James Allen put it this way, “As a man thinketh, so is he.”  This is the case because we truly are what we think about.  This is based on the subconscious scripting written in the basement of our minds and the behaviors stimulated by memory and emotion related to that scripting.  Our minds are plastique, meaning this scripting can be molded, changed and re-written over time, one just has to have access to the pliable parts of the brain.

To understand this, some basic understanding of the brain functions is essential. There are two main compartments in our mind.

The conscious side of the mind is where we analyze and logically think about our thoughts and images we’ve seen.  This is the location where we have agency and choice and make decisions about whether we will accept those thoughts as truth or reject them.  The fact that we can consciously think about our thoughts and analyze them is what differentiates us from the animals of the world.  We can decide in advance of our action what reward or consequence will occur if we act out on those thoughts before acting upon them. This is the divine nature of man.  Animals don’t think is way.  They function solely on instinct.

The conscious mind is where we can choose and decide without the thought or image having an effect upon us.  However, once the thought is spoken verbally, the thought and it’s associated emotion is recorded deeper within our minds by crossing the Critical Factor Belief System Barrier into our subconscious imagination.  Once there, the thought is then amplified in the imagination, validated by previously recorded memories and may begin to generate emotional energy that can then activate the autonomic nervous system (brainstem) based on the degree of emotional stimulus.

It is, therefore, essential to think critically, analytically, and logically about the rewards and consequences of the thoughts we think before taking action. You have to decide in advance of speaking whether or not this thought is going to be right, true and correct for you, or inappropriate for you in advance of speaking it and moving on into acting upon it.   If it is incorrect for you, you are to “bounce the thought out of your mind.”  This means that you reject the thought outright, and the thought is not given subconscious access.

The subconscious mind acts like your own personal “genie in the bottle.”  The genie in the bottle doesn’t care what is right or wrong, good or evil, worthy or unworthy.  The genie only wants to fulfill the wishes of the conscious mind, the genie’s master.  That’s is the reason seemingly good people can do bad things.  It’s the reason that people are shocked by their own actions when they are place in situations of tremendous stress or trauma.  Whenever and whatever you consciously speak, whether you know it or not you are directing the genie for good or ill.  Anything that is a misdirection or a negative implication about yourself is considered to be “potty mouth verbiage” and self-sabotage.

Speaking negativity or talking yourself further into a problem instead of speaking your way out of it gives a directive to the subconscious mind.  Speaking, “I am depressed,” is interpreted as a literal directive to the genie in your subconscious mind to turn up your feelings of depression.  The genie doesn’t care or judge, it only wants to fulfill the directives from the conscious mind.   If you exclaim, “I hate life!” the genie focuses you on everything about life that is unpleasant, difficult, and makes you miserable.   The genie is doing its job to fulfill whatever you direct it to do.  The same is true of positive things you say.  When you say, “I love my life!” feel the difference.

It is necessary to clean out the basement or the subconscious mind from all the inappropriate rationalized stinking thinking patterns.  To do this requires a stairway down to the basement.  Trance, pondering or hypnosis is the stairway down.  It is the intentional internal access to the basement of the mind.  We want to intentionally go down to find out what rationalized thinking errors exist, and then, correct them at the level where they exist.

In the past twenty years of my medical practice, it’s become more and more difficult to address the disconnect between the conscious and subconscious mind and the subsequent diseases that arise from this disconnect with traditional approaches and medication.

Mind Chatter

The process and experience of becoming clear minded is a gradual process.  Many people that I talk to tell me that they commonly experience their minds racing from subject to subject and experience to experience throughout the day.  For many, this even occurs as they try to fall to sleep at night leading to chronic sleep deprivation and insomnia.  So many thoughts occupy their minds, and so many voices seem to chatter to them daily.  We call this “mind chatter,” and though most people think it is normal, having multiple memories and emotions bombard your mind is distracting and problematic to learning and normal day to day function.

With the advent of cell phones, handheld access to social media, the internet, and the media bombardment with COVID-19 fearmongering, this mind chatter has exploded across the generations, especially the among younger generation. We have created a younger generation stuck in their imaginations, highly susceptible to suggestion.

Take Your Mind Off of Guard Duty

Your mind creates this chatter to prevent forgetting important things to be completed.  You can dramatically improve this by learning to Take Your Mind Off of Guard Duty.  This means that before bed, or while you are in bed and a thought comes to mind, pull out a piece of paper and a pen and write down the thought, and then when you are going to thing about it tomorrow or the next day.   It is essential to write down the date and time so that your mind no longer feels the need to worry and remind you . . . its’ written on the paper.

You can download a copy HERE of my bedside page to use to facilitate this exercise nightly.

Familiar Thoughts & Subconscious Memory

Many people experience these thoughts or voices as “familiar.”  These voices sound much like their own thoughts.  Because they are tied to emotion, many people feel they are their own thoughts and they believe these thoughts.  They recall situations in school and childhood where they felt rejected, not good enough, not smart enough, etc.  Constant thoughts and feelings of inadequacy, fear, and guilt fill their minds.  These are things that journaling and hypnotherapy helps to correct and quiet.

Most of these thought scripts people hold in their subconscious minds are negative and have a binding effect, essentially holding people back from being and becoming all that they want to become.

The goal of hypnotherapy is to guide you in resetting your thought patterns back to a calm, clear, clean, confident, peaceful, powerful mind.

Eight Rules of the Mind

There are eight rules that govern interaction between the conscious and subconscious mind.  These are important to understand:

1. Every thought or idea has a corresponding physical reaction.
2. What is expected tends to be realized.
3. Imagination is always more powerful than reason.
4. Opposing ideas cannot be held at one and the same time.
5. Once an idea has been accepted at the subconscious level, it remains there and governs our behavior in that area of our expression from that time forward until it is replaced by a new idea, or it altered and amended.
6. An emotionally induced symptom produces an organic change in the body when that emotion is persisted in long enough.
7. Each time your nervous system reacts in a given way, it becomes easier for the nervous system to react and respond that way the next time.
8. When dealing with the subconscious mind, the greater the conscious effort, the less the subconscious response.

All of Us Have Experience Trance Caused by Advertisers

The natural trance ability of the human mind has been used for centuries to establish thoughts and beliefs in the minds of people.  And, like most things in life, these suggested beliefs could be meant for good or ill depending upon the intent of the person making the suggestion, and the content of the suggestions themselves.  People can be stimulated through suggestion to release and enhance the natural healing capacities and properties of the mind and the body.  On the flip side, people with evil or devious intent can attempt to use these natural trance abilities to promote ill will.

Most of the advertising we experience today takes advantage of our ability to go instantaneously into trance and become hyper-suggestible.  This is done through the form of advertising jingles used to implant thoughts, ideas, and beliefs into our minds.  These jingles serve essentially as “incantations” directed at our subconscious mind.  Radio and TV advertisers use catchy, suggestive phrases (a form of what we all affirmations) to encourage, influence, and persuade us to buy their products or services.  In particular, music enhances our natural inclination to go into trance, increasing our susceptibility to suggestions.  Television advertisements combine music, affirmation scripts and visual cues with the intent to put us into trance.

Most of us have noticed a constant bombardment of advertising through TV, Radio and internet whenever a new product launch beings. Advertisers know that we need to hear the name of the new product and picture ourselves using it in our imagination several times to get us to accept a mental association and then internalize the message, memorize it and have a desire to own or use the item.  Many of us often accept the suggestion, unaware of the process being used upon us.

For example, “Do you deserved a break today?”  100% of those reading these words will know exactly what I am talking about and the fast-food chain that wants you to have that break.  Coke is currently using the “Yes No Song” as their jingle.  Pepsi recently changed their tagline to “For The Love of It” with their own new hashtag #ForTheLoveOfIt.

I’m sure you’ve seen the 10 most effective jingles or catchphrases of all time:

1. McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It”
2. Kit Kat® “Give Me a Break”
3. Oscar Mayer “I Wish I Was an Oscar Mayer Weiner”
4. Subway “Five Dollar Foot Long”
5. Empire “800 Number”
6. State Farm “Like a Good Neighbor”
7. Lucky Charms “They’re Magically Delicious”
8. Huggies “I’m a Big Kid Now”
9. Alka Seltzer “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz”
10. Band-Aid “Stuck on Band-Aid”

These are all examples of intentionally focused scripts designed to bypass the conscious critical factor filter and immediately access the subconscious mind, be remembered, and stimulate emotion.   Advertisers, and hypnotherapists alike, know that once you’ve scripted the subconscious mind, you think it, you feel it, and you act on it.

All People Experience Trance Daily

Hypnosis describes perfectly the natural processes of our mind.  In fact, everyone experiences multiple episodes of trance levels every day during the normal routines of life.  Each of us naturally go in and out of trance or hypnosis, experiencing different levels of altered states of mind on a daily basis.  First, think of the various trance levels you go through as you go in and out of deep sleep.

Another example is when you have an important meeting the next morning and you have to get up at 6 am.   You tell yourself, “I must be up by six o’clock , or I’ll be late.  I must get up at 6 am.”   Even though you never thought about what you were doing, you have likely found yourself waking up just before your 6 am alarm goes off.  Your subconscious mind did exactly what you programmed it to do.  You automatically woke up on time because this is something you directed your subconscious mind to perform.  Our subconscious mind does for us exactly what we have established as our most predominant thoughts.

Another recognizable state of trance is that of daydreaming.  This level of trance is also referred to as “waking hypnosis.”  When you begin to think about the events of the day while driving down the freeway, focusing inwardly to the point that you drive right past your exit, unaware.  Have you ever been on a long road trip, pull up in front of your garage door, and suddenly realize you are home?  You can’t remember the last hour or so of driving.  This is commonly referred to as “highway hypnosis” or “white line” hypnosis.” You simply shifted from an external-only focus consciously to a dual state of external and internal focus.  In this state of mind you have the ability to perform both functions – consciously drive the car, yet internally focus on other thoughts, at one and the same time.

Perhaps the most obvious signs of trance are a deep and profound physical relaxation and lack of awareness of time.  You have likely been in trance while concentrating on reading a book or watching a movie, or when you are highly focused on a project.  When the book ends and you direct your thoughts toward an external focus, you become aware of time again.  You suddenly think to yourself, “I cannot believe I’ve been reading for two hours already – it only seemed like minutes.”  Or, you experienced the opposite. Something only lasted a few minutes, but it seemed to take hours.

A deeper state of trance or hypnosis may be experienced while watching TV.  When someone in the family announces that dinner is ready, the person watching TV may not even move or blink an eye.  In this case, both the conscious part of the mind and the subconscious mind have ben brought into greater concentration or singularity of focus.

Seven Observable States of Mental Awareness

Many people who have never studied trance are afraid of it because it is unknown and they’ve heard incorrect or false notions about these states of mind.  They have understandable fear of the unknown and have not yet learned the ways in which they can use hypnosis for accomplishing worthwhile projects, behavioral changes and healing.  Trance can be used to give you access to every thought, feeling, emotion, every sensory perception – touch, taste, smell and sound – you have ever experienced form birth until now.

Hypnosis or trance is simply a sleeplike state of enhanced concentration.  There are seven different states that are easily identifiable.  Each state has a different beneficial therapeutic effect when used appropriately.

1. Intentional Consciousness or Waking Suggestion
   1. Where observation, analysis, critical thinking and evaluation occur
   2. Wide awake, fully alert, eyes clear and bright, paying attention to detail
   3. Person feels self-confident, self-control and the ability to make choices
   4. Gama waves predominate in the brain with intense concentration– 100 Hz or more
   5. Beta waves present with less complex thought 12 – 95 Hz
2. Waking Hypnosis or Daydreaming
   1. Dual state of conscious and subconscious awareness with primary focus in the subconscious mind
   2. Relaxed body, sag in jaw and shoulders, tearing of the eyes, dryness in the mouth, feeling an urge to swallow occasionally
   3. Highly imaginative state – where we imagine ourselves the hero or heroine of a story or movie. Daydreaming about what we want to accomplish. Great state for affirmations. Spacing out in a classroom. Often experience when highly engrossed in a movie.
   4. Beta waves present with internal focus 12-30 Hz
3. Hypnoidal Trance
   1. Usually experienced first thing in the morning when you wake, but your body has not yet moved. It is that state when we mentally awake and wonder if we have overslept or wonder what time it is.
   2. Mental awareness. Body still asleep. May experience a single jerk of the body or an “abreaction.”
   3. This is the natural state of meditation and deep personal reflection. Often the state in which inspiration or personal improvement thoughts occur. Best state for prayer, affirmations and autosuggestion
   4. Beta waves present 12-30 Hz
4. Catalepsy or REM State
   1. Preferred state for hypnotherapy and creating new decision-making processes. Person has access to their own conscious and subconscious functions at the same time.
   2. Ability to analyze, think and speak logically, as well as access subconscious imagination, memories and emotions
   3. Robot-like movement, rapid eye movement side to side, slowed breathing, balance between the extensor and flexor muscles, ability to hold the arm out for long periods of time without fatiguing, some people will have some muscle rigidity in arms or hands
   4. Preferred state for access to the conscious and subconscious mind at the same time.
   5. Alpha waves predominate – 8-12 Hz
5. Somnambulism or Sleepwalking State
   1. Intelligence is locked into the imagination and person is in chronic trance with the ability to walk around “asleep.” Limited ability to filter or block out thoughts or suggestions.  Generally feel other’s opinions are of more value than their own.
   2. Some individuals live in a chronic somnambulistic state since childhood, they are awake but very suggestable because they spend the majority of their day in their imaginations. These people must be de-hypnotized first.
   3. Eyes roll up and back in their head. Lethargic in complete muscle relaxation.
   4. State of high suggestibility, highly creative and imaginative. Architects, musicians, artists, designers and writers are often in this state. Used effectively for localized pain control.
   5. Theta waves predominate – 4-8 Hz
6. Esdaile State or Hypnotic Coma
   1. State of complete sensory desensitization and used today as a mode of complete pain control for birthing, dentistry and in pain clinics.
   2. Deep state of trance and internal focus, produces temporary amnesia and analgesia, resistant to following commands and suggestions, can hear and understand what is going on around them, but chooses not to respond due to state of euphoria experienced, often state they want to be left alone to enjoy this state
   3. Robot like, oblivious to pain, balance tone of extensors and flexors
   4. Can be used to desensitize from troublesome perceptions. Natural anesthesia and amnesia for pain control
   5. Delta waves predominate – 0.5-6 Hz
7. Sleep
   1. The state just before deep sleep. Conscious mind become dormant; Subconscious mind dreams away emotional content of the day
   2. Eyes closed, deep muscle relaxation, deep rhythmic breathing
   3. Health and wellbeing enhanced and restored with 7-9 hours of sleep. Stress reduction occurs, improved heart function. Improved alertness and memory with regular adequate sleep.
   4. Delta waves 0.5-4 Hz

As you can see from the states of hypnosis above, each of these states has beneficial uses for therapy.  Dr. Nally or his hypnotherapist will help you reach and remain in the necessary state to address various components of thinking errors directly related to disease found within the subconscious mind.  Everything in hypnotherapy is designed to move the “seat of power” back to consciousness and to remove the “double mindedness” disconnect that can occur between the conscious and subconscious mind.

You can learn more about fixing your mind chatter and mind-body medicine here.

Sources:

1. Boyne, G. (2017) Self-Hypnosis: Key to your inner power. Westwood Publishing.
2. Boyne, G. (1989). Transforming Therapy. Westwood Publishing.
3. Elman, D. (1964). Hypnotherapy. (2^nd) Westwood Publishing.
4. Levine, PA. (2010). In an unspoken Voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. North Atlantic Books.
5. Parker, DW; Bickmore, CA; Crews, D. (2013). Spiritual Mind Management. CHTS.
6. Sarno, JE. (2006). The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders. (Paperback ed.) HarperCollins Publishing.