Voss Hypnotics

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If you’re like me, whenever you see a product or service that claims to fix anything and everything, you’re naturally skeptical. Frankly, I get a little hostile. Yet here I am, offering hypnosis services for a wide menu of issues.

How does that work?

Hypnosis for therapy is a process – not a treatment or a cure. As such, it can be applied to anything: it’s a bit like cooking. When I say, “I can cook any kind of food,” you understand what I mean. With the right ingredients, the right techniques and the right amount of time, I could probably make just about anything. When I end up with a delicious cheesecake (the best EVER is from the Cooks’ Illustrated recipe) I don't say the cookbook made dessert. Hypnosis is a state of mind: It’s what we do in hypnotherapy that matters.

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Select a topic or scroll through the page to browse:

Anxiety | Cancer and Chemotherapy | Childbirth | Fertility | Habit Control | Healing | IBS | Learning/Test Success | Pain Management | Quit Smoking | Sleep Better | Sports Performance | TMJ

Anxiety

Whether you call it anxiety, stress or “monkey mind” (the chattering in your head that won’t stop and keeps you from sleeping) you know it doesn’t help. It’s different from being appropriately concerned – free-floating anxiety can be devastating. You may start worrying about something rational and soon find yourself spinning “what if” questions wildly out of control: Not just “what if the plane crashes?” but “what if space junk lands on me?” and “what if I just offended that waiter?”

Sometimes clients know exactly where their anxiety comes from – sometimes we need to do a little exploration. Either way, clients benefit from learning relaxation and self-hypnosis techniques. Often we’ll be able to find and alter the triggers by changing the automatic associations or links in your subconscious mind. For example, if you’re particularly anxious speaking in front of a group, perhaps there’s a memory that’s led to a belief that something bad might happen. The two thoughts are paired – as when I say the word “Paris” and what comes to mind for many people, instantly, is an image of the Eiffel Tower.

Not sure how powerful associations are? Try this with me. If I say the word, “fire,” what comes to mind?

If your first response is an image of a cozy fire in a hearth on a snowy night, that’s going to trigger one emotional state. What if the response is the thought of being trapped by deadly flames in a towering inferno?

The subconscious mind is a great place to heal anxiety – we can find out what the part of you that’s creating these negative images is trying to do. It’s not as though your subconscious is trying to ruin your life. It’s just using a defense mechanism that’s no longer helpful.

A classic example of this is the person who, to protect himself from rejection, rejects everyone else first. Once you learn to give yourself more of whatever it is you want, you can let go of that old method of coping with stress and more easily learn healthier habits of thinking. I generally recommend 4-6 sessions.

If you’re currently on prescription medication or under a therapist’s care for anxiety or depression, we will coordinate with your licensed medical provider.

Cancer and Chemotherapy

Cancer is a frightening disease. Hypnotherapy's premiere use for cancer patients is to help them be more comfortable with the effects of both the disease and the treatment. * 

For patients undergoing chemotherapy, expectations can be key -- did you know there’s something called “anticipatory nausea” with chemotherapy? Often people throw up just knowing they’re about to get the drugs. With hypnosis, we can change your expectations and increase your body’s ability to tolerate and TARGET the power of chemical treatments. One example is the client who, despite having experienced nausea during each of her three previous bouts with chemo, used hynpnosis to get through her last round with a comfortable gut. She joked about missing the weight-loss effects of the chemo this time, but very much appreciated the simple joy of being able to share meals with friends.

In addition to helping with side-effects, hypnotherapy is often used to improve healing. We begin with relaxation, which can improve immune response. Communication with the subconscious, which controls the autonomic nervous system, may also be able to augment the body's response to particular medication. There is some amazing anecdotal evidence of the power of creative, individual imagery to help direct the body to heal itself. Our goal is to help clients with cancer let go of stress, be physically and mentally comfortable, to tolerate and even thrive on medication, and to use every possible modality to increase their natural healing ability. 

We know that the connection between the mind and body is very real. Of course, that does not mean that the mind "caused" your cancer. Too many discussions of mind/body healing seem to suggest that somehow a cancer is "meant" to teach a lesson or is somehow called forth by some psychological need. This notion is ridiculous and offensive. It's a disease. It's just doing what it does. However, our minds then do what they do, which is to attribute meaning to everything. And when we use hypnosis to discover, learn from and address whatever meaning the subconscious attaches to the disease, it becomes easier to let it go. 

I invite anyone coping with cancer or chemo to give me a call. Sessions can be arranged at your convenience and at your location.

* Here’s Just one of countless studies on this subject:
Nurs Clin North Am 1995 Dec; 30(4):697-709 (ISSN: 0029-6465): Relaxation and the relief of cancer pain. Sloman R. University of Sydney, Faculty of Nursing, Australia. Progressive muscle relaxation combined with guided imagery has the potential to promote relief of cancer pain. The techniques appear to produce a relaxation response that may break the pain- muscle-tension-anxiety cycle and facilitate pain relief through a calming effect. One of the benefits is the sense of control this gives patients.

Childbirth

After learning hypnosis for pain management and stress relief, I was amazed that hypnosis is not more commonly used for birth. I immediately went out and found the best national program and have been teaching Hypnobabies® Childbirth Hypnosis ever since.

Whether you want a hospital, birth center or home birth, Hypnobabies gives you a complete education in the birth process. You and your partner become informed consumers of health care. In addition, over the six-week course you practice self-hypnosis that produces medical hypno-anesthesia. Hypnomoms bond with their babies and partners and give birth in comfort, joy and love!

There is much more on this course at www.HypnobabiesLA.com

Fertility

The most popularly cited study of hypnosis and in-vitro-fertilization claims that women who received hypnotherapy doubled the success of their treatment. A team from Soroka University, Israel, found 28% of women in the group who were hypnotised became pregnant, compared with 14% of those who were not. The study of 185 women was presented to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Berlin in 2004. While there were some other differences among the groups, the findings were encouraging.

We know intuitively that simply relaxing helps. That's one of the lessons of all those anecdotal stories about women getting pregnant shortly after adopting. In addition, we know that the reproductive system is one that’s greatly affected by stress: in fact, the opposite of of the “Fight or Flight" stress response is “Feed and Breed,” for obvious reasons.

When we’re getting ready to run from the lion, we don’t send a lot of oxygen or energy to our digestive or sexual organs. They’re not essential to the task of the moment. To fight or flee, we get the blood flowing to our arms and legs and away from the head, gut and groin.

Hypnotherapy for fertility includes relaxation, self-hypnosis and removing perhaps unrecognized mental blocks. Some couples find they need to let go of a hidden fear or concern about parenting that’s been getting in the way.

Hypnotherapy can add the fun back to adding to the family.

Habit Control

Nail biting, hair pulling and eye-twitching are automatic responses or tics often associated with stress. Sometimes a simple substitution works – programming yourself to take a deep relaxing breath and a sip of water. Sometimes you'll want to treat a stress-response habit like anxiety, and find out what the part of you that bites your nails really wants...

Healing

Hypnotherapy can help you strengthen your natural healing ability in three ways: First, relaxation. Stress is believed to be a factor in roughly 80% of physical ailments and syndromes. Using breathing and other automatic cues, you can move yourself from the fight-or-flight response (the sympathetic nervous system) to the relaxation response, in which the body has a lot more energy to use for healing.

Second, giving the subconscious mind an image or goal can stimulate the Autonomic Nervous System and improve the production of hormones, chemicals and neuro-transmitters involved in healing.

Finally, letting go of fear can reduce pain, by ending what’s known as the Fear, Tension, Pain cycle. (Fear causes muscular tension, which makes injuries worse. To picture how being relaxed can help, just imagine a drunken cowboy falling off a horse in an old Western, or, even better, the marvelous Chinese movie Drunken Master with Jackie Chan.)

Hypnosis before surgery, listening to a recording during surgery and hypnosis or self-hypnosis post-surgery all have been shown to shorten the time of hospital stays and reduce levels of medication needed.

IBS

Are you worn out from the gut pain, bloating and unreliable digestion of Irritable Bowel Syndrome?  Tired of leaving a life limited by the nearest restroom?

You are not alone. Did you know that IBS is one of the leading causes of missed work days in the United States?

With a referral from your primary care physician, I can help you become more comfortable and confident using a proven protocol of hypnotherapy. This safe, natural mind-body technique is perfectly suited for the kinds of chronic stress responses created by dysfunctions like IBS.

Call for your appointment today – or ask for more information about IBS and hypnosis and I’ll gladly send you a brief article with more information.

I understand first-hand what a relief it is to free yourself from the tyranny of a demanding digestive tract. That’s why I trained in a specific protocol of hypnotherapy that has been proven to help relieve the stress of IBS, decrease sensitivity to discomfort and manage many symptoms.

In just eight sessions of completely customized individual sessions, bolstered by relaxing recordings with gut-specific suggestions, you can join the clients of Voss Hypnotics who have reclaimed their lives. The same techniques that help patients undergo surgery without anesthesia can help you: once your physician has checked thoroughly, you really don't need that discomfort any more, do you? You'll be impressed at how quickly your body and mind can become relaxed and comfortable.

Many studies back the use of hypnosis for IBS. It’s now a routine treatment in England, covered under the national health plan. As an example, a long-term study published in the scientific journal Gut in 2003 found that 71% of patients who received hypnotherapy reported feeling better after a course of up to 12 sessions. The results were long-lasting, too. Of this group of more than 200 IBS patients who received hypnotherapy, more than 80% of those who made progress continued improvement a year or more later.

More recently, prestigious doctor Roland Valori, editor of Frontline Gastroenterology, kept track of 100 patients with IBS and found that 90 of them had symptoms that "improved significantly" with hypnosis. See the BBC story from March, 2010 here:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8572818.stm.

For more information about hypnotherapy in Los Angeles for IBS, click here.

Calming Test Anxiety & Enjoying Focus in Studying

Everyone knows that hypnosis can help you conquer test anxiety. Did you know it also can help you study? When it comes to succeeding at your big exams, what do you need most?

A) Information storage B) Information retrieval C) Calm Confidence

D) All of the above

Hypnosis is often associated with relaxation, but its key elements are super-focused attention and heightened suggestibility. The dramatic power of focus is one of the reasons hypnosis is such a highly successful learning accelerator.

At Voss Hypnotics, you can learn hypnotic techniques to suggest confidence and complete recall. You'll learn how to enter a state of calm concentration, so you may shut out the external world and become completely absorbed in your study.

You also gain greater access to the enormous power of your unique subconscious mind -- seat of imagination, sensory input, memory and creativity. How do you learn best? It’s often said that most people remember roughly:

Hypnosis, combined with classic memory training techniques, can improve the vividness and clarity you bring to the material you’re learning. It’s much easier to find information when you’ve properly filed it in the first place, and when you've integrated it with your dominant senses. You can key information to images, sounds, or even a sense of location in time and space (kinesthetic awareness). Then, you learn how to stay in a mood of satisfaction and success to recall the information you need at any time and place.

We even use the same kind of mental rehearsal techniques that athletes use. Just as top athletes hit that basket because they've done it hundreds of times in practice and thousands of times in their imagination, so it's a lot easier to ace that exam when you've already imagined yourself overcoming all of the obstacles beforehand.

Imagine how much more pleasant it would be to go in for a test when your body, mind and emotions all know exactly how to be comfortable while you calmly access all the information you need.

Whether you want help with accelerated learning or simply with being more confident at exams, feel free to call to hear more about success with hypnotherapy. You can learn self-hypnosis to enhance your focus and concentration and make study time more productive. And wouldn’t it be nice to link a powerful feeling of joy and triumph to making and measuring progress?

When you approach learning with the same gusto you feel about your most triumphant moments -- When you allow yourself to become absorbed, mentally and physically in your task --

When you learn how to store memories, link them and retrieve them at will --AND when you create a Circle of Excellence that you can step into whenever you want to feel calm, confident and creative -- You can ace any exam!

In fact, you may look forward to tests and exams, because they trigger such terrific feelings in you.

Pain Management

Whether your pain is mental or physical, hypnotic techniques can reach inside to use your own resources to promote healing. A child running a race can fall, get up and keep running until she whizzes past her rival at the finish line without even noticing the deep scrape on her knee. But when she stops and sees the worry on her dad’s face, suddenly she realizes it’s throbbing….

Has that ever happened to you? Most of us have experiences of somehow, for some reason, instinctively turning off our perception of pain. Most of us have experiences of healing scrapes and bumps. These responses are usually controlled by the part of our mind that is under (sub) consciousness. Doesn't it make sense to use hypnosis to access the subconscious mind, which regulates our perception of pain?

First, of course, we must be sure the pain is not sending a message that still needs to be heard. An acquaintance recently confessed to running half a marathon with what turned out to be a fractured pelvis. She pushed on past the pain, rather than listening to it. That's why responsible hypnotherapists make sure the underlying physical issues have been considered first by a doctor before removing pain, which, after all, is designed to signal us for a reason.

Once the green light is given, and there's no reason to feel the pain, it's relatively easy to let it go. This can be especially helpful to NA or AA members, people allergic to anesthesia or analgesics or people who just want more control of their physical and mental experience.

A great video to watch on hypno-anesthesia is a BBC news production from 2006. Click here to watch Hypno-Surgery Live.

Quit Smoking

Hypnotists don’t have magic wands, and despite our best efforts we can't really make people do our bidding. So if you don't want to be free of the smoking habit, I can't make you stop. Hypnosis does have an impressive track record in helping people who are really fed up with breathing poison -- hypnosis has been shown in many studies to be more effective than nicotine substitutes and much safer than any drug.

At Voss Hypnotics, we work together to create the exact method that’s right to help you become smoke-free. Usually, that involves three sessions – one to prepare, one at which you flip the switch to become a non-smoker, and a third to bolster your progress. You leave with tools to handle stress in the future without ever turning back to old habits.

Call today to see if you’re ready to let go of your desire for cigarettes by finding a better way to get what you really crave.

Sleep Better

In cities like Los Angeles, it seems nearly everyone has trouble sleeping from time to time. What if you could sleep like a baby, without the risks of medication?

Whether your lack of sleep is caused by racing thoughts, physical tension, stress, and anxiety or by habits that interfere with the process of falling asleep, hypnotherapy may help.

Your Voss Hypnotics program for better sleep offers some of the most powerful clinical hypnosis techniques available. You’ll receive a customized recording to take home. Listening nightly can create a new habit of sleeping well that becomes ingrained in a few short weeks.

Here’s are just a few of the hypnotic techniques that conquer insomnia:

I usually recommend a 3-session package for better sleep. You'll also receive Sleep Now, a hypnosis CD designed for bedtime use. Any customization required is also included.

Sports Performance

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TMJ

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