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This was posted on the BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk) on 17th March. It suggests that research is backing up the claim that hypnotherapy can be very effective in the treatment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). |
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Greater use of hypnotherapy to ease the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome would help sufferers and might save money, says a gastroenterologist. Dr Roland Valori, editor of Frontline Gastroenterology, said of the first 100 of his patients treated, symptoms improved significantly for nine in 10. He said that although previous research has shown hypnotherapy is effective for IBS sufferers, it is not widely used. This may be because doctors simply do not believe it works. Widely ignored Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common gut problem which can cause abdominal pain, bloating, and sometimes diarrhoea or constipation. Dr Valori, of Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, said the research evidence which shows that hypnotherapy could help sufferers of IBS was first published in the 1980s. He thinks it has been widely ignored because many doctors find it hard to believe that it does work, or to comprehend how it could work.
He began referring IBS patients for hypnotherapy in the early 1990s and has found it to be highly effective. “To be frank, I have never looked back,” he said. He audited the first 100 cases he referred for hypnotherapy and found that the symptoms stopped completely in four in ten cases with typical IBS. He says in a further five in 10 cases patients reported feeling more in control of their symptoms and were therefore much less troubled by them. “It is pretty clear to me that it has an amazing effect,” he said. “It seems to work particularly well on younger female patients with typical symptoms, and those who have only had IBS for a relatively short time.” Powerful effect He believes that it could work partly by helping to relax patients. “Of the relaxation therapies available, hypnotherapy is the most powerful,” he said. He also says that IBS patients often face difficult situations in their lives, and hypnotherapy can help them respond to these stresses in a less harmful way. NHS guidelines allow doctors to refer IBS patients for hypnotherapy or other psychological therapies if medication is unsuccessful and the problem persists. Dr Valori thinks that if hypnotherapy were used more widely it could possibly save the NHS money while improving patient care. Dr Charlie Murray, Secretary of the British Gastroenterology Society, said: “There is no doubt that hypnotherapy is helpful for some patients, but it depends on the skill and experience of those practising it. “But the degree to which it is effective is not well defined. “I would support using it as one therapy, but it is no panacea.” |
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Posts Tagged ‘anxiety’
Hypnotherapy ‘can help’ irritable bowel syndrome
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
It is pretty clear to me that it has an amazing effect 
Tapping therapy: curing physical and mental problems
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010This article was published on the Telegraph website (www.telegraph.co.uk) about Emotional Freedom Technique (also known as ‘tapping’). It’s something that I teach to many of my clients, as it’s such an amazing tooland has so many possible applications. Have a read and see what you think…
Beverley Turner tries out ‘tapping’, a technique designed to cure physical and mental problems by tapping on the body’s invisible energy pathways.
By Beverley Turner
Published: 7:00AM GMT 15 Feb 2010
Singer Michael Ball was seen doing it on a daytime TV chat show. He learnt it from the late singer, Stephen Gately, who used it to calm his own performance nerves. Lily Allen’s weight loss was attributed to its efficacy. American PGA players have been spotted doing it around the golf course. And Norwegian pole-vaulter Rens Blom credited his unexpected 2005 World Championship Gold to its powers. The internet reveals millions of anecdotal accounts of its success on phobias, addictions and anxiety. So nearing the end of my own two-year psychotherapy training, I wanted to discover what this mysterious “tapping” business is all about.
So I signed up for a day course at the EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) Academy in London’s Regent’s College, with Richard Mark, an advanced EFT practitioner and certified trainer, who has worked as a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist for 12 years. My fellow students are a mixed bunch of mental health professionals, lawyers, physiotherapists, trainee counsellors and full-time parents. Unafraid to challenge, the students are surprisingly curious and sceptical rather than gullibile. There isn’t a sandal or kaftan among them.
Although it doesn’t rigidly follow his teachings, Mark’s course is based on the EFT therapy developed by American, Gary Craig in 1997. Craig had studied Dr. Callaghan’s Thought Field Therapy in the 1980s, an evolution of John Diamond’s Kinesiology, both of which were rooted in ancient Eastern “meridian energy” theories of acupuncture and Shiatsu, codified since at least 1000BC.
These therapies claimed that our bodies contain invisible energy pathways – meridians – and identified hundreds of acupoints at junctions along these interconnecting highways. They can be disrupted by life’s vicissitudes; in extreme cases, resulting in not only mental but also physical problems.
EFT works by a person tapping on just nine of these acupoints, while speaking aloud. And this is where it becomes a little weird. Working in pairs we identify a minor physical ailment and repeat the phrase, “Even though I have this sore knee / headache / lack of energy, I deeply and completely accept myself,” while tapping on the meridian points: the soft part of the hand beneath the little finger, crown of the head, around the eyes, beneath the nose, the chin, near the clavicle and beneath the armpit. I just about resist the urge to “ooh ooh” like a monkey.
A key part of the therapy is calibrating the intensity of either physical or emotional pain, which allows both therapist and patient a tangible scale by which to measure success. Mark explains that EFT is “especially effective in clearing traumatic memories: accidents, abuse, violence, childhood memories; or even clearing persistent negative messages from family or key people in our lives.”
We move onto emotional problems, selecting a memory that is difficult, but manageable in the limited time available, and within a classroom environment. Using the “Movie Technique,” we must make a mental movie of a specific event, giving it a title and running it in our mind’s eye, marking its intensity between 1 – 10, before tapping with the mantra, “Even though I have this playground bullying / car accident / illness diagnosis movie, I deeply and completely accept myself.” In extreme cases of trauma, the patient can merely imagine the units of distress without running the movie in their head, gradually moving towards the scene at a safe pace.
In spite of – or perhaps because of – the adrenaline from feeling like a bit of a wally, when using the “Movie Technique” myself my own memory of witnessing a violent assault twenty years ago, does indeed fade in its intensity. But I’m not a prime candidate. EFT has impressive results on a whole spectrum of emotional issues but is arguably making its biggest impact on those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Treating such patients, Marta Krol, a Polish clinical psychologist who trained under Mark and has returned to Poland, has found EFT’s effects “amazing”. She recounts a 12-year-old Chechnyan girl suffering speech and anxiety problems as a result of witnessing, aged six, her uncle’s dismembered body brought into the family home and laid on the kitchen table by hysterical relatives. The child did not speak at all for the following 12 months.
“We had worked together for six months with little progress,” says Krol, “Then I tried EFT. She pictured herself watching the terrible scene on TV but through another TV and so on until she was five levels removed and even then she saw herself watching from behind the curtains. But after six weeks she was talking fluently and could recount the event with no anxiety. I honestly believe I could not have helped her do that without EFT.”
Emma-Leigh Johnson, a London-based drugs counsellor is unequivocal about its benefits, “By the time clients come to me they have had lots of therapy. They know what to say, the games to play and boxes to tick. EFT is so unusual, they don’t know what you want to hear.”
Few therapies allow a patient to say aloud that they accept themselves despite their rape / abuse / addiction, while dealing with the emotions that arise simultaneously. Johnson explains, “lots of therapy separates the issue and the human being. With this you can change how you feel about something, but accept that you can’t change what happened – that’s the emotional freedom. I see bigger shifts using EFT than any other therapy.”
Some clients prefer to be ‘tapped upon’ by the therapist; others will mirror their actions; but perhaps more than any other therapy, EFT equips the individual to take away the skill to use at any time.
EFT is still ripe for ridicule. Having explained it in broad terms to my husband, he can now be heard muttering, “I may not have unstacked the dishwasher but I deeply and completely accept myself.” But I have no doubt that the sound of tapping is here to stay. And it’s only going to get louder.
Richard Mark 020 8993 3803; info@eft-academy.co.uk; www.eft-academy.co.uk
Reflections on what we control and what we don’t
Monday, February 8th, 2010| Once again my this blog comes from Michael Neill’s weekly email. It is reproduced here with his permission.His emails can be really inspiring and you can sign up to receive them too by using the link at the bottom of the page. I hope you enjoy it … Did you know that “worry” is a verb? That is, “to worry something” is to shake it about – it is an activity, not a thing.
The kind of worrying that most of us do is with our thoughts. We take a particular thought and “worry it about” in our minds, shaking it back and forth and flipping it around until we become absolute experts on everything that could possibly go wrong.
I myself am an expert “worrier” – I seem to have been granted the ability to pick out the worst-case scenario at a puppy farm, or to imagine all the things that could go wrong at an OSHA convention.
Which is why I’ve always found it a bit curious that when I’m actually IN a difficult situation, I tend to handle it with remarkable ease and grace. Being stuck in traffic doesn’t upset me, even if I’m running late. If the recording equipment stops working at an event where I’m teaching, as it did recently, I can generally incorporate it into the proceedings without batting an eyelash, even if I had previously been worrying about the possibility.
The difference, or so it seems to me, is this: Once something has actually happened, whether or not it happens is clearly no longer within my control. And if I know that something is not within my control, I see no point in worrying about it, or more accurately, in worrying it about.
Which is why when I woke up a couple of days ago without control over the left side of my face, I was oddly calm. In fact, the only real thought my worrying mind gave me to play with was how it might affect the television pilot we’re working on, and whether or not they will be able to film me exclusively from the right side until whatever it was cleared up.
When others kindly pointed out to me all the other things I could be worrying about that might be a wee bit more important than how I looked on TV, like a brain tumor or a stroke, it did occur to me to go to the hospital, and they quickly diagnosed it as a mild case of Bell’s Palsy, a strange form of facial paralysis the explanation for which sounded completely made up, even to the doctor who diagnosed me with it.
The good thing about Bell’s Palsy is that a. Most people recover within 2 – 3 weeks and b. With the exception of a cocktail of drugs that may or may not speed recovery and that I am faithfully taking each day, there’s nothing much which can be done.
And I find that sort of behavioral helplessness incredibly comforting. Oh sure, I get that if I maintain a relatively positive mind and a relatively relaxed body, that will create an internal environment which promotes healing. And even after only a few days, I’ve discovered that ordering soup for lunch is just a bad idea. But when there’s nothing to be done about something, there’s nothing to be done about it – and that leaves our energy free to enjoy whatever it is we can do. Twenty years ago, I remember seeing the quadriplegic motivational speaker W. Mitchell give a talk from his wheelchair. The line which burned into my memory was this: “Before I was paralyzed there were 10,000 things I could do. Now there are 9,000. I can either dwell on the 1,000 I’ve lost or focus on the 9,000 I have left.”
What we control, in my experience, is not what happens to us and not even which thoughts, positive or negative, come into our head. What we control is what we do and which thoughts we dwell on. And funnily enough, that’s more than enough control to create a magical life, regardless of whatever circumstances you happen to find yourself in. Recently, I was watching a video of the spiritual philosopher Syd Banks and he shared an old Irish philosophy:
With love, Michael |
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Hypnosis Improves Academic Performance and Reduces Test-Anxiety for College Students
Monday, May 18th, 2009|
Monday, May 18, 2009 by: Steve G. Jones, M.Ed., citizen journalist |
(NaturalNews) A lot is expected of today’s college students. They are under an enormous amount of pressure to succeed in academics. The pressure comes from themselves, parents, professors, and friends. This causes a lot of stress for students. Success in college is a stepping stone to being successful in a career after graduation, so students feel the need to perform at their full potential. It is important for struggling college students to seek help in reducing their stress with natural treatments such as hypnotherapy. For some students, the stress and anxiety of school and academics can become overwhelming. Stress affects students in many different ways. For some students, their grades start to suffer, which can affect their GPA in the long-run. Other students become so overwhelmed by stress that they drop out of college. According to the 2000 census, 50% of the population in the United States over the age of 25 attended college. However, only 60% of those who attended college earned an associate, bachelor, or graduate degree. This means that 40% did not finish college for various reasons. Sapp (1990) studied the role hypnosis plays on treating test-anxiety in college students. The participants in the study were randomly divided into two groups. One group served as the control group and received no form of treatment. The other group received cognitive-behavioral hypnosis. The researcher evaluated the effects of hypnosis in improving academic performance and decreasing test anxiety. Both groups were enrolled in a demanding psychology course. All students were evaluated based on their midterm grade and anxiety levels. The hypnosis group reported a significant reduction in test anxiety and improvement in academic achievement. Both groups were evaluated 6 weeks after the end of the course and the hypnosis group was found to have maintained their hypnosis treatment gains in achievement and reduction in anxiety. Cognitive behavioral hypnosis is a highly effective form of treatment that helps students improve performance and reduce anxiety. Carrese (1998) outlines the benefits of teaching self-hypnosis to college freshman. The researcher describes the steps taught to students, including relaxation techniques and the usage of imagery. Self-hypnosis was able to help the college freshman cope with stress and the pressures of college. Whether cognitive-behavioral hypnosis is used or self-hypnosis is used, hypnotherapy is a very effective form of treating stress and anxiety in college students. Having the ability to better manage stress not only improves their academic performance in college, but will continue to help them cope with stress in other situations throughout their lives. Sources 2000 Census. Census Scope. Retrieved on May 15, 2009: http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart… Carrese, M.A. (1998). Managing stress for college success through self-hypnosis. Journal of Humanistic Education and Development, 36(3), 134-142. Sapp, M. (1990). Hypnotherapy and test anxiety: Two cognitive-behavioral constructs. The effects of hypnosis in reducing test anxiety and improving academic achievement in college students. Report. ERIC ID: ED328163.
Sleep and Teenagers
Monday, April 6th, 2009From Pyschology Today
By John Cline, Ph.D. on April 5, 2009 – 2:40pm in Sleepless in America
On a recent episode of the MTV series “True Life,” a high school student suffering from delayed sleep phase syndrome was followed. She finds it impossible to go to sleep at a regular time, instead staying up until the early hours of the morning and then finding it nearly impossible to get out of bed to go to school. When she does, she is constantly falling asleep and is unable to pay attention to class discussions. This was an accurate depiction of the problems some teens have related to sleep. Teens tend to have three major sleep concerns. One, they are naturally sleepier than younger children or adults. Two, they tend to get insufficient sleep during the week due to academic, social and recreational demands and try to make up for it on the weekend by sleeping late. Three, they have a delayed sleep phase, meaning they want go to bed later and sleep later than other age groups. Given late night activities such as text messaging and video gaming, this propensity can easily become a full fledged delayed sleep phase disorder in which bed time isn’t until 3 or 4 a.m., and the ideal wake up time is pushed to around 12 p.m. This shift in circadian rhythm is facilitated by late night exposure to light, as when looking into a bright computer screen at 2 a.m. Teens almost always sleep late on the weekends. Some teens, however, find it almost impossible to get out of bed on any given day due to their sleep difficulties. This can easily result in missing school and becoming truant. Indeed, studies have shown that teens are sleepier than younger children or older adults. Their sleep is shallower and less restorative than the sleep that younger children get. When allowed to sleep as much as they would like, teens average 9 to 10 hrs per night, but few are getting anywhere near this amount. Indeed, as the start of the school day is earlier for high school than middle school, it is often necessary for high school students to get up as early as 5:30 a.m. to get to school on time. In order to get even nine hours of sleep with such a schedule, it would be necessary to go to bed around 8:30 p.m., which is not likely. Once children become preschoolers, most no longer require naptime, and by nature choose to stay awake. Teens regain the ability to nap and are better able to stay up later than younger children. They are able to over sleep when necessary and regularly do so on weekends and during vacations. Teens also tend to have much more irregular sleep schedules, with greatly different bed and wake up times on weekdays as compared to weekends. This greater flexibility in sleep ability and sleep scheduling can lead to significant disruption of the sleep pattern. As a result of the miss-match between sleep-need and school schedules, insufficient sleep is common among teens. It is estimated that up to 40% of high school and college students are sleep deprived. This may be an underestimate. There are many reasons for this. At this age there is decreasing control exercised by parents. At the same time academic work increases. Many high school students are taking honors and advanced placement classes, often working at a college level. Young people engage in many more social activities such as sports and school clubs. In addition to doing their home work, they also may have to work long hours to earn money for college. Many college students have to essentially be full time students and full time workers due to the current economic challenges. The adolescent years are filled with challenges. Teens take on more adult roles while still having many of the needs of children. They experience the rapid physical and emotional changes of becoming young adults. Many have concerns about their future such as going to college, getting a job and having enough money. Sexual feelings are intense during this time and teenagers have to take on more adult decisions regarding sexuality, the use of alcohol and other drugs, and working out their own value systems which may be different from their parents. During this time distrust of parents or authority figures may develop. All of these worries and concerns can cause arousal that interferes with sleep. As with adults, sleep is often a lower priority for adolescents. This is especially true during the school week when school, homework, sports, after school activities, volunteer work, jobs and socializing seem much more important than sleep. As with adults, few teens can appreciate the benefits of sleep with regard to improved cognitive functioning and mood. If they did, the improved functioning young people would experience might more than off-set the extra time devoted to sleep. There are a number of concerns related to insufficient sleep that go beyond the cognitive, memory and emotional effects. Increased sleepiness results in increased risk for fatigue-related accidents, especially motor vehicle accidents. Laboratory studies have shown that significant sleep loss results in cognitive impairment equivalent to that caused by alcohol intoxication. Not a good thing for new drivers just learning the rules of the road! When young people are getting insufficient sleep, there is impairment of the motivation needed to do well in the class room or on the job. Unintended sleep episodes may occur in the form of falling asleep in class or on a job, or behind the wheel of a car. Indeed, students with a C average or below typically report getting less sleep and having a more irregular sleep schedule than students with better grades. While the above issues are the most common ones for sleep problems among young people, a number of other sleep disorders are also potentially problematic. For example, narcolepsy usually appears in adolescence or early adulthood and about 50% of people with narcolepsy will have some symptoms by age 16. Another significant concern is the impact of the increasing obesity in our society. Obesity can increase the risk for sleep apnea in young people just as it does in older individuals. The long term impact of sleep apnea can have severe implications for health and well being. In the next post, I will discuss some ways to help teens keep from being sleepless in America.