There are also lots of allergy medications with long lists of side effects and even many alternative allergy treatments.

But did you know that these type of seasonal allergies can actually be controlled very quickly and easily by your own mind? You see, it has long been known that such allergies have perceptual/mental triggers (as in the famous case of a woman with severe rose allergy responding to fake roses…) and so if it is ultimately the mind deciding to fire the allergic response that it has learned, it can unlearn it.

Here something to begin working with that’s quick and easy:

When you sense symptoms beginning, start with a few deep breaths, telling yourself (internally or out loud) to be calm… relax your body more and more with each out-breath… then notice how you are feeling around the symptoms from a mental or emotional standpoint (“this feeling is like… it feels as if…”). Notice if the feeling reminds you of a particular emotion. Does it feel scared? Angry? Frustrated? Nervous?

Once you have identified the emotion that it most closely resembles, then ask yourself “I have felt this way the strongest when…” and see what comes to you. Then use your breath to release that feeling on the exhale, telling yourself whatever is the opposite of what you identified (so for a fearful feeling “I am safe”, for a nervous feeling “I am calm” etc.). Then make it even more specific to the area where you feel the symptom — i.e. “My nasal passages are now safe and calm with all pollen and dust, the tissues of my mucous membranes are relaxed and dry and at ease” and imagine this strongly. Also, if you notice any negative self-statements (such as “I am bad” “I am guilty” “I am unlovable”) then repeat to yourself the reverse of these.

Try it for 10-15 minutes and notice the result!

One famous experiment on projection involved modifying a deck of cards to have, say, a red 4 of spades. The researchers would then show people cards from the deck, giving them a brief moment to identify the card and moving on. When given only a very brief time to see the modified cards, people would give an answer for what the card is based on a regular deck (i.e. “4 of hearts” or “4 of spades”) but upon having more time to see the modified card, people began to realize a problem, but could not accurately state what they were seeing. They would say things like “it’s a 4 of spades, but there’s a red line around it” showing that they could start to see the color red, but still basically “saw” a black spade image because they so strongly expected that shape on a card to be black. Many people tested, even after having extensive time to examine the modified cards, still couldn’t say what the card was and many experienced real anxiety about this.

So we know that a conceptual expectation can modify our sense recognition. But what about emotions? Is it possible that emotional states cause a shift in what/how we perceive at the sense level, just as beliefs do? We know that there are neurochemical changes in the body when certain emotions are experienced. And there are lots of anecdotes and sayings relating to emotion-induced sense shifts (i.e. “seeing red” or “tunnel vision”.) The relatively modern field of behavioral optometry is looking at how vision is learned, and we know that learning is influenced by emotional states.

So this blog is meant more as a question and a teaser, because I have been unable to locate any specific research to support or refute the idea. But also I hope for this to be a “chicken or the egg” idea to expand how we look at the link between our perceptions and our feelings. I have found a lot in the self-help world about adjusting your emotions by adjusting your perceptions, but perhaps we have to look at it the other way around as well. If anyone feels like they have experienced a modulation of the senses as a result of emotional state, please comment me!

I want to talk about allergies, because lately in Santa Fe, NM (and I imagine in other places as well) seems lots of people are talking about their allergies and how much they are suffering with them, as if it is some rite of passage — “Oh!  This is a BAD allergy year…”  But doesn’t it seem like people are ALWAYS saying that?

I just found this article when searching allergies in Santa Fe on the home page for our local paper here, The Santa Fe New Mexican:

“Allergy sufferers: prepare for a month of pain”

Sue Vorenberg | The New Mexican

3/27/2008 – 3/28/08″

So First off, as a hypnotherapist I was horrified by this glaring negative suggestion (basically instructing people to suffer… it must be so because the paper says so!)

Early Spring, like late Summer, is a time of frequent seasonal allergy problems here in Northern New Mexico.  And I am guessing from the date in the by-line that this is an older article that it just found for me, but it could just as well be current from the buzz around town.

The thing about these season allergies that a lot of sufferers seem unaware of is that they are operated predominantly by the mind, not the body.

This may sound like a rather sweeping claim, and if you are curious about my statement I encourage you to ask your doctor about it.  Ask your doctor why people with an allergy to a certain pollen can look at a PICTURE of that plant, and start to show a histamine response.  Ask how it is that our bodies can be fooled into a physiological response by the IDEA of an allergen.

Perhaps the answer to this question is related to the explanation for how so many allergy sufferers find their symptoms significantly lessening or even disappearing with no treatment besides HYPNOSIS!

Seasonal allergies have become a specialty of mine, and the success rate I have witnessed is so hard to believe I am not even going to post it here for fear I will be accused of fraud.  But the point is, this isn’t about me and what a genius I am (it’s true!) but rather the point is that OUR MINDS do this allergy thing to us.  The theory I have heard goes something like this:

At some point in time, the body is particularly stressed for some reason, which in turn diminishes the immune system and its capacity to respond to pathogens and irritants in the body.  Allergens are not toxic, not pathogenic, but they ARE irritants.  Under normal conditions, our body deals with these irritants easily, flushing them away almost unnoticed just as we do with so many other intruders in our breath, our skin, our mucus membranes.   However, if the immune system is suppressed as a result of stress (physical, psychological or emotional) AND we are simultaneously exposed to a rather large dose of an irritant, our bodies will be unable to deal with it in the normal ways and we will begin to have a more drastic reaction to the irritant.  The body then learns to associate this drastic response to the presence of the irritant (allergen) and so an allergic response is learned.  (funny, just writing about this my nose is starting to run!!!  time for some self-hypnosis…)

So the extreme responses [runny, itchy, sneezy nose, itchy, watery eyes, scrathy throat etc.] are learned on the basis of an event, or sequence of similar supporting events.  If this is the case, that program can be reset, that response unlearned.  This kind of mechanism functions at the level of the subconscious mind, not the conscious mind, so sitting around telling yourself not to sneeze seldom does any good, but with the right language and the right state of mind, your seasonal allergies can simply stop, just because you tell them to.

Interestingly, for spring-time allergies, with a lot of clients, the subconscious identifies a desire to go out and enjoy the emerging beauty of nature, and as long as these people let themselves enjoy the natural world, they don’t suffer from their allergies.  Often there is a deeper message, sometimes associated with the cause of the original stress at the time the allergy was learned.  Sometimes to truly let go of an allergy means to face that inner stress and release it or make peace with it.  It isn’t always easy, but it is rewarding, and a lot better than months of tissues and drugs!

James A. Serendip

So first o

I LOVE this holiday!  And not just because it revolves around food and eating (I am a real food lover and I imagine I will be posting more about food in posts to come…) but because of the idea of thanks and being thankful.

From my perspective as a professional hypnotherapist, I see the potency of the concept of gratitude and being thankful.  I often assign to my clients the homework of making a gratitude list (one of those tried and true aids to personal growth).  We all know we feel good when in a mindset of gratitude, and I think it is wonderful to have a national holiday devoted to it (no, the holiday is NOT devoted to turkey slaughter and football!)

But what happens when this holiday is over?  Maybe we went to visit family, or just took a few days to relax and stuff ourselves and just feel good for a while.  But now it’s back to work.  Back to being productive consumers.  Back to playing our roles.  The leftovers are all gone and it’s a full work week, so what’s there to be thankful about?

As I have gone back to my emails and messages I find a lot of disagreeable things there… stuff I’d rather not deal with.  Can I stay on vacation a few more days?  And then I  remembered something… one of the famous Mind Training Slogans of Atisha.  and it says “Be Grateful to Everyone.”

For those unfamiliar with these slogans, Atisha was an Eleventh Century Tibetan Buddhist teacher who devised a list of pithy sayings to help those who want to be on a path of awakening consciousness.  I don’t want to go too into the Buddhist concepts here, as I am not qualified to do so (for a reference on this I recommend starting with one of my favorite authors, Pema Chodron… her book “Start Where You Are” is where I first encountered this slogan and the book probably saved my life! and her smaller volume “Comfortable With Uncertainty” talks about it as well… read this stuff!  It is approachable and common-sense wisdom!).  I simply want to throw this idea out there to Be Grateful To EVERYONE!

I believe this is meant to address the idea that we are here on this earth to awaken our awareness, to be present, to learn about ourselves and our world… and every other person here (because they are here doing the same thing from another perspective!) can help us with this, whether we like it or not!

The Buddhists hold this idea of clinging to what is pleasurable and seeking to avoid what is distasteful as being at the root of all suffering, and this idea of being grateful to everyone speaks to that.

It’s a simple but powerful idea.  Everyone can help us wake up!  Everyone and every interaction gives us another opportunity to see mind in action, and specifically to see our OWN mind in action.

For myself, even in writing this I start to think “what if I get criticism about this?  what if people say mean things to me?  Oh no!!!  Danger!  Don’t write anything!  It’s safer to say nothing than to say anything…” and so I get to see how my own fear of people and their reactions can almost instantly provide an impulse to shut down, to isolate, to stifle my own creativity and expression and aliveness.

The same can be true for any interaction with anyone.  Concern over the responses of negative people can keep us from being ourselves, can keeps us locked up, alone, in the dark, in fear.
Yet, if I can hold a place of being grateful to everyone (and every circumstance, every situation) then the fear subsides a bit.

For those that know me or are familiar with hypnotherapy, we know that fear is the big enemy.

THE SUBCONSCIOUS IS ALL ABOUT FEAR!
This is because our subconscious mind is that part of our minds that is always looking to protect us, to keep us safe.  That’s why it’s subconscious… the conscious mind basically can’t be trusted (from a subconscious perspective) and is too slow and cumbersome to really safeguard us from any possible danger or hurt, so we develop this portion of mind that remembers everything and is always alert.. always comparing the present against a huge database of memories and beliefs to see if we’re safe.

So that being the case… think about it a moment… have there ever been people in your life you just wished never existed?  People who pushed your buttons?  People who “made you SO mad!”  People who “broke your heart?”  (I put some of these phrases in quotes because of the way certain ideas tend to express themselves… the messages contained in the words are dangerous to the mind, but we seldom pay attention to that… more on that another time…)
But what about these people?  Why do we have to have these situations?  A good friend of mine once pointed out, on commenting how things seem to always have a tendency to go wrong and fall into fear and chaos, that “It’s always PEOPLE, man!”  It so often seems to be people who screw things up, who disrupt our balance, our equanimity, our bliss.

Why?

Well, like I said, because they are here for the same reason we are… to awaken.  And they are playing the same games we do.  We are all so damned precious!  It’s my way or the highway!  If you don’t agree with me, you’re an idiot!

This is why we tend to gravitate toward the people who mesh well with our belief systems and our world view.  In this country we have seen this situation become very extreme in our last election.  Family members stopped speaking to one another if they were for the other political party!  Our culture has really evolved into a strong “us versus them” mentality (much to our detriment it seems!)

Here’s where this slogan of Atisha comes in.  Be Grateful to EVERYONE.
Because they are showing you your own mind.
We are all grateful for our friends, our loved ones, those special people in our lives.
But what about that awful ex-husband?  That intractable colleague?  That bombastic boss?  That horrific politician?  That guy up the street who lets his dogs crap on my lawn?

Thing is, we never GROW in our COMFORT ZONE… do we?  When everything is going our way, do we ask questions?  Do we question ourselves and our motivations and or ideas?  Do we try to see through the dialog in our own minds when that dialog is all happy and nice?  Not so much.

So be grateful to those people who get your goat!  Those awful people who don’t even SEE what they’re doing!  Those heartless so-and-sos who seem so unavoidable in our lives.
They are our teachers.  They are showing us another place where we can learn to let go if we can get clear on our subconscious responses.  Do we really need to react the way we do?  Does it protect us somehow?  Is there really a threat? (and sometimes maybe there is… but if so, do we respond best out of anger, or out of calm?)

Every single person who interacts with you, just be the act of their doing so, regardless of the nature of the interaction, is reinforcing to you that you are not alone, that we are all in this together.  No matter what you think of another person… to someone else, you ARE the other person!  Think about that!  And be grateful that in this case, you get to be YOU and not the other.  You always get to choose.

So… I offer this proposition.  Choose gratitude.  For everyone.  Let this thought trickle in over the next few days and weeks.  Just play with it… see what you get.  And always remember, YOU are part of everyone… so be gentle with yourself as you work with this thought.

Isn’t THAT interesting?

Combining this study with the fact that IBS is a disease purely of the industrialized world raises a lot of questions about what exactly causes so many people to suffer from this often debilitating syndrome.

The medical community has long been telling us that IBS is a “stress-related illness” but unfortunately that’s about all they will say when it comes to stress-related illnesses.

The truth is, “stress” is a fairly ambiquous term, and it may be time to start identifying some more specific concepts that currently just fall beneath the umbrella of “stress.”

Going on a vacation is a source of stress! Does vacationing cause IBS??? (Well, some people DO notice gastrointestinal distress the first few days of a vacation, so…)

Let me clarify what I mean by a vacation being a stress… “Stress” most literally means any set of conditions perceived in which the mind/body complex determines some degree of possible or imminent threat that requires a response. And since we humans are “creatures of habit” actually anything that is outside our normal or expected experience is (as far as the subconscious is concerned) a stress. Even if we’re enjoying it!

So to say that “stress” is a cause or contributing factor in IBS is simply not therapeutically useful. Rather, I propose that we begin to examine what sorts of things an individual is focusing on, both consciously and subconsciously, as contributing factors to IBS. After all, this sort of internalization of “stress” is quite directly metaphorical, being all about what we hold and what we release and when.

Have you ever gotten home from a vacation and thought, “Now I need a vacation?” Seeing stress from its wider definition, it’s easy to see how such a feeling comes about. Nice as it may be to get away from the office for a week, those action-packed days and nights in Vegas may still be perceived at some level as a stress. The key word here is “perceived.” Perception is the lynchpin that can be both the source and remedy of many of the stresses in our lives.

To better understand how stress is perceived, take your mind back in time – far back! Imagine it is several hundred thousand years ago- here we are, a bunch of primitive humans adapting handsomely to survive as well as we can. Our minds are already quite advanced, with complex memory, language and capacity to reason deductively and inductively. With this tremendous capacity to reason comes a wonderful survival skill – the ability to adapt our behavior in a predictive way. While other creatures do prepare for seasonal changes and adapt to the environment once it has shifted on them, we have this new capacity to speculate at what the most likely changes will be, and so get the jump on the changes by being ready. In order to do this, we must store and process vast quantities of information. As we begin absorbing all this data we need to be able to sort through it, and so we start to classify our experiences and inputs. The most general classification of experiences is as either safe or dangerous. This is because at the most basic level, the first thing we need to know about anything that happens, if we want the best chance of survival, is how dangerous the situation is.

It is this necessity for our minds to label experiences as safe or hazardous that is the ultimate source of so much of our stress today, and so this is a question of perception! These decisions about what is hazardous are usually not made by our conscious mind at all, but rather by our subconscious mind, for the sake of expediency (too much conscious processing is just too slow, and threat assessment needs to be as rapid as possible to keep us safe!) and so our conscious minds may have one outlook on a situation, but our subconscious mind might be working in another direction.

So if we don’t get to consciously decide what is a stress and what isn’t, how do we avoid or reduce the stress in our lives? Well today there are lots of techniques out there to help relieve the effects of stress – yoga, meditation, tai chi, hypnosis, exercise, breath-work etc. For some people turn to less healthy alternatives, like alcohol or just watching TV, but these tend not to provide as much benefit.

The answer is an ancient one, a simple one, an obvious one, and yet it seems for many people it is a difficult one. Though many mind-training techniques, like hypnosis, can alter the beliefs at the subconscious level directly, and therefore alter the perception of stress, the most straightforward technique to change the perception of stress is simply to chose to perceive differently.

What? How? What mystical secrets do I need to know to perceive differently? Didn’t that already fail in the 60’s?

Though there are many extreme ways to radically alter experience/perception (such as with hallucinogens or deprivation) these potentially harmful activities are not required. We all have everything we need within us right now! We simply forget. We forget, moment after moment, that we are choosing our perceptive focus. We decide what and how to perceive. Yes, much of this mechanism IS running by our subconscious minds, but still our conscious mind gets to choose its point of focus. This can seem very difficult when our subconscious is running a very emotional “program” for us about what we “should” be perceiving, but even in those moments, the choice is open to us if we simply remember that it is. What is required is setting a firm intention to remember that we are choosing our experience, our perception of our current situation, in each moment.

So, when it is three o’clock on a Wednesday and things are not going well with your account at work, and the boss is screaming and your client is upset and no one is getting the job done and everyone is blaming you- how do you feel? Do those conditions enter into your body in some way and release adrenal corticoids and put you into “fight or flight” mode? No, they don’t – you do that yourself. Your mind does this for you by labeling the situation threatening. And perhaps it IS threatening! Your livelihood is at risk! You might get fired! But consider this: does preparing yourself for physical combat actually help you here? Or does it rather cloud your judgment (physiologically, by shunting blood flow away from your high-thinking centers in your brain back to your limbic system for more rapid reflex responses!) and eventually exhaust you and perhaps even make you sick, and therefore less able to do your job?

But how can I choose in that moment to feel a different way? Well, here’s the trick- perhaps you can’t, because your subconscious is running the show at this point. But, even while the subconscious is doing its thing, your conscious mind is still present. It has just become conditioned to be submissive in this situation and follow along with what the subconscious is doing. What if you took a fraction of an instant and in that moment decided, just for this brief flash of time I am going to focus on how good it is to be alive and healthy, or to have a home, or to have a loving spouse, or whatever it is that brings you joy (perhaps even just the miracle of being conscious!)

The subconscious may still be running riot, but the conscious mind can place its perceptive focus on something else- and soon, even the subconscious must begin to release its perceptive hold on the situation at hand.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t easy! It’s a struggle at first. It is the warriors battleground. It is simple, but not easy, because the subconscious will continually bring the old view back, again and again, attempting to distract the conscious minds focus until it concedes again and goes back to sleep and lets the subconscious go on running things. But every time this happens, the opportunity is still right there to decided differently again. Choose your focus! Choose to be present in your perceptive focus. Choose positivity, and eventually, unavoidably, the stresses will lessen and vanish. And then, possibilities will begin to open – you will begin to connect with your true creative nature. Won’t that be nice?

The important thing to realize here is that when we are dealing with a health challenge already, the LAST thing we want to have happening in our bodies is a stress response! When the mind perceives stress (real or imagined) the Autonomic Nervouse System goes right into a sympathetic mode… what we were all taught as the “fight or flight” response. This hard-wiring of our nervous system makes a lot of sense for a primitive creature whose most probable cause of death is predation… but in our complex society it is a real burden for several reasons:

1) as already stated, the mind can’t distinguish a real threat from an imagined one, and in the same vein, cannot distinguish a psychological or emotional upset from a physical danger, hence this system is triggering all the time!

2) in “fight or flight” our immune systems actually become diminished! this is because the body is redistributing it’s energetic resources to other areas where more immediate threats could be dealt with (like heart and lungs and large muscles… of course, this is no help for those with heart conditions either, as it means increased blood pressure!)

3) in “fight or flight” our high reasoning capacity is also diminshed as more of the blood flow to the brain is shunted to the hind brain, the more animal, instinct-driven portions of the brain. So just when we need to think clearly, it becomes harder and harder to do so.

This last aspect is particularly relevant to the discussion of hypnosis to deal with these stresses, because many of my clients know perfectly well that they are in good hands, that their conditions are not that bad, that they need to remain calm and pay attention to what the doctors are telling them, yet all their conscious efforts don’t seem to help… they still end up with sleepless nights, and even panic attacks! What is happening? The conscious mind is efffectively cut out of the loop. The subconscious program is running,signalling DANGER, and the nervous system responds as best it knows how.

This is where hypnosis comes in! The truth is, just entering the hypnotic trance state does wonders for reversing this process on its own. The deep relaxation that comes along with a deep trance experience can (at least temporarily) relieve some of the neurochemical effects on the body of the stress it had previously been experiencing. The important thing to remember is to (funny as it may sound) avoid “personalizing” the anxiety. Many people come in with a “what’s wrong with me?” attitude, when in fact their nervous system is working perfectly! It’s just that the program is not appropriate for the circumstance… that’s more the fault of evolution than the individual. So letting go of the “I’m broken” idea and getting a little “hypno-rest” is a great start, but only that.

Most people who have real anxiety over their health have deeper issues involved, and many such folks would do well to also consider seeking the help of a psychologist or therapist, as HYPNOSIS IS NOT THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE, physical or psychological! (please remember that folks!) and for these people, the real question in easing the anxiety is “how deep are you willing to go?”

For many, it is the simple and human fear of mortality.

For others it relates to early life traumas.

It can even stem from Pre-Natal or Past Life trauma.

Regardless of the cause, the focus needs to stay on the solution. “What can I change today?” And often this is not as hard as it may seem. Anchoring peaceful, confident, grateful states gives clients a tremendous resource when facing unpleasant tests or procedures. Simply exploring the nature of the fear and giving that part of the psyche some other positive way of helping the situation, of knowing the client is paying attention and doing everything possible to maintain health and balance, can turn the whole view of the situation around.

Life and our health will always change and shift, and those changes will not always be the ones we would like, but how we respond to those changes does not have to be set in stone; does not need to be hard-wired. We can chose to face our circumstances with all of our resources open to us, with one foot always firmly planted in the joy of our very existence. Even pain itself can often be greatly reduced, even eliminated, just with the power of the mind, and interestingly enough, it’s usually a fairly pleasant experience to shift that focus!

The enemy is not the medical procedure, or the health challenge. The enemy is fear. And because fear is internal, not external, there is truly nothing to “vanquish” nothing to struggle against… there is only something to let go of…

Talk to your doctors. Find out all the information. Do everything you need to do for your health. And give your mind permission to be OK with it all! You’ve got nothing to lose but the fear.