For many of us, the day begins with a shrill, piercing alarm shocking us awake. Even before our eyes open, thoughts begin to fill our sleepy minds. We may be bombarded with worries and concerns about loved ones, finances, politics, health, weather, environmental issues and warring nations. In today’s world, we brace ourselves for the deluge of information and the barrage of instant notifications everywhere we turn. We need only glance at a smartphone, tablet, newspaper headline or news broadcast to realize the world we live in can be fear-provoking and stressful. Most of us live in a fast-paced environment in an age of high-speed technology fraught with continuous pressure and perpetual change. Because of these factors, we may find ourselves and our loved ones unable to create and perpetuate a feeling of safety and security. The good news is there are a multitude of stress-relieving options. These include hypnosis and Thought Field Therapy (TFT).

Hypnosis, also known as therapeutic hypnosis, is recognized by researchers as a safe, natural and enjoyable state of deep physical and emotional relaxation. Hypnosis can easily be used as an effective tool for everything from anxiety and stress reduction to self-esteem and behavior modification.

Another tool is the Callahan Techniques Thought Field Therapy (TFT). Developed by Dr. Roger Callahan, a noted clinical psychologist, TFT is a natural and distinctive protocol of healing that works with the meridian system, the body’s energy system. By stimulating specific points on the body, TFT can quickly and easily produce immediate and dramatic results for those suffering from a wide variety of problems, including fears, phobias, anxiety and stress.

Each technique quickly helps to reduce the severity of fear, anger, loss and grief as well as negative thoughts, feelings and emotions related to perceived or real life events.

Hypnosis: Healing is a Matter of the Mind

Even in this day and age, to some the word, “hypnosis”, may conjure up thoughts of scary movies, thunderstorms with frightening castles and helpless victims in a zombie-like trance. Those old myths, legends and misconceptions about hypnosis have been replaced with proven, scientifically sound applications.

Today, hypnosis is considered to be rather conventional and has gone mainstream. Over the years, millions of people worldwide have benefited from its use. Men, women and children are using hypnosis regularly; doctors are recommending it for help with many problems from arthritis to childbirth to stress reduction. Major hospitals across the U.S. are using hypnosis to speed surgical recovery, heal fractures weeks faster, and assist in reducing pain and improve healing of burns. It can help to alleviate negative thoughts, feelings and beliefs as well eliminate the emotional blockages preventing us from accomplishing personal goals. Smoking cessation, sleep issues, success, memory, fear, motivation and healing are commonly helped through the use of hypnosis.

Hypnosis can naturally help people overcome the mental or emotional obstacles preventing them from living life to its fullest. It empowers people to set and accomplish goals and helps to focus the mind’s power of concentration to gain a sense of peace and well-being.

Hypnosis has proven to be a safe, effective and inexpensive way to create desired physical and emotional change, positive results and implement self-healing where traditional medicine has often failed. This includes the area of weight loss, where traditional therapeutic hypnosis has been a successful tool for weight loss over the years. Many who prefer to avoid gastric weight loss surgery can actually use the Virtual Gastric Band Hypnosis program to achieve their results in that area.

Thought Field Therapy: Energy Psychology in Action

The discovery and use of the TFT system has been at the forefront of the emerging field of energy psychology and brief therapy. This process integrates the sciences of acupuncture, the meridian system and applied kinesiology with the associated emotional problem to successfully reduce and eliminate negative and often debilitating emotional and physical responses. The procedure is safe, drug-free, non-invasive and may provide some immediate relief. While stimulating specific meridian points in a precise order and thinking about the upsetting issue, we utilize the power of the body’s own bio-energy system to release the unwanted negative response.

The National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices, a service of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ searchable-online database of mental health and substance abuse interventions, has added TFT. It is now included as an effective evidence-based practice for improving personal resilience, self-concept and self-regulation in addition to reducing trauma, phobia, panic, anxiety and stressor-related disorders and symptoms.

The TFT Foundation has provided free trauma relief missions and PTSD studies around the world from Africa and Kosovo following wars and genocide to disasters in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and in Haiti after the earthquake. The organization has also completed many studies demonstrating TFT’s effectiveness. Thousands of disaster sufferers and victims of war have been helped using the TFT technique and the outcomes are recognized in the International Journal of Emergency Mental Health in recent Rwandan genocide recovery studies. A new film, From Trauma to Peace, is a documentary of how Rwandans are healing themselves from the 1994 genocide.

Create Peace of Mind Naturally

Stress, fear, and emotional and physical traumas may deplete a person’s physical energy as well as cause a multitude of other issues. Western medicine is only now beginning to understand that health and illness may be directly related to our emotional state of inner harmony and balance. Releasing negative thoughts and emotions with TFT and solidifying the positive changes with hypnosis may help unlock the power of the body and mind and cause us to feel happier, healthier and able to once again discover the natural joys of life.

Diane Bahr-Groth, CH, TFT-Adv, director of Mind-Body Transformation Hypnosis Center in Stamford, has more than 24 years of experience in mind-body therapy. She is a registered consulting hypnotist and is trained and certified in multiple hypnosis modalities. Connect at MindBodyTransformation.com or 203-595-0110. See ad, page 3.