The Inner Healer - Hypnotherapy Healing Illness
by Nick ArdaghWhen I first met John, he'd just been diagnosed HIV positive. While he felt physically fine and had no symptoms, John was facing another kind of problem: he was living with a diagnosis. Everything in his life had shifted to foundations of quicksand.
Serious illness and sudden shifts in the equilibrium of the body affects everyone at sometime in their life. They're usually accompanied by feelings of powerlessness, lack of hope, and chaos.
John turned to the Alchemical process to help him find inner resources to guide him through his crisis. He was able to return, in hypnosis, to an early time in his life when he chose to welcome the disease. He found many incomplete relationships and issues from childhood which he worked through.
But his most important session was the discovery of a foundation of inner healing. Moving down a flight of stairs into a state of hypnosis, John entered a room, with walls of pale peach and sunlight filtering through trees outside. He felt at home here, he made himself comfortable on a low couch and he noticed soft music and smells which eased him further into a relaxed state. Soon another presence was there with him in the room, which took form as a resource from his Higher Self. John had discovered his inner healer.
During the thirty to forty minutes which followed, John was able to ask his healer about the state of his body, about his fears for his health. He received guidance, from this center, about why this illness had arrived in his life, about his lifestyle, his diet, and detailed changes he should make to help facilitate healing.
His inner healer touched him on his chest, and John felt a glow of energy and life spreading through his body. He received a gift from his healer to use each day.
Since that session, John's life has changed significantly. Of course he's still taking medical advice for his condition, but his approach now is positive and life affirmative, and he continues to access his inner healer whenever he needs to.
I have worked with many other clients to help them discover this resource within, sometimes for conditions which had no obvious medical explanation. In each case the client found that both the cause and the basis for cure of the condition could be found by meeting their own inner healer, by looking within.
The client may receive from the inner healer specific foods, teas, herbs, or supplements, smells, or specific stones to wear as jewelry. The inner healer may explain the emotional cause of a disease. In every case, this process is entirely self-generated from within the client, thus the possibility of inappropriate suggestions from a therapist being rejected by the client's mind is completely bypassed. The inner healer may also use colors as a part of the client's self-sufficient healing process. This can be done, for example, by draining out a dark or murky color from one part of the body and pouring in a golden liquid or any color the client's subconscious mind wants. Sometimes, the inner healer may use sound. Clients have, during hypnosis, began humming, or using sounds of a specific frequency to balance and restore parts of the body. You can meet your own inner healer at home by listening to Alchemical Journeys, Tape 5, Side A.
Of course, clients always continue with whatever outer medical attention is called for. The presence and guidance of the inner healer simply allows the client to fully cooperate with, and to support the work of their medical practitioner.
Dr. Timothy Van Ert, MD, recently completed the Alchemical Hypnotherapy Training in San Anselmo, California. He has an holistically orientated medical practice in San Francisco. Says Dr. Van Ert, "Unless the doctor's work is supported by the subconscious mind of the client, a battle ensues. When medicine is supported by inner work, it stands a far greater chance to succeed".
My experience has been that everyone has within them this level of healing and wisdom. It's what Jung called an archetype. It is from this transpersonal, superconscious level of the mind that the Alchemical process originates, it is in contacting this level in its pure form that the Alchemical process excels.
Nick Ardagh, M.A., is a trainer in Alchemical Hypnotherapy. He is the creator of the Alchemical Journeys tape series.
