WEIGHT loss, related to overeating, is one of the most common problems that make people seek hypnotherapy.
“If you have someone who wants to lose weight, they’ll probably say, ‘I want to diet, I want to lose weight’,” says Sheila Menon, a hypnotherapist and the principal of LCCH Malaysia, the local branch of the London College of Clinical Hypnosis.
“What they’re actually saying is, ‘Something’s wrong with me. I’m overweight.’ They’ve got a negative self-image.
“So you change the language. You tell them that they’re going to deal with weight control, which is something they can take responsibility for immediately. You get them interested in eating healthy, nutritious food, in doing a little exercise, and in being in control of their weight so that they can have confidence and respect for themselves,” she elaborates on the post-hypnotic suggestion that can be given.
People with weight problems usually have a negative, fat image of themselves.
Ego-strengthening suggestions, using imagination and imagery, can help them imagine what it will be like when they achieve their goal of losing weight.
“So you get them to imagine what they want to look like in the future, how it will feel to move their hands or their bodies without the extra weight, how good it will feel, the admiring looks they will get from their friends, how their hair will shine, their skin will be clearer and their eyes will sparkle,” she says.
The hypnotherapist can also provide action-oriented suggestions, like “When you eat healthy, nutritious food, you chew that food twice as long as you normally do, and you roll it around in your mouth.”
Hypnotherapy in smoking cessation works by replacing the derived pleasures of smoking with new ones.
“Smokers have rationalised why they’re smoking. Smoking is something within their immediate control that will give them pleasure. They’ve cued themselves so that taking that first puff from a cigarette means they will relax. Also, when they are lighting that cigarette, they are giving themselves total attention,” says Menon.
All these are secondary “benefits” that smokers derive from smoking, she adds.
“In hypnosis, you focus the person away from what they’ve been doing and you give them a good rational proposition. You systematically go through all the bad habits associated with the cigarette and you replace each one with a benefit.
“You remind the person that even before he was a smoker, he was a non-smoker. You remind him about breathing in fresh air, and give a very strong, positive image for the benefits of that.”
“IBS is stress-related as much as anything else,” says Menon. Therefore, hypnotherapy will reduce stress as well as physically affect the gut motility.
“You get them to become aware of their inner realities,” she suggests, demonstrating by saying in a soft, soothing voice, “As the food you eat passes down your gullet into your stomach, your stomach will slowly and systematically break the food down. Imagine your digestive system, especially your colonic system, as a slow, sluggish river. Imagine the food flowing down into this sluggish river.”
Using this slow, tranquil imagery, she says, will actually make the body slow down. “Someone who has to run to the loo will experience much slower digestive tract (motions),” she says.
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WEIGHT loss, related to overeating, is one of the most common problems that make people seek hypnotherapy.
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