Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy in the form of Guided Journeys are used during the Self-Awareness Weekend.

What are Guided Journeys and what is their purpose at the Self-Awareness Weekend?

Guided Journeys are a form of guided meditations - in that one person guides another through a journey of the mind. The answers you receive can help you overcome issues or resolve situations in your life. They are a tool like hypnosis that can be used in the process of opening a cognitive communication between the conscious and subconscious minds. They are a physically and mentally relaxed state of awareness in which your subconscious mind is actively involved with your conscious mind in developing solutions to unresolved problems.

In guided journeys as well as hypnosis, you are in an alert state of deep relaxation. In fact in some ways you are more alert, more awake, and more “conscious” and more in charge than when you are in your conscious mind. They help you achieve a focused, state of mind though encouraging the rational, critical mind to temporarily relax. In summary, they are a technique of communication that bypasses the ‘analytical/critical mind’ to reach and work with the subconscious mind.

Your conscious mind, where we spend most of our waking hours, is attentive and uses logic to reason, evaluate, assess, judge, and make decisions, Unfortunately, when making life changes, the conscious mind is in the way. In the relaxed state of guided visualizations, the doorway between the conscious and the subconscious is opened, memories become easily accessible. In this state, you are not really “thinking” in the traditional sense. You are “experiencing” without questioning, without critical judgment or analysis.

The subconscious function of the mind begins to operate long before the conscious mind, in early childhood. Strategies for self-preservation and survival are irrevocably etched in the subconscious. Since our subconscious stores our life experiences from birth to present time, guided visualizations can guide you backward in time to prior events that were hurtful, traumatic, and painful and at your present level of maturity you can re-experience them, release them and heal them from the associated feelings, i.e. anger, sadness, fear. And, self-defeating decisions that were made at a very young age i.e. I’m not good enough, I can’t trust anyone, I’ll never get close again; can be accessed and changed to self-fulfilling beliefs and behaviors.

The major concern that people have about this process is: “I don’t like the idea of being under someone else’s control.” The truth is you are in control the entire time. You cannot be made to do anything you don’t want to do, and you will remember everything that happens. Your subconscious would NOT allow anything to happen to your physical or emotional safety.