12 Years With a Crippled Neck Healed in 2 Hours with Hypnosis
Carol Willett was a skeptical candidate for Alchemical Hypnotherapy. As an intelligence officer with sequential careers in the Department of State, the United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency, her 25 years in cross-cultural communications across five continents ill prepared her for the world she would discover within.
During 30 years of rough, physical activity and a commanding personality, Carol had been plagued by debilitating and recurrent neck pain. Whiplash, interrogations, bad parachute landings, judo and muggings had each thrashed her neck with stress and injury to the point that in 1996 she had surgery that fused two neck vertebrae. It was declared successful by her medical team yet the pain continued. With no more medical treatment options available to her, Carol sought an explanation in psychological factors. She discovered the concept of the "inner Healer" and enrolled in a study program in Alchemical Hypnotherapy. On August 2, 1998, she experienced a somatic healing session with George D'Amato. He helped her engage her inner healer who in one session relieved her of a combination of factors which were causing the pain.
Carol tells us her story of how she met her inner healer and the work they did to relieve her of chronic neck pain.
"Earlier in the day I had announced to our assembled hypnotherapy class that my one goal for the month-long program was to become free of pain. After three prescription painkillers during the course of the day simply to stay focused on what was being taught, I was ready to try virtually anything if I could remove the feeling of hunting knives being jabbed in my neck and shoulder and the sensation of broken glass up and down my spine.
George invoked a safety shield of white light around both of us - a barrier to protect us and to contain what we experienced. He conjured up three cords of white light extending from the back of my neck and from my heels down deep into the earth. The cords were to keep me safely connected and to serve as channels for carrying away anything that I might want to get rid of. I hated having anything around or touching my neck. He placed one of the white cords at the base of my skull which made me feel at once nervous and intrigued. As it turned out, that was the best cord of all.
George's voice, a melodious baritone, counted me backward from ten to one, down the circular staircase in my mind, inviting me to drift down gently into the structure of my bones. With each step down the imaginary staircase he urged me to relax deeper and deeper into myself. Moving from the 6th step to the 5th, my awareness penetrated my skin to enter into the large and small muscles. As I approached the 3rd step I became conscious of the beat of my heart, the pulse of my blood, the little synapses of electric current between the muscles and the tide of breath in and out of my lungs. When I reached the 1st stair and prepared to sink into the stuff of my bones, George asked me to focus my attention on the bones of my neck. I was calm as I relaxed into the long bones of my arms and my legs and my pelvis.
I heard George's voice, "And as you look around from within your neck, what do you find?" Suddenly, I was yanked out of my soothing near-slumber, choking, hearing my voice strangle as I tried to describe what was around me. What I saw looked like the aftermath of an earthquake - buildings had fallen down and twisted as if the earth had been torn apart. Shards of white bone poked out like match sticks through the bruised tissue. My neck looked like a mutant Lego set put together by a psychopathic, malicious child. I was horrified by the vision and ready to flee when George addressed my neck as if it were a personality in and of itself.
"Carol," he said calmly, "I'd like to speak directly to your neck if I may." I somehow made an affirmative noise.
"Carol's neck," he asked, I guess it was as good a name as any, "it seems like you've been through the wringer. is there something you'd like to say to Carol?" "STOP CRUSHING ME!!!" My neck screamed with more force, violence and anger than I would have thought possible. I was stunned. My neck could talk? More than that, my neck went into an absolute rage, ready to rip out my vocal cords in order to make itself heard.
"Neck, neck" George soothed the aggravated voice, "we hear you. You are being crushed and you want it to stop. Carol is listening to you now -- you have her full and complete attention. Tell her how she crushes you." Part of me listens to this bizarre conversation and wonders if George, my newly vocal neck and me haven't lost our minds.
"Well,' confided my angry neck, "she has this cockeyed notion that she is responsible for everyone and everything in the whole world. Carol's like some demented Atlas heaving every situation up onto her shoulders and expecting me to carry the load. I'm sick of it. Completely fed up. I'm not made of steel and I've had it with having to carry responsibilities I was never designed for. From the time she was twelve she convinced herself that she was responsible for her mother and that 160 lbs. has been hanging around me ever since. She steps forward every time there is something to be done and no one else volunteers. Every time she appoints herself leader she assumes responsibility for every single person within sight of that job. During the Gulf War and afterwards she convinced herself she was responsible for the safety and careers of nearly 4,000 people scattered across half the globe. The woman is dense. That's the only word for it. She seems determined to keep piling pressure on me till I collapse."
"She doesn't ask for help when she needs it and doesn't accept it when it's offered -- not even when the offer is from people she says she loves. Her friends only know when she's in trouble from the silence."
"And," my neck continued, roiling into an exasperated fury, "she doesn't even have the common sense to listen to me till I landed her in the hospital." "For years I've been sending her twinges to get her attention. When that didn't work I started in on her wrists and hands. Did she hear me? Not a peep. Old Carol just soldiered on. She started going to a chiropractor but otherwise didn't change a thing she was doing. Finally I just threw in the towel and collapsed, cutting off everything to her right arm. And finally, that got her attention. She couldn't keep doing what she was doing with no right arm."
All these words were coming out of my mouth, my throat, my abused neck, but I would have happily sworn that they weren't coming from me. Suddenly I saw patterns of gradual disability I had never noticed. I certainly couldn't fault my neck for acting on the sly. It had sent me every signal possible short of a stroke or heart attack and I had doggedly ignored it. Lodged solidly in a major case of remorse, I hoped that George would hurry up and figure a way out of all this. It seemed that if we didn't find way to make peace with my neck, it might declare war right then and there.
"It seems to me," George said to my neck, "that Carol is read to change if you are ready to help her clean up some of the damage. Do you know what needs to be done to put things right? My neck thought about that one. "Yes," it finally answered, "but there are conditions." "Oh, good," George said, "I thought there might be. What are your conditions?"
"First," my neck began in non-negotiable terms, "no more jumping out of airplanes, no more judo, and I'd just as soon she stayed out of trees from now on. Second, I want to hear Carol admit that not only is she not responsible for everyone and every thing but that she has limits. Third, I want Carol to agree that from now on, I set the limits and that when I speak up she's going to listen to me and stop whatever she's doing that is crushing me. No more fooling around now - the first twinge and she stops. Finally, I want her to talk to me once in a while - once a day would be good. She has a lot of making up to do and I don't want her abusing herself anymore -- I always end up paying the price of her overwork and neglect."
"Well Carol, that seems like a pretty clear list of demands," commented George. "Why don't you take a minute to speak directly to your neck and discuss this. You can do this internally or out loud if you'd like. Let me know when you've reached an agreement."
Inside my own head I wept for what my neck had been through. I was sure my neck and I could never be on speaking terms so I was grateful to hear that my neck was still willing to try. I got a clear impression that if I held up my end of the bargain, my neck actually knew what to do to heal itself--
I got the impression that my neck knew things that surgeons and chiropractors could not know because they were limited to working from the outside. After a long internal conversation, I spoke to George. "We've agreed. What next?"
George reminded me of the white light conduits fastened gently to the back of my neck and to my heels. He invited my newly empowered neck to begin using its power of healing to dissolve and break up the pain, to repair the tears, to mend the damage. he assured my neck that the conduits at my head and heels were ready to carry away any pain, any damage, any debris, any leftovers that were no longer needed. George invited me to envision a healing light, one that could fill the spaces left by the departing pain. Like a river melting in springtime, a cascade of clear blue light streamed into the top of my head, George called in my inner healer, who began making repairs, disposing of the debris, as a river of healing light, it flowed in to soothe the tissue, grafting cells, cooling and mending what had been broken.
My neck felt like a great fire in a war zone. But my inner healer went calmly about its rapid reconstructive work, transforming it into a cool and still place, a place of peace.
When there was nothing left but a blue coolness in the space that was once my hellfire ravaged neck, George asked my healer if there was anything more to do. "No," my neck responded, "but remind her again of our bargain!"
George then asked me, "What would a perfect neck be like?" I immediately thought of the white and black swans paddling around serenely in the pond outside my bedroom window. "It would be like a swan -- graceful and flexible, able to curve any which way it wanted."
George invited me to move my neck like a swan. As I gently turned my head from one side to the other, I was amazed to find that it rolled with an ease I hadn't experienced since the surgery. Moving forward and back I still hit the limits of my fused joints, but there was no pain. For some minutes I gloried in the pleasure of moving a neck that was hinged, not frozen.
George asked my neck if it had any parting gift that it wanted to give me. I was surprised by its response as it laid a tiny, exquisite dagger in my palm. I described the little jeweled weapon to him. He asked the obvious, "Why a dagger?"
My neck answered. "To remind her when I give her a little jab to pay attention to me."
In the year since that Alchemy session, after at least twelve years of chronic pain, I have been completely without neck pain.
Carol Willett now lives and works in Virginia as director of training for a company that teaches globally dispersed workers how to operate effectively in the virtual environment of the Internet.
George D'Amato is a compassionate, astute therapist, George has a deep understanding of the entrapment of having to be in control and to be self sufficient at all personal costs. On his personal, spiritual journey, he began to live and breathe the philosophy: let go and let God. His clients experience this stance of his heart in the total absence of any advice. George refuses to even guess what solutions might be appropriate for his clients. He sees himself merely as a skilled introduction service to their own internal guidance. Specializing in Somatic Healing as a result of a miraculous healing he experienced for a badly injured knee, he introduces a collaboration among his client's inner guides, particularly in the wisdom of the inner healer.
You can reach George at 707-895-2366
