Arthritis is not the only source of joint pain that affects our body. Old sports injuries and car accident residue can affect our bodies for years after one has supposedly recovered from the acute effects of the accident. Former high school football player with bad knee, chronic pain from an old whiplash injury, such residual pain is all too familiar to many of us. Chronic emotional stress can also settle in the joints. Carpal tunnel syndrome is just one example of how emotional stresses, often work-related, can take hold in the body.
What if you could teach yourself simple movements that can easily eliminate pain and restore flexibility and strength to your joints? Movements that can address all of the sources of joint and muscle pain listed above. These movements are easy and painless to perform and take as little as 5 minutes a day. In other words, in about the same time it would take to find and open a bottle of pills, fill a glass of water, and drink, his clients could experience a radical reduction in pain and joint healing and strengthening. . This is the promise of a new technology for healing called hypnotic movement.
The concept of hypnotic movement is simple. The body has a deep internal knowledge of how it wants and needs to move to relieve stress on the joint, increase healthy circulation, restore flexibility, and relieve pain. These simple movements are easy and natural for anyone to experience. In fact, most of us have already experienced the hypnotic movement at one point or another. Have you ever noticed the way your body sometimes stretches when you wake up in the morning with a stiff back? Sometimes when you wake up stiff and take the time to get up slowly, you may notice your body stretching out slowly and relaxed, your muscles may tremble slightly, and you may even sigh or moan with pleasure as you stretch. Have you ever noticed how good your back feels after you’ve stretched your sprains this way? This is an example of hypnotic movement. Of course you didn’t think you were in a trance. But you were, just woken up, in a state of being relaxed and connected with your body and its needs.
This state of relaxation with heightened awareness of the body is not the usual state of deep hypnotic trance with which most hypnotists and their clients are familiar, in which the body lies in peaceful repose, while a hypnotist guides it in a journey and offers you hypnotic suggestions. It is a state of “alert trance”, like that morning stretch, in which gentle relaxation is combined with a deep awareness of our body and its feelings. This state is similar to the trance that athletes describe when running a marathon or playing their best in a sporting event. They call it being “in the zone,” a blissful state of getting out of your daily worries and feeling one with your body while performing perfectly in sport. Athletes are quite familiar with this altered state and look for it at every competition and practice, although few understand that it is a kind of hypnosis. To achieve the results of hypnotic movement, you must work with a hypnotherapist who is familiar with this alert trance.
While many of us have surrendered to our bodies’ natural hypnotic movements from time to time, few of us listen to our bodies’ needs for movement very often because, as a culture, we’ve been trained to override the feelings and needs of our bodies. our bodies when we are children. How often have we toddlers been told to stop moving (a movement little bodies should do a lot) when forced against our nature to sit still at a desk? Stop moving, sit still, no, you can’t go to the bathroom, don’t make those noises, children should be seen and not heard…etc.etc. No wonder most of us start looking at our bodies as a stupid object, a vehicle that takes us at best, but then has all these aches and pains that we don’t understand. So we are trained to believe that there is nothing we can do about the pain in our body except take it to a doctor. There we received pills to improve it. We have lost awareness of the healing powers of our bodies.
Well, there is good news. His body may have stopped making these healing moves years ago, but he still knows how to move in all those miraculous ways. All you need is help to awaken these dormant inner powers! And that help can be provided by a hypnotherapist trained in Somatic Healing, of which hypnotic movement is one of many techniques.
Let me illustrate this with a story. A client came to me with severe sciatica. Pain constantly radiated down his right leg, forcing him to consider leaving his job permanently due to disability. While some people may be delighted with a ticket to a life of leisure, this man loved his work in the construction business and wanted to get back on his feet. Unfortunately, the doctors weren’t very hopeful, given the depth of his pain. As I gently brought him into the soft alertness of trance, I suggested that his body knew exactly how to move his way to ease his pain. I used a number of other suggestions to trigger this move. Soon his body was writhing in the peculiar combination of stretching and wiggling that is hypnotic movement. In about three sessions, the pain disappeared. But, this was not just because of his work in my office.
No, he learned to use the hypnotic movement on his own, and he just did these simple exercises whenever the pain appeared, and at night while lying in bed. He was soon back at work. Then one day, he fell off a platform at work and sprained his ankle. The pain was intense, but by then he had mastered the art of listening to his body’s needs. No, he didn’t call me. He spent a few minutes resting at the workplace, relaxing into that deep state of body awareness we call “The Zone.” Then he allowed his foot to move for a few minutes very slowly, painlessly, in a unique way, as I had taught him. Within half an hour he was pain free and back on his feet. I was not there to witness this miracle, but he was delighted to share this story with me, and a co-worker called me to ask if he could teach him how to use the powers he had witnessed in such awe. That’s why my favorite somatic healing practitioner, Brigitta D’Amato, calls this work “Somatic Self-Healing.” Because we empower our clients to heal themselves!
I have trained hundreds of practitioners in these techniques as part of Somatic Healing training. Using hypnotic movement, we have achieved excellent results in a wide variety of movement and joint-related conditions, including:
o Rheumatoid Arthritis: I was crippled with the disease 29 years ago and developed this technology to heal myself. I have been completely symptom free since 1984. (I now use hypnotic movement to keep my body flexible and strong so I can pursue my hobby of rock climbing and mountaineering. At 57 I have the flexibility and grace of a 30 year old , thanks to the hypnotic movement) I have helped many more with this condition.
o Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: We have seen an immediate reduction in pain, stiffness, and swelling, and continued improvement through daily practice.
o Osteoarthritis – We have seen flexibility restored, swelling reduced or eliminated, and sometimes completely eliminate pain in the knees, hips, lower back, and fingers. One client was able to restore her ability to play her favorite Rachmaninoff piano pieces in one session by restoring strength and flexibility to her fingers. She now says that whenever her fingers start to swell and ache, she simply uses a simple massage and motion technique to restore full freedom of movement in 5 minutes or less.
o Sciatica – I have worked with many clients helping them learn to rotate and realign their hips on their own
o Post Traumatic Injury Pain and Stiffness: We have achieved remarkable results with long-term post traumatic pain from auto accidents and other injuries. We have had especially good results with whiplash injuries.
o Chronic back pain: the back responds quite well to hypnotic movement. Check out our web article, Healing Back Pain for more details, including hypnotic movements you can start doing now to improve your back.
o Post-Surgical Recovery – If you suffer from chronic pain even after corrective surgery, hypnotic movement can be very important for a full recovery. See our article on Hypnosis and Surgery for more details.
Would you like to learn these healing powers for your own body? I developed the hypnotic movement process in 1979. I have been teaching it since 1995. In all these years, I have discovered that almost anyone can learn to enter this delicious zone of body awareness, and can learn in a remarkably short time to become a master of the technique of hypnotic movement. It can be used in conjunction with pain relievers and any other medical treatment, and physical therapy, which I find works well with hypnotic movement. Tell your doctor that you want hypnotic movement therapy. Then call our office at (800) 950-4984 and start learning now how to control and perhaps eliminate your pain while healing your joints!
