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Welcome to the science page!
There are three main elements to UM hypno adventure:
In the UM hypno-sessions you learn how to allow your body chemistry and biological processes to change automatically when needed to bring you feelings of health and well-being. You learn to let it help you realise your goals.
It is based on self-hypnosis with deep relaxation (the relaxation response) developed by Professor Dr Herbert Benson, from the Harvard Medical School and the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The human nervous system has two branches, the Central Nervous System (CNS) and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS).
The Central Nervous System is located in the brain and spinal cord, which connects the Central Nervous System with the rest of the body.
Now it gets interesting: The Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) has two parts. When you decide to take a first step and actually move your leg, you are consciously using the voluntary nervous system (the somatic nervous system).
When your heart is beating, and you blink from time to time, your involuntary nervous system is activated. You are generally not aware of it, but it works without the assistance of your conscious mind to keep your body alive, safe and in great health. This called the involuntary nervous system (the autonomic nervous system.
That’s pretty cool, right?
But that’s not all. This just when it starts to get really interesting…
The autonomic system has three parts:
If a big red truck drives too fast towards you, your heart will beat faster and the adrenaline will start pumping so that you can run out of the way – fast. If you are being physically attacked then your heart will beat faster and the adrenaline will start pumping so you can fight. Or you might just freeze. Your sympathetic nervous system is activated.
When you are enjoying relaxing listening to music, a UM Hypno session, or meditating, then the calm feeling tells you that the relaxation response is happening and the Parasympathetic Division is activated.
There is another network of neurons managing the gastro-intestinal tract. That is called the Enteric Division. If you have a gut feeling about something, that comes from your gut. This is where the network sometimes called the ‘second brain’ is located.
So what?
Here is the Peter and Paul of it. The Fight/flight/ freeze response and the relaxation response cannot happen at the same time. In stressful modern life we can notice that we are too often in the fight / flight / freeze response and this is exhausting and dangerous. Like a muscle in spasm it gets stuck. When this happens it overloads your system and creates burnout. This is when you can make a conscious choice to change your body chemistry safely.
The relaxation response changes your bio-chemistry. It re-energizing the whole body, and recharges the immune system.
There are many relaxation practices which you can use according to you own value system and traditions.
Dr Benson studied Transcendental Meditation, Zen and Yoga, Autogenic Training, Progressive Relaxation, Hypnosis with suggested deep relaxation, and Sentic Cycles.
He found that found that in all of the above, the relaxation response was activated, producing physiological changes in oxygen consumption, respiratory rate, heart rate, alpha waves, blood pressure and of course, muscle tension.
Footballers use relaxation techniques when they jump into an ice tub and then into a warm bath after a tough game! Joggers use it every day as they repeat steps and enjoy the physiological high.
In the second week of the course you will learn and use the relaxation response in your own way, on your own or with a friend to achieve your goals. It takes only a few minutes to learn it! It will be easy for you because you will have already experienced it as you relaxed and enjoyed Hypnosis with suggested deep relaxation in MD30 hypno sessions.
Begin your journey.
Start UM today.
Your hypno sessions are strongly informed by modern hypnotherapeutic practice based on the work of Dr Milton Erickson an American psychiatrist and founder of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis.
Erickson grew up on a small farm in Wisconsin. The floor of the farmhouse was earth and one of the walls was the side of a Mountain.
His ground breaking discoveries and transformational work were inspired by his difficult childhood experiences. Erickson suffered from dyslexia, colour blindness, tone deafness and crippling bouts of polio. He learned auto-hypnosis at a moment of health crisis, when in a fever he overheard his physician telling his parents that he would be dead by the morning.
He watched the sunset in reverie, and discovered a new power, auto-hypnosis. Then he went canoeing, recovered his body, earning his keep by cooking for fellow travelers and adventurers.
Modern approaches such as brief therapy, strategic family therapy, family systems therapy, solution focused brief therapy, and neuro-linguistic programming are built on his Erickson’s work.
Erickson learned from his own experience that with a little help you naturally find your own unique way to health and creativity.
Every man has a quiet place in his soul, where everything is self-evident and easily explainable, a place to which he likes to retire from the confusing possibilities of life, because there everything is simple and clear, with a manifest and limited purpose.
Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit.
Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way through mere appearances; you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that? There is only one way and that is your way. You seek the path. I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you. May each go his own way.
Is common to recovery from addiction, survival in combat, trauma recovery and to the graceful flow of energy. It satisfies a deep thirst for connection with ‘something inside so strong’, connected to something outside even stronger, a higher power which guides and helps you through the most challenging times.
This brings meaning and orientation and your sense of what is right and wrong for you becomes very clear.
There are as many roads to this one source as there are people. Your unconscious knows the right one for you.
Knowledge, great perception decision making and actions come not from a single state of consciousness but from many. They arise from the ability to move naturally from conscious to unconscious states and back. That is when parts of the psyche work together with creative tension as connected and united states of psychological reality. That is what your are learning in the MD 30 hypno sessions.
Jung noticed that you experience this in your own unique ways and at a pace and time which is natural to you. It is not so difficult when you have safe space and freedom to let yourself relax. Sometimes you need a little help from your friends to allow yourself enjoy safe space.
So before you start your hypno sessions make sure that you have somewhere safe, quiet and comfortable and switch of the mobile, Keep a glass of water nearby, because the mouth can get dry. The dryness tells you that everything is working as it should.
Carl Jung, the Swiss Doctor, Psychiatrist and Founder of the C G Jung Institute (Zurich) is famous for inspiring the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson with a secret formula.
His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness…
The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is, that it happens to you in reality and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path, which leads you to a higher understanding. You might be led to that goal by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism.
You see, Alcohol in Latin is “spiritus” and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison.
The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.
Jung chose to be a moderate drinker who often enjoyed a glass of good red wine.
With warmest wishes for your success Dr John O’Brien & Dr Nada O’Brien