Category Archives: Hypnotherapy

Articles and thoughts about Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy

Quick Rewards Works Better

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Improve the odds of success with earlier rewards

Improve the odds of success with earlier rewards.

In a study published by Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers discovered that feedback given earlier in learning sessions tend to bring about better grades over the long haul and improve students’ performance overall.

I’ve found this same phenomenon in hypnotherapy and Rapid Eye Technology sessions. When clients discovered early on that the process I was using was working, they tended to get better results overall – achieving therapeutic goals quicker and with far less effort. When clients believed it would take several sessions to show improvement, they tended to go slower and often struggled to make progress. Conversely, when clients felt immediate results (positive feedback) they tended to feel more successful and confident with the processes we used.

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Imagination Can Create Reality

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Imagining your success greatly increases the probability of your achieving it.

Imagining your success greatly increases the probability of your achieving it.

“Imagine yourself passing the exam or scoring a goal and it will happen.” You may think it’s a bunch of newage bunk, yet in a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists Christopher Davoli and Richard Abrams from Washington University conclude that the imagination may be more effective than we think in helping us reach our goals.

Through a series of ingenious experiments, the authors showed that simply imagining a posture may have effects that are similar to actually assuming the pose. Previous research has shown that we spend more time looking at items close to our hands (items close to us are usually more important than those further away), but this is the first study suggesting that merely imagining something close to our hands will cause us to pay more attention to it.

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What a Country!

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Sometimes you have to look from the outside to see the truth. Thank you, Stephen Fry, for pointing out the obvious (except to us in the USA, that is).

If you’re going to imprison 1% of your population, wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to offer real help to those who are imprisoned, rather than letting them languish or using them as slave labor? It seems to me that most prisoners are there because of drug usage. Drug dealers are in there, too, but I wonder if most of those are busy running their criminal enterprises from the relative safety of prison.

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Who Am I Really?

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Am I morphing into some kind of monster?

Am I morphing into some kind of monster?

It’s a little-known or at least little-appreciated fact that a rather large percentage of my biomass is not human. Let me repeat that just for emphasis -

I am NOT ALL HUMAN!

About 99% of the outer covering of my body is NOT human. Rather, it is a “coating” of bacteria – mostly feeding on my dead skin – while some feed on my living skin cells. That’s just my skin! Within my gut are many more species of bacteria. Some help and some hinder my digestion process.

The point is – my body is not just “mine”. It is home to a large number of single-celled plant and animal life – as much as 90% of my biomass!* Each of those microscopic creatures has its own “mind” – with its own volition, decision making processes, and behaviors – maybe thoughts, too.

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Placebo Effect Redux

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"To my surprise, it seemed to work for many of them."

"To my surprise, it seemed to work for many of them."

In another post, I recommended utilizing the placebo effect to improve the likelihood of successful outcomes. An interesting study from the Harvard Medical School corroborates my contention. Further, they suggest that the placebo effect, far from being benign, is very effective therapy or treatment in and of itself.

“[Our] findings suggest that rather than mere positive thinking, there may be significant benefit to the very performance of medical ritual. I’m excited about studying this further. Placebo may work even if patients know it is a placebo. Not only did we make it absolutely clear that these pills had no active ingredient and were made from inert substances, but we actually had ‘placebo’ printed on the bottle. We told the patients that they didn’t have to even believe in the placebo effect. Just take the pills.” – Associate professor of medicine Ted Kaptchuk

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