Some people call this practice “hypnosis without hypnosis,” or even “hypnosis inside out.” They refer to it as “hypnosis’ because what happens during the session is close to what we witness at the session of hypnotic trance. It is “without hypnosis’ because we don’t confront our consciousness and that is why it is unnecessary to turn it off. On the contrary, our consciousness has to take an active part in everything that is happening during the session. For this exact reason, this method can be called “hypnosis inside out,” or “anti-hypnosis:’ “Wake up and observe what is happening inside yourself!” The initial state is, thus, considered to be a kind of a dream one has to wake up from. The fact, that consciousness is active and takes part in the process, means that psychocatalysis does not have cases of the patient’s resistance. There is nothing to resist. This is the most advanced kind of hypnosis, which does not really happen, but has its effect.
The light of knowledge versus the darkness of ignorance
Data processing is followed by different sensations, and the experience of practising psychocatalysis allows us to make the following observations.
When new useful knowledge, welcomed by us, makes its way through our mind, we experience the sensation when some light-coloured mass of information is moving from periphery to the centre. When unnecessary knowledge is being “deleted,” we observe the reverse process: it begins from the centre and moves to the periphery; it comes out through the top of the head as something dark, grey, or black, which is what affected us at the moment of frustration. This is how primordial elements of our consciousness send signals, which enter the body and leave it. A variety of cases when patients needed to get rid of unnecessary information are presented in my book “Phobias, Disappointments, and Losses” (2010, 2011, 2014), and we are going to see more of those examples that relate to the subject of this book.
“Knowledge is light; knowledge is power.” “Ignorance is dark.” These expressions reflect how people really feel. If everything goes smoothly, the light of knowledge, which nurtures life, fills in and lightens up the body, whereas the darkness, cast by ignorance and lack of confidence and characterized by a knot in the stomach, step away and disappear, defeated by its power. If something foreign has wounded the depths of the body, it would go away, too.
Knowledge in its integrity, thoroughness, and maturity finds its deserved place while harmful fragmentary and random information leaves it. When “frights,” “deceits,” and other traumatizing signals leave the body, our autonomic nervous system calms down, and our emotional balance is restored.
Studying is much more efficient and successful when one is in a calm state. In this condition, the flow of information come from every direction, and everything new seems easy to learn.
“Mission control centre’
The location of information within the psychological space of a person defines its status and its influence on this person’s life. There are places with more degree of influence, or “prestige.”
The vault for most significant information is usually in our stomach. It is like a town hall. This place keeps the essential information about what one should strive for and what one has to avoid. This is the place, we will usher the information that will help us take a creative approach to life and will eliminate everything that has a harmful effect on it.
Core competence
Information can be stored at the level of the head, but this is not its final destination. Our head and brain can be easily “disturbed’ by the stress. Experience shows that a much more secure place is our body, for instance, at the level of the solar plexus. Deeper levels of the nervous system are much more stress resistant, and they keep the information even in extreme situations. It is similar to oceanic depths because they are always quiet, even if there is a storm on the surface. Having such core competence, a person maintains the ability to adapt creatively to different circumstances, even when reason seems to fail to do it efficiently, and when the brain is intoxicated by stress. Nevertheless, only information that is useful and appropriate for life should be stored there.
In order to “relocate knowledge’ and rearrange everything, good and bad can be done with the help of the phenomenon as mentioned above; that is: by way of observing these processes at the level of sensations.
Unexpected answers to strange questions
Concerning the question of “the future of one’s knowledge’, then it turns out to be quite possible to receive coherent answers to the questions that may seem odd at first sight: “Where is the knowledge I already have? What does it feel like?” As an answer to these questions, you can hear the following, for example: “It’s a ball in my stomach.” – “And where are the sensations connected with the new knowledge?” – “It’s a fog above my head.”
The difference of emotions can give us quite a lot! To discover it and benefit from it, all you need to do is to concentrate a little.
The experience of internal work of many people shows that one can trace how new information enters the body, the way it exists, develops, the way it is used when it’s necessary, and the way it serves to solve problems. Flows of information that come our way and flows of information that we give away can be tangible! The ability to reconnect with our sensations through our attention gives us the keys to take an active part in the distribution and use of knowledge. This allows us to “sort through’ useful and unnecessary information and reinvents ourselves.
Moving towards refreshing self-awareness is what we are striving for.
Question attack using a three-step method
This is how it is done. Our mind is attacked by questions about the immediate sensations like “Where?” “What?” and “What does it look like?” We have to stress the fact that we are talking about revealing what it is actually like, so this process does not mean “fantasizing’ or “making things up.” As soon as the characteristics of the spontaneously formed state begin to surface, one can move from the diagnostic stage to the stage of therapy: from the evaluation of the state and solution to the observation of the changes, and from analysis to “meditation’.
Here are the major questions for the different stages of work:
– Where and what do you have in your initial state?
– Can you define where it is useful or not, and what kind of solutions do you see in connection with what you have discovered? You can discover the factors that trigger certain sensations and the way your body reacts to these sensations.
– Where are the obstacles that inhibit the natural flow? What do they look like? What happens to your sensations because of it?
Then, in three steps, we resolve the following questions: where do we take what will help us update our contour/profile and help us mature? How will