C
lemistine Victor sits alone, staring at a blurry screen in an empty movie theatre. Really, though she is sitting in front of 15 students and Kyle Wannigman, a certified medical hypnotherapist, in Humboldt State’s Rec. Center. The imaginary theatre is part of a trauma reversal exercise to help her overcome a fear of public speaking. “I’d say it’s a three,” she tells Wannigman, rating her fear from one to 10. “Let’s see if we can get that down to a one or zero,” he says, and they try the exercise. Victor closes her eyes, and Wannigman asks her to imagine a time she was comfortable talking in front of a crowd and to imagine watching that moment on the imaginary screen. “How do you feel now?” Wannigman asks. “Much better. Probably a zero,” Victor responds. Therapists like Wannigman are using hypnotherapy to treat a variety of conditions. According to reports in The Journal of Pediatrics hypnotherapy can help reduce depression, anxiety, addiction and even cancer. Elizabeth Connors-Keith is a hypnotherapist practicing in Eureka. She uses hypnotherapy to help people quit smoking and overcome anxiety and other ailments. “Hypnotherapy can help with almost any error of life,” Connors-Keith explains. “I have training in weight loss, stress and pain management, and I recently started practicing hypnobirthing, helping women through the birthing process using hypnosis. It’s also good for working through fears, for habit breaking, trauma and to boost motivation and focus.”
ments, deep-seated issues or phobias. If I was hoping to get anything from hypnotherapy, it was to become more confident and motivated. My goal was to leave with a positive outlook, but I was admittedly skeptical, perhaps even more so after my first appointment. “I want you to find a spot on my hand to stare at,” Wannigman tells me with his arm stretched out in front of my face. “Bring all of your attention to that spot. Focus completely on that spot. Let it absorb everything. Let everything around you go.” I’m in Wannigman’s Arcata office, laid back with my feet up on an overstuffed leather recliner. The office walls are adorned with pieces of his history: a certification from the International Board of Hypnotherapy, a certificate noting his honorable discharge from the Air Force and an Air Force Achievement Medal. Breathing deeply, I try to relax and my eyelids grow heavier until they shut completely. My arms fall limp on the armrests. His words are methodical and rhythmic, like water dripping from a leaky faucet. “Absorb your full... attention... to my voice,” he says. In my mind, the word “attention” appears in block letters. Listening to Wannigman read the script he prepared for our session, he sounds noticeably softer than when I first came in. No longer is he joking about the stereotypical pocket watch swinging hypnotist to quell my preconceptions. He is calm and attempting to put me into a trance. “There is a set of seven stairs in front of you. With each step, you go deeper and deeper into your subconscious,” Wannigman reads from the script.
A misconception is that hypnotism leaves the patient unconscious. Not so. Wannigman says hypnosis is a natural yet altered state in which that voice in our head is relaxed and we go into the subconscious.
I try to picture the stairs.
“Hypnosis happens all day, every day, to all of us,” Wannigman says. “It’s that experience where we’re driving our car and we get home and we don’t really remember driving. Hypnosis is just where we are so engaged perceptually that the external world kind of dissolves.”
For nearly two hours I was the focus of conversation. Normally, I would have been terribly uncomfortable in such a situation. But here I was openly discussing my goals, aspirations and insecurities, not as if Wannigman was a close friend, but more as if he wasn’t even there. I was openly expressing myself, effortlessly.
I had always thought of hypnosis as a trick — merely entertainment. I was set on finding the truth, so I set up a one-on-one session with Wannigman and signed up for his six-session hypnotherapy workshop. I have no physical ail-
“When you get to the bottom, you are going to step into your own, personal garden of healing,” he says.
When I came out of trance, it was startling. As Wannigman began to count up from the number one, I was overcome with the feeling that my eyes might not open, my limbs may Fall 2014 | 7