Does hypnosis really work11/10/2022 ![]() ![]() And many athletes have turned to it-Tiger Woods, for one, as well as Troy Aikman-in order to improve their game. ![]() I know several people who relied on hypnosis techniques to quit smoking. Work happens, life happens, you maybe don’t achieve the gains you were hoping for, and suddenly the very thought of going to the gym becomes a grim existential wrestling match.ġ5 Natural Ways to Fall Asleep Faster > But lately my motivation has begun to flag. I lift, I ride my bike, I try to get a yoga class in every now and then. And if you’re wondering what brought me here to begin with, the answer’s quite simple: fitness.īy most measures I’m a relatively fit guy. “Your eyes start ping-ponging back and forth.”Īnd that’s exactly what they are doing, as if I’m watching a very fast tennis match behind my eyelids. “That’s how I can tell you’re in a hypnotic state,” Janelli says. Suddenly my mind stops drifting, and I can feel the tension in my neck and shoulders dissolve. It’s when she tells me to visualize a warm golden ball enveloping me. Given my preternatural gift for avoiding relaxation at any cost, I worry it won’t work. Each time I do, she tells me to release any tension located there. She has me focus on my arms, my legs, my neck, my back. ![]() Is it day or night? What’s the temperature? What are the smells? If I walk around, what does the ground feel like? What does it sound like? The point of it all is to dislodge me from any thoughts of the future or the past and to instead root me squarely in the present. She then tells me to concentrate on the details of the location. I choose a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean in southern France on a perfect summer day. She’s guiding me through a series of relaxation techniques, the first of which involves visualizing a physical location, one where I can feel calm and happy. When my mind veers too far, I try to reel it back in and focus on Janelli’s crisp yet soft voice. RELATED: How to Hypnotize Yourself in 7 Easy Steps > Instead, my mind keeps drifting, first to Roger Clemens, then to the smell of the office, which reminds me of the beauty section at Whole Foods-a bit of lavender, a bit of sage, a general earthiness I can’t quite put my finger on. Of course, I’m not anywhere near that state myself. Which is actually the whole point of hypnosis therapy. It’s in that state that you become more susceptible to suggestion-that is, more capable of behavior outside your normal comfort zone. “It’s when you stop actively listening and you just hear,” she says. She assures me that, rather than some sort of trance in which you’re under the hypnotist’s control, the hypnotic state is actually more of an intense form of focus. “Hypnosis is nothing more than a deep state of relaxation with an acute focus,” says Alexandra Janelli, a hypnotherapist who owns and operates Theta Spring Hypnosis in New York City and who specializes in helping high achievers-Academy Award–nominated actors, top-level business executives-manage stress and anxiety. I know because my hypnotist, sitting across the room from my criminally comfortable Barcalounger, says it won’t. Of course, I know that won’t happen to me. But thanks to an inept hypnotist, Roger Clemens ends up clucking like a chicken. Burns has his team of professional ringers hypnotized to improve their performance. It’s from a scene in The Simpsons, the softball episode, in which Mr. Of all the many pop culture references that exist for hypnosis, that’s the one that keeps popping into my head. ![]()
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