BLOOM Knocking Down Barriers to Health Shayn is working in an area of therapy that seems strange to most of us. We can’t understand how hypnotism works so we are a little fearful of it. But Shayn reports wonderful healing results from her work. July 2007

Shayn Cutino

Hypnotherapy is a healing art that uses hypnotism to promote healthy emotions and attitudes, plus providing curative procedures for a variety of ailments. Hypnotherapy also aids in managing pain and enhancing personal development.

The AMA has recognized hypnotherapy’s curative powers for nearly 50 years. It has over 800 documented uses — from removing phobias and compulsive behaviors, to overcoming depression — attacking such things as stress, anxiety, panic, smoking, plus issues of self-esteem and self-confidence.

Hypnotherapy procedures are able to attack the root of many problems rather than merely treating symptoms. Weight problems, for example, usually have emotional underpinnings.

People are carrying issues around with them and literally “stuffing” their emotions rather than their stomachs because they are failing to deal with the issues causing the problem.

Most weight-loss programs treat only symptoms by focusing upon calorie reduction and special diets. These sometimes help people experience significant weight loss. Once they get off those programs, however, 80 percent end up gaining the weight back, because underlying problems, that were the source of the compulsive eating symptoms, were never addressed.

The Road to Hypnotherapy

Since age 12 I’ve had a desire to serve others but did not know how I wanted to do that. I began working in the fashion industry in San Francisco’s Garment District. I loved the work, but when we moved to Oakley in 1984 I found the commute to be grinding.

I developed an interest in the healing professions, so went back to school and started working at the John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek doing patient discharging. I subsequently worked for other medical offices.

My jobs were happy experiences but I always felt that I wasn’t being true to myself because I was capable of helping people in a more personal way.

One day a light came on and I realized that I should be working with people one-on-one helping them to live and work through their passions. The decision wasn’t made in a vacuum because fellow workers would come to me asking things like: “What should I do?” “I just had to come here and talk to you.”

It became apparent that I should be working full-time with people on this personal level so I went back to school and became a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist. I joined the American Association of Professional Hypnotherapists and the International Hypnosis Federation.

Hypnotherapy is not voodoo. I’m one of the most normal people you will ever meet. More and more people are becoming receptive to alternative healing modalities.

New patients sometimes tell me that they had read a little bit about hypnotherapy but remained skeptical. I always tell such people, “Let me give you the experience and then tell me what you think.”

In every case such people have been amazed at the results.

Some uninformed people shrink back from hypnotherapy, supposing that hypnotism has dark spiritual connotations. However, the hypnotic state is a perfectly normal human condition occupying a middle plane between sleeping and waking.

Hypnotism brings people into a healing state. I don’t like the words “Under a trance.” I want people to understand that they will be safe and comfortable. Only then can true healing actually take place.

Clinical hypnotherapy is altogether different than stage hypnotism. No pendulum swinging or lights. Everything is done by voice.

Some of my patients have come to me after fruitlessly trying to find help through traditional remedies for such things as insomnia, depression, and anxiety. In some cases they have been on medications that have caused other symptoms.

Some have said to me, “I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to take pills. There has to be an alterative.”

A new patient once told me, “I have a bag with 28 pills that I have to take every day.” Some people find that kind of thing to be scary. Plus, maintaining that much medication is obviously expensive.

Two of my clients told me that they had been hypnotized in the past. Both of them had very traumatic and negative encounters. They were willing to come in even though they had these histories of bad experience. The desperation caused by their problems drove them to give hypnotherapy a second try.

The whole subject of hypnotism seems strange to some people, in part because of the pop-culture’s portrayal of it based upon stage hypnotists who will sometimes make a person quack like a duck or crawl around a stage on all fours.

After the initial session many of my new patients say that they never realized how calm and tranquil their minds could become. They come into my office carrying a lot of nervous energy because thoughts and imaginations are endlessly chasing each other around in their minds like socks in an automatic washer.

In many cases that random mental busyness is exactly their problem. They have insomnia and anxieties because their minds will not be still. A mind whirling out of control will cause anxieties that sometimes lead to a panic state or to some stress-related illness.

I’ve had clients tell me that psychotherapy works better than massage for achieving a state of tranquility. “I’ve never been so relaxed!” is a comment I’ve heard more than once.

Some patients, like my daughter, have been extremely skeptical at the beginning, saying things like, “I don’t know about this. I don’t think this will work for me.” I use the first session to let them experience the hypnotic state, itself.

I’ve never had a single person who couldn’t be hypnotized. Zero failures! I even tried it on my daughter, which presented a difficult challenge. She was 16 and a total non-believer, but she was completely blown away by the experience.

Healing as an Inside Job

The mind is bizarre. Researchers explain the nature of hypnotism by imagining the human mind as having two parts, and being like an ocean. The sunlit upper layers of the ocean represent the 5% of the mind that is self-aware. Scientists call this the CCM (Critical Conscious Mind). The unlit ocean depths represent the other 95%, which researchers call the SCM (Sub-Conscious Mind).

In fact, the SCM is subdivided into seven clearly distinct levels. During the processes of growing and living, positive and negative messages continually pass through our CCM filter and become buried (or implanted) in our SCM. Even though we are not aware of them they are always there and continually influencing us.

Sometimes the buried messages control us in ways that we don’t like and lead to problematic and dysfunctional behaviors. We call these negative messages “blocks” or “obstacles.”

We’re not aware of our mental blocks but one day, for example, someone says something that triggers a negative reaction. The reaction begins to put pressure on the CCM and we start to develop irrational methods of responding to the pressure leading to symptoms including such things as anxiety, panic attacks, fears, phobias, and compulsive behaviors.

Symptoms begin to develop which, if left unchecked, turn into disease, which is the body’s way of telling you that something is wrong.

So our role as clinical hypnotherapists is to delve into the sub-conscious mind to identify and then remove blocks or obstacles. More properly, we assist patients in removing their own blocks.

Milton Erickson, the father of modern hypnotherapy, was a master at being skillfully and artfully vague about resolving people’s problems. The practitioner doesn’t have to know the problem, but simply leads people to self-knowledge.

Hypnotherapy, as I practice it, is a completely self-actualizing process, and altogether different than such things as psychoanalysis, since it isn’t necessary for me to even know what blockages my patients have. Patients identify them and then get rid of them on their own. I’m merely a facilitator; the individual does the work.

A Road to Health

As the patient goes under hypnosis, the depths of the mind — the SCM — suddenly become clear and I begin talking to the person’s subconscious mind. I tell the mind to scan completely all seven levels of the subconscious.

“Scan these seven levels completely,” I tell it. “Then let me know when you are finished.”

When patients say that they are done, I ask them if they found any blocks. If they say, yes, I ask them how many. They can always tell me because, amazing as it seems, my patients come back from the first working session with an absolutely clear understanding of what blockages they have, and how many of them.

Sometimes they have found only one. Sometimes there are many more. In one case a patient reported 144.

The nature of the event is common for everybody, but the experience changes depending upon the person’s character.

Based upon how we interact with the world we are divided into four classifications: visual, hearing, smelling, and touching. We all have all of these qualities but one is most dominant. The majority of us are visual, but some people experience the sub-conscious in one of the other sensory ways.

After patients are back to CCM, I ask them to tell me about their experience. They describe the clarity that comes to them. Some of them see the sub-conscious as a cloud beneath them. Others see words, numbers, colors, or faces.

Once they are conscious of the blockages, during subsequent sessions the patients can desensitize, unlock, and remove them. After each session I ask, “Have the blocks or obstacles been completely removed?” If the answer is no, we go back in again. We keep doing that as an iterative process until the answer to the question is yes!

Once the blocks are finally gone, patients are free of pain, perhaps, or they no longer have crying jags. Or they can stop eating once they are full. Whatever problems they have that were caused by mental blocks are finally gone.

Some people think hypnotherapy is weird, but I’ve seen huge successes that even amaze me. One client, for example, came in for a weight issue. When we started delving into her sub-conscious mind she would report having dreams of things she didn’t remember that had happened to her. I told her that it was a good thing that she was stirring up things so she could get rid of them.

By the end of our time together she had gotten rid of all the blocks through sleep and dream activities, as well as the sessions in my office. She lost weight, got her confidence back, and one day called, in tears, to report that she had fallen completely back into love with her husband. She hadn’t even realized that she had fallen out of love with him.

I’m in a happy place of doing something that is amazing and interesting, and most of all, provides for people real relief for problems that have been dragging them down, in some cases for years. My life as a hypnotherapist is a great fit for me and is satisfying my desire to make the world a better place one person at a time.

For more information see www.anjahealthcenter.com.