Pathways to Wholeness

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The Foundation of the Sacred Stream is pleased to announce our Membership Program open to all those interested in the ongoing work of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream.

There are three membership categories with the Foundation of the Sacred Stream — Personal, Journey and Professional. As a member of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, you become part of a spiritual community that can provide you with support in charting your own individual pathway to wholeness.

We appreciate your support and look forward to the opportunity to offer you ongoing assistance along your journey of self-discovery and professional development.

There are three levels of membership available. Benefits of each membership are listed below:

Personal Membership
Upon signing up for any class or training program with the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, $10.00 of your tuition will go toward granting you Personal Membership in the Foundation of the Sacred Stream’s community. As a member in this membership category, you will receive a quarterly newsletter and news and updates of community events.

Journey Membership
Upon completion of the Depth Hypnosis Foundation Course, you will receive Hypnotherapy Certification, with a special emphasis in the Spiritual Counseling Practice of Depth Hypnosis. This certification grants you Journey Membership in the Foundation of the Sacred Stream’s community. As a member in this membership category, you will receive a quarterly newsletter, news and updates of community events, and the opportunity to participate in a reduced tuition program for other classes.

Professional Journey Membership
Upon completion of the Depth Hypnosis Practitioner Program, you will receive certification as a Depth Hypnosis Spiritual Counseling Practitioner. This certification grants you Professional Journey Membership in the Foundation of the Sacred Stream’s community. As a member in this membership category, you will receive a quarterly newsletter, news and updates of community events, receive an invitation to a yearly member’s retreat, and receive client referrals from the Foundation.

Depth Hypnosis

Depth Hypnosis is a highly effective therapeutic model that combines Buddhism, shamanism, transpersonal psychology, energy medicine, and hypnotherapy.

Applied Shamanism
The Applied Shamanism Training Program is a powerful, in-depth course of study in Applied Shamanism. It teaches core shamanic principles and techniques that will help you gain a better understanding of the nature of reality, and effect positive changes in your life and the world around you.

Integrated Energy Medicine
The Integrated Energy Medicine Training Program is for anyone interested in gaining greater knowledge of the energetic systems that underlie physical, mental, and emotional health.

Buddhist Psychology Studies
The Buddhist Psychology Studies program is for those who would like to understand the deeper workings of the mind and heart from a non-western perspective.

Ordinary reality." These realms can also be referred to as the "seen" and "unseen" worlds. To the Shaman, there is no difference between the factual and experiential reality of these two worlds.

Today, shamanic practitioners are in a unique position to effect change on many levels. They are informed by modern medicine and psychological thought, and grounded in the wisdom of the ancients, addressing maladies with assurance and understanding. Unlike western medical thought, shamans recognize that even the slightest trauma has potentially negative long-term effects, and they will often perform soul retrievals for surgeries, births, and the loss of loved ones. The study of shamanism offers a fresh perspective on the nature of healing and provides effective methods for maintaining health on a mental, emotional, and physical level.

About Integrated Energy Medicine

Integrated Energy Medicine is a delicate balance of the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual states. Whenever one of these states is out of balance with the others, a person's overall system becomes imbalanced. This can result in severe emotional and psychological states such as depression, eating disorders, and addiction, as well as physical illnesses ranging from cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic fatigue, to name just a few. Energetic imbalance can also manifest subtly in the form of mood fluctuations, headaches, and other less serious issues.

For thousands of years, many cultures, tribes, and societies have recognized that there are complex energy systems within the body. When maintained properly, these energetic systems contribute to the overall health and well-being of an individual. Also common to these cultures is the idea that there is a subtle energy body or animating force in each of us. This animating force is called chi in Chinese medicine, prana in India, ki in Japan, mana in the Huna tradition of Hawaii, and the soul in many spiritual traditions of western civilization.

Interestingly, science is now closer than ever to lending support to these ancient claims. Einstein's Theory of Relativity showed that matter is made up of energy packets called quanta. He essentially proved that energy underlies everything in the universe and he set into motion a serious study of energy, which continues to evolve today.

What energy is and where it comes from is still a mystery. However, the study of energy in physics for the past century has helped usher into our society a new understanding of energy and how it operates in the universe. This has paved the way for the combining of intuitive and scientific methods of healing and the merging of eastern healing techniques, and western medicine. These new combinations are creating innovative and highly effective ways of healing the body and mind.

The Four Noble Truths, the Eight Fold Path, Boddhichita, the dharma, the sangha, meditation (Vipassana, Samatha), taking refuge and reincarnation are just some of what will be explored in the Buddhist Psychology Studies Program.

Although Buddhism is primarily viewed as a religion, at its heart it is a very sophisticated system for understanding the deeper workings of the self. Different schools of Buddhist thought focus on different aspects of practice. This program is non-dogmatic, and takes a “pan-Buddhist” approach as it draws from wisdom that has been developed in several different schools of Buddhism.

No previous knowledge of Buddhism is necessary. Those who do have experience with Buddhist practice will find fresh understanding in the application of Buddhist perspectives to western therapeutic paradigms.

The Buddhist Psychology Studies Program is divided into several parts: BPS 1, BPS 2, BPS 3 and a Continuing Studies Program. There is also a Buddhist Ethics class designed for professionals. (CEUs are available for all of our Buddhist Psychology courses.)

Dreams
The information we receive in dreams can serve as a vehicle for deepening our relationship to our deeper self. The tremendous amount of guidance we receive every night usually escapes us – either because we do not recognize its significance or because we do not know how to translate the information held in dream images and states.

In this class, you will learn how to explore the meanings held in dreams from several different vantage points. An innovative method for tracking energetic patterns held in dreams will be presented here. You will learn how to use these energetic patterns as a blueprint for understanding normally hard-to-access information held deep within the self.

Introduction to the Shamanic Journey

The shamanic journey is one of the oldest technologies for understanding the world of spirit and energy. It has been the foundation of spiritual and healing practices of vast numbers of cultures for thousands of years. Today, the shamanic journey still offers a dependable method for exploring the psyche and accessing inner wisdom.
In this class you will learn to sustain a journeying practice that will help you:
   •    heal parts of yourself you have had difficulty accessing
   •    problem solve for yourself and others
   •    serve others effectively and efficiently
   •    understand the nature of different levels of consciousness

Applied Shamanism Level I

Much of the work performed by Shamans takes place within the Middle World. In the Applied Shamanism Foundation Course, Level I, you'll learn how to safely navigate the Middle World, while minimizing fear and deepening your trust in yourself. You will learn about the nature of the Middle World and the healing that occurs within it. Some of the core shamanic methods of healing taught in Level I include Power Retrieval, Divination, and Distance Healing.

Applied Shamanism Level II

In the Applied Shamanism Foundation Course, Level II, you will learn to work safely and effectively with two core methods of shamanic healing: Soul Retrieval and Psychopomp. Soul Retrieval is a powerful shamanic healing technique that yields profound change. Psychopomp refers to "the guiding of souls", and provides a deeper understanding of the nature of death.

DEPTH HYPNOSIS

Using Depth Hypnosis Techniques to Treat Abuse

By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

In my Depth Hypnosis practice, I work with many survivors of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Most survivors have developed defenses around the abuse and the memory of it, and although this may be helpful at the time, it prevents the survivor from fully integrating the emotions of the experience. The key to healing abuse involves remembering the experience, and integrating the emotions that are associated with the abuse—emotions such as fear, pain, or betrayal, for example. Depth Hypnosis offers a variety of useful techniques for helping survivors move past the defenses they have developed around their memories of the abuse.

Because most defenses are formulated unconsciously, they are most easily accessed through the unconscious. Often the survivor is not aware that they are defended, or that they are being affected by the experience they are defending against. By helping the client become aware of their defenses and by exploring their nature, it is possible to transform them.

The establishment of safety is essential to this process. The survivor needs to know that the transformation of defenses will not leave him or her helpless and out of control. By bringing the survivor into contact with the essential self through guided imagery and meditation, we establish both a base to work from and a goal to work toward. In effect, we create a container of safety in which to hold all of the emotions, and protect the survivor while they explore their issue and the nature of their defenses.

When I work with abuse survivors, I am less interested in laying down historical fact than in understanding the nature of the person's subjective experience. This idea of staying close to the person's subjective experience regardless of actual external events becomes particularly important when hypnosis has been used as part of the abuse. How hypnosis is used in an abusive situation is broad in scope, but it can be understood simply as suggestions that nothing happened, they are making it up, or threats to the victim that if they say anything they will be hurt. These kinds of suggestions to the victim are powerful and they contribute to the victim's denial about the abuse, not remembering it, or reconstructing the events. This is done to remain safe and, in the case of children especially, to survive into adulthood.

I have found that there is always some level of cognitive dissonance to the hypnotic suggestions laid down during or after abuse. That is to say, there is some feeling on the part of the survivor that something is not quite right around the issues that have been the subject of hypnotic suggestion. The sensation that something is not quite right may manifest as uneasiness, strongly defended irrational ideas, or a complete unwillingness to look at the idea that something is not quite right.

I believe this dissonance arises from the fact that the hypnotic suggestions given during or after abuse do not jive with the person's authentic experience and sense of self. The mind during the abuse is so open to manipulation, that the suggestions take seat in the person's psyche. But because they are paired with the abuse and generally are contrary to authentic experience, the suggestions register as an uneasy feeling.

One survivor, I will refer to as Jim, was hypnotized as part of his abuse. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon experience for abuse victims. In this case, Jim shares many things in common with other survivors I’ve worked with, survivers who have all been hypnotized as part of their abuse. When Jim first came to me, he was unaware that he was a survivor of severe parental abuse. In fact, he vehemently stated again and again that his mother loved him very much. The vehemence in these statements was a red flag for me, and I filed this information away without realizing where it would take us. We then continued the process of working on Jim’s physician-diagnosed attention deficit disorder (ADD). Jim had been on medication for ADD for over a year, but was it was having no effect.

As the abuse memories began to surface when we explored the roots of the ADD, Jim was often aware of a very bright light in the middle of the surfacing images. When I asked him to focus on the light, Jim began to repeat the same phrases again and again. One such session revealed the following set of phrases:

Your mommy loves you, no matter what anyone else says. You just fell down. Your knee is only a little scraped. Those bruises happened when you fell. Poor Jim, mommy helped you fix your knee and made it better. No matter what anyone else says, you know this is true. Your mommy loves you every day, more and more. And when you look at your knee remember your mommy loves you. Your mommy loves you more and more each day."

It took me a moment to realize that he had been told to look at a bright light while classically-formulated hypnotic suggestions were told to him after he experienced abuse. Because of this, I realized that it would be necessary to uncover all of the hypnotic suggestions that had been given to him during or after abuse.

After a great deal of work, we discovered many different abusive situations where hypnotic suggestion had been used to distort Jim’s memory. The presence of the light became a helpful sign in knowing when we were dealing with these suggestions during our Depth Hypnosis sessions. In subsequent sessions, whenever the light appeared, I would ask him to look into the light and just allow his lips to move. Each time revealed a new hypnotic suggestion and a new memory of abuse.

In order to rid Jim's psyche of the cognitive dissonance causing his ADD, we had to remove the effect of the original suggestions by his mother. To do this, I asked Jim to write out a series of suggestions that would replace those of his perpetrator. While Jim was in a light trance, I would repeat his suggestions to him. Having Jim write his own hypnotic suggestions was important to the healing process. He was taking control of his own process and his own psyche, therefore empowering himself against the intrusion of his mother—an intrusion that had existed in his psyche for forty years.

The new suggestions would not have been able to take hold, had Jim not dealt with his rage and sadness over the abuse. We spent many sessions addressing his emotions and integrating the retrieved memories of abuse into his consciousness. It took a great deal of courage for him to be able to see the physical abuse and to understand how it distorted his ability to concentrate. It was even more difficult to integrate the emotions of betrayal by his mother and how it had cost him not only his memory and ability to focus, but his ability to trust himself at the root of the ADD.

Depth Hypnosis provided a series of techniques to uncover the abuse, as well as the hypnotic suggestions that were hiding it. Today, Jim is still coming to terms with many aspects of being identified as an abuse survivor, but his attention problems have been greatly reduced. He is now able to focus and tap into his will to live in ways that were impossible for him before he began this process. Now he is regaining the ability to trust his own experience and make decisions based on it.

Using Depth Hypnosis With Eating Disorders

By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

Eating disorders are a common presenting problem in the West. Mainstream psychotherapists categorize these disorders according to the specific behaviors involved, providing different diagnoses for someone who binges and purges (a bulimic), as opposed to someone who withdraws from food (an anorexic.) This seems to imply a nascent understanding of the different energetic patterns underlying each disorder. However, mainstream psychotherapy generally fails to trace this understanding down to the origin of the disorder within a person’s psyche.

I resist making generalizations about the causes of any disorder, as I have found that each person has her own unique path to imbalance. In order to resolve that imbalance, it is important to identify the path, and to unravel the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical threads that have created the pattern.

In my experience, looking closely at a client’s relationship with food teaches me a great deal about the client’s relationship with his or her source of life energy. Although food is tangible and life energy is not, both nurture us. Thus, the relationship with food can be seen as a metaphor for how we do or do not allow ourselves to be fed or nurtured at deeper levels. If I do not take the opportunity to listen to what the relationship with food demonstrates about the unconscious processes taking place at these levels, it is difficult to get a shift in the presenting disorder. The following short case study illustrates these principles.

Alice was painfully thin. She ate very little most of the time. When hunger overcame her, she would binge-eat on sweets. Then she would lapse into a deep depression, once again eating very little. And then the cycle would start over again. She had no close relationships, but she occasionally had one-night stands, in which she would have sex most of the night and then never see the person again. Before our conversations, she had not made a connection between her patterns with food and with sex.

Other therapists had primarily looked at ways of stopping Alice’s eating disorder. However solutions aimed at directly changing the pattern–behavior modification, calorie counting and nutritional counseling–had had little effect on Alice’s disorder, or had helped only briefly.

In contrast, the question in my mind became, “What is Alice medicating with these starvation and bingeing cycles?” In my years of practice, I have learned that imbalances that move between two poles are generally fueled by a major underlying imbalance about which the client is not consciously aware. The main western therapeutic solution to “bi-polar” type disorders is to medicate them. In contrast, my approach reflects my understanding that the movement between the two poles is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger unconscious issue. It is that issue which needs to be investigated and resolved, in order for the movement between the two poles to cease.

When I used the Depth Hypnosis technique called Insight Inquiry and light trance work to dive beneath Alice’s behavior patterns, more information began to emerge. It became clear that self-hatred was the primary emotion that came up after her binge cycles. It was this self-hatred that she then responded to with the withholding and starvation part of the cycle. When we did more in-depth trance work to follow this self-hatred to its root, we re-visited several times in her childhood when she had been unkind to her sister. She had judged herself very harshly for this, unconsciously telling herself, “You are so bad for hurting your sister that you don’t deserve to have food.” In a larger, more metaphorical context, this translated as, “You are so bad for hurting your sister that you don’t deserve to have what you want or need.”

Alice’s memories of the incidents when she had hurt her sister had been completely blocked by her conscious mind, and by the layers of shame she had placed around them. This made the conclusions outlined above completely unavailable to her. Nevertheless, these conclusions were running her eating disorder, and by the time she came to me, the eating disorder was running her life. It was both a result of her self-hatred (the withholding cycle), a medication for it (the binging cycle where she sought comfort from the withholding), and ultimately a means of compounding and deepening the self-hatred that had started the whole pattern. Like most people caught in addictive patterns, she had made the initial generating emotion (in this case, self-hatred) much worse through the activity of the addiction.

In order to resolve the underlying issue, I worked with Alice by removing energetic interference and using soul retrievals, age regressions, forgiveness and integration techniques. Through this work, it became evident that Alice had not had the rosy childhood she had believed she had (she had been telling herself this partly to mask the memories of unkindness to her sister). In fact, these unkindnesses had taken place within the larger context of her own serious abuse at the hands of her father, and her mother’s refusal to acknowledge those abuses.

When we unraveled these memories, Alice was able to begin to forgive herself. As a result, her eating disorder began to shift. Our work together took place over the course of a year – at the end of which she was neither starving herself nor bingeing. In addition, she had begun to date rather than having one-night stands.

For me, the most radical aspect of Depth Hypnosis is that it does not spend much time on the surface dynamics of a problem, as traditional therapeutic models might do. In Depth Hypnosis, the disorder is understood to be only a doorway into the much larger context of a person’s experience.

Using Depth Hypnosis Techniques to Treat PTSD

By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is a surprisingly pervasive disorder suffered by hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone. Formerly referred to as shell shock in WWI and WWII soldiers and later named Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Vietnam veterans coming home from the war, it is now recognized by the American Psychological Association (APA) as a legitimate psychological disorder, affecting many people, military and otherwise. The causes of PTSD vary, but the common factor is usually a traumatizing event. Any long or short-term event, such as an accident or physical abuse, can permanently affect a person and cause PTSD.

Modern psychology has been helpful in describing and categorizing the ways in which PTSD presents itself in the form of panic, dissociation, hallucinations and other phenomena. However, the attempts of the APA and others to understand the disorder have yet to provide any substantial long-term alleviation of it. In most cases, medications are prescribed to address the symptoms of panic and lack of sleep, but they do not offer definitive ways of resolving the underlying causes.

Depth Hypnosis is a therapeutic model that does offer an effective method for working with PTSD type symptoms. The alleviation of these symptoms depends upon identifying the traumatizing event and then integrating the emotions that were not processed at the time of the event. Depth Hypnosis provides the practitioner with techniques for identifying these symptoms related to PTSD, and for integrating the event and its severe effects within the client's psyche. In order for this to happen, the practitioner must create a safe space that enables the client to enter the time and place where the trauma occurred, allow abreaction to the extent that the client feels safe to do so, help the client transform their relationship to the trauma, and integrate the experience into the client’s being.

I have worked with numerous clients suffering from PTSD type symptoms and Depth Hypnosis has been effective in improving or entirely alleviating symptoms in most of them. One of my clients described her experience with physical childhood abuse as "beaten dog syndrome". She explained how, as an adult, she still involuntarily flinches when someone yells or moves towards her too quickly, much like an abused dog will flinch when you raise a hand to it. The more debilitating affects of this abuse manifest in my client's lack of confidence, fear of confrontation, depression, Attention Deficit Disorder, and suicidal thoughts.

When my client first started seeing me for counseling, it was to address a problem she had with confrontation and depression. Whenever she experienced confrontation, she shut down and was sometimes debilitated for days. I began by questioning her about her childhood and using a Depth Hypnosis technique called Insight Inquiry, I discovered that she had been abused by both parents as a child. During this process, it took some time for my client to see and acknowledge the abuse. She had been under the impression that her childhood had been good and that the punishments she endured, including beatings with belts and being locked alone in a room for hours at a time, were normal and that she deserved the punishment.

It took many months to reach the core traumatizing event, a severe beating with a belt by her father, which took place when my client was four years old. This was not a new memory for my client, although her recollection of the event had always been void of emotion. After doing light trance work for several sessions however, my client was able to get in touch with the full emotion of the event and gain even more of the memories surrounding it. In the trance she recalled the shock of betrayal as her father, a person she loved so much, turned on her. She was bewildered because she felt responsible and did not understand what she had done to cause this event to happen. She also realized that a memory that she thought was unrelated, was actually part of the same event.

It is interesting to note that my client was so overwhelmed by the fear and pain caused by this particular beating that her mind actually compartmentalized the memory, breaking it down into manageable segments. When my client was finally able to go back and relive the event in a hypnotic state and see more clearly what had happened, she was able to integrate the separate parts back into one whole memory of the traumatizing event. The following are the words of my client, reprinted by permission:

"What I remember is my father dragging me down the hall. I was crying "No Daddy. Please Daddy.' I had done something wrong, though I don't know what and he was pissed. He made me pull down my pants and lay face down on the bed. I think I checked out then, because I can't remember the physical pain or how long it lasted. It seemed like a pretty long time. My next memory is of me sitting on my bed looking out the window and thinking that the whole world was over. I can only describe it as something in me had left. It had died. I then recall sitting in front of my dresser with my baby clothes trying to put them on. I think I must have been left alone in my room for a pretty long time because during the beating it was light outside and when I was trying on the clothes it was dark."

Using Depth Hypnosis techniques, I worked with this client to transform her relationship to the traumatic event and dismantle the defenses she has built-up in reaction to it. As a result, she is now better able to handle confrontation and she reports that her depression has lessened and her suicidal thoughts have dissipated. We also spent many more sessions integrating her memory of the traumatizing event by going deeply into her anger and fear while she was in a safe space. She also did the important work of connecting with the part of her that she described as “having died” at the time of the event, and we integrated the powerful emotional content contained there. It is important to note that Depth Hypnosis techniques do not involve simple suggestion hypnosis or rescripting of the traumatic event. Instead, it provides an in-depth exploration into the psyche, and the places where the psyche stores memory and trauma. It is a process in which the client always actively participates.

While Depth Hypnosis is not the only means of alleviating symptoms of PTSD and other psychological disorders, it does seem to help clients on a long-term basis. There is a great deal that we do not understand about the psyche and trauma related disorders, but through work of this kind, we can learn more about PTSD and ourselves in general. In the end, it is the courage and hard work of the clients who make healing possible.

Hypnosis: The Secular Sacrament (Part 1)

By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

I often think of hypnosis as a secular sacrament. At first glance, "secular sacrament" appears to be an oxymoron. How can something sacred, and therefore traditionally a part of the religious community within a society, be the same thing as something secular, and therefore a part of the political and socio-economic community of a society? This chapter will show how hypnosis functions as a secular sacrament yet remains outside of the trappings of the larger cultural and social realities.

What is the process of hypnosis which allows it to function as a sacrament and, in so do doing, bring us to an experience of the sacred? Hypnosis functions as one of many possible catalysts to bring us to an experience of ourselves at a soul level by revealing our most deeply-held needs, motivations and desires. The hypnotic state is an altered state of consciousness described by all cultures, but it takes different forms in different cultures. Some of these forms of experience include the experience of the self through the use of mind-expanding drugs, meditation, chanting, singing, extreme physical exertion, and prayer. Hypnotism as used by western practitioners today was rediscovered and redefined in the last century by Mesmer, Jung, Erikson, and Freud and others.

The sacred allows us direct experience of the reality of our being beyond the filter of culture. People experience this core level of being in different ways. People who meditate may describe it as becoming part of phenomena rather than observing it. People who pray deeply may describe this experience as a sense of one-ness with God. Those who take psychogenic drugs may describe the same experience as having their usual personal perspective superseded by a more expansive, all-inclusive understanding of reality.

Naturally, the culture where we are raised is bound to influence the way we describe this experience. But although culture and its structures may affect the path we take, they cannot ultimately influence or change us at a soul-level. This always remains beyond the reach of acculturation.

Because the hypnotic state is common to almost all cultures even though it is understood in different ways, much can be learned about this altered state of consciousness by looking at how different cultures view it. In some cultures, the use of hypnosis to touch the realms of the sacred is revered. In others, such as our own, it is not widely valued. In cultures where the understanding of the self and an acquaintance with the reality of the soul are considered to be instrumental to the maintenance of the dominant culture, the hypnotic state is sought out. It is considered to be an important tool with which to understand the nature of the reality which lies beyond acculturation. In traditional cultures, shamans and medicine men are the keepers of this knowledge. Non-shamans in such societies may or may not come to their own experience of the world of the sacred to which the hypnotic trance is just one door. But they respect and understand the shaman's or medicine man's abilities to enter it. Following are some brief illustrations of shamanic practice in different cultures which illuminate the ways in which the hypnotic trance is used to experience the sacred.

In Shaman's Drum, Winter, 1996, William S. Lyon, Ph.D. reports on the Lakota (Sioux) Yuwipi ceremony which has been documented by other anthropologists as well. The Yuwipi is a ceremony designed to address physical and sometimes psychological dislocation or imbalance within the tribe. This ceremony is conducted by a medicine man of great personal skill and experience who is able to handle the intense powers associated with the ceremony. All the of the members of the community recognize the value of the ceremony which is often reflected in the return to balance of the patient. The patient is often in an altered state during the ceremony and the shaman is in a deeply altered state. This state is called a hypnotic trance in the west. It functions in renewing a connection with the sacred nature of the experience of the self at a soul level. This may be done by retrieving parts of the self that have been disconnected from the larger self through trauma or illness. Yuwipi ceremonies are conducted as needed to heal various physical illnesses, including cancer, multiple sclerosis, AIDS and asthma. At times, it is used to treat those who are experiencing what, in Western terms, would be considered psychotic episodes. The ceremony has a uniting effect in bringing the different parts of the patient together into present time. It has the same uniting effect of bringing the community together as the community witnesses the shaman assisting the person for whom the ceremony is conducted into better communication with his inner life. In this context, there is minimal conflict between an individual experiencing the sacred through the institutions of the culture.

In the same edition of Shaman's Drum, Carol Cumes and Romulo Valencia report on the festival of Q'ollorit'i which is held by the Q'ero people of Andes mountains in the book, Pachamama's Children: Mother Earth & Her Children of the Andes in Peru.. They describe this annual festival as the most sacred festival of the Andean year. The point of the festival is to bring the individual into deep communication between his inner life and the mysterious energies of the cosmos. Rather than perceiving this inter-communication as a threat to the order of the society, it is viewed as an event which brings the community into harmony and order. Some of the ceremonies associated with the festival are conducted by priests, some of whom incorporate elements from the Catholic religion. Again, we have an example of a cultural institution which helps the individual reestablish his connection with the sacredness of his being on a soul level.

In the Fall, 1995, issue of Shaman's Drum, there is a description of Flora Jones' initiation into the role of shaman. She is a member of the Wintu tribe of northern California.

At the age of seventeen came the climactic event of her calling - her first trance. She was engrossed in a card game with friends when, without warning, her ears were filled with a ringing sound and a burning pain. "It was like a hot bullet going through my ear," she recalled. "The pain went through me and I passed out for four days." Years later, she viewed this traumatic experience as her first ecstatic encounter with a helping spirit. She awoke from her prolonged unconsciousness singing. With her were four older Wintu shamans, who had cared for her, administering medicine and taking her to sacred places to pray.

If an individual were to undergo such an event in the context of most western cultures today, it is unlikely that her experience would be recognized as a voyage to the sacred calling within her. Even if religious authorities almost of any persuasion were called, it is unlikely that they would recognize the experience as anything other than one which would require some sort of curative measure. But within the Wintu tradition, there is a culturally-understood place for ecstatic encounters of this nature. These types of experiences are viewed as deepening both the community's and the individual's connection with the sacred. This culture does not see the individual's direct connection to the divine as a threat to religious or cultural hegemony; it welcomes it as quite the opposite.

Within the mystical traditions of many organized religions, there are stories of spiritual awakening through the 'dark night of the soul. ' The individual undergoes a severe psychological or emotional crisis which brings him to a wider understanding of himself. Ideally, this understanding is allowed to remain one of intense, personal and direct connection with the divine. It is within this context that organized religion could accommodate the individual encounter with the divine. Hopefully, these religious institutions can allow the person who has such an experience the freedom to explore his psyche. Hopefully, the structure of religion acts as a light-handed guidance through the experience. Ideally, the institution does not feel threatened by such individualistic understanding and does not seek to limit such experiences.

Because religions, by their nature, are group events, their authorities can sometimes feel threatened by an individual who experiences the divine without the mediation of religious authorities who seek to create group cohesion. It is simply a conflict of interest. The group seeks to perpetuate itself, and to do that it must have the cooperation of its members. The individual seeks to know himself, and he may choose to know himself with or without the filter of the group. Traditional religions in many "civilized" cultures of both the east and the west have had a stake in mediating the religious experience of their members. To the extent a priest or a guru can control or influence a follower's experience of the divine, his control and authority is measured and exerted. And the group is perpetuated. This may not be the goal of a person seeking self-understanding with as few filters as possible.

If one is to believe the accounts in many organized religions' scriptures, people in the distant past did have intercourse with their deeper selves which were accepted by that religion. People did have experiences with the sacred, which have been described as encounters with God. Descriptions of these experiences form some of the most basic teachings of the Bible. In Genesis, we have the following description of one of Adam's and Eve's encounters with God:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

David has a similar encounter in Chronicles:

He raised his eyes, and saw the Angel of Yahwe hovering between the Earth and the heavens and his drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem.

Such mystical encounters do not often find a place within the confines of many religious practices today because they tend to break or stretch the tradition set out in ancient scripture. It is important for religious institutions to maintain tradition in order to keep the religious institution in place, so people who have such non-traditional, non-ordinary experiences often find it difficult to find meaning within the context of traditional liturgy.

But there are people who have had these sorts of experiences since the Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads, and other ancient holy books were written. Indeed, these encounters with the sacred are quite common in hypnotic states. I have experienced them personally and many people I work with have experienced them as well. Outside of the context of the secular sacrament of hypnosis, these events can be viewed with some consternation by the arbiters of some societal institutions.

But, because of the force of conviction born in those who have such an experience some religious authorities may recognize this phenomenon. Some organizations will even encourage this type of divine encounter, but they will stop short of leaving the individual to discern his own understandings from it. Rather, the authorities tend to make the encounter a reason for the experiencer to bring more people to the institution. This intention may be a good one in the eyes of the group, which needs to perpetuate itself in order to continue to exist, but it may interfere with personal self understanding.

I had an encounter with a member of a Christian Pentecostal church. It is one of those institutions which encourages its members to have personal mystical encounters as a way of perpetuating itself. I found this melding of the personal encounter with the sacred within the context of the group a very intriguing blend of personal mysticism and group dynamics.

I met Mr. Young when he was attending the death bed of his father at the hospice where I work. I had been struck by his devotion to his father and his willingness, which I did not observe in his siblings, to be present in a very difficult and painful situation. I asked him if he was a member of his father's Catholic church. He told me he had joined a Pentecostal congregation because there was no Catholic church in the town where he lived. He then told me the following story as I asked him questions.

"I was praying one day when suddenly I heard the most beautiful song."

Q: What was the song?

A: Birds. It was a music I have never heard on earth. Heavenly music.

Q: What color were the birds?

A: I could not see them I could only hear them.

Q: Where were they in relation to you?

A: They were singing in my left ear.

Q: How many birds were there?

A: Three

Q: How did you know there were three if you could not see them?

A: I just knew there were three. I could hear their wings.

Q: What did you think when you heard them?

A: I was very happy. I was never so happy in my whole life.

Q: What happened then?

A: I went and told my pastor and the congregation about the music. They all rejoiced and prayed for me. Then I began speaking in tongues.

Q: Did you recognize the language?

A: No. It was just sounds repeated over and over like, 'Oo lai lai, oo lai lai,' like that.

Q: How did you feel when you heard yourself speaking in tongues?

A: I was very joyful. I told God all the bad things about me and he forgave me. Now I have forgiveness in my heart.

Q: How has this experience affected your life?

A: Well, I must tell everyone about this. Because anyone who has not experienced Jesus as his personal savior will go to Hell. Even if they are good people and do good things, they will go to Hell if they do not have this experience of Christ. And they will never get out of Hell. So I was very anxious to have my father accept Jesus as his personal savior before he died so he would go to heaven.

Q: Did he accept Jesus as his personal savior even though he is a devout Catholic?

A: Oh, yes. I am very happy. He will go to heaven now. I am very happy that I have helped him in this way.

Q: What other effects has this experience had in your life?

A: Before I used to think about making money all the time, and material things, but now I just think about saving as many people as I can from Hell by bringing them into my church.

The experience of the birds was outside of Mr. Young's dominant reality. He had never heard this music before. In terms of symbology, we have the three birds, messengers of the trinity, a symbol common to all religions. And we have divine music, another common feature of the encounter with the divine in many contexts. This is a wonderfully inspiring personal experience of the greater reality of the self at a soul level. This is the reality which underlies the dominant cultural conscious-mind based reality, which is the only reality most people think they live and die in.

Less inspiring is the church's definition of this experience as a calling to save all non-believers from Hell by having them join the church. The church established itself as an arbitrator of the divine in Mr. Young's life. It had ready-made explanations for him which might have a tangential relationship to the experience of personal transformation which can result from such an encounter. This tangential relationship to what is the truth of Mr. Young's personal encounter with God gives the church credibility in Mr. Young's eyes. It allows him to surrender the experience to the church. But he must do it in such a way as to rally new members to the church in order for it to continue its hegemony. If he does not, he has no way to integrate this divine encounter into his dominant cultural model or his sense of self. The church has perpetuated itself by drawing Mr. Young's experience of God and putting it toward the furtherment of its own goals. Given the fact that again, the church is a group phenomenon, it needs to do this to maintain the group.

Naturally, Mr. Young has allowed this to happen. It is his choice to find this context for this completely mind-altering experience. To choose to do otherwise could possibly lead him down the path of madness - or set him on the equally-daunting course toward an ever-expanding journey of self-knowledge

Hypnosis: The Secular Sacrament (Part 2)

By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

The dominant cultural reality in the West does not have a model for this type of experience outside a few narrowly-defined religious experiences. Therefore, some people are willing to give away responsibility for the power of their sometimes-accidental personal encounter with the sacred reality of themselves. This allows them to keep from losing their moorings in the culturally-accepted definitions of conscious-mind reality. The religious institutions which accept this responsibility find that they can survive by explaining and defining what seems to be undefinable and unexplainable.

This fear of losing an understanding of "what is going on" and the fear of the loss of context into which we can plug that understanding is exactly what makes us agree to hand over our power to any institution. Generally speaking, we tend to hand over that power to the institutions of the society in which we live. In return, we are granted the safety and security of being told that our encounter with the unknown can be managed for us. This is, in fact, the basis of all acculturation. It can also be the beginning of the obstruction of the path toward the Self. This is particularly true if the culture in which this occurs does not have the preservation of the individual's connection with the sacred as one of its primary goals.

When hypnosis is used to create a vehicle to bring us into connection with the sacred, it has the capacity to bring us to a different perspective of society and its institutions. It allows us the direct experience of our own inner life processes. It allows us a glimpse of the sacred which lies beyond the mediation of any institution in defining the nature of our relationship with ourselves. The need for a secular sacrament, devoid of the hidden agenda of any political, economic or religious establishment becomes evident if the West is to maintain any pathway at all to that reality which many traditional cultures recognize as the domain of the sacred. This is also, of course, the domain of the soul.

Because of our need for safety from the chaos of the unexplainable, our need for a way to contact ourselves at a soul level can seem like a dangerous concept. This is because that journey can take us into parts of ourselves which are not easily known or explained. This is a perceived danger for the institutions of many modern cultures as well as for those of us who live in those cultures. The danger in knowing who we are beyond the confines of the roles we choose or are forced to play by the society in which we live is clear. It is dangerous to societal institutions because it is very likely that at least some of us will not choose to remain yoked to the dominant cultural reality. When we perceive that our experience of life need not be veiled by the intervention of society or its institutions, we may decide to withdraw our support from them. It is dangerous to us individually because the path to the experience of ourselves at a soul level can pass by the gates of what Jung calls the shadow: that part of ourselves which contains all of our fears of what awful thing we might be.

Karl Jung who provides many valuable insights into the topography of the unconscious, identifies the shadow as one of the more salient features of the mind. The shadow is the part of our mind where we relegate that which is unacceptable to the image of ourselves we wish to project into the world. For instance, if we wish to be seen as a generous person, we may relegate our tendencies toward greed and avarice to the shadow. In doing so, we lose conscious knowledge of our greed. This is convenient because we can then pretend that we are only generous, and never have to admit our greed to ourselves. Unfortunately, when we cut off communication between parts of ourselves which we perceive to be unacceptable from the larger self, they cannot be integrated into a our sense of self. This is intolerable to the self which is functioning at a soul level because it longs to be whole. The self longs to embrace and understand even that which our idealized image of ourselves would reject. In my practice, I have noticed that whatever we have relegated to the shadow is actually "running the show" in creating our conscious-mind reality. This is because it wants to be seen and integrated into the larger self.

An example of how the shadow functions can be find in a young man named Fred. Fred was born into a family void of emotional warmth. He was sent off to boarding school at an early age, and the abandonment he felt being cast out of the family made him feel fearful and powerless. But, because he had to survive in a complex and daunting world with very little support, he could not function from a place of fear or powerlessness. Or, at least, he could not let himself know he was functioning from a place of powerlessness and fear. So he relegated powerless and fear to the shadow and created an idealized image of himself which was powerful and fearless. He became very aggressive and domineering. This demonstrated itself first at school: he became an A+ student and a star athlete. But he was moved to a new school where he could not compete at his former level. He then did all he could to re-establish himself in a powerful position in relationship to his family by agreeing to support them financially. But they never offered him the respect he craved in taking this obligation on; he was ultimately abandoned by them again because they only wanted his money. And finally, in relationships with women he established himself as a Don Juan which he felt gave him the upper hand. But, finally he was betrayed by a woman who would not play by the rules and left him rather than remain dependent on his sexual prowess. Each time, he was returned to a state of powerless and fear which was unacceptable, and each time he would redouble his efforts at creating an idealized image based on power and courage. By the time he came to me, he was exhausted and defeated by cycle after cycle of moving away from powerlessness and fear. Through our work together he learned to embrace the powerlessness and fear he had once rejected and he was able to create a life which was much more stable and which brought him much more satisfaction because it was not based on this movement away from what he had relegated to the shadow. As the contents of the shadow became integrated into his larger sense of self, he became much more powerful than he had ever been in trying to run from them.

But most of us do not use the opportunity provided by what we may perceive as 'bad luck' or failure to integrate what we have relegated to the shadow. By disconnecting the contents of the shadow from our larger self, we feed the disconnection with ourselves at a soul level. The dominant conscious-mind reality wittingly or unwittingly encourages this because its main agenda is to perpetuate the idealized image. This idealized image is generally caught up in measuring itself against the standards and morals of the dominant-mind reality. We lose our ability to communicate with ourselves at a soul level by agreeing to perpetuate the idealized image of ourselves which participates in the structures of the dominant-mind reality. We lose contact with whatever does not fit into our idealized image when we relegate qualities which we perceive to be unacceptable to the shadow. Then, we begin to fear what we no longer know.

When we decide to undertake the journey to begin to rediscover what we have refused to see, we need maps which help us recognize where we are. Hypnotherapy, when applied correctly, provides this context as our connection with the soul level reality of ourselves is allowed to unfold. This happens through our encounter with all the dimensions of our being which the altered state of the hypnotic trance opens to us. The hypnotic trance also helps to gently remove the interference of the defenses to this experience of ourselves at this level. These are the defenses which have been generated and cultivated by our interaction with the dominant, conscious-mind cultural reality through our need to perpetuate an idealized self-image. The process of letting this idealized self-image dissolve into true self-knowing ultimately allows us to experience that sense of personal power the encounter with the soul outside the cultural context provides.

To be sure, the unethical use of hypnosis can lead to serious invasions of the individual's psychic space when used irresponsibly. Later in the book, I give an example of the effect the unethical use of hypnosis can have within the psyche of an abuse survivor. In no way do I support the use of hypnosis in this way, yet it is interesting to note how different organs within the dominant culture have howled against such incursions when they, themselves indulge in a type of appropriation of the individual's internal psychic space.

An example of this kind of incursion is easily seen by examining the way television is used by the institutions of dominant-mind reality. To be fair, all forms of culture participate in this kind of mind control to varying extents, but few other cultures have had such an ideal homogenizer of individual experience as television. Television meets so many requirements as the perfect tool for external control that it is used by almost all the organs of society, including the religious, political and economic establishments to help them mold the individual's experience of reality.

Television provides a comfort zone of virtual experience for those for whom direct experience of the dominant reality, (much less the experience of ourselves at a soul level) has become too dangerous. It certainly has the ability to "fix" us in time and space, and thus keep the demons of chaos and uncertainty at bay. Within the context of modern societies, there are few other methods which are so effective in numbing the chaos the avoidance of the direct experience of ourselves creates.

Even our nagging sense of the presence of the shadow, that part of ourselves which encompasses all that we fear, is medicated by the television. It is precisely because we allow the dominant culture and its devices such as television to mediate our relationship with this part of ourselves that we find it so hard to open to the shadow honestly through the tools provided by hypnotherapy. Instead, we numb ourselves through the titillation of the viewing of violence and horror we fear may be lurking within ourselves on the screen of the television. This vicarious experience of horror is externalized and objectified in a virtual reality which does not require us to enter into any kind of meaningful dialogue with the shadow side of ourselves. Such a dialogue would break the television trance and allow us to enter into the direct experience of ourselves at a soul level. This is exactly what hypnotherapy does when it is used as an interactive meditation. It establishes contact with the shadow, which is part of what we are yearning to do both in viewing violence on television and exploring in our desire to establish contact with ourselves at a soul level.

But because we agree to support the requirements of the dominant-mind reality to fix ourselves in time and space and reduce the sense of chaos we often find ourselves in when left to our own devices, we can lose sight of our needs and requirements. Without the ability to draw from our deepest knowing of our needs, we are only left with our interaction with the external reality. Because there are so few avenues to the honest encounter with the ways we have become separated from our deeper levels of experience within the dominant conscious-mind reality, hypnotherapy is invaluable. It provides a path to the sacred encounter with ourselves that few other tools can. It helps locate the source of imbalance and helps us discover within ourselves the tools required to return to balance.

Without the assistance of a hypnotherapist or counselor who is comfortable with the honest encounter with at least some of the realities of the soul, we may become disoriented. Uninformed contact with our shadow selves can lead to us into a state of disorientation. Again, this is why we often willingly agree to remain within the confines of such realities as those defined by televised acculturation. This avoidance of the unknown suits society's institutions because when we are lulled into a false sense of comfort by something like television, we are unlikely to upset the status quo. And the continuation of the status quo perpetuates those establishments. If enough members of society decide to take that step outside of the dominant, conscious-mind cultural reality's trance, this could create a threat to the structure of society's establishments. Ergo, the dire warnings by religious authorities, political figures, legal arbitrators and even psychotherapy professionals against the dangers of hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy does open the doors to the shadow where we have carefully sealed away all that is unacceptable in ourselves or our experience. The shadow has the potential to open the doors to the reality of the sacredness of our experience of ourselves at a soul level. It also has the ability to create chaos and destruction within the fabric of our experience of the dominant culture's institutions. This reality does remain a factor which these institutions and those who live within them must consider. Hypnosis as a secular sacrament has demonstrated itself to be dangerous enough in the process of releasing (and when used properly, transforming) the shadow so that the legal establishment in the U.S. has seen fit to refer the matter to the courts in the context of recovered memory cases. The arbiters of morality have even gone so far as to rule that our memory can never be the same once we have been hypnotized. For this reason, they assume testimony given in court by a person who has been hypnotized is less reliable than that of someone who has not been hypnotized.

It may be true that a person who has been hypnotized has a different sense of reality and memory than a person who has not been hypnotized, but why would a judge find the hypnotized person's memory to be less reliable rather than more reliable? Why wouldn't it be more reliable? Rather than recognizing that our access to past events through the honest encounter of ourselves at a soul level is enhanced once the veil of cultural conditioning is lifted, the court must find it less reliable because it has a stake in maintaining the integrity of that cultural conditioning. When we have had unimpeded contact with our own reality of ourselves at a soul level, unvarnished by the demands of the dominant conscious-mind cultural reality, we may be perceived as a threat to the maintenance of the status quo of that cultural reality. The legal system is charged with arbitrating dominant cultural reality and it, like other societal institutions, cannot afford to admit the possibility that there is another reality which could undermine its authority and influence.

One of the main arguments against the validity of the testimony of a hypnotized person is that the individual may have been hypnotized by someone who has his own agenda. This person may offer suggestions in accordance with that agenda which become part of the individual's experience, but which may not have actually happened. This type of abuse can and does happen. But it is hardly integral to every hypnosis session. Indeed, it is quite the exception. It is possible to use hypnotic patter to alter a person's actual experience. This can be helpful when the patter is used to help shift the individual's relationship to events in a positive way, with the individual's permission and knowledge. But it can cause damage when it is used to shift the individual's relationship to events in a way which is not in harmony with his desires or needs in understanding events . But the damage which arises in these latter events is a function of the dissonance between what actually happened and what the hypnotic patter says happened. The dissonance remains because the subconscious cannot reconcile an inauthentic version of reality introduced by the hypnotic patter with the actual experience of reality. This is especially true when the patter is designed to interfere with the consonance which the self always seeks at all levels of its being.

When such situations within the psyche are approached in hypnosis much is revealed. In my clinical experience, the authentic experience of reality is almost always recognized as such. Hypnotic suggestions used to screen actual experience are almost always revealed to be what they are. This is particularly true when these experiences are approached in the same type of altered stated they were first laid down in. Irene Hickman, in her book, Mind Probe Hypnosis, reports on numerous tests which show that individuals do not deeply accept anything into their unconscious mind which does not ring true at a very deep level.

My own personal experience with suggestion in hypnosis confirms this. Several reconstructed dialogues taken from age regression sessions demonstrate how the hypnotized subject will not simply go along with a line of questioning if does not fit with his experience of reality.

Hypnotherapist:Where are you?

Client:I am in the back seat of a car.

Hypnotherapist:Is it daylight or night?

Client:It is daylight.

Hypnotherapist:What can you see?

Client:Hmmm......I don't know.

Hypnotherapist:What can you see when you look past the back of the front seat and look through the windshield?

Client:I can't see past the back of the front seat. I can only see out the side window.

If the client's mind had been so open to suggestion that I could form his memories through my questions, he would not have contradicted my assumption that someone sitting in the back seat of a car could see out through the windshield. Or, with another:

Client:It is very cold.

Hypnotherapist:What are you wearing?

Client:I don't know.

Hypnotherapist:Look at your feet. What kind of shoes are you wearing?

Client:I'm not wearing any shoes.

Again, the client did not go along with my assumption that she must have been wearing shoes if she was outside in cold weather.

Even a stage hypnotist who wants to hypnotize someone and make them quack like a duck on stage must carefully select a volunteer from the audience. This person must unconsciously or consciously desire the release from normal social constraints in order to get up on the stage and quack like a duck. All the display involved in the "hypnotizability" tests are really just forays into the person's unconscious by the hypnotist to see what the person is willing to do. Their function is not necessarily to determine what the person is willing to let the hypnotist to do him. In some situations, the person may be actually willing to turn over his will to the hypnotist. But he has to be willing to do this. The hypnotist cannot simply snatch his will and make him do things he does not want to do. But any situation where there is an agreement for one person to take over the will of another is a serious transgression for both parties. This is true whether such an agreement is made between hypnotist and subject, husband and wife, or mother and child. The ethical hypnotherapist simply aligns his will with that of the client to help effect deep and permanent change to bring the client into closer contact with himself at a soul level.

Any process of opening to the sacred encounter with ourselves at a soul level involves aligning our energies with those of our deepest needs and desires. This involves quieting the conscious mind which is dominated by the surrounding culture. To open to the experience of the sacred, one must be as free as possible from the pervasive effect of any cultural system which would interfere with the direct encounter with the self and its natural longing for wholeness and integration. This includes freedom from any family or relationship structure which requires the individual to forgo his own needs for the satisfaction of the other's needs on a permanent basis. This includes freedom from any religious culture which insists that its followers allow church authority to mediate an encounter with the self so it may exert its own hegemony. It also includes freedom from economic and political institutions which draw us away from a relationship with the sacred so that we may indulge in activities which maintain their status quo.

Unlike the Q'ero culture which organizes itself around the mysteries of the sacred self, Western culture tends to separate its members from the experience of the self. In this environment, hypnosis, when used as a secular sacrament, is sorely needed if the members of the western cultures are to emerge from the abyss of a cultural mindset which insists that its members lose touch with the unadulterated experience of their inner lives. The hypnotherapist who works with transformation of the self as his goal, offers the secular sacrament. In doing so, he helps cast open the doors to that world beyond the reach of the dominant culture - to the realm of the sacred and the soul.

Opening the Doors to the Self: Habits

By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

Given the few opportunities to experience ourselves authentically at a soul level in most modern western cultures, where are we to find an opening to the pathways to the sacred experience of ourselves? The doorways which hypnosis opens for us to begin the journey to the experience of ourselves at a soul level are numerous. They are most often found in an unexpected places: in "bad" habits, phobias, panic, compulsive or imbalanced behaviors and even physical pain. The pain and fear that these phenomenon medicate are all connected with the shadow, whose manifestations the dominant culture tries so hard to control. But in its need to be known and recognized and re-experienced as part of our connection with ourselves, the shadow exerts itself. Fear and pain are, after all, part of our experience of ourselves and cannot be repressed or denied indefinitely. The principal way the shadow shows itself within the domain of the dominant culture is through the symptoms of dysfunction and the pain those symptoms cause.

Some of the most evident of these symptoms are "bad" habits. Many of us never permit ourselves to encounter the meaning behind our habits. We may only notice that we smoke constantly, or that we can't focus on anything for more than a minute or two at a time, or that we eat compulsively. And we are lucky if we notice this much about ourselves; we are more aware than those who never notice or acknowledge that they engage in compulsive or self-limiting behavior. For those who do notice how habits limit them, the hypnotherapist's office is one step on the path to understanding and changing the habit.

Most hypnotherapists do not take advantage of the wonderful opportunity for self exploration the desire to stop smoking provides. And indeed, many clients are not interested in exploring that opportunity. We may want to remain unconscious. We may only go so far as to seek an externally-generated hypnotic suggestion in an attempt to govern our behavior without understanding it. For those who do not wish conscious contact with motivation, traditional hypnotic techniques can be effective.

A traditional hypnotic approach to smoking cessation might involve the following steps: A relaxation induction where suggestions are given to relax each muscle group, then a visualization to relax the mind; once the subject is hypnotized, the suggestions might fall into the following pattern:

"And as you are feeling relaxed like this you find you no longer need the cigarettes, and each time you wish to smoke you will remember the way you feel now and realize that you don't need he cigarette to feel relaxed. And each time you want a cigarette, you will remember that you no longer need the cigarette and you will feel so much better without the cigarette because you feel so good about yourself because you are now stopping the habit of smoking and it feels so good to stop smoking that you realize you no longer want cigarettes because smoking no longer makes you feel good and every day in every way you will find that the cigarettes no longer fill any role in your life because you are now becoming a non-smoker and you feel relaxed and in control because you are now becoming a non-smoker and because you are a non-smoker you feel relaxed...."

This series of suggestions might be effective over the short term for many people. It is possible to reprogram the unconscious, at least temporarily, while remaining unconscious to the causes of the original programming. Again, it is important to emphasize that this process must be agreed to by the client and be in harmony with his goals and desires.

For those who do wish to explore their unconscious motivation, the habit of smoking can be the door to the deeper understanding of the self and the desire to stop smoking the doorknob. In my practice I have found that the habit which the client wishes to rid himself of is generally medicating a repressed or forgotten trauma to which the ego defenses do not allow access. The reason unconscious programming with traditional hypnotic suggestion often does not remain effective over time is because the charge around the trauma usually remains unchanged with this approach. Although spontaneous dissolution of the charge can and does occur with traditional hypnotic suggestion, the charge can take on new life upon contact with an unconscious trigger. This trigger may remain unrecognized by the conscious mind. And this is when we see old habits resurfacing.

Mary Ann's case is an example of how an old habit can resurface due to a trigger which is not recognized consciously because the root of the habit remains unconscious. She came to me because she had recently started biting her nails again. She had been to a hypnotherapist who had provided her with traditional hypnotic suggestions two years before. She had quit biting her nails after several sessions. She could not understand why she had started again.

Through a series of questions, asked while she was in trance, and which started with the habit and led to its cause, she recognized that she bit her nails whenever she felt insecure or afraid. Although she had been biting her nails most of her life, she had never made that connection. Through another series of questions beginning with fear, she found that what she feared most was her mother's scorn.

She had recently lost her prestigious job and she realized that the worst part about losing the job was that her mother would have a reason to begin harping on her and scorning her. So she had started biting her nails. This was the same response she had always had to the effect of her mother's scorn. By returning to some of the original situations where her mother had been scorning her through words and deeds, she was able to shift her relationship to the scorn, to her self esteem and to her ability to trust rather than fear herself. Therefore, when she found herself in a situation, like losing a job, which brought up insecurity, the insecurity became a trigger to her new-found sense of self esteem and self trust rather than a trigger to fear of her mother's scorn. She stopped biting her nails permanently. And she reclaimed a part of herself which had been lost to the previously-unrecognized yet devastating effects of her mother's scorn.

This approach required her to feel the pain of that devastation, but feeling pain is the only way we can shift our relationship to it. We cannot transform what we do not know is there. Many of us would rather remain within the framework of traditional hypnotic suggestion because it is less challenging and allows us to remain more passive in our approach to change. Somehow it seems safer not to confront the root causes of our habits, but this safety is an illusion. As long as we allow anything at all to come between the aspects of our conscious waking self and our experience of ourselves at a soul-level, we will never really be safe. We will always be affected by the pain, fear, disorientation and confusion even if we do not acknowledge its source.

Naturally, we must feel that we are in safe hands before allowing the exploration of the long-avoided issues which are at the bottom of the habit or symptom. The relationship with the hypnotherapist must be one of honest rapport which can take more time to develop than a quick-stop shopping at an external-suggestion hypnotherapist. Also, the hypnotherapist practicing this type of hypnotherapy rather than simple external suggestion must be able to be present for pain (his own as well as the client's) in a way the professional who practices the latter type of hypnosis need not be. This is why many hypnotherapists are willing to remain in the domain of external suggestion and why hypnotherapy as a secular sacrament is just now being seriously explored both by professional hypnotists and by the wider psychotherapeutic culture.

It takes a lot of courage to step outside of the culturally-accepted mores and submit ourselves to the as-yet-unknown self. It is important to remember that pain of the re-discovery of the trauma behind habit is mitigated by positive change the release from its compulsions provides. Many people who came to me for simple habit control have used the opening provided by the initial exploration of the self through the crystallizations of the habit as an entryway to the self at a soul level. After the initial issue is resolved, they return for more intentional explorations of their relationship with their inner life. One client described her experience of this exploration by remarking, "I have learned about inner landscapes I never even knew existed."

The experience of the self beyond the level of the personality which contains the habit takes many forms: an encounter with the individual's idea of God in the form of light, unearthly music or sound, the appearance of angels, or beings of light or simply in the experience of subtle vibrations encountered in deep meditation. All of these experiences (and more!) are part of the journey one can undertake by deciding to stop biting one's fingernails or stop compulsive eating.

The form these explorations take draw on elements of spiritual experiences common to many different cultures. The hypnotic induction containing instructions to relax and release tensions from the body and mind serves the same purpose as the incantation a shaman uses to establish a relationship with the patient in some traditional cultures' healing rites. The client may find the presence of a totem animal or spirit who presents itself as a guide to the inner world which parallel the experience of shamanic or mystical encounters in other contexts. The client's dreams may deliver messages which the conscious mind is unable to hear as Karl Jung reports in his book, Dreams. Experiences of past life memories may illuminate the current life's symptoms or difficulties as reported in Brian Weiss' book, Many Lives, Many Masters. Equally powerful in the release of one's blocks to the experience of the sacred is the inner child work so cogently outlined by John Bradshaw in his series of books on the family.

The following is a reconstructed transcript of a training hypnotherapy session which demonstrates the encounter with a previously unrecognized part of the self, and points to an experience of the sacred. This example is also a clear demonstration of the power latent in a dysfunctional habit.

T. What would you like to do?

C. I would like to manage my time. I need to be more focused.

T. You want to be more focused. And what stops you from being focused?

C. Handling a lot of stuff from the outer world. I allow myself to become confused.

T. You allow yourself to be confused. How long do you remember having this pattern of allowing yourself to be confused?

C. Well, really quite a long time.

T. When is the first time you can remember that happening?

C. At one point in my life it worked to handle a lot of things at once, but now it has become uncomfortable.

T. When you say it worked, in what sense did it work?

C. It created a lot of activity, a lot of contacts. Creative pursuits do come out of being sort of all over the place.

T. And what does it cause now?

C. Now it just makes me feel confused and scattered.

T. And when you're scattered, what effect does that have on your life?

C. It's kind of unnerving.

T. Are there particular times of the day when you feel more scattered?

C. I think probably early, from about 6 to noon.

T. Does anything trigger your feeling scattered at that point?

C. It's something happening inside rather than externally.

T. Would you be willing to explore what that is?

C. Yeah.

T. So just get comfortable.

Take some deep breaths and just feel yourself releasing the tension out of your body, letting yourself become open, your mind clear. And visualize yourself entering the movie theater that is going to show you a movie, a kind of a documentary about your life. And the scene that's going to be on the screen when it comes on in a moment is going to be the scene that shows you the event when you originally chose this method of scattering your mind. It will show you why you chose that, what it was meant to achieve. On the count of three that scene will play, and I'd like you to just say everything that you see on the screen. Here we go. One, two, three. What do you see?

C. Well, I'm riding my bicycle and I see absolutely everything. I can see the spiders, the grass, the sky, the different clouds, the bushes, the different flowers. I just see everything.

T. You can see clearly.

C. And all at the same time.

T. Does that scatter you, seeing too much at once?

C. I think it scatters me but I don't want to focus. I like the experience.

T. What is it achieving for you?

C. Freedom.

T. Freedom from what?

C. Structure, discipline, chores, rules.

T. Let's go back to an earlier moment when you had those things: structure, discipline, rules, a scene of importance that shows you the impact of that on your deciding you don't like that. What do you see?

C. It's just generally everything.

T. Who is imposing the structure and the rules?

C. My father.

T. And how are you feeling when he's doing that?

C. Like I'd better do it.

T. What happens if you don't?

C. Anger

T. You get his anger. So what do you decide about that?

C. I'd rather be riding my bicycle.

T. How do you feel about his anger?

C. It make me feel lonely.

T. So what do you do with that loneliness?

C. Just keep riding. Be in touch with everything.

T. And how does the being scattered help you deal with the loneliness?

C. It dissipates it.

T. So as you look at that now, is the scattering still somehow helping you deal with that?

C. I think so.

T. Yet at the same time, you needed to avoid the structure of your father's environment. So I'd like you to let the creative part of you come up with other ways of dealing with those issues other than scattering yourself. I'd like you to see that young girl that you were. How old when you were riding your first bicycle?

C. Seven or eight.

T. I'd like you to see yourself as you are when you're seven or eight years old. What do you think of that girl? Do you like her? Could you tell her that? How would that feel to say it out loud?

C. I don't know if I could say it.

T. Do you see yourself, as you are now, as an adult, going to give her a hug? Look her in the eyes and just let her know that you'll be there for her. She doesn't have to be lonely anymore. You might let her know that you don't require any structure or rules. You're not like your father. You don't require her to do anything or be any certain way. She can be free with you, totally free without having to scatter her mind. Ask her if it would be okay for her to do something else besides scatter herself, something that might make herself feel even better and more free. Be that seven-year-old self. How do you feel now you know that big Cathy is loving you?

C. Not sure.

T. What are you not sure about?

C. Being serene, being connected to God.

T. Why did big Cathy lose that?

C. Well, she hasn't really, but she has a lot of other things to do.

T. Maybe she needs you to teach her that again and remind her. Could you do that? And being calm, how does it feel to be calm versus being scattered?

C. Good.

T. So would it be okay to choose to be calm, and teach big Cathy how to be calm? Would it be okay to teach her from six to twelve in the morning to be calm? You can help her be more focused on what you really want. Would it be okay? All right. Now, big Cathy, how do you feel about that? Are you okay to let your inner child teach you again about serenity? I'm going to ask you inside to really feel and monitor your response to this. Is there any part of you that objects to this new way of being? I'd like you to see yourself then tomorrow, or some time in the future, as soon as you're ready, being this new way - calm, focused, unscattered, very present, also very free. Feel that serenity in your body now and I'd like to know if there's a word or a phrase or a sentence that would somehow sum up this feeling of serenity, freedom from being scattered. Give yourself a word or phrase.

C. Joy.

T. So would it be okay to use the word 'joy' and say it to yourself to bring back all of these feelings: serene, calm, centered, focused, free? And then whenever you say this word to yourself, it will bring you back to this state instantly. As you say that word to yourself it will bring you back to this state, because this is your natural condition, free and serene. When you're ready now just bring yourself back into the waking state. Your inner self will do that. You'll open your eyes when you're ready and that will be a sign that you've integrated what you have learned here today. When your eyes open you'll be wide awake. Great. Just take as much time as you need. How do you feel?

C. It was wonderful really. I hope it will work.

This shows how hypnosis can release power held within dysfunction so the individual can use it as a pathway to his inner life. This is more helpful rather than seeking a bandaid to soothe the symptom and ignore the cause of distress. Instead of exploring the root cause of the scattering, the therapist might have just provided external suggestions such as,

"Now when you are feeling scattered, you will repeat the word, "joy" and it will bring to a calm, serene place. And you will find that you will be able to focus with more ease. You will find that every time you repeat the word "joy" you will find that you focus more easily and even now you are feeling less scattered and feeling more focused and this sense of focus will stay with you even as you open your eyes."

This approach can be effective as well, but from a purely behavioral point of view. The suggestion is from without; it is someone else's reality. It does not necessarily contain resonances with the inner psychic life history of the client. It may even go counter to the client's inner reality. If he cannot experience joy when he tells himself to because he does not understand the nature of his imbalance, he may make adaptations to the suggestions which are not helpful. I have seen the effect of this problem in working with people who were raised in churches where there was a belief that everything is fine the way it is, that everything is perfect, and to say otherwise is a sin. This type of mass external suggestion which has no resonance with the individual's actual inner reality creates confusion and feelings of badness which are anything but therapeutic.

In any case, the client is not afforded the opportunity to explore the emotional charges behind the problem, so the charges remain within his unconscious experience. Worse, without exploring the emotional charge, there is no door to the self, and no possibility of the experience of the sacred encounter with the self. With this approach, the opportunity of using hypnosis as a secular sacrament is entirely lost.

The experience of working with a hypnotherapist, whose intent is to help his client use his dysfunction as doorway to the soul, serves the same function as a priest or shaman in other cultural contexts. Ideally, all three understand the dynamics of transformation contained in the shift of one's attention from the dominant conscious-mind cultural reality to the reality of the self at a soul level. Knowing that the practitioner has this understanding makes it much easier and safer for the client to launch into the uncharted, unfamiliar territory of the self. Once the client understands that the practitioner can help him create a container for the process of self transformation, the client can use the hypnotherapy session as an interactive meditation. He can then be guided to the encounter of the same energies which are encountered in deep prayer, meditation and some chemically-altered states to affect a change in his relationship with his dysfunction. The advantage of using a secular sacrament for this encounter is that the individual is not beholden to any belief system or dependent on a drug for insight.

Opening the Doors to the Self - Pain as a Guidepost (Part 1)

By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

As we have seen, one of the most valuable tools in this journey to the encounter of the self at a soul level is the ability to create an atmosphere where it is safe. We must feel safe in order to remain present with pain long enough to be able to understand its origins. Within the framework of hypnosis, the path through pain or imbalance can reveal itself safely. It can lead us across the field of the pain through the psyche to the encounter with the self at a soul level. To begin this journey, it is important to examine the kinds of relationships we have with pain.

We all have different adaptations to pain. One of the most common is a habit which may be ultimately self-destructive, but which eases the pain in the moment. The remarkable thing about habits is that they often have the quality of masking even the origin of the pain they were developed to accommodate. In a way, they are the perfect anti-inflammatory - however temporarily effective and ultimately ineffective their anti-inflammatory properties may be. Not only do habits cool the pain, but they make the conscious mind forget what the pain originally was and where it originated. Of course, the certainty that we will have to deal with the pain eventually one way or the other is also masked.

Because of this dynamic in habit formation, unraveling the nature of self-destructive behavior can be a circuitous task. One of the reasons traditional psychotherapy may get lost in these loops is because it begins at the outside of the matrix and tries to work its way in to the root of the problem. This approach can provide a faulty road map. It can be faulty, because everyone has a different, unique source of pain, which can manifest in similar types of external behavior. We can describe external behaviors, but this does not always help trace each individual path back to the internal motivation behind the behavior. No generalized system can do this.

The only way to truly unravel the matrix of self-destructive or compulsive behavior is to start at the pain which lies beneath the habitual behavior. This means getting the conscious mind and the various constructs which evolved to deal with the pain, to step aside, even for a moment. This is exactly what hypnotherapy provides: a well deserved rest for the conscious mind. This allows the contents of the unconscious mind to be expressed, usually in images. The message it conveys are the keys to the pattern which underlies the external imbalanced behavior.

The process of unraveling and decoding these messages from the unconscious can be very threatening to the personality and its constructs. These are, in large part, developed precisely to mask the pain at the root of habitual behavior. When the personality and its defenses to understanding the true nature of pain are left to their own devices they preserve themselves. They do this by evading the encoded messages the unconscious mind uses to convey its contents. We receive these messages on a regular basis through dreams, deja vu experiences, past-life recalls or other-life bleed-throughs, and other anomalous (anomalous to the world dominated by the conscious mind) phenomena. We will look at how hypnotherapy provides a key to the process of decoding these images later in the book. For now, we are just looking at how our honest encounter with the pain at the root of imbalance can be understood as a path to the experience of the self at a soul level.

Sometimes the messages about the pain our habits are trying to medicate have been altered. This can happen through active intervention on the part of those who would rather not have us remember events clearly. My experience in helping survivors of abuse come to terms with the effects of abuse has shown me that hypnosis can help break down defenses to abuse memories. These defenses may have been useful when they were developed, but many survivors find that these same defenses become an obstacle. This is especially true when survivors decide to integrate the information contained in the abuse memories as they begin the process of self-exploration.

Because most defenses are formulated unconsciously, they can most easily be contacted through the unconscious. Often, the survivor will not even consciously know about the existence of the defenses, much less what thoughts or decisions they are constructed to block. By exploring the nature of these defenses, usually through contact with the issues they were constructed to cope with, the defenses can be slowly and carefully transformed. This can happen in hypnosis once the survivor begins to feel it is safe to do so.

The establishment of safety is essential to this process. The survivor needs to know that the transformation of defenses will not leave him helpless and out of control. By bringing the survivor into contact with the essential self through guided imagery and meditation, we establish both a base to work from and goal to work toward. In effect, we create a container which can hold all of the emotions safely. This keeps the survivor protected while the exploration of the nature of the defenses and the issues they relate to begins.

When I work with abuse survivors, I am less interested in laying down historical fact than understanding the nature of the person's subjective experience. This idea of staying close to the person's subjective experience regardless of actual external events becomes particularly important when hypnosis has been used as part of the abuse.

I have found that there is always some level of cognitive dissonance to hypnotic suggestions which are laid down in the psyche and are a bit aligned with the individual's experience of reality or desired experience of reality. This is especially true of hypnotic suggestions used all too frequently during or after abuse, especially ritual abuse. That is to say, there is some feeling on the part of the survivor that 'something is not quite right' around the issues that have been the subject of hypnotic suggestion. The sensation that something is not quite right can manifest as uneasiness, strongly defended irrational ideas, or a complete unwillingness to look at the idea that 'something is not quite right' about a particular sensation or feeling.

I believe this dissonance arises from the fact that the hypnotic suggestions given during or after abuse do not jibe with the person's authentic experience and sense of self. The mind during the abuse is so open to manipulation that the suggestions do take seat in the person's psyche. But because they are paired with the abuse and generally are contrary to authentic experience, the seat they take is uncomfortable.

My experience with a survivor we will call Jim has many themes consistent with other survivors I have worked with who have been hypnotized as part of the abuse process. When Jim first came to me, he was unaware that he was a survivor of severe parental abuse. In fact, he vehemently stated again and again that his mother loved him very much. The vehemence in these statements was a red flag for me, and I filed this information away, not realizing where it would take us. We began the process of hypnosis to help him with a physician-diagnosed attention deficit disorder which was not responding to medication.

There is much to tell about the long process in Jim's evolution in understanding himself and his inability to focus. It took him some time to come to terms with the idea that he was an abuse survivor. But I will focus here on how it became evident that hypnotic suggestion had been used to screen from him what had actually happened to him.

As the abuse memories began to surface in exploring the roots of the attention deficit disorder, Jim was often aware of a very bright light in the middle of the images that were surfacing. When I asked him to focus on the light, he began to repeat the same phrases again and again. One such session revealed the following set of phrases,

"Your mommy loves you. No matter what anyone else says. You just fell down today. See, your knee is just a little scraped. Those bruises happened when you fell. Poor Jim, mommy helped you fix your knee and made it better. No matter what anyone else says, you know this is true, you know that your mommy loves you every day, more and more and when you look at your knee you will remember that your mommy loves you, your mommy loves you more and more each day."

It took me a moment to put it together that he had been told to look at a bright light while classically-formulated hypnotic suggestions were repeated to him after having been abused. As the truth dawned on me, I realized that we would have to focus on uncovering all of the hypnotic patter that had been given to him during or after abuse.

We discovered that there were many, many different situations where hypnotic suggestion had been used to distort memory. In subsequent sessions, whenever the light would appear, I asked him to look into the light and just allow his lips to move. Each session revealed a new patter to screen a new memory of abuse. After each session where this patter would emerge, I would present the recorded patter to Jim. I would ask him how he wanted to erase the patter which was still stored in his memory.

I never provided him with hypnotic suggestions that he did not write out himself. In each one of the "re-writes" I would include the suggestion that this new hypnotic suggestion would take permanent and total precedence over any hypnotic suggestions he may have been exposed to in his childhood. This worked as a kind of seal to keep the other hypnotic patter from intruding on his sense of self and perception of reality in the way that it had for forty years.

A big part of this work went beyond simply providing a new hypnotic "tape". The new tape would never had been able to take hold had he not been able to deal with the rage and sadness he felt about having been betrayed in this way. It took a great deal of courage for him to be able to see the physical abuse and the way it distorted his ability to concentrate. But the emotional betrayal of the use of hypnosis to cripple his memory, and thus his sense of self, was in many ways a more brutal process to work through for Jim.

Because the damage had been created at a subconscious level, it needed to be undone on an subconscious level. This was accomplished by contacting the methods by which Jim had been conditioned through hypnosis. I am not aware of any process which can provide this repair other than hypnosis. By using hypnosis to explore the nature of his defenses in seeing his mother as anything but a perfect, loving creature, he was able to see how his defenses were keeping him from contacting his ability to concentrate and focus.

Jim is still coming to terms with many of the aspects of being identified as an abuse survivor, but his attention problems are greatly reduced. He is able to focus his attention in ways which were impossible for him before he began the rewriting of these tapes. He is regaining the ability to trust his own experience and make decisions based on it. I am sure if we had not discovered the unethical way in which hypnosis had been used to rob him of these abilities most of us take for granted, he would not have made the progress he has in reclaiming himself.

When we learn that there really is some type of pain at the root of our imbalance we can begin to allow ourselves to understand the nature and origin of it. This is the beginning of the process of shifting our relationship to pain. As this happens, the constructs the personality has created to avoid dealing with the pain become irrelevant. If the truth of the existence of this pain is irrefutable, then it is inevitable that the personality's constructs, developed to mask that pain, begin to lose their foothold within the personality. This can be terrifying to the part of the self which operates solely on the personality level. And it can be threatening to the structures in which the personality operates such as the family and religious, social, economic and political communities the individual operates in. These structures have made adaptations to "manage" the pain the loss of contact with ourselves at a soul level creates; they may even, in some cases, be designed to mask this loss. In some cases they are the cause of this soul loss.

If the pain of this soul loss is resolved, if we can be whole, those structures become less important to us. And we may decide to withdraw our support from them. If enough people do this, the society's institutions must change. It can be extremely threatening to the entire matrix of the agreed-upon, cultural conscious-mind reality to have even one individual throw in his cards and pull out of agreement with the cultural realities. We have only to look at the dynamics of dictatorships and autocracies to see how true this is. If we discover a way to transform our relationship to our behavior by uncovering the origins or nature of our pain, we no longer need the habits or the constructs which the conscious-mind reality's personality has created. These constructs are developed not only to support the habit, but they become part of the mask we use to interact with the larger cultural reality we exist in. When the mask realizes the inevitability of its destruction due to the possibilities inherent in this transformation, fear arises. At the point where the source and nature of the pain is discovered, the personality's mask may generate defenses in the form fear, denial, and doubt. This is natural. One of the main functions of the personality is to keep whatever is perceived as unacceptable unseen. When the need not to feel the pain is greater than the need to know the truth, these defenses are necessary. But as those needs change places, everything changes.

It is understandable that the fear which may arise at this point can create disequilibrium. Fear occurs not only in ourselves as we experience the shift, but also in the larger cultural matrix we exist in. Fear is generated within the cultural institutions which deny or manage pain as their supporters realize the institution's role must change. An institution which is designed to manage or deny pain must crumble if its members decide they no longer need it to maintain distance between themselves and their pain. This type of transformation can be far-reaching. At each level, constructs which have been created to manage this pain of separation must give way to new forms which are based in our honest dialogue with the sources of that separation. For the individual, the personality constructs must shift. For the institutions, their function must shift away from the management or denial of pain as a raison d'être. Ultimately, the culture at large must reorganize itself entirely to remove the veils it maintains between the experience of the self at a soul level and that part of the self which interacts with the culture.

Because the truths about pain and the way we try to disguise it can be revealed through hypnotherapy, some view it with consternation. Hypnosis has been labeled suspect by many institutions within the larger cultural context. As we have seen, the legal establishment has labeled it unreliable and some mainstream religious communities have called it the work of the devil. Perpetrators of abuse who have managed to enter agreements of secrecy with those they abuse view hypnosis as a mortal threat to those agreements. I have had many clients who did not understand their parents fear when they told them they were beginning hypnotherapy come to understand it as the abuse is revealed. I have even had clients who have told me their psychotherapists had told them that hypnosis was dangerous. Dangerous to whom? Truth is only dangerous to those who are invested in a lie. When hypnotherapy is used ethically and consciously, there is nothing to fear.

The tragedy of the failure to embark on the journey toward truth is illustrated by one of my clients who came to me for help with his habit of compulsive overeating. He wanted to try hypnosis because he thought I could give him some suggestions which would curb his appetite. I prefer to try to understand the source of the pain and help begin the healing process from the inside out, rather than just putting a bandaid on the pain in the form of positive suggestion. So I asked him a few questions. At that point he revealed to me that he was receiving disability payments for a diagnosis by a government psychiatrist of schizophrenia. He also described in some detail the highlights of his emotional history. He also provided me with a write-up of the government psychiatrist's diagnosis and solution to his problem. From what I could tell, the psychiatrist's reaction to this patient's pain was to discount, ridicule and minimize it. A paraphrasing of the report is something like this:

"Patient believes he was raped and sexually molested by his parents. Parents deny this. He believes he is being abducted by aliens regularly. Paranoid. He thinks all people on the street are after him. Psychotic. Loses track of time. Has recurring episodes where he has visions of parents molesting him. He also dreams same. Diagnosis: schizophrenia. Recommend medication and disability payments."

I could find nothing in the report or in the treatment records where anyone had ever taken the patients' reports about his reality seriously. It seemed like the main goal of the government psychiatrists' interaction with this patient was to neatly compartmentalize the problem. At no point that I could see was anyone willing to actually be present for the pain this patient was experiencing. No one believed that this pain was real, much less that it had a real source somewhere within the patient's psyche.

Under hypnosis, the first image this patient had was the image of a tall gray alien. The second image was of himself as a baby in a crib, with his father standing next to him smoking a cigarette molesting him sexually. The hypnosis session went through other images related to a sense of shame which emerged from these two primary images. Most of these were centered on self-destructive external behavior - including overeating, compulsive sexuality and episodes where he had experienced a loss of time. I took the information provided by his unconscious mind seriously. My approach was not, "Oh, you're seeing aliens, you must be nuts," but "So here is an alien, what does an alien mean to you?"

This type of dysfunction does not exist in a vacuum. It takes the complicity of many actors within the patient's environment to keep this level of dysfunction in place. What would it mean if this patient's father really did rape him? What would it mean if his parents did molest him? Would it possibly mean that his whole complex of overeating was an effort to reconcile what he knew to be his own irrefutable inner reality with the lies which his parents, his doctors, and his benefit administrator reinforced with every action ? What would it mean if he discovered and integrated the source of his pain?

The main effect of accepting the patient's experience of reality as truth would be that everyone involved, including the patient himself, would have to take responsibility for their part in perpetuating his pain. This is a huge undertaking. But it is clearly the work this person has to do if he is ever to be reconciled with himself at a soul level. If everyone faced the fact that he had been molested by his parents - either emotionally, physically or sexually - he would have to reevaluate his relationship with his parents. This might mean losing their support (for whatever benefit it was). He would probably lose his disability benefits if was able to arrive at a state of integration with this level of pain. There would have to be a tremendous shift in the external cultural constructs around him if he asked the actors within them to take responsibility not only for his pain, but for their own. For them to be able to be present in a honest way for his level of dysfunction, they would have to look at the pain at the source of their own dysfunction. The initial dislocation on every level would be disorienting at first, but the reorganization around truth would ultimately benefit everyone involved. It would provide a tremendous relief from having to maintain a web of so many lies.

He was so used to believing all the ways in which those around him tried to minimize his authentic experience, that he was shocked when I suggested the possibility that the information he was receiving in hypnosis might be a basis for his internal reality. This reality included the possibility that the nightmares and the psychotic breaks might actually be a reflection of his authentic experience of abuse. The truth of his authentic internal experience (regardless of the actual events in the external reality) was overwhelming to him. It was hard enough to believe that these horrible events could have really happened. But more overwhelming was the task of facing the pain which was being managed by his parents' duplicity and the complicity of the government psychiatrist in an honest way. When I asked him what it would mean if he validated his own authentic experience rather than believing everyone who ridiculed his experience as delusion, he was clearly overwhelmed by the possibilities contained in this shift of perspective.

At that moment, he had to decide if he could manage the confrontation of his pain at its source or if he preferred to remain in the chaos which the denial of that pain had created in his life. He had to decide if he could go through the transformation and the rebirth of himself the integration of this information would generate within his sense of self. I could only promise him that the effort would not be in vain, that he would find new energy and regeneration. And it would be on the other side of the process that this transformation of his relationship to this pain would engender. I could not tell him it would be easy, I could not tell him that I had a little pill that would make it all go away. I could not deny that the dismantling of the undeniably complex matrix he had created to deal with his pain would be difficult. But I could promise that he would experience a diminishment in the gulf that was separating him from an authentic encounter with himself at a soul level.

This process can be understandably terrifying and many people would rather forgo the intimacy with pain it requires. Often, only those whose situations are so intolerable or those who can dimly perceive the light of regeneration at the end of the tunnel choose this path. This patient could not take that path. In making this decision, he could not see that the access to new resources of personal power the integration of the pain would provide him was worth the effort he would have to go through to obtain it. There was nothing I could do but support him in his decision to postpone the process of personal transformation. And truly, this was only a postponement. The journey home to the encounter with ourselves at a soul level is not an option. We can choose how and when we take the journey to a certain extent, but we cannot defer this encounter indefinitely.

While we must respect the individual's limits in his ability to cope with the truth of his inner reality, we must not deny the value of pain. Sometimes, we learn to value pain only when it has become undeniable. This lesson is well illustrated in the case of another client of mine who decided to take the path to the transformation of her relationship with pain.

She came to me hoping to find pain relief through hypnotic suggestions for excruciating pain in her right arm. An army of osteopaths, orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists and internists had judged that it had no origin. Again, because I do not feel comfortable simply applying bandaids of external hypnotic suggestion to deep-seated problems, I asked a few questions about the development of the pain. These questions led back over her life; I was struck by her ability to manifest emotionally painful situations again and again. However, the manifestation of the pain in her arm was the first time the pain had manifested physically. It was clear to me that, contrary to what the physicians had said, that there was a source of this pain. And it could well lie within the emotional aspect of her being. It also seemed possible that the source of the emotional pain and the physical pain were one and the same.

We did several sessions together, including a prenatal regression and a past life regression, to try to understand the reasons why she needed the pain in her life. Each time, the only suggestion I gave when she was in hypnosis was, " We are going back to a time and place or situation which will shed light and understanding on the origins of the pain you are experiencing in your right arm." Each time, I was asking the subconscious mind for the message it was trying to convey through the manifestation of the pain in the right arm. As is customary, the message was conveyed in the language of images.

During a past life regression she regressed to a time where she had been a monk in a place where there were high mountains. She found herself hiding in a place where there was a stone wall and a dirt floor. Through further questioning, it became clear that she was in a monastery. Politicians and soldiers had come into the monastery and were slaughtering all of her fellow monastics. The pain she felt in not being able to control the situation and save them from this fate was acute. Finally, the soldiers found her and took her out into a stone courtyard, yanking her arms behind her back and tying them tightly together. As the soldiers cut off her head, I asked her what the last thought in her mind was as she died:

Opening the Doors to the Self - Pain as a Guidepost (Part 2)

By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

Client: " My last thought is: I have to remember this."

Hypnotherapist: "What is the value in remembering this?"

Client: "So I can remember my religious teacher and his teachings about the nature of the soul."

She had used the emotional pain of anger at herself for failing to save her fellow monastics and her physical pain of being tortured and beheaded to try to remember the teachings of her spiritual source. It is a convoluted way to remember such teachings, but who can account for the decisions we make under such extreme duress. By arriving at one point of the origin of this pain, the pain in her arm began to shift a little.

During a prenatal regression, one of extreme panic and a sense of loss of control (the same emotions which were attached to the images in the past life regression) she realized that the only connection she had to her mother was pain and panic. As an adopted child, this was all she had to remind herself of her birth mother, her physical source.

In both of these instances, it was pain which she chose to keep herself connected to the source of sustenance of her soul. If she had kept running away from the pain rather than facing it, she would never have been able to resolve the pain in her arm. By embracing the pain rather than fighting it, by listening to it rather than ignoring it, she was able to touch her soul again. By seeing her pain as her friend and not her enemy, she was able not only to free herself of the physical pain but to transform the way she manifested all types of pain in her life.

She saw how she had manifested the physical pain. It was impossible to deny it in the same way she had been able to deny the emotional pain she had created in her life. Both were only attempts to return to herself at a soul level. By embracing the physical pain, she was able to take steps to resolve the emotional pain. She realized that she could find and maintain a connection to her physical and emotional source of wisdom and power through other means. She also realized that the conscious-mind personality constructs she had created to maintain that connection through pain had to be transformed. She saw the choices clearly and she chose the path of transformation. It was a courageous choice.

This required considerable effort. She had to dismantle the personality constructs she had created to deal with the pain, a process which, in itself, was very painful. But she did come out the other side of it with a new connection to the source of herself at a soul level. This connection did not require pain to keep the lessons and needs of her soul active in her conscious life. The immense power and renewal she was able to manifest in her life through the process of the transformation of her relationship to pain could never have happened had she not decided to embrace the pain rather than ignore it.

This approach to imbalance is decidedly more involved than simply labeling the dysfunction and assigning a pill to it based on the label. But it is, ultimately, a much faster and surer route to the resolution of pain. The reason that many practitioners who rely on the compartmentalization of pain may fail is because their method of compartmentalization does allow the patient - and the practitioner - to ignore the pain. The focus of attention becomes centered on the label. The curative procedures may only apply to the label rather than to the patient. A client of mine described an encounter with compartmentalization of this type with a well-respected head of psychiatry at a major hospital:

"Her mind was laid wide open before me as she asked me utterly irrelevant questions about my problem. I could see little compartments with little labels on them, and she was trying to figure out in which compartment I belonged. The questions she was asking had more to do with the labels than with me and I realized I could not trust her or her process at all."

While this approach does not serve the client in helping him to return to a soul-level sense of himself, it is safe for the practitioner. This is because the practitioner does not have to be present with the pain once it is compartmentalized. And the client may even think this is a safe course of action for him as well because he thinks the compartmentalization lets him off the hook for taking responsibility for resolving the pain. This is a path most people would understandably choose if they could. But the possibility of true self-transformation and self-understanding through the pain is lost. The client is cut off not only from the pain at the source of the problem but from the possibility of tracing the path to the self at a soul level that the pain provides.

In this process of trying to circumvent pain, the typical therapeutic approach mirrors the adaptation to pain which the larger conscious-mind dominated reality has adapted. The therapist may not be able to step outside culturally-accepted ways of looking at pain, so it is difficult for true healing to take place. As illustrated above, a person who truly transforms himself in relation to his pain may no longer be a willing participant in the culture's agreements which are designed to mask pain. In lieu of transformation, therapeutic approaches may just become descriptions of the problem.

Without the soul and its still point to return to, every description of every psychic, organic, or psychological imbalance is just that - a description rooted nowhere and going nowhere. The big problem with this concept is that imbalance does not arrive and function in a vacuum. It has a very real a