Self-hypnosis ‘easy to do'

Press, 12 October 1985, Page 8

Self-hypnosis ‘easy to do '

Self-hypnosis is easy to do, and can be used to expand all kinds of skills, says a visiting clinical psychologist and hypnotherapist, Dr Robert Weisz.

“Most people use a form of self-hypnosis every day, but without realising it,” Dr Weisz said in Christchurch. Dr Weisz is one of the directors of the Milton Erickson Insitute of New Mexico, which deals with clinical hypnosis and behavioural science. He is in Christchurch as part of a tour of New Zealand, teaching self-hypnosis as a tool for healing people and for helping them expand their abilities.

He will hold a workshop at the Ashgrove Centre this week-end and at the Arts Centre next week. When people were described as being .Jin a trance” or day-dreaming,

they were actually using a form of self-hypnosis without realising it, he said. “Trance states allow people to experience themselves in ways that are very productive and which tran-

scend' normal limitations.” In his workshops, Dr Weisz helps people to go beyond their own boundaries in such trances, and to help them extend their AS?an example, Dr Weisz

talked about self-hypnosis to give up smoking. In a trance state, one could convince oneself that one was a non-smoker.

“You can then, in the trance, find out what it feels like to be a non-smoker, then you could imagine yourself refusing a cigarette if offered one.”

One could experience oneself becoming sick by smoking, he said. One of the main myths about hypnosis was that the hypnotist had power over the subject. In fact, a hypnotist did very little to send a person into a trance — it was the person’s mind which did that.

The step beyond that, to self-hypnosis, was very simple.

To go into a trance, a person had to find something to think aboutwwhich was relaxing, such as

imagining himself floating on a raft down a river, or perhaps lying in the bath. A good example of selfhypnosis in every day life was that of anxiety, he said. A person who had worried about something did not notice other things, and often got upset about what might or might not happen. Learning self hypnosis channelled that sort of energy into something positive, said Dr Weisz.

A hypnotist was simply a facilitator of thought patterns, someone who helped a person train his mind on particular thoughts. Teaching self-hypnosis and the use of it in health fields was becoming widely acknowledged in the health field, he said. In the United States and in Europe it was being used by psychologists and all types of doctors to help patients.