Guided Imagery, meditation, and hypnosis for Cancer can easily be integrated into cancer care and support patients during treatment and recovery.

These therapies aim to help lessen treatment side effects, increase physical and emotional resilience, and improve patients’ attitudes toward treatment. Unlike medical treatments, these practices require no medication or downtime, no hospital stay or follow-up, and they are appropriate for patients of all ages and with all types of cancer.

There is More to Cancer than Medical Treatment

We know conventional cancer treatments do save lives, but they are not enough because cancer comes back too often.  Medical methods only focus on cancer itself – the genes and tumor, the biology of the disease; however, there is more to cancer than what the doctor can see, touch, and remove.  The job of medicine is to treat your physical body. Your job, if you wish to optimize your experience during treatment, is to take care of yourself, the person within this physical body. You can do so with integrative therapies in general and, more specifically, clinical hypnotherapy. Clinical hypnotherapy complements and enhances the efficacy of conventional treatments.

Hypnosis has long been an ally in the fight against cancer. Mostly it helped patients negate the harsh impact of treatment side effects and improve their quality of life. However, with advancements in the field of clinical hypnosis, new and more powerful methods were developed, such as my practice which I named Immersive Healing (IH). IH is an evidence-based practice designed to heal the mind patterns that promoted and produced illness in the first place and now may inhibit the work of medicine.

The Three Basic Premises of Immersive Healing

IH is based on three basic premises [1]:

1. The body’s natural immune system is designed to defend against all illnesses, cancer included.

2. Harmful states of mind (primarily stress, hopelessness, etc.) and negative subconscious programming can suppress the immune system.

3. If these harmful states of mind can be resolved and healed, the immune response can be revived, and cancer prevented or healed.

In essence, all healing is self-healing, and at the root of every healing process is the decision to be in control of this process.  Balance can naturally be restored within the body, and healing will effortlessly take place when the Mind patterns which produced illness in the body are addressed and healed.

Failing to do so, the internal subconscious calling for self-punishment and self-mutilation (the root cause of illness) will continue to echo within.  In order for the healing of the body to take place, we need to have a healing of the Mind.

Part of what defines us as human beings is that we are emotional beings, capable of expression. Sometimes, though, it seems safer to suppress hurts and pains rather than express them. It can be overwhelming or even a bit frightening to open up and let go of our fears, anger, guilt, and shame or even admit to their existence.

A Mind-Body Perspective on Illness

From a mind-body perspective, suppressed and unresolved emotional conflicts and trauma, compounded over the years, build internal pressure. Any illness, including chronic disease or cancer, can be caused, worsened, or aggravated by this internal pressure.

The by-product of internal pressure is a state of disease. It is the non-physical aspects of the disease i.e. harmful beliefs, erroneous perceptions, and emotional pain, that fuel it. These aspects translate via the natural mind-body connection into the environment within the physical body. Such a stressful internal environment is likely to develop a state of physical disease.

To facilitate and promote self-healing of these non-physical aspects, two powerful dynamic and therapeutic tools, hypnotherapy [2] and Neuro-Linguistic Programming [3], have been combined.  These techniques have been around for some time and have proved effective individually. However, integrated into one healing modality, their efficacy increases.

References:
[1] ^ Alfred A. Barrios (1973). “Hypnosis as a possible means of curing cancer.” Paper presented at Int. Congress of Hypnosis, Upsala, Sweden.
[2] ^ Alfred A. Barrios (1970). “Hypnotherapy: A reappraisal.” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice, Vol. 7 pp. 2-7.
[3] ^ Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Steve Andreas (1982). “Reframing: neuro-linguistic programming ™ and the transformation of meaning.” Real People Press, Boulder, CO.