So what *is* somatic hypnosis—and how does it work?
“We are not thinking machines that feel. We are feeling machines that think.”
- Antonio Damasio
One of my teachers, Melissa Tiers of the Integrative Hypnosis Institute, gives the simplest definition of hypnosis I’ve heard:
Hypnosis is a heightened state of suggestibility. It occurs when one’s focus is narrowed, and the ‘critical faculty’ is down.
That last bit just means that the reasoning function of your mind can be bypassed. You can imagine this like a barrier going down.
Suggestions received in a state of hypnosis are able to enter directly into the unconscious mind.
By Melissa’s definition, watching TV is a form of hypnosis. She also calls practices like shamanism hypnosis. Any situation where one’s attention is focused, and they are amenable to suggestion, produces a hypnotic state.
Having sat in a number of plant medicine ceremonies, I can attest: it’s hypnotic.
I’ve also been in healing containers where we worked with the body to rewire trauma, and I would consider this a form of hypnosis as well. I’ll unpack that below when I go into my integration of somatic healing with hypnosis.
I personally describe hypnosis as a means of using your natural neuroplasticity to change the way you think, feel and act.
Many healing practices are, thereby, hypnotic in nature.
Working with your unconscious gives you power.
Some say that your unconscious mind constitutes 95% of your brain’s activity. This isn’t a precise measure.
But it IS known that your conscious mind can only process 10-60 bits of information per second… whereas your unconscious mind can process MILLIONS or BILLIONS of bits per second.
Talk about powerful.
Your unconscious is responsible for the autonomic functions of your body—as well as your habits, feelings and a good portion of your decision-making.
Psychology is rich with theories as to how this affects your experience of life.
Sigmund Freud spoke of repetition compulsion: the tendency of a person to repeat their past trauma in an unconscious effort to master something unresolved.
Carl Jung famously said, “Until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
He was speaking to our tendency to hold our conditioned beliefs about reality as absolute truths—e.g. “CEOs are evil.”
In reality, this is a generalization. But you might meet an executive and see him as a jerk for, say, speaking bluntly—because you’re projecting this belief onto him.
Harville Hendrix and other proponents of attachment theory believe that we unwittingly choose partners who will re-enact our childhood trauma—leading us to feel abandoned, dismissed, impeded on, etc.—so that we can heal.
The list goes on.
In more esoteric circles, we talk about reality as a hologram. It’s entirely projected. I love this view, but a few years of meditation or psychedelics are probably required to adopt it.
The point is, experts agree: we gravitate toward people and experiences that match our unconscious expectations or beliefs.
Why use hypnosis?
Simple. Use hypnosis because you want to be happy, healthy and live a good life.
Use hypnosis to program your unconscious mind to expect or believe in experiences and interactions that lead to health and happiness.
(Because your unconscious dictates your ability to do that.)
More specifically, you can hypnosis when you’re struggling to…
Overcome procrastination. You know what you need to do, but you put it off.
Change a bad habit, e.g. when willpower alone isn’t helping you to quit vaping.
Get into a new habit, by creating safety around something that previously may have caused pressure or disappointment, like meditating or writing.
Overcome hidden, unconscious fears that lead you to self-sabotage. For example, you might unconsciously fear scaling your team because then you’ll have more risk of hurting people in layoffs, so you resist delegating.
Accelerate your path to a goal. Get your beliefs and identity on board with the person you need to be in order to achieve something.
Gain insight into a challenge. Your unconscious mind has a simple answer to questions that your conscious mind can spin on in confusion for weeks.
Hypnosis really helps you to become congruent with your desires. Frequently, we say we want something—but on a deeper level, our unconscious mind isn’t sold.
There may be a hidden fear associated with having that thing. For example, I once helped a client work through her fear of becoming wealthy.
In her family, rich people were considered bad, so she was inhibiting her own ambition because she didn’t want to lose ties. Once we released this fear through somatic hypnosis, she was able to fully commit to her business.
Or the goal may be coming from other people’s idea of success, not your own.
In which case, you can gain wisdom on that by dropping below the conscious mind to reveal the truth… and then, using hypnosis, release any need to perform or look good in order to come up with your true ambition.
When all of you is onboard with change—your conscious and your unconscious alike, or as I like to say, mind, body and spirit—then everything gets easier.
Not effortless, and not any less rewarding… but easier.
HYPNOSIS CHANGES YOUR BRAIN
Dr. David Spiegel has led fMRI studies at Stanford that show that during hypnosis, the brain's “critical faculty” (dorsal anterior cingulate) does indeed quiet down.
Meanwhile, connections between decision-making and body-awareness centers strengthen. This allows for underlying emotional patterns and subconscious beliefs to be accessed and influenced without resistance.
Even more powerfully, during hypnosis we can easily take advantage of something called 'therapeutic memory reconsolidation.’
According to clinical studies (Ecker et al., 2012), when a core belief or emotional memory is activated and then paired with a new, contradictory experience in a safe setting, the original pattern can be permanently rewritten.
In other words, we can change your brain, your subconscious expectations of reality and your experience of life—through hypnosis.
What is somatic hypnosis, specifically?
Somatic healing is the art of feeling, and processing energy or emotion through the body.
I integrate somatic healing into my work for two main reasons:
It changes your nervous system and expands your capacity to withstand stress and emotion.
It builds your tolerance for being in your body, aka out of the thinking mind and in the present.
Performance, in work and in life, is truly a function of presence.
Whereas the conscious mind tends to worry, project or complicate our problems, the unconscious mind holds truth and clear direction—and a healthy nervous system anchors our ability to execute on that direction.
When you are present, you are way less apt to waste time on negative thinking, doubt or distraction.
You are able to respond to challenges, rather than reacting impulsively.
You’re more available to hear the quiet guidance of your intuition and unconscious.
And best of all, because you are more capable of feeling, you can feel a sense of sufficiency. You are capable of doing, being and having enough—because ‘enough’ is a feeling.
(Or a collection of feelings, like gratitude, satisfaction and fulfillment.)
How does a session work?
When I work with a new client for the first time, we keep it light. We’ll focus on the symptoms that are showing up in your life.
Rather than putting you into a state of deep trance, I’ll lean primarily on conversational hypnosis to completely reset how you’re thinking and feeling about your biggest challenge.
In one session, you can get unblocked around a goal that’s felt sticky for weeks or months.
Your unconscious mind is already shaping your life. It will be your most powerful ally when designed to work with you, rather than against you.
Book an intro session to get your unconscious onboard with growth.
