(This blog was originally posted on
December 7, 2016)
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| Photo by Rick Hustead |
People
in hyper-suggestible states tend to want to “retreat” into a trance or
disassociate themselves from themselves/the situation if they feel overwhelmed
by the stimuli around them. The more suggestible the individual is the more
easily he or she will drift into a trance state (hypnosis). This is
particularly true of third-stage somnambulists,
said hypnotherapist Dr. John Kappas.
In
one of his most interesting video seminars,
the Hypnosis Motivation Institute
founder worked with a client to remove the man’s frozen smile and nervous
twitch. The client explained that these symptoms developed while he lived in
Trinidad, where he had lived for many years. During the course of their
discussion, the Dr. Kappas discovered that the client had participated in a voodoo
ritual around this time. The hypnotherapist deduced that his client’s natural
somnambulistic tendencies kept him in the hyper-suggestible state he
experienced during that experience.
In
addition to chants/spells, voodoo rituals often include smoking or ingesting
hallucinogenic drugs to overwhelm the participant and induce a trance to change
the participant’s behavior, Dr. Kappas said. The more suggestible the person
is, the more likely he is to go into that trance. Voodoo rituals are unfamiliar
and especially frightening to Westerners, who have little first-hand knowledge
or experience with its traditions and beliefs, he explained. “If the person
believes voodoo spells (curses) work and is already highly suggestible, he may
be particularly vulnerable to going along with any behaviors or beliefs the
priest presiding over the ritual suggests.”
The
small (pin-point) size of the client’s pupils indicated that he was already in
a trance state. Therefore, before Dr. Kappas started to work on changing the
unwanted behavior (twitch and frozen smile), the hypnotherapist had to de-hypnotize
him and get the man out of the original hyper-suggestible state. “You have to
recognize that the client is already in-state [and then] re-direct him. Take
him in to get him out,” the HMI founder said. Next, Dr. Kappas desensitized the
man to the previous suggestions and drew on aspects of hypnotic modality to
assume an authoritative role during the hypnotic induction. These steps were imperative
to make the client more amenable to following the hypnotherapeutic suggestions
to remove the client’s suggestibility to
the voodoo and change the unwanted physical behaviors, the hypnotherapist
explained.
“You
have to recognize the client is already in state, [and then] redirect him. Take
him in to get him out,” Dr. Kappas said.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified
hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors
from the Hypnosis Motivation
Institute in 2005. For more
information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an
appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
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