THE BODY IN BODY-MIND-SPIRIT HEALING
The body is an integral aspect of our work with clients. The body, through symptoms and specific sensations, provides valuable diagnostic information about what needs to be resolved and healed in psychotherapy. By tracking changes in these somatic experiences through the course of therapeutic intervention, we can assess our effectiveness.
In a Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy model, people often discover emotions that they never knew they had or that they did not have language to express. With hypnotherapy, we can teach clients to identify their emotions and then to put an appropriate label on these feelings. It is surprising how many adults have no language to describe or express their emotions. The most effective way for them to have a surefire way of knowing that an emotion is, in fact, present is to bring their awareness down into their body and notice what is happening. Many people try to “think about” what they are feeling, which brings them into their heads and their conscious minds. The problem with this is that the feelings are not located in the head, nor are they located in the conscious mind. Emotions are rooted in the unconscious part of the mind and physically in the body. This is why hypnotherapy is so effective for mind-body work. Every emotion that we experience has a corresponding reaction in the body.
So, for example, when you begin to feel sadness, your eyes may begin to tear up and you may have a slight pressure in the center of your chest which is called the heart center. The heart center is not your physical heart, it is your emotional heart. When you experience joy, you may feel like laughing or smiling (a physical reaction) and you may feel a warm feeling in your chest, your heart center. Some people experience anger in their chests with a pounding sensation, rapid breathing and tightness, perhaps in the stomach. Fear often expresses as tightness or burning in the stomach or chest. Shame or embarrassment usually causes the person to put a hand over his or her eyes or cover his or her face.
The body never lies and is the most consistent reporter of our current emotional status at any given time. In Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy, we always ask clients to bring their awareness into their bodies to find the place where the feeling or emotion is located. Then we use the Gestalt Therapy approach taught by Dr. Fritz Perls of “giving that part of the body a voice” and letting it express to us our deeper emotions of which we are usually consciously unaware. What are your clenched fists saying? What is the pain in your neck telling you? What is the message of your indigestion? Give it a voice and let it speak.
Many people hold their emotions inside their bodies, which is what many of us were taught to do as children. When this holding in of powerful emotions has become a lifelong pattern, it can certainly lead to disease and chronic pain or illness. With the Heart-Centered type of therapy, the stressed person can learn to identify and release these powerful emotions in a healthy way so that the internalized stress does not lead to a fatal illness such as cancer or a heart attack.
Other people have not learned how to express feelings in a constructive manner and may hold them in until they explode and become abusive to those they love. Some folks express feelings in another unhealthy manner, with snide remarks, sarcastic allegations and rude behavior. They frequently use the statement, “I don’t get mad, I just get even.” This is an example of expressing emotions in a non-direct, abusive manner, and is what psychologists call passive-aggressive.
When clients are in a hypnotherapy session, they have much more direct access to their emotions located in the unconscious mind. Clients in the trance state are much more aware of their bodies and can be easily directed to notice and express in a healthy way the feelings that have been stored within the body. This release of emotions is like opening or loosening the valve of a pressure cooker. The steam can then be released slowly without exploding. This, then, is how hypnotherapy heals the mind and the body through the information revealed, expressed and released from the client’s energy field. This is also the reason why hypnotherapy can be so successfully used by psychologists, clinical social workers, licensed professional counselors and school counselors, as well as by doctors in the field of integrative medicine.
THE SPIRIT IN BODY-MIND-SPIRIT HEALING
How does spirit fit into mind-body-spirit healing? While the person is in the hypnotherapeutic trance state, perhaps toward the end of the session, he or she often experiences a warmth, a sense of forgiveness, of compassion, of a love that extends out to humanity itself. This phenomenon occurs with such frequency during the hypnotherapy experience that we have not been able to ignore it. It seems to be a natural result of someone making intimate contact with his or her heart center.
We have learned after more than forty years of experience that many people are longing for some type of spiritual connection—a real, felt, deeply personal experience of spirit. Many times we have heard ministers, rabbis and other actively religious people say, “Right now I feel closer to God than I have for many, many years.” This connection allows clients to reclaim what may have been missing in their lives since they were children: the deepest and highest parts of themselves. We use the term “soul retrieval” for this miraculous spiritual healing.
Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy is a particular approach to the use of hypnosis in psychotherapy for mind-body-spirit healing which, taken together, we call personal transformation.
We transform first physically, changing the structure and functioning of our bodies. We begin to understand the subtle energy of which we are composed, and learn to manage it for optimal health and growth. We gain conscious influence over many of the processes once believed to be autonomic, such as our sleep cycles, recovery from injury and illness, the functioning of the immune system and ultimately the process of dying.
Second, we transform emotionally, healing the wounds of unresolved trauma and growing in self-actualization (Abraham Maslow’s term) or individuation (Carl Jung’s term). This healing necessarily involves incorporating the full expression of ourselves, embracing the repressed shadow, the imperfection, the unworthiness as well as the wisdom and the transcendence.
Third, we transform spiritually, surrendering the ego to that which is greater than itself (“Thy will, not mine, be done”), finding our highest purpose in life and beginning to express it in every action. This involves reclaiming all the fragments of the Soul that have been dissociated or lost through identification with a narrow, too-limited self-concept.
Finally, we transform our social context, creating healthy community to support our highest level of functioning. We transform within the crucible of relationships, creating an identity and strengthening the resulting ego by facing our deepest fears and greatest challenges. We create and use safety and trust, encouragement and support within the heart-centered unconditional love of a healthy community.
PTSD AND COMPLEX PTSD
It has become clear in recent years that there are degrees of wounding in traumatization, some being more pervasive and complicated than others. One attempt to distinguish between them is the distinction between trauma and complex trauma, or PTSD and Complex PTSD. Complex trauma refers to trauma experienced as overwhelmingly intolerable, that occurs repeatedly and cumulatively, usually over a period of time and within specific intimate relationships which violate the human bond and sever the vital human connection.2 The victim of complex traumatization is entrapped and conditioned by the perpetrator, whom the victim relies on for safety and protection.
In families, it is exemplified by domestic violence and child abuse and in other situations by war, prisoner of war or refugee status and human trafficking. Complex trauma also refers to situations such as acute/chronic illness that requires intensive medical intervention or a single traumatic event that is calamitous.
Unresolved complex trauma results in Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Complex PTSD), which produces apparently contradictory symptoms.
When children and adults are traumatized beyond their breaking point, they retreat inwardly