News Articles » – Controlling stress and breaking bad habits

Bradenton Herald
WellBeing
Mind over matter

Controlling stress and breaking bad habits with
hypnotherapy and biofeedback

By Travis Prater
Wellbeing Correspondent
(Edited & Reprinted)

Unlike the image glamorized on television, more people turn to hypnotism and biofeedback to help them drum up the willpower to break bad habits – or start good ones – than to overcome buried traumatic memories.

To explore its effectiveness, the Bradenton Herald interviewed a group of patients trying to quit smoking or lose weight. They all attended seminars conducted by local hypnotists/biofeedback specialist Rena Greenberg, who has used hypnotherapy and biofeedback in hospital and corporate seminars since 1990.

Each participant’s experience was unique, and although the methods didn’t work for everyone, some found surprising relief. Here are their stories:

*Joyce Blankenship, of Sarasota, had struggled with smoking for more than 30 years. While she had tried numerous times to quit cold turkey, she says, it never worked.

Once, she had quit for five years.

She heard of Wellness Seminars through advertisements, and although skeptical of hypnotism, “decided to try something new.” After just one seminar, she said, she stopped craving cigarettes and experienced no symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.

“I didn’t throw my cigarettes right away, “ she said, “and when I tried to smoke one four days later, it tasted horrible.”

For the first time, she has no desire to smoke any more.

“Nobody seems to have the same effect I do, “ she said about friends who have tried other methods to stop smoking.

*”I don’t know why, but it moved me,” said Ronald Werley, a retired nurse from Port Charlotte who had been smoking continuously for 40 years.

He had tried hypnosis once before, unsuccessfully, to help him quit. However, he decided to give it another try when a group of friends said they were going to Greenberg’s seminars at Doctor’s Hospital in Sarasota.

He said he quit that very day. “I may never smoke again,” said Werley. It only lasted two months however. He smoked a cigarette just days before this publication.

*Cindi Kimmel of Sarasota found it difficult to ignore her craving for fatty foods, especially fast foods and fried foods.

She was skeptical about claims she had heard about hypnosis, but when she read about an upcoming Wellness Seminar in the newspaper, she decided to try it with a friend. Since that seminar, she said, she’s been able to resist the fatty foods.

“I’ve lost 10 pounds because of it,” she said. “You don’t have to consciously try to lose weight.”

Janice Lindbloom, of Bradenton, used biofeedback to treat stomach problems that had been plaguing her for more than six months. She went to several doctors without success.

“All they wanted to do were more tests,” she said. Lindbloom had been going to Greenberg’s husband for acupuncture treatment when she heard of his wife’s biofeedback practice. “I wanted to try something natural as a treatment, so I made an appointment,” she said.

After four visits, she says that she has learned to reduce her reaction to stress with simple mental exercises.

“I do it every day,” she said. “It almost becomes a habit.”

It is a process frequently used to help manage stress.

“Biofeedback is a wonderful learning tool,” said Rena Greenberg, a hypnotherapist and biofeedback specialist in Bradenton. “It’s like a mirror.”

This ‘mirror,’ according to Greenberg, allows patients to learn how their bodies work, and how to control them.

When used in conjunction with hypnosis, biofeedback can help a person relax, or treat chronic health conditions caused by stress, including headaches and muscle pain. These conditions, according to Greenberg, are caused when the body’s natural ‘fight or flight’ stress response is left unattended for a period of time.

In a typical session, a biofeedback therapist attaches a series of sensors to your body to monitor your breathing, blood flow, muscle tension, temperature and perspiration, then tests your body’s reaction through a series of stress tests. A machine measures and displays the changes.

“Some people react by getting cold, clammy hands, while others have a great deal of muscle tension,” said Greenberg.

After determining how patients respond to different stressors, she said, biofeedback therapists can use the information to teach them how to control those conditions that occur during stress.
USED IN ANTIQUITY

The history of hypnotism dates back thousands of years in most cultures.

A review of history books shows varied applications.

*In 2600 B.C., the father of Chinese medicine, Wang Tai, first wrote about procedures using incantations and passes made with the hands, which appear hypnotic in nature.

*The modern name hypnotism came from the classical Greek practice of going to “sleep temples” in order to invoke the god Hypnos to give prophetic dreams.

*The Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles were among the first to use hypnotism in order to cure the sick. Druidic priests, serving as both religious leaders and doctors for the Celts, would place the sick in a state of “Druidic Sleep” in order to cure them.

*The first modern usage of hypnotism came from the Viennese physician, Franz Anton Mesmer, in the late 18th century. He believed that by passing a magnetic rod over the body of a patient he would be cured.

Some of his patients were known to go into a sleep-like trance in these sessions, during which time Mesmer said that the magnetic fluid in the body was being balanced. When the patients awoke, they were cured. Thus the term mesmerism and the modern practice of hypnotism came into being.

The history of biofeedback is considerably shorter, stretching back only a few decades.

During the 1960′s, people were becoming more aware of different methods of healing, including those that emphasized the mind’s ability to heal the body. People began turning to New Age healers rather than traditional practitioners of medicine.

About 10 years later, when studies revealed that involuntary processes, such as heart rate, could be controlled by the conscious mind, interest in biofeedback surged.

WHAT LIES AHEAD

Today, the future of biofeedback and hypnosis are seemingly boundless.

The next frontier: Using your mind to relieve or block pain.

Most of us have seen the images of natives walking barefoot over burning hot coals or shards of glass.

The same mental process they used to block out pain, some experts say, can be used to treat chronic pain, relieve labor pains during childbirth, even block the pain of surgery.

Although it has not been tried locally, hospitals in other regions of the country have reported patients using hypnosis rather than anesthesia in surgical procedures.

It’s just a matter of time, experts say, until the practice catches on in other regions.