When someone is considering hypnosis as a solution for being overweight or dealing with any other eating disorder, they typically ask three questions:
- What is your success rate?
- How does it work?
- What if it doesn’t work for me?
In order to sincerely reply I often have to point out that the very presuppositions or assumptions contained in the questions reveal the true challenge for any personal transformation.
What motivational speaker Zig Ziglar calls, “stinking thinking…”
What is your success rate?
My success rate is 100%.
Here is why.
There is no failure. Only feedback.
Ultimately the thoughts we think produce the bodies and experiences we call “us”. The other challenge with this question “What is your success rate?” is it presupposes that the results I assist another person to get is somehow relevant to the experience you will have with hypnosis.
The problem with this is, it is an inside job.
I don’t ever make someone’s change for them. Hypnosis is not something I “do to” you. It’s a process I help you remember.
If for whatever reason you are not really ready to make the changes necessary for you to experience “enlightenment” of your body, I haven’t failed. You haven’t either. If you get even one new tiny insight into how you are wired and how you have been creating the result of “overweight” in your life, that gives you power to do something more effective.
Also the results someone else may experience is irrelevant because no one has exactly the same childhood, or life experiences that you do. And your personal history has a lot to do with what you are experiencing in the present moment.
How does it work?
This is another quite intelligent question.
I can answer it at face value:
We get together and I facilitate you getting into a relaxed state where your conscious mind can take a little break and your unconscious mind can be directly communicated with. At the beginning of the session we create suggestions together that give your unconscious mind clear, simple, direct, specific suggestions that if accepted will lead to the change you want. These are not my suggestions — they are YOUR suggestions that I deliver.
On a deeper level I can answer that we really do not know how it works.
We do know from the first 100 years of official study of hypnosis that what Milton Erickson, MD, (considered by many to be“the father of modern hypnosis”) said is still true. He said, “My patients are my patients because they are out of rapport with their unconscious mind.”
My job is to teach you how to get back in rapport with your own unconscious mind.
Essentially hypnosis works because it is always at work.
We are constantly giving ourselves hypnotic suggestions throughout our days and perhaps even in our dreams. That act like computer programs running in the back ground. Most of us are giving ourselves dis-empowering, negative, or conflicting suggestions.
Formal hypnosis with a competent practitioner helps like an anti-virus software helps your computer, it clears out the thought viruses and replaces them with clear, functional, congruent suggestions that your unconscious mind can act upon.
The result is a different outcome for you.
What if it doesn’t work for me?
Careful! That sounds awfully like a hypnotic suggestion!
You see your unconscious mind is hardwired to use the questions you ask to filter and interpret “reality.” The problem with a negative question is that it presupposes in this case that hypnosis won’t work. But the bottom line is that if hypnosis doesn’t work for you it is because you quite literally hypnotized yourself to get that result!
Therefore hypnosis always works. 100% of the time.
The real question is, “Mark, what if I pay my money for hypnosis in person or over the phone only to be just as fat I was before?”
Again, you are hypnotizing yourself to get that result by vividly imagining that outcome.
Ultimately THAT is hypnosis!
If you are open to asking better questions and practicing thinking in new, more effective ways, I can assist you to get the results you want… or perhaps even something better than you can imagine right now…
So if you truly are ready to release the excess stored energy we call fat, it requires a willingness and commitment on your part to be coach-able, to be open to thinking in new ways especially between hypnosis sessions. If you come in focused on how it probably will be just as disappointing as all the other stuff you’ve tried, the fad diets, the exercise machine sitting in your basement, the gym membership which you only got yourself to use for the first week, the binging, the self hate, the lying to yourself…. then you will continue to get those old results.
Because without knowing it you have hypnotized yourself into your present condition.
The beauty of hypnosis is that with my help we can change the way you habitually interpret the world and the events in your life.
But I don’t make those changes for you. You and only YOU are the most powerful hypnotist in the world.
In fact my goal is to give you the tools so that you can move forward without me into creating the body and life that brings you the most joy and highest experience of being alive.
In reality the 3 questions above are a polite way of saying…
- Are you any good as a hypnosis practitioner?
- Is there any scientific, predictable explanation for why this works?
- What if this works for other people but not for me?
Answer #1
Yes. I’m good as a hypnotist. I’ve practiced for over 10 years. I’ve had tons of advanced training and in fact I am a certified trainer of hypnosis.
Answer #2
Yes. The AMA has approved of hypnosis as a legitimate medical treatment since 1958. There have been many, many clinical studies demonstrating the effectiveness of hypnosis.
Answer #3
Ultimately if you give me enough time we can uncover whatever it is that is blocking you from making the change you say you want that’s why I usually require a 6 month commitment from my weight loss clients.
The bottom line is that you have to evaluate whether you feel comfortable with a hypnotist or hypnotherapist.
If not, keep looking.
Ultimately it only takes a weekend course to learn how to assist someone to go into a hypnotic trance. It may take a life time of practice in order to know what to do or not do in order to assist you to break through the old habits, limiting beliefs, childhood programming and other challenges that need to be addressed so that you can be the slim, fit, healthy, happy person you long to be.