Welcome to Trailhead Health. Hypnosis has many applications. What are some common conditions that people can use hypnosis for?

Ok, so Roberta there are applications of hypnosis in so many different areas. In your experience what are maybe the top conditions or issues for which people seek Hypnosis.

Well, they range the gamut. Most of them are emotionally based and I know for some people that might sound really strange. Well, I'm sleeping, sleep is the problem. Or I'm overweight, the food is the problem or I'm in pain, stress. Those are all emotion driven so at the basis of pretty much everything I do there is emotion.

One of the biggest reasons that people come in is stress and that stress manifests itself in a lot of different ways for people. So they may come in because they're pulling their hair or they just keep scratching or they've developed a tick or they're rolling their eyes or whatever it is. But stress is at the base of that. It's 90% of why people end up in a doctor's office or an ER. Stress takes an incredible toll on your body so it manifests in a lot of different ways physically. People might have IBS or they might get psoriasis or some kind of skin condition. Eczema is really big there. They might get digestive issues. They might gain weight. They might lose weight. They might develop an ulcer. They can't sleep at night. This is the way stress manifests and we're seeing a lot of stress lately. I just did a recent blog on headline stress.

So what we do with our clients is we help give them real-life tools where they can manage their stress but hypnotically we work on allowing them to feel that relaxation and take control their mind can take control of their bodies so that they can literally stimulate that part of their nervous system that releases calming chemicals and shuts off the adrenaline and the cortisol and the things that are ultimately harmful and detrimental to the body. So we work with stress on a very a lot of different levels and they learn to do self-hypnosis so that they can do this on their own that they don't need to keep coming back here.

Another thing that we deal with quite often is pain. Obviously that's what brought me to hypnosis and I'm very passionate about that. Pain is a perception in the mind and you can you can change the way you perceive pain. You can your brain can decide to not feel pain if it doesn't really need to. So I educate the client about how pain works in the body and in the brain and then I give them lots of techniques. And some of this is art.

The same technique does not work for every client. I have three that I use first session always because typically one of the three will resonate but not always. Or if the client gives me something when I ask them, "How would you like it to feel?" If they're really passionate about that or they have an idea around it then I'm going to use that because they're gonna accept it.

And then I teach them how to do self-hypnosis and practice that technique again and again and again and again because repetition is really important. And the more you practice something just no different than learning to tie your shoes, or brush your teeth, the more you repeat it the more automatic it comes. So when I was getting ready to have my surgery I used a breathing technique and I practiced it so that by the time I just kind of went huh, or thought about it my brain was already telling my body what to do. And that was it wanted total comfort.

So we take a technique, we create a new neural network in the brain that the brain will say when he does this this is the expectation and then that's what you get. So it's pretty simple.