“HYPNOTHERAPY FOR YOUR PATIENTS” in PCI Journal by Jeffrey Rose, Rockland County, NY Hypnotist & Nutritionist 

The use of effective adjunct therapeutic modalities can create tremendous goodwill for any dermatological practice or medical spa. It will distinguish the practice within a community as being genuinely committed to both the esthetic enhancement and the general health of its clients. In this regard hypnotherapy for your patients can be viewed as a natural extension and totally complimentary to the overall goals of any dermatological practice. The use of hypnotherapy at present is a growing trend both in the allopathic medical community and in the alternative and complimentary area. Employing hypnotherapy for both smoking cessation and weight loss can become an essential part of any practice’s goal of lifestyle planning, raising the client’s health standards, helping them to honor and respect their bodies and themselves by rejecting tobacco, excessive alcohol, and processed foods, which are well-known to undermine their dermatological health and the health of their body in general.

Hypnotherapy for Smoking Cessation

The dermatological condition of the skin and particularly that of the face is often one of the most important concerns for your client coming to your dermatological practice or medical spa. This concern can be used as an opportunity to make those clients who are smokers become more aware of the relationship between their smoking habit and the health of their facial skin. Skin is not exempt from the deleterious effects of smoking. While many effects are benign and primarily of cosmetic concern, others have the potential for significant morbidity and may affect the person’s quality of life significantly. The relationship between smoking and facial wrinkles, including premature facial aging, is a good motivator for having your clients quit smoking before more serious consequences to their health have a chance to manifest themselves.

With a qualified clinical hypnotherapist, typically only a single session is required for complete and permanent cessation of the smoking habit. In addition, with smoking cessation hypnotherapy, not only are the results excellent, but they are also achieved with the greatest ease and least discomfort.

What to Look For In a Hypnotherapy Practice The following description based on the Advanced Hypnosis Center’s Smoking Cessation Program can be used as a guideline for judging the practices of the hypnotherapy programs you may be considering for referral. A smoking cessation program should help smokers quit with little or no withdrawal, cravings or weight gain, remove negativity and stress from their subconscious mind, increase their self-esteem and self-confidence, and combine stress-control,  confidence building, and smoking cessation, all without the usual cravings, and withdrawal

A comprehensive system that includes the following:

• Provides pre-session material that helps educate the future non-smoker about both the nature of smoking as a behavioral habit, and the nature of smoking as a chemical based nicotine addiction. Gathers information with an Intake Form, which is designed to help the client prepare for their quit date. As they respond to the questions on the Intake Form they get a better understanding of both their relationship to their habit and their motivations for ending it.
• Behavioral instruction prior to their session aimed at disrupting the regular routine of the habit. The smoker may be asked to, for example, to change the hand they smoke with, introduce a delay before resuming smoking, place a restriction on the total number of cigarettes smoked daily, or even practice being a non-smoker.
• Post-session follow-up calls to insure that the client sustains motivation, and stays smoke free with little discomfort.

The dynamics of the program must recognize the complexity of being a habitual smoker, and approach the treatment from many perspectives, rather than from one point of view. Such a comprehensive approach allows the smoker to break the smoking habit and modify their behavior, while overcoming the addiction to nicotine. The smoker gains improved self-awareness, along with a much healthier self-image. The smoker’s motivation is enhanced and they feel a sense of personal gain and accomplishment, rather than self-denial and frustration, as a new non-smoker. The therapy obviates the need for any further on going use of medications or nicotine withdrawal regimes that may have previously been utilized.

Using Hypnosis as a Safe and Effective Therapy for Permanent Weight Loss

For clients referred from a medical spa for Weight Loss hypnotherapy, there will be welcome benefits for those concerned about the general health of their skin because the diet that leads to weight reduction, including eating more fruits and vegetables, and less processed foods and sugar, is the diet that leads to healthier and younger looking skin, even slowing its aging as well.

Hypnosis is the safe way to lose weight permanently. Most dieting clients who have lost weight, have been losing weight then putting it back on. In fact, about 90% of all successful dieters put back all the lost weight or even more, after only a two year period. Attempt after attempt has most likely left them frustrated and back where they started. Some have felt starved and struggled to avoid their favorite foods as best as they could because being overweight made them unhappy and because of a sincere desire to look better and be healthier. Unfortunately, such conscious desire and motivation are not enough to achieve their goal in most cases.

Why People Overeat

The reason people have such a difficult time losing weight and staying thin with a diet is not just because of the type of diet itself. Often when people are overeating, they are doing so for reasons deeper than just natural hunger. They may quite often be eating for reasons such as boredom, stress, anxiety, and depression. The time of day, a lack of companionship or upsetting social interactions may create the need to reach for food to comfort themselves. Eventually, these stimulants can create a powerful habitual response within their subconscious mind.

People Have Trouble Losing Weight and Staying Thin

Through the use of will power people can temporarily change their behavior, eat differently, and lose weight. Unfortunately their basic eating habits which are determined not by their conscious desires, but by their unconscious beliefs remain the same. Thus, they will inevitably at some point fall back into their old patterns and habits of eating, and regain weight. People cannot just consciously use will power to make themselves thin when there is subconscious resistance. If they could, they would not be overweight. They would simply make up their mind to lose weight and stay thin, and do it.

Why Hypnotherapy Does Not Prescribe Traditional Diets

Diets create tremendous feelings of deprivation and provide only temporary change. This is because diets do not address the heart of the problem. The best way to get long-term permanent results is by changing a person’s beliefs. Hypnotherapy has the tools and capabilities to change these underlying beliefs so that people can permanently lose weight. When the beliefs held in their subconscious are changed, then they can easily achieve the healthy and thin body they desire. Hypnotherapy has helped people to easily and comfortably move away from the stigma, poor health, and emotional suffering of being overweight into a new life with a healthy trimmer body.

No diets are needed and no will power is necessary because their fundamental relationship to food will have been changed. They will easily and naturally make better food decisions, choosing both healthier food and more reasonable quantities. Specifically, they will find that they will enjoy their food more, and will eat and be satisfied with smaller quantities and portions. Their days of trying to control their desire to overeat will be completely over.

How the Hypnotherapy Process Works

People cannot control their conscious desires if there is subconscious resistance. That is why trying to will themselves to eat in a way that makes and keeps them thin does not work for so many people. With hypnotherapy they are guided into the same highly focused state of mind that they experience naturally when they become deeply absorbed in watching a movie or when they are lost in a daydream. While they are in this special state of mind, they will be more readily able to absorb and utilize positive suggestions and guidance. This may involve among other things, improving personal resources such as self-esteem and confidence, and gaining the ability to powerfully visualize themselves already having achieved their perfectly trim body and improved health, which acts as a strong force for creating the changes they desire in their life.

With hypnotherapy a person is able to experience permanent weight loss without the suffering, frustration and setbacks of less effective programs. Anywhere from three to six sessions are all that should be needed to guide your client to easy and permanent, significant weight loss. During these sessions the person’s attitude toward food will completely change. In addition, they will have a much better self-image and more self-confidence and will be more motivated to carry through with any exercise program.

Hypnotherapy and Your Practice

Today, practices are experiencing a new trend. Within the complementary and alternative area, there is often a desire to become more holistic and treat the entire person regardless of the reason they have come for help, and within the allopathic community, many practices are seeking to become more comprehensive, becoming not only treatment centers for specific presenting problems, but as resource centers to help guide the patient to valuable remedial and adjunctive therapeutic resources.

Referral to a qualified clinical hypnotherapist for smoking cessation and weight loss can be a powerful force for enhancing both the value and prestige of a dermatology and plastic surgery practice, or of a medical health spa, with individual clients, and within your community. The Advanced Hypnosis Center, for hypnotherapy for both weight loss and smoking cessation, as well as for stress management, as an adjunctive therapeutic modality for their clients.