Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy for Healing Past Injuries, Pain and Mind-body Conditions. No. 1.

by Brian Green, CCHT

There is a question on my intake form, "Do you have any residual pain from work, automobile, or surgery related injuries." This can lead me to aspects of pain and healing I have encountered, but not seen mentioned in the general hypnosis literature. That blocked unfelt emotions, created at the time of a physical trauma, may remain locked in, preventing full physiological healing. And unexpressed feelings of physical hurt may produce a similar result. Some medical research studies show that persons who do not take pain medications heal faster. It figures. For those clients who can use hypnotic processes well, a simple resolution can be obtained with regressive and other techniques.

This tallies with the hypnosis literature where it has been regularly noted that some persons would have severe inexplicable difficulties following surgery. After regression back to, and reprocessing in trance the negative events heard or experienced while unconscious from anesthesia, rapid recovery can take place. Events that registered despite commonly held views that this is impossible. This is a subset of the general processes I have used for past injuries, still painful, whether recent or more ancient.

I have personally experienced the release of such tension leading to healing an injury. I first came to America to enter Arthur Janov's Primal Institute. Playing soccer in a park with other patients, one ran up, missed the ball, kicking me full force on an instep knob of anklebone. Agonizing pain, which I mostly held inside, being a stoic British stiff upper lippish cool manly man at the time. The inside of my right leg soon acquired a rainbow patchwork of purple, dark blue, green and yellow, from under the arch of the foot up to the knee. This persisted along with great pain for well over a week. He must have hit a nerve. Worrying, I recalled that Janov had written in one of his books, the original edition of "The Primal Scream." perhaps, of a child having some fingers squashed by an auto trunk lid. After being immediately encouraged to cry and loudly express his howls of pain, the fingers healed rapidly. I decided to try it. I lay down, and began taking my consciousness down into the pain in my leg, feeling it and expressing the sounds of the suppressed agony as I relived the incident. Releasing the howls and tears, I felt a rush of stored tension leave the tissues of my leg where I had been holding it, unbeknown to myself. My very cells needed to cry and moan. The pain diminished dramatically, and healing commenced from that day onward. Janov would call it Primalling the pain. Now, as a hypnotherapist, I would describe it as the resolution of pain and injury by revivication, in a self-induced light hypnotic trance. The label is immaterial; the process labeled deserves significance, a fact to be kept in mind with all terminology.

An early hypnotherapy case taught me more. Briefly, a female, late twenties, came to me for some now forgotten issue. Just before trance induction, she casually stated, "I was in car accident as a teen, and I still have a lump on the back of my head." I decided to explore this in trance, and she stated on regression to the accident. "I am in an alley at night. I look up and see headlights, and know I am going to be hit. Then I wake up in hospital." I guided her to visualize and speak to the lump/tissue cells in her head, and let them know, "I survived, you can relax now, everything is OK." As if dealing with a psychological part in parts, (ego state), therapy. Releasing the stored terror that I had intuitively surmised was still locked in. Followed by her visualizing a metaphor of the tissues turning into limp noodles, etc. Then we went on with her other issues. On emerging from trance, vacantly reaching for the back of her head she exclaimed, "The lump is gone!"

Here is a case of a more recent injury. The client, male, mid-thirties, came in two weeks after his second session. Falling off a skateboard about a week earlier, he had descended on the base of his spine, crashing his coccyx on a concrete surface. He was in severe pain that was hardly diminishing. Revivifying the incident in trance, he began releasing the retained hurt and emotions as moans etc. I asked, "Were you unable to stand up at first?" (From my own experience with a similar injury). "Yes." Guiding him through reliving the pain and shock, I asked him if his terror was the thought, "I'm crippled.'" My own past thought in a situation similar to his. "Yes." He replied. Accompanied with a huge sigh of visible relief! He then realized that he had suppressed his fear and pain in order not to scare the teenager he was playing with. Releasing the impacted agony and verbally articulating the locked in huge fear allowed the initiation of integration and resolution of the encapsulated tension. Emerging, he stated that the remaining pain was insignificant, so healing could ensue.

I would describe this process as healing a form of Post Traumatic Stress, (PTS). In the psycho-hypno-therapeutic literature, PTS release is more commonly focused on the release of disconnected repressed/ suppressed split off past psycho-emotional stress. Usually to relieve psychological negatives (symptoms) in the here and now, presenting mainly as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD). Any related physical issues, whether of a more psychosomatic or psychogenic origin, or those injuries similarly part of the initial trauma(s), that also heal are regarded as a secondary side benefit. (In my lexicon, psychosomatic represents the more mentally produced symptoms, such as turning emotional pain into physical pain, known as a conversion symptom in psychotherapy, as opposed to psychogenic, used for mental problems that cause actual physical results in the body, as "stress" (primarily unfelt unresolved emotional reactions causing physical tensions in my experience), e.g. joint deterioration such as Sudden Onset Arthritis). The approach above is the reverse, starting from the physical trauma and working backwards. This indicates that therapists who are familiar with resolving PTSD can meld any other suitable processes they may already know into this method where applicable. Advanced hypnotherapists already use hypnoanalysis, parts therapy, regression therapy, reframing, timelines and imagery in their work, and I have indicated uses of some. Resolution can be followed by the use of white light or any other preferred healing imagery.

I find it is therefore necessary to view past physical trauma from this more inclusive holistic perspective. Single factor approaches limit the amount of healing obtainable. Integration of all factors, including at times in addition to the internal psychological and physical, the marital, social, employment and historical factors involved, as I will show, give greater possibilities for additional healing. An extended pattern may need identifying for a full healing process. If enough can be resolved, the body/mind's unblocked natural healing processes can resume and complete the job. In the following casebooks, I will deal with cases such as one of Trigeminal Neuralgia, virtually 100% healed in two sessions. Colitis, Tendonitis, an individual with Acid Reflux, leg pain and an acute episode of chronic Bursitis, elevated blood pressure, severe menstrual cramps, etc.

For more information visit www.MindMagic123.com.