Hypnosis- Memory and Regression

Hypnosis: Fathom memory

Memory constitutes experience of the past, so also of the present: Since there is no future experience in the present, non-existing future experience would not contribute to present memory.

But then what exactly is memory?

The brain activity that reflects objective reality in the outside world begins with sensations. Brain does not react directly to the objects outside, but it acts through receptors known as sense organs connected to sensory centers in the frontal cortex of the brain. Brain has five sensory centres each representing our five sense organs. Sensation is the primary mental condition induced in the brain (cerebral cortex) through stimuli produced by information from outside or from inside the body. These stimuli interact with sensory nerve endings that result in producing sensation. ‘Sensation’ is the initial stage of cognitive activity (thinking process) and it is elementary in nature and it does not portray the object of information in its entirety or total form. 

The process by or through which the entire phenomena of an object of information is reflected, is known as perception. Perception is the second stage in cognitive activity of brain. What is perceived through sensations leaves behind in the brain traces of images and when the encounter is over, one can reproduce these images.

This is the background of what one might call as 'memory'. But these images are subtle and the memory at this stage is unstable.

For example when a child starts growing, its mental development also starts. In the early days of growth, the images cast in its brain are poor and unclear. As the child grows, it starts developing second signal system which is identified as speech. Then the child’s world of images gets enriched: In adulthood, perceptions become clearer and with fully developed second signal system (use of language - speech) the adult becomes capable of generalization and segregation of concrete images through conceptions. Sensations, Perceptions and Conceptions undergo evaluation and judgment. And thus ‘memory’ becomes stabilized; memory becomes capable of being reproduced in complete order.

Experience and memory:

Memory, when closely examined, can be traced to experiences which one has encountered. Experiences can be of the past or of the present. Since experience of future does not exist in the present or in the past, it does not contribute anything to the constitution of memory in normal brain activity. In abnormal brain activity, through and by imaginations, some persons build up memory in their brain: But these memories mostly belong to different beliefs nurtured by individuals.

Memory of past experiences leads to different emotional and attitudinal changes of people. These include happiness, joy, pleasure, feeling of wellness, sorrow, worries, agonies and distresses. Due to conditional situations of something or the other, the emotions and attitudinal changes affect some people very adversely. As a consequence they lose their mental equilibrium.

Under hypnosis, subjects can be made to regress through memory. Where certain experiences have resulted in mental aberration, a competent hypnotherapist can set right the bad impacts and restore normalcy, peace, harmony and health in affected individuals.

Sleep disorders

Significance and cause of sleep

Revelations of Scientific study of sleep show that the phenomena called natural sleep is very simple to understand. Sleep sets in when the nerve and body cells need recuperation of energy expended during waking hours. Even when the organism is not engaged in active work, its sensory centres in the brain would be constantly working to enable sensory experiences, motor activities of the physic, ingestion and bronchio-cardiac functions. These are the causes for loss of life energy of the cells. Sleep sets in to enable the physic to restore the lost life energy. That is the reason why sleep is so important to keep body and mind (nervous system) healthy, energetic and creatively active in every aspect of life. Lack of sleep or disturbance that hinders sound sleep is very disturbing and even destructive.

Sleep disorders - Types

Disorders manifested either by increased drowsiness or by sleeplessness are morbid conditions of sleep. Both these conditions are predominantly the result of overwork, irregular sleep and sleeping in unfavorable conditions. Here, drowsiness resulting from regular shortage of sleep need not necessarily be looked upon as really a morbid condition even though it is very disturbing to the beholder. Because, this condition is a normal reaction of a healthy body striving to satisfy its vital needs. Just as there are no other means of overcoming hunger or thirst than satisfying them with food or water, as the case may, so is increased drowsiness of this type and can only be eliminated by taking a good long sleep and after that by sleeping as much as the body craves.

In yet another situation, even if a person sleeps adequately, she/he may still feel drowsy and the working capacity of the individual getting dim and low. For example take drowsiness observed in college students during morning lecture hours. Such states can be explained by the fact that in certain individuals, transition from sleep to waking state and activity occurs slowly. Such type of disorders must be overcome by an effort of will and by regular physical exercises.

In some cases continuous drowsiness is observed as a result of exhaustion.This type of sleepiness is a protective reflex action. This can be overcome by dealing with the basic cause. Here a temporary rest is needed, and a better regimen of work. Here also it is expedient to sleep longer hours and to take a nap if possible in the day time.

Insomnia

is another disturbance of significance.This is an often observed condition that is tolerated with greater difficulty than drowsiness is. Insomnia must not be understood simply as sleeplessness of complete loss of sleep. Insomnia may appear in different forms: disorder of falling asleep, light sleep, restless sleep, broken sleep and early waking. These are mostly results of concern and worries that the person is not getting sufficient sleep: People suffering from insomnia worry about possible grave after-effects. Though insomnia is an unpleasant disorder, still such misgivings are unfounded. When the mind is focused on thoughts about quickly falling asleep, that thought creates

conditioned nerve paths which in due course become obstacle to sleep. Thus excessive worry over falling asleep may prevent sleep.

Sleep disorders - remedy

The best remedy for all types of insomnia is a proper understanding of sleep, its needs and nature. Sleep is a natural requirement of the physic: No one needs to interfere with sleep. When the body and nerves need sleep, it will come automatically of its own. No normal healthy individual need to chase sleep, at all. That is the most effective treatment that insomnia entails.

Somniloquism that is talking in sleep is another sleep disorder. This is very common among almost every one. It is not as worrisome as insomnia is. It is muttering a few mumbled words while asleep and is the result of incomplete inhibition of the speech centre in the brain. Better treatment for this habit is to ignore it: Infact Somniloquism relieves suppressed emotions and therefore may be welcomed.

Somnambulism or sleep walking

is a very rare but unpleasant sleep disorder.Without being conscious, individual automatically does something, gets out of bed, moves slowly and cautiously, climbs to roof or window ledge or to a tree and gets into bed back as if nothing had happened. Sleep walking may cover a period of time ranging from several minutes to half an hour. In the morning the sleep walker will not remember any of things she/he has done at night. The reason for sleepwalking is, except for the area that controls motor activity, the rest of the cerebral cortex of the individual concerned remain inhibited. Somnambulism requires to be treated neurologically by experts.

All disorders of sleep briefed above can also be cured or controlled by and through Hypnotherapy at the hands of appropriately trained competent hypnotists.

Sleep disorders – How to cope?

1. Before going to sleep keep away all thoughts, worries and distress from mind. As far as possible consciously divert attention to other scenes of pleasant situations ,occurrences and experiences.
2. Never go to bed with hatred of anything or anybody. These can be replaced by thoughts of dear and near ones.
3. Understand the scientific truth that it is not necessary at all for any one to fall asleep the moment one gets to bed.
4. Lying and resting totally relaxed is as good as sleep itself: This truth has to be remembered always.
5. Avoid resorting to sleeping pills. If at all needed do it very rarely in consultation with a good physician.
6. Never ever hunt for sleep, forget about sleep while on bed.
7. Prepare your place of sleep in good and healthy soundings, free from excess light, sound, heat, insects and other disturbing agents and factors.
8. Never bother about dreams. Understand that dreams are essential ingredients involved in sleep. Realize that dreams, whether good or bad, never do any harm to body and mind.

STRESS MANAGEMENT

What is STRESS?

 ‘STRESS’ is one of the most severe mental agonies humans face in their pursuit for existence. It is true that fear and consequential stress are essential for survival; the living organism could not have survived on this earth without fear; without stress originating from fear. In the case of homo sapience, the humans, all what is attributed to human achievements are the results of fear and stress. Yet, because of certain peculiar working order of the brain, (the nervous system) stress exceeds the required limits in some people, leading to mental agonies that affect their routine bodily and mental equilibrium:Such a state of mind will pose severe hurdles in every aspect of their life.

‘Stress` is a state involving demand on physical and mental resources. Stress condition can disturb normal physiological functions; it can even generate abnormal emotional tension. Medical science recognizes stress as a condition of ‘perturbation’ of the body’s homeostasis. Stress demands body response or action to the particular causative situation. Extreme stress conditions are detrimental to human health although in moderation stress is normal and useful.

Today, with the rapid diversification of human activity, we come face to face with numerous causes of stress with symptoms of anxiety and depression.

In challenging situations the brain prepares the body for defensive action: The body response involves release of hormones called cortisone and adrenaline. These chemical substances raise the blood pressure and the body prepares to react to the situation. As a result of the defensive action the stress hormones in the blood get used up and depleted, resulting in reduced stress effects and symptoms of anxiety. But when we fail to counter a stress situation due to certain conditions, chemicals remain unreleased in the blood stream for a long period of time. It will cause symptoms such as tense muscles, anxiety, dizziness and rapid heartbeats. 

Every human being, both young and old, encounters stresses in everyday life. Accumulated stress factors, if not curtailed, can accumulate and can compel the body to be in an alarm-state to fight or to escape. Accumulated stress can thus result in chronic psychosomatic illnesses. These include headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, eating disorder, allergies, insomnia, backaches, frequent cold and fatigue and even hypertension, asthma, diabetes, heart ailments.

We have to clearly understand that the origin of stress is circumstances and environments to which a human being is condemned to respond and react. Such reaction is an essential element of survival and existence. The environs include needs of livelihood, relationship demands, chronic health problems; pressure at workplaces, traffic snarls, meeting deadlines, growing-up tensions, skill formations, competitions, different complexes and such other individualistic and social conditions. People react to these conditions in their own ways. In some people, stress-induced adverse feelings and anxieties tend to persist and intensify.

Learning to understand the situations, conditions and environs behind stress situation, is the first and foremost requirement to manage counter effects of stress and to prevent ill-effects of excessive stress that affect mental equilibrium. There are many methods for coping up with stress. Usually practiced methods are change in lifestyle, relaxation techniques, and physical exercises, listening to soothing music, deep breathing and personality developments: These techniques may help a stressed person to keep away from stress factors. But once the person stops the practice, it is very likely that the individual may slowly and steadily start facing the maladies of stress.

A permanent solution for stress management is hypno-therapy: The qualified hypnotist can analyze and find the causative factors of circumstances and conditions and through hypno-suggestion free the sufferer from the ill-effects of excessive stress and give peace, tranquility health and happiness to the individual.

Significance of ‘word’ – its meaning and knowledge it conveys?

Word can either be spoken or written down. Spoken word entails sound, but sound may not be written in normal, known platforms. Both 'word' and 'sound' are signals.

In brain activity there are two systems of signaling through which ideas, knowledge and information are received and conveyed. When the developing animal world evolved into homosapiens, that is humans, an extremely important addition was made to the mechanism of nervous activity: In animals reality is signalized by situations and the traces they leave behind in the cerebral hemisphere which come directly to the nerve cells in visual, auditory, olfactory or other receptors. This process is what humans also possess by way of impressions, sensations and notions in relation to the world around, - the world that represents both the natural and the social environs. But there is a definite exception in so far as 'word' that is heard or 'word' that is seen (in writing) is concerned.

Except for 'word' that is heard or seen, the other mechanism of receiving and conveying reality of situations and traces they leave behind belong to First Signal System and the first signal system revolves around in the form of signs and symbols. This first system of signals of reality is common to both the animal world and the humans.

Then there is the other system, the Second Signal System, which is the exclusive possession of human beings. This exclusive human possession of second signal system is of "words" written and or words spoken.

The knowledge "word" conveys would be of impressions, sensations and notions in relation to the world around. Process of understanding the meaning and knowledge that 'word' conveys, either separately or together, depends upon the working condition of the sensory centres in the cerebral cortex of each individual: Idiots, imbeciles and morons may not understand the meaning and or knowledge that word represents or conveys. But an intelligent person whose sensory reactions to signals from the environs are sharp, might in all probability, understand the meaning and knowledge a word conveys together with consistency as compared to a moron, imbecile or idiot.

Words are the tools of all modern Hypnotists to put persons under hypnosis for whatever purposes the phenomenon is aimed at. Idiots cannot be put under hypnosis for the impact of words seldom works on them as in normal intelligent persons. To be hypnotized by suggestions through words, subject shall have to be intelligent

Suggestions are built up on words.Suggestions through and by words can be either in writing or by spoken words. A person can be hypnotized through written words in a piece of paper or on any suitable surface clear, concise and readable by the person to be hypnotized. Here the meaning the word conveys impacts on the person through what is called ‘auto-suggestion’. Spoken words, on the other hand, assume the position of ‘heterosuggestion’ in hypno-parlance. The present day hypnotists across the globe adopt heterosuggestion to induce hypnosis.

Power of suggestion

Examples galore

A house wife is so attracted by a cleverly produced advertisement in a News Media that she does not rest until she rushed to the shop and bought the goods advertised, a sari, a washing machine or say, some kitchenware or a magic lamp for prosperity.

Jim Johns tells a community of hundreds of devotees comprising of men, women and children that God has already arranged their blissful, ageless and ever happy living in Heaven. J. Johns continued: “You shall no longer waste your lives on Earth. You right now end your mortal earthly lives, here.”

No sooner did Jim Johns say the oracle, than they all, men, women and children, drank a divine potion of poison and ended their lives to become denizens of God’s own abode. This was fanaticism of the first order, but then, imagine the power of the words that Jim Johns spoke!

Auto suggestion, Hetero suggestion

In psychology there is a word, 'suggestion'. It is a powerful tool. It can be either hetero suggestion or autosuggestion.

Think of a person repeating in his mind that he is weak and ill health is bringing his end sooner than later. The result would be astonishing and unbelievable. The guy shall surely fall sick and shall even meet with untimely end. Here the suggestion that was imposed was self made autosuggestion. The same would be the result if a third person repeatedly telling the "one" that his health is declining and he is going to fall sick soon. Here it is hetero suggestion that works.

Every one knows that smoking is injurious to health: To wipe out the habit of smoking, Governments across the world have already let lose a psychological warfare to maim and suffocate the smokers by forcing manufacturers of cigarettes and other smoking materials to boldly print written warnings against smoking and to invariably depict pictures of skull and or cancerous organs on packets containing the smoking materials.

These warnings turn out to be hetero suggestions at the manufacturing and marketing levels. Once the cigarette packet reaches the hands of the consumer who is the smoker, the printed warnings on the packet becomes autosuggestion for the smoker. The meaning and contents of the warning repeatedly haunt the helpless smoker. The smoker is helpless because he is addicted to smoking and it becomes totally difficult for him to stop smoking. The smoker becomes entangled in the two fold frights of his helplessness to

stop smoking and the consequence of smoking. His acute stress thus takes him to real state of the doom depicted in the warnings. He becomes ill and ends up his life span sooner than what it ought to have been otherwise.

Look around, we see that all the orderliness and lack of it called chaos in the society whether it relates to law and order, dress codes, food, avocations or anything, it reflects a direct link with suggestions contained in written words or unwritten customs and notions.

Power that subdues:

When we closely examine we find that the house wife who was carried away by the advertisement was in a state of mind subdued by the power of suggestion contained in the advertisement. The disciples of Jim Johns were subdued by the power of suggestion contained in his words. The citizens of a civilized society can also be said to have become subdued by the civilian rules and regulations.

What then, is that ‘power’ or ‘force’ which subdues normal intellectual working of human mind replacing it with momentary intent of suggestions? That is a phenomenon which can neither be a ‘power’ nor a ‘force’: It is a particular mental state that is brought about in the brain, say the sensory centres in the cerebral cortex. It is one of the phases of “Hypnotism.”

Induced state of mind:

Hypnosis is an induced state of mind in which the central nervous system becomes inactive of its natural and ordinary functions. It diminishes its reaction to the environs; it does not react to sound, light, touch and any other sensory response. The faculty of reasoning becomes extinct in that state but certain sensory centres get activated as per the suggestions of the hypnotizer or the one who is commonly called a hypnotist. The person who is under hypnosis is not at all under sleep; but he is in a dreamlike condition in which he is responsive to the words spoken to him by the hypnotizer.

Hypnotic experiences are still veiled in the garb of divine and occult powers though it is scientific phenomenon. Hypnosis has most valuable use in clinical and therapeutic fields. Hypnosis can be profitably employed by general practitioners as well as psychiatrists for the benefit of patients. Suggestions under hypnosis go a long way in restorative treatment and prophylaxis.