Nervous Horse Riders and how Self Hypnosis can help

they are trying to avoid, a nervous horse which then makes a nervous rider, which makes a more nervous horse and a more nervous rider and so on and so forth.

Chapter Four The Process of Hypnosis for the Horse Rider

During the state of hypnosis the conscious mind is bypassed, the unconscious part of the mind is spoken to (and if we stay with the electrical circuit metaphor); the negative current is short-circuited, overridden, and the current is reversed in a positive direction, and then rejoined to a positive terminal. Once we have reprogrammed the unconscious mind, and the unconscious mind reconnects with the conscious mind, our perception alters, we feel different, and depending on the reason for hypnotherapy, we find that whatever blockage was stopping us from achieving our goal, has either been reduced to such a degree that we can now live with it, or it has been removed completely.

The first part of the process of hypnosis is the “induction” of the trance state; a day dreamy state of mind, often experienced when listening to music, or driving for a long time on a boring road, listening to a long lecture, or during meditation. Think how many times you have driven home from somewhere and you can’t remember the actual journey; or in the middle of listening to someone you have drifted off to somewhere else; you are engrossed in a book or TV program to such an extent that you have forgotten the time; that half-awake feeling as you drift to the surface of sleep caught between wakefulness and sleep, these are ‘trance’ states or ‘altered states of mind’.

At this point, I want to lie to rest any misconceptions you may have about the power of hypnotherapy and the hypnotic trance state. Despite publicity in the media, and those that ‘perform’ on the stage using hypnosis for entertainment, hypnotherapy cannot make you do anything, or say anything or behave in any way that is unnatural to you. It cannot override your sense of morality, alter your judgement about what is right and wrong, or make you more susceptible to the unethical behaviours of others. During a hypnotic trance, you will always be aware of your surroundings when you need to be, you will still hear a fire alarm go off for example, and be able to open your eyes, get up and walk away, or respond to a question asked, and answer as normal. You will always be in control just as you are in a fully wakeful state. A hypnotic trance state is arrived at by ‘agreement’, not by way of coercion.

The Induction sequence of a trance state is to allow your body and mind to move into a state of complete relaxation. This prepares your mind and body to transfer on to the next stage of the hypnotic process. Breathing techniques, relaxation, visualisation imagery, use of metaphors or bombarding the critical mind with an overload of information can all induce the mind to start to alter its state of awareness. The old stereotypical image of swinging a watch in front of a subject’s eyes is to some extent valid; it was just another technique to get the conscious critical mind to switch off, to allow the subject to concentrate on what was being said to them and to start to focus on the inner self. Today there are allsorts of hi-tech gadgets about that create moving shapes or noises, but they are just that – gimmicks, and when it comes to listening to Self-Hypnosis pre-recorded material, whether you are using a traditional Hi Fi system, MP3′s (iPods) or via a PC, there is no concrete evidence that using headphones with two different voices in stereo sound, overlaying of voices one on top of another, or special sound effects and subliminal messages, actually increases the success of the process at all, furthermore, clients of mine than have tried these techniques elsewhere, have told me that they actually find these most annoying, and rather than allowing them to focus on the voice it actually distracted them to such an extent that they gave up using the process. Why re-invent the wheel if it works as it is?

The next stage of the hypnotic process is called the “trigger”. Depending on the therapeutic training of the Hypnotherapist and their personal preferences, different techniques will be used to increase the depth of the hypnotic trance state, sometimes a word is offered, or a particular behaviour, such as touching ones ear or pressing a finger and thumb together. This trigger can be used in the normal waking state to reproduce the same state of calmness and relaxation achieved during hypnosis. It can also be used to bring back to the conscious mind any imagery or suggestion that the unconscious mind has visualised or heard during hypnosis. It is always emphasised by the Hypnotherapist, that this “trigger” word or action, will ONLY take on this special significance when used in relation to hypnosis, in all other circumstances the word or action will have the same meaning as it always has.

The next level of the hypnotic process is called the “deepener”, this stage takes the mind through a process that encourages the critical conscious mind, to fade into the background and the unconscious mind to come into the foreground, and a much deeper hypnotic trance state is established. This state is associated with a vivid involvement in imagined events, a shift into a context-free literal understanding of words and phrases, and a removal of the restrictions ordinarily imposed upon conscious abilities and responses. Hypnotherapy is designed to take full advantage of these characteristics. The Trigger and deepener stages are interwoven with each other and the listener is taken ever furt