Wendy Walling           

...I 'listen with others to what the heart would say in its longing to open more fully to Life.  At any given crisis point in living, whether it is an acute or debilitating illness, or mental or emotional disturbances, each person has the key to his or her own starting point in the healing process...
                       Susanna Davis, from The Listening Heart, in The Heart of the Healer

                 
      The similarity is the premise from which we start - what we believe about life and death, the meaning of life, the very purpose of our being,  Healing accepts that there is a universal intelligence and that we are part of that intelligence and that nature is intelligent.  It is when we become separated from that intelligence which is our true Self, our true nature, that we come to be diseased.  Healing (becoming whole) puts us back into balance with our Self and the universe.  Once again we are 'in step', 'at one with nature', in homeostasis.

      When people are dis-eased, there seems to be something inside which is out of their control.  How can that be?  They 'know' something is wrong but consciously cannot release 'it'.  'It' may be fear which is a conditioned response.  It may have been necessary and helpful in childhood to protect the child from a painful experience.  Later, it may not be needed.  Most of our defensive strategies, arising out of the fight or flight response, are laid down in our early years.  They become locked into our subconscious minds so that we react to later situations in the same way.  Most of these automatic responses benefit us.  Once we have learnt to drive a car we do not have to think about it too much.  In fact, we can experience the state of hypnosis when we are driving on a motorway,  We go into 'automatic pilot' and switch off.  The conscious mind hands over the control to the subconscious part of the mind.
 
      While many of these responses are helpful at the time of traumas, in later years such negative responses may be inappropriate.  These maladaptive responses may cause emotional and physical blocks.

      Habits resist change.  Habits are controlled by the subconscious.  Having learned a conditioned response, the subconscious hates change.
 
      Hypnosis is a totally natural phenomenon in which a person can converse quite easily, remembers all that is said and feels a heightened sense of awareness through which positive suggestions can be received.  Hypnosis is the key or tool used to unlock the door into the unconscious mind.  The subconscious is closely allied to one's Self.

      A therapist can use hypnosis to have direct communication with the inner mind.  By so doing he can find the cause of deeply rooted problems.

  A lady came to see me who had 'gone cold'.  Not only were her hands and feet like blocks of ice, but her heart felt like that too.  Up until eighteen months earlier she had been a happy and contented wife and mother who worked part-time as a nurse.  She was the carer and had to be brave for everyone else.  She found it difficult to receive support from others.  Now she could not show any love to her new granddaughter and could not hug anyone.  She felt locked inside herself.

  She also shared that her mother had died.  Her daughter had become pregnant and had subsequently had a lovely baby.  Her overwhelming feeling over this time was of isolation.

  Under hypnosis she was helped to find the cause of her isolation and to re-experience the actual event with its associated feelings.  We discovered that when her baby brother was born she had had scarlet fever.  She was taken into hospital and put in an isolation ward for three weeks.  Imagine how traumatic that must have been for her.  She was not allowed to see the baby or her mother before being taken away in an ambulance.

  At the age of five she had 'lost' her mother, a baby had been born, and she was isolated from everying familiar to her.  However, she could not express her grief because she believed she was a big girl and was not allowed to cry!  Therein lay the problem.  She has never been able to cry, so her painful feelings were locked in her middle and stayed there.  Forty years later her isolated feelings overwhelmed her due to her losing her mother, not expressing any grief, being brave for everyone, and the birth of a baby.

  Bringing these things to conscious awareness helped her to understand her problem.  She could then take responsibility for expressing her emotions and asking for the support she needs.  It is the release of the block ('big girls don't cry') that facilitated the healing process.

     The subconscious mind is like a computer.  It stores all memories and is programmed by the conscious mind which keeps us in reality.  It has to accept all that it is told, for it has no logic or reason.  It fulfills goals by producing the energy needed, so positive thought leads to positive feeling and negative thought leads to negative feeling.

     The subconscious works through the autonomic nervous system, regulating body functions.  It produces symptoms which reflect dis-eases within the mind.  Working backwards from these clues, we can learn about our Self through our symptoms.

     Within the subconscious lie our feelings, emotions and our imagination.  Imagination is more powerful than reason.  It is by apealing to the imagination through imagery that healing can take place.  This has been studied extensively in the treatment of cancer.

     The conscious is the controller, the programmer, the critical aspect of ourselves which decides what is true or not for the person.  The ego seeks to control one's world by organising it into comprehensible units.  Ego is 'scared to death' of letting go of its perceptions and beliefs about reality, of completely relaxing, of surrendering to the Self.  The major objective of the conscious ego is that of self-preservation.  It will fight for that, which is why it resists meditation, for in meditation the conscious mind is released.  Hypnosis gives the conscious permission to let go, although the conscious is always ready to jump back in.  The ego, which is materialistic can work against the body and feeling, and against spirit.

     Herein lies the problem of life: the conflict between what we believe is real and what is actually real!

     The conscious mind is rational, logical and has perception.  Our perception can alter how we see 'the truth'.  In the above example, the five year old believed that she was a big girl and was now not allowed to cry.  This belief was programmed in with such traumatic feeling that the subconscious protected her from her fear of crying (and therefore not being loved by Mummy) by making her 'brave' and caring for everyone else.  I wonder how many nurses can identify with this feeling?

     Spiritual healing seems to release blocks directly, without involving the conscious mind in discussion or analysis.  Healing offers unconditional acceptance and love.   Spiritual healing opens a person to positive suggestions to get well.

     It seems that we are born into this world from spirit only to be conditioned by our parents, teachers and society to conform in certain ways.  We give away our own power, believe we are not good enough, and seek materialism to satisfy our needs.  It is only by becoming aware of our Self and our purpose that we can become whole.  Body, mind and spirit working together.

     We have to have the courage to break the chains of our conditioning so that we may become free of dis-ease

Wendy Walling is a hypnotherapist, counsellor and healer in South Devon, member of the Exeter DHN group.
 

You may quote from or reproduce these editorial clips if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1992 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com   DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com 

RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS NEWSLETTER