what if i told you
you might not be who you think you are
what if i told you that your very
perception
or idea of who you are has been
weaved into your mind over time
what if you don't agree with what your
mind has to tell you
i've always had an acquiring mind i've
always questioned
everything i felt the need to get to the
bottom of everything
and never took anything at face value
this ever curious personality would one
day
save my life let me tell you who i am
hi i'm dana i'm a hypnotherapist
specializing in trauma and chronic
illness
i also do a lot of public speaking about
the holocaust as i'm a third generation
descendant
about trauma and my favorite topic to
speak about the subconscious mind and
how it works
because holy moly it's fascinating
i want to take you on a little journey
today that will expose the connection
between
your mind who you think you are
and the potential onset of disease
so if you may please follow along
as we go through the human experience
from conception until death okay
so it won't be that morbid we
all of us are born as blank slates
we all of us then through our
experiences
are programmed to have certain beliefs
about who we are
what we can achieve in life and what
type of person
we should be from birth until six
we are essentially living life in a
hypnotic trance
it's why we learn languages so quickly
at this young age
we are sponges just joyously absorbing
everything around us
at this precious age we set up the rest
of our lives that's right
what we learn from about the age of zero
until six
is essentially the patterns or
programming we begin to develop
from adolescents or from then and repeat
again and again from adolescence into
adulthood
i want to tell you something that might
offend you
people we are patterns
i also want to relay something else to
you sometimes our patterns
do not serve us those patterns are
called disease
depression obesity and the list
unfortunately goes on and on okay
let's rewind for a minute i want to
rewind to a really serious pattern that
i had
in the past i had what's called chronic
fatigue syndrome
which later turned into fibromyalgia
both are chronic illnesses that to put
them lightly
are no fun and to put them into context
can be seriously
debilitating i was 18 years old
and i would suddenly go in and out of
these intense spurts
of not being able to function i was dead
tired to a point where if i couldn't
take a nap in the moment i needed to
i felt as if my heart would give out
the fact that i was so young i knew
something was wrong i went to many
doctors
many doctors who all told me i was
either stressed
or depressed and i looked at them and i
said
i'm a freshman in college really what do
i have to be depressed about
so for years years i did research into
why i felt the way i felt and i became
my own advocate
i began experimenting with diet with
lifestyle
many different things just to try to get
a handle on my symptoms and i started to
feel better
and i was able to really get a handle on
my life and to manage life really well
and when i finally had a big handle on
my health
i got severely knocked down again
and when i say knock down i mean almost
killed
in a near fatal car accident t-boned
smashed left hanging upside down
in my car until the firefighters came to
cut me out
not sure if i was paralyzed or dead
without going into the gory details i
knew
that i was in for a long ride ahead of
me
i was handicapped for six months and i
developed what's called ptsd or
post-traumatic stress disorder
and on top of that i began to feel sick
again
in 30 seconds i wasn't the same dana
anymore
i developed ptsd and because i knew that
i was one person
and i wasn't that person anymore i knew
i had to see someone or do something
about it
so i began to see this therapist and she
was a very nice woman yet she would tell
me things when you get to a stop sign
you need to breathe
so i thought to myself am i really
paying you this much money for that
that i got so eventually after six
months of minimal improvement i met a
woman who survived cancer
and she said she would not have survived
cancer were not for this trauma
therapist she went to
so i said that's my woman
so i went and the first appointment with
her
this trauma therapist she said to me and
she looked at me and she said i'm a bit
alternative
i hope that's okay with you and i said
i'm desperate whatever you got
she said i do this thing called
hypnosis i said there is no
way you're touching my brain with that
stuff
i was super skeptical i had no idea what
it was
and my only reference was show hypnosis
and hypnotherapy
is not show hypnosis
so basically after about six or seven
sessions of meeting with her
i decided that i liked her she was smart
forward thinking
compassionate so i thought to myself
what the heck
what can it hurt so i walked in that
session i walked in feeling one way
i walked out feeling another i wasn't
exactly sure what she did i just felt
better
within six weeks my ptsd was gone
the next month my depression the next
month
my anxiety this woman saved
my life okay so that's all interesting
yet i want to tell you something even
more interesting
so i mentioned to you earlier that i
started with chronic fatigue and later
developed what's called fibromyalgia
i view these two ailments as sisters
very similar
yet fibromyalgia on top of the intense
fatigue is serious muscular pain
yet what the interesting part is i
didn't develop this pain until
after my accident so here's the
interesting part
when i was healing my trauma through
hypnosis
the pain in my legs began to dissipate
bit by bit little by little the pain
in my body was leaving
i thought to myself whoa what's
happening here
so that brings us to where we're going
today i want to walk you through
the mechanics of the hypnotic process
and how it works
and how the mind and body and disease
and thought
are all interconnected but first
let's jump into the science of how minds
and bodies interact
so how exactly are trauma and disease
correlated
i want to mention to you that trauma
doesn't have to be a near-fatal car
accident it doesn't have to be coming
back from war
really in my mind the way i view trauma
is if you view the world one way and
then some situation happened to you and
now you view the world in a different
way
that can be a traumatic circumstance so
it doesn't have to be this overwhelming
experience
have you ever heard the phrase stress
kills
okay so i used to hear that phrase and i
used to scoff
yet now i see just how valid
that statement is physical and
psychological stressors
cause inflammation to occur in the body
inflammation is the key word in many
diseases
reducing inflammation is the key to
healing many diseases
are you with me this far okay
beautiful when events happen in life
they're recorded
when stressful events happen they are
recorded
as is and that creates a certain level
of shock
on the mind which therefore sends
distressed signals down the nervous
system
which in turn will tell the endocrine
system to increase adrenaline and
cortisol
and while those levels are increased our
immune levels are lowered
the fact that we have these stress
responses initially
is not a bad thing yet the fact that our
minds compound
all of these situations over time
without ever
letting them go every situation builds
upon each other
so the real reason we experience stress
in reality is for
our own good for our own safety
if you think of an animal for example a
mouse
a mouse sees a cat gets anxiety has
stress levels why because it needs to
make the decision to run away
yet once the mouse runs away once the
mouse finds cover
that anxiety is gone the mouse doesn't
over analyze what the cat was thinking
how to feel about it now and what to do
about it
no that's only something humans do
humans encounter a stressful situation
we
instantaneously attach meaning to it and
then it's recorded
for ever so the initial stress
isn't bad the continual attachment to
this stress is bad
following me so far good okay
so just to reiterate reiterate when we
experience stress
there's a recording in the subconscious
mind and enough of those recordings over
time
will cause havoc and an overstressed
nervous system
which in turn will cause an
overproduction of stress hormones and a
suppression of immune
function so now the golden question how
do we reverse all of this
so there's a new study dedicated to all
of this called
psychoneuroimmunology
psychoneuroimmunology meaning the branch
of medicine that deals with the
influence of emotional states and
nervous system activity
on immune function especially in
relation to
disease so that's the textbook
definition
in reality the best way that i have
found to take the study off of paper and
into real life
to intervene in the influence of stress
on immunity
i have found is hypnotherapy how
let me tell you so i do this fascinating
therapy
it's called regression therapy
essentially what this means is i take my
clients
to the first time the very first first
first
initial time that a stressful event or
events
caused the ailment at hand for example
let's say we're working with depression
i'll guide a client through a
visualization through their mind to
their subconscious mind
it's very cool uh and then through this
visualization i'll say something like
this
we're going to go to the first time the
very first time you had emotions around
depression
and so what happens in the subconscious
mind the subconscious mind then links up
with the specific
memories that are tied to that specific
ailment so it goes something like this
a client would describe um something
that happened when they're two years old
let's say
i was two my parents were fighting i
felt very upset
confused responsible for my parents et
cetera et cetera
so then i started asking them questions
like this in that moment
how did you need to feel as a
two-year-old and then they would respond
something to the effect of
i needed to feel like a baby like a
two-year-old comforted
etc so at this point i would then direct
them to feel as if
in that memory they were filling their
body as the two-year-old with the
resources
that he or she needed in that moment
in that moment there is healing
you cannot change what has happened to
you in the past
instead you are changing the mind's
perception
and the weight of the heavy feelings
that the past memory holds
then after resolving that memory we
would then proceed through other
memories in a similar fashion
so what exactly is this doing it is
completely
allowing the subconscious mind to cope
with things
and never got to cope with in the past
this reduces the recorded stress that
we've carried around
our whole lives when the subconscious
mind heals
it allows the nervous system to relax
when the nervous system relaxes there
are less erratic signals
when there are less erratic signals the
endocrine system does not need to be in
a chronic state
of fight or flight therefore sending out
inflammatory hormones like cortisol
and adrenaline you see all this all
coming together
okay i know i overloaded you with a ton
of information
so i want to finish up with this a bit
of an experience i had with a client who
came to see me
there's a woman she came to see me and
she came to see me for weight loss which
many people do many people come
to see hypnotists to lose weight and i
asked her what's the issue no motivation
to get to the gym
you know have a taste for healthy foods
what's going on
so she said no i have motivation to get
to the gym yet every time
i go i get into more pain so i asked
why are you in pain she said i have this
thing
called fibromyalgia are you familiar
i said oh am i familiar
so i said to her let's start from the
inside out
instead of working on your motivation to
get to the gym we should work on your
fibromyalgia pain first
i asked her where do you feel most of it
right now
she said in her neck i said okay
let's go for it we did a regression
session around the pain
in her neck and the memory that came up
was of a time she was 12 years old
her and her brother got in a fight he
pushed her down the stairs
and she essentially got a stiff neck for
a few weeks
and then it went away 10 years later it
came back
and she told me for 20 years she
couldn't move her neck
we resolved that trauma the trauma
surrounding that memory and
a few others when we finished she came
up out of hypnosis
and she went like this
for the first time in 20 years she moved
her neck
my mouth dropped and so did hers
we carry our lives with us not only in
our minds yet
all over our body our bodies and minds
are intrinsically
connected there is so much more detail i
can go to on this topic
yet really this is the takeaway i want
to give to you today
the mind and body are resilient and have
the innate
ability to heal themselves
yet sometimes they just need a bit of
guidance
my wish for you is to be informed and to
know that there are resources out there
to help you feel like the best you i was
told
time and time again that i would be sick
or have ptsd forever
i was told by many doctors that i'd have
to be on high level antidepressants
that there was no hope for me this was
the
pathway of my life yet in reality i knew
and i was determined with
every ounce of my being to get back to
who i knew i was
that girl that existed somewhere deep
down inside me
and now i speak about chronic illness
and ptsd in the past
behind me no longer part of me
if there's someone you know who doesn't
feel good please tell them that there is
hope
if you can heal your mind you can heal
your life so here's to you your healthy
mind
and body and here's to never giving up
the fight
for your vitality thank you very much
you