Massage for the Mind: A Practical Guide for Using Hypnotherapy to Enhance Your Life!

By Shirley Davalos

Massage for the Mind is a practical guide to help people use the practice of hypnotherapy to re-frame their perspective about past experiences and future possibilities. We use our marvelous imaginations to create guilt and worry, as well as feelings of not being enough. You can use your mind to benefit your outlook, rather than create fear.
Too often our brains are filled with a constant chatter that raises doubts and creates anxiety. Hypnotherapy is a simple way of silencing that chatter, creating a quiet space where new perspectives can be recognized and developed. There is no magic. My clients create their own healing. I am simply their guide in the experience. I assist people and help them use their own imagination so they understand how they can be in control of their own life. The answers to their problems have been there all along. I just help them realize that and identify the solutions that have long been buried in their subconscious mind.
Hypnotherapy plays a major roll in supporting optimum health. I think of it as a relaxing and healing factor for the entire body and mind. It’s a reliable method of quieting the mind while cutting out the constant brain chatter, it creates a quiet space where new perspectives can be recognized and developed. I assist people and help them use their own powers of imagination, so they can be the architects of their own lives and uncover answers that have been long buried in their subconscious mind.
There is no magic, simply a state of mind that we have overlooked. My clients create their own healing; I am a guide in their experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Mar 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781642377415

Book preview

It was still dark in the house as I made my way to the light in the kitchen. The tile floor felt cold on my bare feet. When I got to the kitchen she turned and saw me standing in the doorway. Something was wrong. Her face looked angry. I didn’t know what I had done to make her so mad. She grabbed me by the arm, yanking it hard as she pushed and dragged me across the cold floor to my bedroom. I was crying and screaming when she threw me in the closet. I hit my head on something. She slammed the door and locked it. I was so frightened. It was scary in the dark closet. I couldn’t see anything in the blackness. There were shoes on the floor under me, and my head hurt. I was lying in the corner where she had tossed me. I was only wearing underpants. I was cold, scared, crying hysterically. I screamed, Mama! Mama! I was three years old, locked in a dark closet, was cold and now, wet. I had messed myself.

I screamed and cried for what seemed like hours until finally so exhausted; I fell asleep right there on the bed of old shoes. No one came.

I woke up shivering. I didn’t know where I was at first but could see a pale stream of light coming from the bottom of the door. I called out again and again, Mama crying, pounding on the door, trying to open it.

Nothing.

I don’t know how long I was in the closet. I woke up as my father gently picked me up. I was shivering, whimpering and completely confused. He ran a bath and cleaned me up, wrapped me in a towel and carefully laid a cold cloth on the bump on my forehead. His voice was soft and comforting as he put me in my pajamas and tucked me in my bed, staying by my side until I fell asleep.

Although it happened years ago, the memory of that horrible day continued to frighten me. I could not forget it, nor could I get over the feeling of anxiety that swept over me each time I remembered it. It was etched into my mind, and it became an unsettling memory which continued to shadow me even as an adult.

It was never mentioned in my family, never explained. I never knew why or what I did that had me thrown into a closet when I was three years old… that is, until I revisited the entire scene with the help of hypnosis.

Years after that incident was long forgotten, I had reason to revisit it again while studying to become a hypnotherapist. As we practiced hypnosis techniques, we were given an exercise to look into the past and find a memory that had caused us anxiety.

Guess what memory came up for me?

During the session, as I relaxed and became centered, the therapist used some guided imagery. He asked me to imagine I was in a movie theater, safe, calm, just observing the screen. Then he asked me to remember a time when I experienced anxiety. The memory of that confusing day came into view on the screen. At first, I felt panicked! The therapist continued to give me quiet, peaceful suggestions to help me feel calm and continued to remind me I was observing from a distance, without any emotion attached. As the session went on, it became clear to me what had happened that day.

My father had left for work before daylight, and my mother was in the kitchen. My mother suffered from epilepsy. I had just woken up and changed out of my pajamas and came into the kitchen just wearing my underwear. I was showing her how I could put on my own clothes when she grabbed me. The entire scene continued as I watched the imagined screen. The march to the closet, the locking of the door, but here the former scene changed. My mother locked the door and went into her bedroom and had a grand mal seizure!

She wasn’t the cruel, angry mother that I had experienced that day years ago. In fact, the entire memory morphed into a new way of feeling and understanding the incident. This new perception changed the meaning of the memory and created a different scenario which soothed the pain of that day.

Here is how I now interpreted the scene: my mother was trying to keep me safe. She had only a minute or two to put me where I could be safe before she was completely incapacitated by an epileptic seizure. Her intention was not to harm me or punish me but to put me somewhere out of harm’s way while she was wracked with the intensity of an epileptic convulsion. When I was older, I learned to deal with these ferocious assaults that my mother endured and knew how to react when presented with the symptoms of an upcoming episode. But at three years old, I didn’t understand what was happening. I was just terrified, frightened and confused. My memory was filled with dread, guilt and fear. What had I done to make my mother so angry?

Revisiting that nightmare while under hypnosis, changed everything for me. I am now mostly free of the ongoing reaction of fear and horror that had become an emotional habit, each time I remembered the events of that day. The emotional habit I had lived with was hard to change, but after recreating the scene during hypnosis, I no longer felt tormented by anxiety, guilt or fear.

Did it really happen that way? I don’t know. I don’t know if the first memory was absolutely real either. I do know I am now over the habit of creating emotional fear triggered by that memory.

My perception changed! I was able to make a positive out of what had been a long-standing negative.

It also gave me some insight into the power of hypnosis. If you think you’ve never been hypnotized, you are wrong. We go into a trance state all the time. It’s the feeling of standing in the aisle and staring at the products on the shelf in the grocery store, until you come back into the moment and remember what it was you are looking for. It’s when you walk into a room and wonder why you came in, what did you need from here. It’s the moment when you are completely focused on what you are doing and lose track of time. It’s the kind of like the twilight moments between sleep and waking. Bardo is the Tibetan term for that pause between death and rebirth when the mind is calm and at rest.

The Buddhist religion believes that between death and rebirth there is a transitional time when the mind is quiet and free from the trappings of the body.

That same quieting of the mind is experienced through meditation and yoga practices. It is a state of concentrated awareness. Hypnosis is another way of expanding the quieting moments of the mind because hypnosis calms and focuses awareness and, like meditation or yoga it can extend this serene experience, giving the mind an opportunity to tap into a moment of wisdom.

A hypnosis session begins with the therapist guiding you into a relaxed state as you focus on your breathing. You then are guided by the therapist to relax, as you quiet your mind and focus your thoughts. This quietness gives you a chance to open your mind and see things in a different way. When you are in a quiet, calm state, your conscious mind becomes peaceful; the subconscious mind opens up, then events come forward. Your mind goes wherever it needs to go and is able to re-interpret whatever issue that demands your attention.

Many people think when you are hypnotized, you are no longer in control, but that’s not true. You are completely aware and available for any emergency. You will hear noises, like birds or traffic outside. It is just that you are focusing on relaxing, as you quiet your mind. There is no right or wrong in hypnosis; you simply let the experience happen.

Many times, relaxing the mind creates an altered state and gives a new awareness to a long-term problem. It