Читать книгу Self Hypnosis - Valerie Austin - Страница 18

The subconscious is often called ‘the unconscious’ in many teachings. I prefer ‘subconscious’ because this term is not so misleading. The word ‘unconscious’ perpetuates the popular myth that hypnosis is sleep. This brings us to the importance of another misunderstood facet of human behaviour, the bad habit. People are surprised that bad habits are hard to break but rarely consider what a blessing it is to be able to keep good ones. Imagine learning to ice-skate or drive a car and then suddenly losing the habit! The consequences could be fatal.

To form a habit you practise it and, when practised enough, it becomes automatic. You first consciously work at it, then, if you continue for a long enough period, the subconscious takes over. The subconscious does not judge whether it is a good or bad habit. It presumes that if you do it enough, then you must want it to be permanent. Likewise, when you want to put an end to a habit you have to practise until you ‘automatically’ stop doing it.

The subconscious is programmed to ensure that the conscious retains this newly-learned habit. Part of the ‘job’ of the subconscious is to create an obstacle course to prevent any change to the acquired habit.

Once the subconscious has taken a habit on board it provides an ‘urge’. It is, therefore, the subconscious that we need to access in order to persuade it to cancel the programme that triggers this ‘urge’. Hypnosis provides instant access to the subconscious and allows an immediate change of attitude which, in turn, changes the unwanted behaviour. Simply put, with hypnosis it is not necessary to practise unlearning a habit because the work has already been completed. The conscious mind is more or less bypassed—only, however, if it is in the individual’s interest.

If you were to decide at a later date that you wanted to regain an old habit, very little practice would be needed. The programme would already be set and could easily be retrieved. For example, if you had not ridden a bike for 10 years and then had a go, you might be a bit shaky at first but, nevertheless, your confidence would soon return. Or, just walking down a flight of stairs, try thinking which foot goes where and notice how difficult it is. Since you have formed the habit it has become an automatic instinct and you are no longer conscious of the action. Consider amnesia victims: whatever else they may have forgotten, they always remember how to open doors, how to talk and how to perform most habitual, simple tasks. I should know, if anyone does!

Just as you can eliminate a bad habit without practice through hypnosis, it is also feasible that you can create a good one in the same way. I have proved this in developing a speed reading programme in which I can guarantee at least to double a person’s reading speed, while increasing retention and concentration, in less than three hours (20 minutes if there is no trauma involved which may be preventing the subject from accepting the speed reading technique). To speed read properly you have to use a pointer, such as a pen, pencil or even your finger, to lead your eyes across the page. Without hypnosis it could take as long as 40 hours’ practice to master this. It may sound simple but involves a complicated procedure, linking eye movement and the correct maximum speed for optimum concentration. To achieve the 100 per cent success rate I have been able to claim with my speed reading clients there may be a need for advanced methods of hypnosis, but suggestion-only therapy can reach a healthy 60 per cent of those who try it. Obstacles to the success of the suggestion therapy arise in the form of trauma-based problems, which more than likely date from early childhood. The trauma can be as simple as that when you first attended school your teacher slapped your hand if you used your finger to point to the words as you read.

Our actions are dependent on the information we receive in early life and, therefore, many problems have begun with a ‘programme’ that was established in early infancy. If you are doing something that you really do not want to do it is because you are acting on an incorrect programme. It is not necessarily bad or good, just inappropriate for you. If a person says to me that he has a problem and he knows exactly when it started—it could be anything from fear of flying to insomnia—invariably he is wrong! Few if any of us are really aware of when or where a trauma started, only when the programme came into operation. The actual trauma will probably have happened much earlier, a later incident only triggering off the programme.

If someone really could remember the trauma, there would not be a problem. The conscious would have been able to deal with the trauma and solve the resulting problem naturally with its logic. The reason the conscious cannot solve the problem—say, fear of flying—is that it does not have all the information it needs to be able to use logic to eliminate the fear.

Sometimes, even trauma-based problems can be treated with suggestion therapy, but there is a higher success rate with problems that are purely and simply bad habits. Most bad habits are not the result of a trauma but rather of practice.

Smoking is a good example of a bad habit. It is only a bad habit once the smoker decides he or she wants to give up. It might have been an unhealthy habit but it did not start out as a bad one, from the individual’s point of view. Humans do not persist at acquiring bad habits, only at habits they want. For example, nail-biting in its early stages might have been done for comfort, just as thumb-sucking or nose-picking all begin innocently enough. There has been extensive research to prove that the nicotine in cigarettes is the reason that smokers find it nearly impossible to quit, although just as many other reports disprove this. In 1992 I was at a conference where figures were produced proving that 90 per cent of smokers gave up without any help from products on the market (including therapy), with 40 per cent of this 90 per cent suffering no ill side-effects whatsoever. The latter tallies with my own statistics. I have a Stop Smoking programme that only takes one hour and carries a very healthy (95 per cent) success rate. The client stops immediately and does not suffer the supposedly mandatory side-effects. Suggestion hypnotherapy that has a positive 30 per cent success rate (and with the right script and hypnotherapist a 60 per cent success rate) has worked for giving up smoking for many years. It is all down to the old rule: ‘What the mind expects tends to happen!’ If the smoker is programmed to believe there must be side-effects, then there will be. Out of the thousands of smokers I have treated, I have never found a common denominator in the type of side-effect they suffered to give credence to the popular but unproven opinion that smoking is an addiction.

At present there is a great deal of scientific debate over whether smoking is an addiction or a habit. I would say that smoking is a mental addiction, whereas, say, taking heroin is a physical addiction. A mental addiction can be eliminated instantly with hypnosis, without the occurrence of side-effects. On the other hand, a drug addiction takes longer to treat, as the body will necessarily have a physical response when deprived of the drug it has become used to.

There have been extensive tests and surveys by addiction clinics claiming to prove that smoking constitutes a physical addiction to nicotine. But the mere fact that they are called ‘addiction’ clinics will automatically discourage those smokers who believe it is only a habit. Therefore, the results of any survey based on test results in these clinics are bound to be totally flawed! The belief that smoking is a physical addiction is what the popular nicotine ‘patches’ trade on. It is hardly surprising that, whatever the manufacturers’ claims, their success rate is disappointingly low.