting each and every note.

I explored many strategies to cope with stage fright, from yoga and deep breathing exercises to creative visualization techniques. Eventually, a professor suggested that I try beta-blockers but made me promise to not to tell anybody who advised me of this. I’m still keeping the secret, but this was my first exposure to what is commonly called the “musician’s underground drug.”

Beta blockers are medications which block our body’s receptors for the physical effects of a person’s natural fight or flight response. The fight or flight response is an innate safety device triggered when our mind perceives a threat. It is a remnant from our prehistoric ancestors. Take the cave man, for example. He encounters a saber-toothed tiger. His adrenaline is released and an automatic decision is made: flee the situation and hope to outrun the ferocious predator or stay, roll the dice, and take his chances of killing it before it kills him. Most of us don’t have such worries anymore, but the mechanism is still present and is responsible for the behavior we experience when suffering from stage fright.

There are two views of thought about using beta blockers for musical performance. The first is that, despite the potential risks of hallucinations, nightmares, depression, decreased pulse, bronchial asthma, and heart failure that can lead to death, beta blockers can be a tool to assist an individual musician to perform at his or her very best. Many musicians are willing to take that risk if it increases their chances of getting a “gig.” On the other hand, there is a view (likely held by individuals who do not suffer from performance anxiety), that taking beta-blockers gives a performer an unfair advantage, much like an athlete who takes steroids. Although this is a topic of debate in the music community, a study of 2,122 musicians in major North American symphony orchestras reported that 22% of those musicians take, or have taken, beta blockers for performance anxiety. Granted, this figure only accounted for a small segment of professional musicians who were willing to divulge their use of the medication; it didn’t account for musicians in other smaller orchestras, military bands, opera and theatre vocalists, musicians working in other genres, etc. As such, it is likely that this figure is much higher.

I promptly made an appointment with my physician and, when I discussed my problem with him, he readily explained to me that medical students commonly take beta-blockers prior to taking exams. He then prescribed Propranolol, which seemed to do the trick for the physical symptoms. My legs stopped shaking and my mouth didn’t become dry. However, it did not solve the psychological problems: my mind continued to go blank and I still imagined inevitable failure. I settled upon the fact that any help is better than nothing at all, so I continued to use the medication.

In 2007 I found that the answer to my problem was far simpler than I could have imagined; it was with hypnosis that my problem with stage fright was finally solved. The source of my problems with stage fright stemmed from unresolved childhood conflict, or negative experience, which occurred before the age of eight; hypnotherapists call this source the Initial Sensitizing Event (ISE). A situation occurs which the mind is not mature enough to process or analyze. As adults, this ultimately manifests itself as stage fright. Most people suffering from stage fright have no recollection of the ISE and, as such, cannot explain why they have this problem. In their mind, it has just always been there.

There are two parts to our mind: the conscious part and the subconscious part. As you read this, you are using the conscious part to think about and process these words. It is always aware of what is occurring while you are awake. The subconscious part of our mind is like a computer hard-drive with thousands and thousands of computer programs that contain everything we have seen, heard, touched, and experienced.

Up until approximately the age of eight, both parts are of the mind are merged together. This is why children are so suggestible. For example, a child who experiences sexual trauma may repress those memories into adulthood. However, the experience has left a lasting imprint in the subconscious mind. That child then grows up to find him or herself following similar patterns, perhaps involved in drug or alcohol abuse or other negative patterns of behavior. However, the memory of the actual ISE is usually not present.

Hypnosis can be utilized to effectively “reprogram” the software in our subconscious mind. Once placed into hypnosis, the therapist invokes the feelings of stage fright to an almost unbearable degree and then uses regression techniques to take the client back to the time when they first experienced this feeling, the ISE. The client is then able to relive this experience with incredible detail by replaying it in his or her mind. Often, the event could be something silly or inconsequential to an adult yet seemingly devastating to a child. Depending on the severity of the ISE, the therapist could choose to reframe the experience to give the memory a positive slant or he could do nothing at all, simply allowing the adult mind to properly process and analyze the situation. The therapist would then have the client fast forward to any future negative imprints which generated similar feelings, the Subsequent Sensitizing Event (SSE), and deal with them in the same way. Finally, the therapist will have the client attempt to bring about the same feelings of panic and, if they are not present, then success was achieved.

In my practice at the Sanders Hypnosis Center in Glen Burnie, I have worked with dozens of professional musicians suffering from stage fright who fit this model. In one case, regression hypnosis for a graduate violin student yielded a childhood incident where she played poorly in a recital and had greatly disappointed her overbearing parents. In another case, a Russian piano player witnessed his private teacher get scolded and fired for working him too hard; he felt responsible for the teacher losing his job and going hungry. Certainly, from an adult perspective, an issue may seem relatively minor. However, to a child it can be extremely traumatic. The effectiveness of this approach is extremely favorable; one hundred percent of my stage fright clients have reported the complete elimination of their problem.

There is no question that hypnosis is a preferable alternative to beta-blockers. Hypnosis is completely natural and safe, and it has no negative side effects. Additionally, unlike beta-blockers, which temporarily address only the physical symptoms of stage fright, hypnosis can cause permanent physiological and psychological change.

For more information about hypnosis and stage fright, visit www.SandersHypnosis.com.

Published in The Baltimore Musician, the Official Journal of The Musicians' Association of Metropolitan Baltimore. Vol. 24, No. 4, June/July/August 2011.

Our Blog Has Moved!

2011-07-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

The official blog of the Sanders Hypnosis Center has moved. Our new virtual street address is now: http://marylandhypnosis.blogspot.com/. See you there!

Study Promises Major Breakthrough For Gastric Band Hypnosis

2011-07-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

We received an email today from Sheila Granger, the founder of the Virtual Gastric Band Program Hypnosis Program used by the Sanders Hypnosis Sanders in Glen Burnie, Maryland. A pilot study of our Gastric Band Hypnosis Program will be conducted in October 2011, in conjunction with the UK's Humberside Obesity, Nutrition, Education and Innovation Center, The University of Hull, Hull York Medical School and the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Upon completion of the pilot study, the trial will be conducted on an international level. The Sanders Hypnosis Center of Maryland is pleased to report that we will be participating in this study.

This is a major potential breakthrough, which raises education and awareness of Gastric Band Hypnosis and hypnotherapy in general as a valid method of helping individuals.

Note that this study only involves the Virtual Gastric Band Program developed by Sheila Granger, as utilized at the Sanders Hypnosis Center. When inquiring about Gastric Band Hypnosis, be sure that you are benefitting from the same program developed by Sheila Granger, as there are several different competitors out there.

Obesity Surgery Might Not Help Older Patients Live Longer, Study Suggests

2011-06-17T06:57:00.000-07:00

June 13, 2011 -- Extremely obese adults who are middle-age or older may not be lengthening their lives by having weight loss surgery, a new study reveals.

These findings differ from previous research, which has shown a modest improvement in survival rates. Other studies done on younger, female, or healthier populations have suggested an increased life span following these procedures.

But this current study looked at an older, predominantly male, and sicker group of adults, and the results did not show a decrease in mortality rates in patients after gastric bypass surgery during a nearly seven-year follow-up period.

"We looked at Roux-en-Y gastric bypass because that was the predominant procedure done when the research was conducted," says study researcher Matthew Maciejewski, PhD, an investigator at the center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

The research appears in the June 15 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Weight Loss Surgery and Risk of Death

Researchers analyzed data from 850 veterans who had weight loss surgery between January 2000 and December 2006 at one of 12 VA medical centers and a similar number of severely obese high-risk veterans who did not have the operation but received their health care from the same facilities. Among the surgical patients, 74% were male and 26% were female. Their average age was 49 and the average body mass index (BMI) was 47, which is considered severely obese.

When researchers compared mortality rates in the surgical group to a matched nonsurgical control group -- who had a similar age, BMI, race, gender mix, marital status, and number of participants who were super-obese (BMI of 50 or above) -- they did not find a lower mortality rate.

Why didn't gastric bypass extend life? Maciejewski says one possibility is that there is no survival benefit from weight loss surgery in this higher-risk, predominantly male group of patients after nearly seven years. A second explanation is that there could be a longer-term benefit that researchers didn't have enough time to observe.

A study from Sweden with a longer follow-up period found a survival benefit in patients, but it was not seen until an average of 13 years after weight loss surgery.

"In the Swedish research, some of the decreases in mortality found a decade or more later were caused by a reduction in deaths from cancer and heart disease," says Janey Pratt, MD, a bariatric surgeon and director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Loss Center in Boston, who was not involved in either of the two studies. "Perhaps in this latest research, the damage had already been done in older patients, and they're less likely to reap the benefits of surgery in terms of survival.”

Eleven of the 850 surgical patients died within a month of having gastric bypass. That's a mortality rate of 1.3%, which is four times higher than the one seen in an earlier study of weight loss surgery in younger, mostly female patients.

Pratt tells WebMD that it's much more difficult to do obesity surgery on male patients than females because of gender differences in the way fat is distributed on the body.

Women carry more of their fat in their hips and thighs, and belly fat is found mainly in the abdominal wall. But extremely obese men carry much of their fat in the belly, the so-called "apple" shape. They have thin abdominal walls but lots of fat floating around inside surrounding the gastrointestinal tract and organs where weight loss surgery takes place.

Weighing Risks and Benefits of Obesity Surgery

Roughly 220,000 Americans have obesity surgery per year, or 1% of the clinically eligible population, according to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. These operations, which include gastric bypass or gastric banding, make the stomach smaller so the amount of food eaten is reduced. With gastric bypass, fewer calories are also absorbed because food bypasses part of the small intestine.

"Even though this study did not suggest a survival benefit at nearly seven years, there are a host of other benefits from having bariatric surgery," Maciejewski tells WebMD. It's effective in producing weight loss, it decreases the use of medication for obesity-related health conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, and it improves the quality of life.

Pratt frequently does weight loss surgery in people over 60, but she tells her patients that it's unlikely to prolong their life and more likely to improve their quality of life and decrease the number of medications they're currently taking.

Many go ahead and have the procedure. "But sometimes it's the quality of life benefits -- being able to sleep in the same bed as their spouse, sitting comfortably in a movie theater, or cutting their own toenails -- that's enough. It doesn't have to be living longer," says Pratt.

Original source: http://www.webmd.com/diet/weight-loss-surgery/news/20110613/weight-loss-surgery-middle-age-may-not-increase-survival

Visit Sanders Hypnosis Center to learn more about our safe, effective Gastric Band Hypnosis program with absolutely NO surgery involved

Bariatric Surgery Linked to Increased Fracture Risk

2011-06-07T02:09:00.000-07:00

For those wanting to lose weight, here is yet another reason why NOT to have bariatric surgery, but to participate in a Gastric Band Hypnosis Program such as that provided at the Sanders Hypnosis Center in Glen Burnie, Maryland instead.

New research has found that people who have had gastric bypass surgery or other bariatric weight-loss surgery have an even higher increased risk of breaking bones than previously found. These study findings will be presented Tuesday at The Endocrine Society’s 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston.

“A negative effect on bone health that may increase the risk of fractures is an important consideration for people considering bariatric surgery and those who have undergone bariatric surgery,” said lead author Kelly Nakamura, a medical student at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn.

Nakamura reported the final analysis of research presented two years ago in a small subset of the 258 patients included in this study. This full analysis showed that patients who had bariatric surgery have 2.3 times the chance of fractures compared with the general population, as opposed to the 1.8-fold increased risk found initially.

Patients who had bariatric surgery had an increased risk of a fracture at nearly all skeletal sites studied, according to the authors. The chance of breaking a foot or hand was especially high—about three times what would be expected, Nakamura said.

For comparison, the investigators studied the patients’ actual fracture rates reported in their medical records versus the expected fracture rates among people of the same age and sex living in the same county in Minnesota. Patients underwent bariatric surgery at Mayo Clinic Rochester between 1985 and 2004, with 94 percent of patients having a gastric bypass.

A total of 79 patients had 132 fractures during an average follow-up of nine years, the authors reported. On average, they experienced their first fracture about six years after surgery. This is a time when their primary health care provider, rather than their surgeon, usually is responsible for their care, said the study’s principal investigator, Kurt Kennel, MD, an assistant professor of medicine in the endocrinology division at Mayo Clinic.

After evaluating various fracture risk factors, the researchers found that patients who were more physically active before surgery had a lower fracture risk than those who were less active. Some of these obese patients may have been too debilitated to exercise, Kennel suggested.

“Clinicians may need to consider measures to optimize bone health and reduce fracture risk after bariatric surgery, such as fall prevention and optimizing calcium and vitamin D nutrition,” he said.

Kennel stressed, however, that the patients who had fractures did not necessarily develop osteoporosis. He said, “There are no data on whether bisphosphonates [osteoporosis medications] are safe or appropriate for this patient population. Further research is needed to understand why bariatric surgery negatively affects bone health and how best to prevent these fractures.”

Released: 6/3/2011 11:00 AM EDT
Embargo expired: 6/4/2011 2:00 PM EDT
Source: Endocrine Society

Aaron Lohr
alohr@endo-society.org
240-482-1380
www.newswise.com/articles/view/577410?print-article

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

Sanders Hypnosis Center of Maryland
www.SandersHypnosis.com

Sanders Hypnosis Center of Maryland and our Virtual Gastric Band featured on ABC 2 News

2011-02-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

Our Virtual Gastric Band Program was recently featured on ABC 2 News. Brian Sanders, our extraordinary hypnotherapist, was interviewed along with two of his clients who were discussed the wonderful benefits of the program. As Brian always says, "No excuses, just results." Read on for the story transcript and a link to the news segment!

Click here to view the news segment!

PASADENA, Md. - Many of us obsess over ways to lose weight. Some go extreme, going under the knife for gastric bypass or gastric bands that actually shrink the size of your stomach, forcing you to eat less. But what if you could get all the benefits of a stomach band without ever stepping foot in a hospital? ABC2News Joce Sterman has details.

The operating room machines beep and hum as you lay sleeping. Your stomach is being shrunk through a simple procedure thousands of Americans get every year. But Sondra Lambert isn't undergoing a gastric band surgery in an operating room. She's only under the knife in her mind. Hypnotist Brian Sanders says, "Our clients actually believe their stomachs have shrunk down to the size of a golf ball."

At this clinic it's all mind over matter. Clients like Sondra think they're in a hospital, convinced they're getting a gastric band. But there's no scalpel and no scar because the surgery isn't really happening. It's hypnosis. Lambert says, "It doesn't hurt. It's me. He's going to be talking to me on the inside."

Sondra's happy inside. She wanted to change her outside so she opted for the virtual gastric band at Sanders Hypnosis Center in Pasadena (Anne Arundel County). Lambert says, "This is something that will blend what I need and what I enjoy and I truly believe this is a solution."

And she's not alone. Brian Sanders started offering hypno-bands six months ago and he says he's already put 200 clients under his four-session pseudo-surgery. Sanders explains, "We are able to basically go in and reprogram the brain through hypnosis kind of how you reprogram a computer. You really can't do that at the conscious level. You access the subconscious mind and then you can reprogram these things and that's why it works so well."

It's worked well for Deborah Herbert. Her weight yo-yoed for years. But after three sessions and a couple of months her loss this time is a mind trip. She's down 58 pounds. Herbert says, "It doesn't feel like a temporary measure this time. It feels more like a lifestyle change, like something I can live with and I can continue."

Sanders is quick to sing the praises of the procedure. He claims his patients get full faster because they feel like their stomachs are smaller. Some even claim they feel tenderness from an incision!

Dr. Peter Liao, the Medical Director of the Comprehensive Obesity Management Center at GBMC is intrigued by the idea. While he wants overweight people to have options, he’d like to see more clinical data before he's sold. Liao says, "We need to see how well does it work in the long run so patients really understand when they make these choices, yes, this is zero risk but what is the benefit?"

The benefit according to Sanders is that you lose without the side effects of surgery, changing your body through your mind. But just like the actual surgery, Sanders agrees the virtual procedure isn't for everybody, "You have to believe in the process. You have to be willing to open your mind and allow yourself to be hypnotized."

You can consider Sondra a believer. She's three sessions in and already feeling a difference after losing 15 pounds in three weeks. But her journey into the mind is about more than the number on the scale. She says, "It's not the weight or even the health issues. It's the lady in the mirror." Now she’s a lady getting smaller and beating the adage - no pain, no gain.

If you sign on for the virtual gastric band, you show up for four sessions and pay $799. You've also got to agree to other steps you'd do if dieting like eating smaller meals and exercising.

Hypnosis To Combat Stress

2010-10-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

A Vancouver-based reporter, who was accustomed to seeing stage hypnosis shows, decided to see how hynotherapy worked for his stress. He went to see Doug Osborne, clinical hypnotherapist.

Osborne states that he has "seen a stamped of people" come in for stress-related issues. In his sessions, he refers to a shamanic wheel's four compass points: emotions, the body, the mind and the spirit, to allow his clients to make connections to their sources of stress.

Osborne's approach also has the client identify a personality that the exude when under stress, referring to himself as "Mr. Grumpy." He believes that when you can isolate the parts of oneself in such a fashion, this will allow the client to have a better understanding of the source of stress. When the reporter asked if he would be under Osborne's control, he replied "I can't control you. If I could, I would go and see my bank manager and get him to transfer loads of money to an offshore account."

To read the original story, click Here.

Sanders Hypnosis Center
Maryland's ONLY Clinically-Proven Virtual Gastric Band Provider

The Top 5 Phobias....

2010-10-25T23:09:00.000-07:00

...according to Steve Spears, staff writer for Florida's St. Petersburg Times. Spears conducted some extremely indepth and thorough research to come up with his list of phobias; he searched on Yahoo.

In any case, I thought it would be interesting to blog about his findings. The top five Yahoo searches for phobias are:

1. AGORAPHOBIA - The fear of being in places where help may not be available. For example, you're driving cross-country and your car breaks down hundreds of miles from civilazation, with no help to be found.

2. HAUNTED HOUSE PHOBIA - Yes, for real. Is there an official term for this? I don't think so, but I would love for somebody to correct me on this.

3. ACROPHOBIA: Fear of heights - a very common phobia that we work with at the Sanders Hypnosis Center in Pasadena, MD.

4. LEPORIPHOBIA: Check this one out. This phobia is the fear of mutant bunny rabbits or, more specifically, the Easter Bunny. Yes, killer bunnies.

5. ARACHNAPHOBIA: Most people are familiar with this thanks to the movie by the same name. The fear of spiders is another common issue we see at the Sanders Hypnosis Center. So, yes, if you have arachnaphobia, come see us and you'll soon have your very own pet tarantula.

You can view the original article here.

Sanders Hypnosis Center
www.SandersHypnosis.com

Halloween Phobia?

2010-10-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, believe not, there is a phobia for Halloween. The clinical term for this is Samhainophobia. The word "Samhain" denotes an ancient Pagan day where dead druids supposedly roamed the Earth -but for one day only. Today our concept of Samhain has changed and we now call this Halloween.

L. Vincent Poupard wrote an interesting article last year on this topic. He noted that individuals who suffer from this condition can express a wide range of symptoms, from believing the children in costumes are really monsters to thinking that children will actually play "tricks" on them. It is believed that other underlying phobias are actually the cause of Samhainophone. For example, one individual whose mother had died on Halloween now dreads the approach of this day. Other related causes could include the fear of children or people.

Poupard Article

Sanders Hypnosis Center

Hypnosis advocated for breast cancer patients

2010-10-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

The New Britain Herald reported today that hypnosis is recommended for breast cancer patients. Hypnosis can help clients prepare for the surgery by addressing the fears and concerns the patient has, greatly diminishing stress and anxiety levels. Following surgery and/or treatment, hypnosis can be utilized to enhance a patient's self-image, particularly after hair loss occurs.

One point that the article did not mention, however, is that hypnosis can be also be used to help manage pain and discomfort. It goes without saying that breast cancer patients would certainly benefit from this.

To read the article, click on the following link:
The New Britain Herald

Brian Sanders, MS, CH
Sanders Hypnosis Center

Virtual Gastric Band With Hypnotherapy

2010-10-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

Have you thought about having a Gastric Band fitted or Gastric Bypass Surgery without doing your research? Do you comfort eat when you are unhappy, alone, bored or stressed? Do you think that having a Gastric Band fitted, which is an invasive procedure and can cause discomfort and has cost lives will change your attitude to only eating when you are hungry?

Interest in Gastric Bands and Gastric Bypass Surgery has increased with celebrity admissions such as Sharon Osbourne, Roseanne Barr, Al Roker, and Carnie Wilson, whom have publicly admitted they have used the Gastric Band or the Gastric Bypass procedure to lose weight. But is the Gastric Bypass or Gastric Band Surgery procedure 100% safe, the answer is no!

According to a study by researchers at the University of Washington, it was found that 1 in 50 people die within one month of having gastric bypass surgery, and that figure jumps nearly fivefold if the surgeon is inexperienced. Gastric Band Surgery is also extremely risky. Not only has this procedure caused discomfort with patients, but it has also claimed the lives of Gastric band patients including the life of Bernadette Reid, Suzanne Murphy 29, and Marilyn Wardrop 54, just to name a few. One life lost to an invasive procedure is one life to many.

There is a range of post-operative problems reported with gastric bands, and over 80% of patients will experience one or more of the following symptoms:

Nausea and vomiting (50%)
Reflux or regurgitation of food (35%)
Slipped band (25%)
Obstruction or blockage (15%)
Constipation
Diarrhea
Difficulty swallowing

If these complications cause you serious discomfort your band may need to be adjusted or removed. This involves further surgery, exposing you to all the associated risks once again.

Losing Weight when you have temptations or no will power is not an easy route to take but if you are trying to lose weight only to then pile more pounds on, then you should think about losing weight the safe way, by having a Virtual Gastric Band.

A Virtual Gastric Band, also known as Gastric Band Hypnotherapy or the Hypnotic Gastric Band, allows you to be convinced that you have a Gastric Band fitted where you will have all of the feelings without the risk and discomfort that an Invasive Gastric Band Surgery would bring, and you will still lose weight.

Here are some of the Benefits that a Virtual Gastric Band with Hypnotherapy would bring:

1. With Virtual Gastric Bands (Gastric Band Hypnotherapy) or (Hypnotic Gastric Band) there is NO invasive Surgery
2. No fears about having surgery to have a Gastric Band Fitted
3. No Discomfort with having a virtual Gastric Band
4. Virtual Gastric Bands are much more cost effective
5. No Time off work with a Virtual Gastric Band fitted
6. No Gastric Bands Complications with Surgery

Recently, several European gastric band hypnosis practictioners have been highlighted in the news. ABC News ran a nationwide story on the positive successes of the Gastric Mind Band System and Chicago's ABC Affiliate aired a similar story on the Virtual Gastric Band system. The Virtual Gastric Band System, which is the approach used at the Sanders Hypnosis Center, has had documented clinical success in a recent UK study where National Health Service patients saw a 95% success rate in group trials.

Call the Sanders Hypnosis Center today at 443-494-9766 for your free telephone consultation, and to see if Virtual Gastric Band hHypnosis is right for you.

Why Do Successful People Use Hypnosis?

2010-03-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

A successful person has a lot of major qualities which together form the foundations which lead to success. To have the confidence in oneself, the belief that you have a good idea, the belief that you can do it is clearly a major factor. This is needed by the barrel load. Tenacity is also required, the tenacity to keep on going, to fight for your ideals, for your goals no matter what obstacles get in your way. Determination and commitment are essential ingredients, as is a burning desire to succeed. This is what causes you to leave no stone unturned. The ability to focus on your goal and turn a blind eye to distractions is also involved.

What else is needed in order to stand out from the crowd? The icing upon the cake is to have imagination, to have vision. The most essential thing of all is the ability to see the end result which you so desire. How could you make a chair if you could not visualize it first? How could you design an airplane if you did not imagine flying first? How could the electric light bulb be invented without first having a vision of the light which it would create?

If you were to read the biographies of almost all successful people, they would say that the key to their success was that they had vision. They had the ability to see something in their minds eye and this is what enabled them to set about its creation. If you dig a little deeper you will find that their most creative moments came in times when their mind was relaxed, when they were in a meditative state, when in a state of relaxed focus.

This state of relaxed focus is hypnosis. Many successful people intentionally induce this state of creativity, whilst others inadvertently drift into this state. Either way, this state is essential to creativity and to remarkable vision. Hypnosis is a state of relaxation at one with a state of heightened awareness. When in hypnosis your subconscious mind comes to the fore and you get past the critical aspect of the conscious mind. Your imagination is enhanced and your ability to problem solve comes to the fore.

I'm sure that you can relate to times when you perhaps had forgotton a person’s name and no amount of trying helped your memory, but when you stopped trying that name just popped into your mind, seemingly from nowhere. In effect, if you focus on an end result you want to achieve, and relax, your subconscious mind will come up with the answer.

At night when you dream, whilst in the REM state, your brain performs the task of conflict resolution. This task happens each and every night, whether or not you are aware of it, and this is essential to human survival. It happens automatically, it is just how your mind naturally works to keep you in a state of balance and equilibrium. Hypnosis creates a similar REM state and therefore you access the creativity and problem solving abilities which come naturally at this time. It allows you to tap into a far deeper ability to imagine and create that you would otherwise be capable of. In actual fact, when in a normal state of waking consciousness you are really only accessing a very limited percentage of your minds capabilities. Every successful person accesses this state of relaxed focus, this state of hypnosis, be it deliberately or instinctively.

The great thing is that we can all use hypnosis, we can all access our inner creativity and thereby enable ourselves to be more creative and successful than we ever dreamed to be possible. You can get a free hypnosis download from my website and try it for yourself.

By Roseanna Leaton, specialist in hypnosis downloads for motivation and success.

Sanders Hypnosis Center
Blake Professional Building
2528 Mountain Road, Suite #103
Pasadena MD 21122
www.SandersHypnosis.com

Create A Winning Mindset Using Hypnosis

2010-03-21T02:45:00.000-07:00

Do you know anyone who always wins? Sure you know that person, everything just works out for them. They go into business and they are an instant success. They enter the dating scene and their phone rings off the hook. If they were in the Olympics, you just know they wouldn't settle for anything less than the gold. It seems as though they always win.

Why is it that some people just have IT and others seem not to? Want to learn the secret to their success? Ready? Here it comes....the secret to unstoppable success...drumroll please....Winners EXPECT to win!

That's the big secret. Simple, huh?

But, think about it for a moment...Winners actually SEE their success BEFORE it happens! Do YOU expect to win BEFORE you have even entered a situation...or do you assess your chances AFTER you are already in the situation? Or, even worse, do you imagine failure?

BEFORE selling a piece of real estate, winners EXPECT to get their asking price. BEFORE buying a car, winners EXPECT to get a discount.

Before running an Olympic race, winners EXPECT TO WIN the gold, so they do win! This one small thing gives winners a tremendous advantage over others.

Want to be a winner? Try the following exercise...

Close your eyes for a full minute and THINK about achieving a goal in your life...go ahead, close your eyes for one minute and really THINK about achieving it.

OK, now close your eyes again for one full minute and EXPECT to get it. Did you notice a difference? When we simply THINK about getting something, our thoughts tend to be vague.

There are also two options...getting it or not getting it (winning or losing). But, when we EXPECT to get it, there is only one possibility...getting it (winning).

So now that you know the secret, the next step is applying your powerful knowledge and getting yourself to that point where YOU ALWAYS EXPECT TO WIN. I suggest that you take a full minute pause right before entering any challenging situation. During that minute, close your eyes, and imagine winning. See it, feel it, hear it, imagine yourself already having won. Guess what...you will have programmed your mind to pull you powerfully in the winning direction.

When you do enter that situation, your words and actions will be generated from a winning mindset. Your path will be straight to victory...you will already know the way and EXPECT to get there...so you WILL get there. Using the power of hypnosis, you can easily program yourself for a constant winning mindset.

Until next time,

Live in abundant possibility!

Steve G. Jones, CHt

About The Author
Steve G. Jones is a board certified Clinical Hypnotherapist who works extensively with Hollywood actors, writers, directors, and producers, helping them achieve their very best.

Hypnosis: A Powerful Tool in Complementary Cancer Care

2010-03-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

Complementary therapies, while not given the attention that more traditional cancer therapies may receive, are perhaps equally important while undergoing treatment for certain types of cancer. Patients diagnosed with difficult to treat malignancies will often use these types of therapies in conjunction with traditional surgical, chemotherapeutic, or radiology techniques to form a more comprehensive and effective treatment regimen. Among the most important and effective alternative therapies utilized by those diagnosed with cancer is hypnotherapy.

Hypnotherapy has been used for many years in clinical settings. Hypnotherapy’s role in cancer management however, is relatively new and indications are that its utilization has not been fully maximized yet. Effective cancer treatment often depends on the patient’s ability to not only defeat the cancer through treatments but also to maintain their health and mental spirit throughout the painful side effects of cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.

Often, the symptoms and effects of the cancer itself on the body are negligible compared to the pain and other side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. This is where acupuncture has been said to be most effective. Cancers such as mesothelioma, which are often unable to be removed by surgical means, are often treated with some combination of chemotherapy and radiation. While these potent therapies can be effective in eliminating some of the tumor mass and growth, they also profoundly affect the health of the surrounding tissue. Symptoms of these effects including fever, nausea, and general pain have been dramatically reduced through the utilization of hypnosis. Patients, who are able to withstand these symptoms and recover quickly, will often be able to be more aggressively treated, increasing the efficacy of the treatment regimen as a whole. Some specific hypnotherapy techniques utilized in pain management for mesothelioma patients, include altering the neurophysical configuration of pain, control of anticipatory anxiety, and targeted imagery.

Hypnotherapy techniques may not be appropriate for all patient’s pain and individual symptoms but it’s certainly worth exploring as it can do very little harm in experimenting with integrative therapies. The goal with alternative therapies, as with traditional therapies, is always to increase the effectiveness of treatment as a whole. If hypnotherapy can assist in any way in helping patients recover or manage symptoms of chemotherapy or radiation, then it will have contributed to the treatment regimens overall efficacy and should certainly be utilized.

By Jack Bleeker

February 9, 2010

References

Erickson MH: Hypnosis in painful terminal illness, in Haley J (ed): Advanced Techniques of Hypnosis and Therapy: Selected Papers of Milton Erickson, MD. New York, Crune & Stratton, 1967.

Sunnen, Gerard M.D. , Hypnotic Approaches in the Cancer Patient Ozonics International, LLC

An Online Guide To Hypnosis

2010-02-24T23:33:00.000-08:00

Hypnosis is one of the most effective alternative healing methods available. There has been tons on research on hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and the results have been very encouraging. Today, a lot is known about hypnosis - what it can do and what it cannot do.

What Hypnosis Is Not

1) Don't expect hypnosis to be some kind of magical healing method that will take away all your problems with the wave on a wand. It doesn't happen that way. For hypnosis to work, you must be prepared to put in some time and effort.

2) Hypnosis is not a coercive method. In other words, if you are not a willing party, hypnosis cannot work on you. Let's say you are trying to quit smoking. But you know that you don't really want to do so. In this case, since you are not really willing to quit smoking, hypnosis will not be able to help you.

3) Hypnosis is certainly not mind control. The subject is aware that the suggestions are being made to the mind, and can refuse to participate further at any time. The ability to choose is never impaired during hypnosis.

Sometimes, on television, we see hypnotized subjects behave in ways that they would never behave in when under hypnosis. This is an illusion created by the performers. They tend to choose subjects who are willing to participate in these shows. In other words, they are all willing participants. But that's just entertainment. In a real world healing situation, hypnosis is used very differently.

What Hypnosis Is

1) Hypnosis is an alternative healing method. Note that it is not meant to replace scientific healing methods. Instead, hypnosis can be used effectively with medical healing methods with no conflicts at all. Hypnosis doesn't deal with drugs and medicine. The most commonly seen tool that is used in hypnosis is audio. Through audio, suggestions are being made to the subconscious mind.

2) Hypnosis works on changing existing habits through the method of suggestion. Many health problems are related to habits. Smoking is a bad habit. Some people just need to smoke after a meal. Eating can also become a bad habit. Many people become obese because they just can't stay away from junk food. Deep down, these people know that they need to stop smoking or eat better, or their health will suffer. However, in many occasions, these habits are so ingrained that they find it hard to get rid of them. In such cases, hypnosis can help tremendously.

By making constant suggestions to the subconscious mind, the affected individual starts to lose the need to smoke or to overeat. Of course, the healing process many take some time, depending on the severity of the situation. But with patience, hypnosis has shown to be highly effective.

Article by Jake Rhodes

Brian Sanders, MS, CH
Sanders Hypnosis Center
2528 Mountain RD, Suite #103
Pasadena MD 21122
www.SandersHypnosis.com

This Is Your Brain Under Hypnosis – New York Times

2010-02-24T22:58:00.000-08:00

Hypnosis, with its long and checkered history in medicine and entertainment, is receiving some new respect from neuroscientists. Recent brain studies of people who are susceptible to suggestion indicate that when they act on the suggestions their brains show profound changes in how they process information. The suggestions, researchers report, literally change what people see, hear, feel and believe to be true.

The new experiments, which used brain imaging, found that people who were hypnotized “saw” colors where there were none. Others lost the ability to make simple decisions. Some people looked at common English words and thought that they were gibberish.

“The idea that perceptions can be manipulated by expectations” is fundamental to the study of cognition, said Michael I. Posner, an emeritus professor of neuroscience at the University of Oregon and expert on attention. “But now we’re really getting at the mechanisms.”

Even with little understanding of how it works, hypnosis has been used in medicine since the 1950’s to treat pain and, more recently, as a treatment for anxiety, depression, trauma, irritable bowel syndrome and eating disorders.

There is, however, still disagreement about what exactly the hypnotic state is or, indeed, whether it is anything more than an effort to please the hypnotist or a natural form of extreme concentration where people become oblivious to their surroundings while lost in thought.

Hypnosis had a false start in the 18th century when a German physician, Dr. Franz Mesmer, devised a miraculous cure for people suffering all manner of unexplained medical problems. Amid dim lights and ethereal music played on a glass harmonica, he infused them with an invisible “magnetic fluid” that only he was able to muster. Thus mesmerized, clients were cured.

Although Dr. Mesmer was eventually discredited, he was the first person to show that the mind could be manipulated by suggestion to affect the body, historians say. This central finding was resurrected by Dr. James Braid, an English ophthalmologist who in 1842 coined the word hypnosis after the Greek word for sleep.

Braid reportedly put people into trances by staring at them intently, but he did not have a clue as to how it worked. In this vacuum, hypnosis was adopted by spiritualists and stage magicians who used dangling gold watches to induce hypnotic states in volunteers from the audience, and make them dance, sing or pretend to be someone else, only to awaken at a hand clap and laughter from the crowd.

In medical hands, hypnosis was no laughing matter. In the 19th century, physicians in India successfully used hypnosis as anesthesia, even for limb amputations. The practice fell from favor only when ether was discovered.

Now, Dr. Posner and others said, new research on hypnosis and suggestion is providing a new view into the cogs and wheels of normal brain function. One area that it may have illuminated is the processing of sensory data. Information from the eyes, ears and body is carried to primary sensory regions in the brain. From there, it is carried to so-called higher regions where interpretation occurs.

For example, photons bouncing off a flower first reach the eye, where they are turned into a pattern that is sent to the primary visual cortex. There, the rough shape of the flower is recognized. The pattern is next sent to a higher – in terms of function – region, where color is recognized, and then to a higher region, where the flower’s identity is encoded along with other knowledge about the particular bloom.

The same processing stream, from lower to higher regions, exists for sounds, touch and other sensory information. Researchers call this direction of flow feedforward. As raw sensory data is carried to a part of the brain that creates a comprehensible, conscious impression, the data is moving from bottom to top.
Bundles of nerve cells dedicated to each sense carry sensory information. The surprise is the amount of traffic the other way, from top to bottom, called feedback. There are 10 times as many nerve fibers carrying information down as there are carrying it up.

These extensive feedback circuits mean that consciousness, what people see, hear, feel and believe, is based on what neuroscientists call “top down processing.” What you see is not always what you get, because what you see depends on a framework built by experience that stands ready to interpret the raw information – as a flower or a hammer or a face.

The top-down structure explains a lot. If the construction of reality has so much top-down processing, that would make sense of the powers of placebos (a sugar pill will make you feel better), nocebos (a witch doctor will make you ill), talk therapy and meditation. If the top is convinced, the bottom level of data will be overruled. This brain structure would also explain hypnosis, which is all about creating such formidable top-down processing that suggestions overcome reality.

According to decades of research, 10 to 15 percent of adults are highly hypnotizable, said Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford who studies the clinical uses of hypnosis. Up to age 12, however, before top-down circuits mature, 80 to 85 percent of children are highly hypnotizable. One adult in five is flat out resistant to hypnosis, Dr. Spiegel said. The rest are in between, he said.

In some of the most recent work, Dr. Amir Raz, an assistant professor of clinical neuroscience at Columbia, chose to study highly hypnotizable people with the help of a standard psychological test that probes conflict in the brain. As a professional magician who became a scientist to understand better the slippery nature of attention, Dr. Raz said that he “wanted to do something really impressive” that other neuroscientists could not ignore.

The probe, called the Stroop test, presents words in block letters in the colors red, blue, green and yellow. The subject has to press a button identifying the color of the letters. The difficulty is that sometimes the word RED is colored green. Or the word YELLOW is colored blue.

For people who are literate, reading is so deeply ingrained that it invariably takes them a little bit longer to override the automatic reading of a word like RED and press a button that says green. This is called the Stroop effect.

Sixteen people, half highly hypnotizable and half resistant, went into Dr. Raz’s lab after having been covertly tested for hypnotizability. The purpose of the study, they were told, was to investigate the effects of suggestion on cognitive performance. After each person underwent a hypnotic induction, Dr. Raz said:
“Very soon you will be playing a computer game inside a brain scanner. Every time you hear my voice over the intercom, you will immediately realize that meaningless symbols are going to appear in the middle of the screen. They will feel like characters in a foreign language that you do not know, and you will not attempt to attribute any meaning to them.

“This gibberish will be printed in one of four ink colors: red, blue, green or yellow. Although you will only attend to color, you will see all the scrambled signs crisply. Your job is to quickly and accurately depress the key that corresponds to the color shown. You can play this game effortlessly. As soon as the scanning noise stops, you will relax back to your regular reading self.”

Dr. Raz then ended the hypnosis session, leaving each person with what is called a posthypnotic suggestion, an instruction to carry out an action while not hypnotized. Days later, the subjects entered the brain scanner.
In highly hypnotizables, when Dr. Raz’s instructions came over the intercom, the Stroop effect was obliterated, he said. The subjects saw English words as gibberish and named colors instantly. But for those who were resistant to hypnosis, the Stroop effect prevailed, rendering them significantly slower in naming the colors.
When the brain scans of the two groups were compared, a distinct pattern appeared. Among the hypnotizables, Dr. Raz said, the visual area of the brain that usually decodes written words did not become active. And a region in the front of the brain that usually detects conflict was similarly dampened.
Top-down processes overrode brain circuits devoted to reading and detecting conflict, Dr. Raz said, although he did not know exactly how that happened. Those results appeared in July in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A number of other recent studies of brain imaging point to similar top-down brain mechanisms under the influence of suggestion. Highly hypnotizable people were able to “drain” color from a colorful abstract drawing or “add” color to the same drawing rendered in gray tones. In each case, the parts of their brains involved in color perception were differently activated.

Brain scans show that the control mechanisms for deciding what to do in the face of conflict become uncoupled when people are hypnotized. Top-down processes override sensory, or bottom-up information, said Dr. Stephen M. Kosslyn, a neuroscientist at Harvard. People think that sights, sounds and touch from the outside world constitute reality. But the brain constructs what it perceives based on past experience, Dr. Kosslyn said.

Most of the time bottom-up information matches top-down expectation, Dr. Spiegel said. But hypnosis is interesting because it creates a mismatch. “We imagine something different, so it is different,” he said.

Originally published in The New York Times
by Sandra Blakeslee
November 22, 2005

Brian Sanders, MS, CH
Sanders Hypnosis Center
2528 Mountain RD, Suite #103
Pasadena MD 21122
www.sandershypnosis.com