Allergies and Other Immune System Disorders: Part 3

Doctors have understood for years that chronic stress in our lives can trigger a wide variety of immune system disorders, including asthma, allergies, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. They don't always explain to their patients what processes cause the normal stresses of daily life to turn into disease. Nor do they show us how we can deal more effectively with the stresses in our lives to eliminate these processes and the symptoms that result from them. You'll learn in this article how stress becomes internalized into immune system malfunction and how with hypnosis we can stop this dangerous process and thus heal our immune system reactions.

Among our primitive ancestors, stress usually involved some profound physical threat which required a rapid and energetic physical response. If attacked by a saber tooth tiger, our bodies reacted with a powerful dose of adrenaline from the adrenal glands, which got our heart pumping, increased mental alertness, stopped digestion, and prepared us for fight or flight. With the action of this and other hormones, our bodies were ready for battle. Unfortunately, nowadays the stresses we experience usually do not require aggressive and energetic action.

When the rent is overdue or mother in law pays a visit, you may have noticed that a few rounds of screaming, hitting or running are hardly effective solutions, no matter how good they might feel. So all these stress hormones simply stir up our bodies into a frenzy of cellular reactions for which there is no effective release. The result: our bodies, directed by the subconscious mind, start attacking whatever is at handinnocent pollen grains, loose food proteins, or even our own body cells, as in the rheumatoid arthritis which had me crippled in 1978. (Hold the sympathy cards. I used hypnotic techniques to free myself of this disease in 1984 and am now a rock climber and mountaineer.) What can we do?

Hypnotherapy has the answers. And the first of these lies in the very definition of hypnosis. Hypnosis is first and foremost a state of deep relaxation and peace and thus a premier remedy for stress. A competent hypnotherapist will spend time showing their client how to induce the state of self-hypnosis, and will instruct their client both in and out of trance to access this state every day, especially when their symptoms are activated by the stresses of daily living.

Hypnotherapists know that even the most ordinary stresses can become overwhelming if the subconscious mind clouds these experiences and tasks with negative significance based upon childhood or other traumas. For example, the simple and usually pleasurable act of making love to one's devoted spouse, for most of us a source of pleasure and relaxation, can be a nightmare of stress to a survivor of sexual abuse.

It is critical to gather from our clients their descriptions of the most stressful experiences of their daily lives, so we can go back in hypnotic regression to "the first time you felt this feeling" and rescue the client's earlier self from these terrible memories. We use emotional release therapy to help the client push these tensions out of their body, through sounds, movement, and aggressive emotional expression. Then we implant in the body new memories, memories in which the client's younger self is filled with safety, power, and love. These new memories are accompanied by new beliefs. "I'll never get it right!" is replaced by, "I can do this and enjoy it!" While many of my clients express skepticism at first about the possibility of accomplishing something so farfetched, one session in trance is all they need to feel the enormous power of the work in their own bodies, in their own beliefsand in their lives.

Which particular stresses are bringing on an attack of an autoimmune disease can be discovered in hypnosis by entering the affected body part as if it were a room. Then we can see exactly what persons or memories are stored there, and either complete communication with those persons, or rescue the former self from these traumatic memories. Details of these processes can be found at the Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy library. For example, we enter a client's arthritic finger and discover the stresses of trying to type at a job filled with criticism and undermining of the client's achievements by a vicious boss. First I encourage the client to use these fingers and the client's voice to express their anger at the boss.

Then I have the client's present self applaud the good work she is doing, while gently stroking and massaging these fingers. The results? We can see and feel an immediate and lasting reduction in pain and swelling. I then encourage the client to continue this healing process on their own if needed. And such conditions, because they have been ingrained by years of daily trauma, often require that clients learn to do these processes every day on their own for a period of time. This combination of self massage and self hypnosis to deal with chronic pain is a very powerful and unique feature of the work I have developed.

Physical exercise is an important element for recovery from any illness. It is especially difficult for victims of autoimmune conditions because when we are in pain, or sneezing, or suffering from chronic fatigue, we just don't feel like moving. That's why to work effectively in this area, a hypnotherapist must be trained in pain control and helping to motivate clients to get exercise. The client must be encouraged to be patient with their bodies and celebrate the small victories. "I'm too sick to move, so I'll just collapse" can become "I walked all the way to the mailbox today!" Hypnotic suggestion can be used to make movement more appealing as well. "It's so much fun to walk again" is a message that can be repeated in every session, and will be so much more effective when spoken to the subconscious mind of the hypnotized client.

Another helpful approach in hypnosis is to communicate directly in trance to the "soldiers" of the immune system, telling them to "stand down" from their assault on harmless pollen grains or those body cells that are being attacked. For example, for rheumatoid arthritis sufferers, such phrases as "The linings of your joints are safe. They are a part of you. They belong to you. Your body is safe and at peace." can be very effective. For pollen allergies: "The flowers are your friends. Their pollen is harmless, a gift from your friends, the flowers. Your mucus membranes (prime sources of histamine production) can relax in the knowledge that these pollens are your friends." I have personally experienced a huge healing of an arthritis attack using these methods. It is often possible to experience a steep reduction in visible redness and swelling within an hour of this procedure.

In another article, I explain how it is possible to rewire a client's biochemical responses to allergens by returning to infancy, the time when our biochemical immune system responses were first programmed into our bodies. We can then change this programming to reduce or eliminate allergic responses.

Copyright 2006 By David Quigley