Healing Joint Pain Through Hypnotic Movement

Arthritis is not the only source of joint pain to affect our bodies. Old sports injuries and the residue of auto accidents can affect our bodies for years after one has supposedly recovered from the acute effects of the accident. The former high school football player with the bad knee, the chronic pain of an old whiplash injury, such residual pains are all too familiar to many of us. Chronic emotional stress can also settle in the joints. Carpal tunnel syndrome is but one example of the way emotional stresses, often work related, can settle in the body.

What if you could learn for yourself simple movements that can easily eliminate pain, and restore flexibility and strength in the joints? Movements that can address all of the sources of joint and muscle pain mentioned above. These movements are easy and pain-free to perform and take as little as 5 minutes a day. In other words, in about as much time as it would take to find and open a bottle of pills, fill a glass of water, and drink, your clients could experience moving their way to a radical reduction in pain and healing and strengthening the joint. This is the promise of a new technology for healing called hypnotic movement.

The concept of hypnotic movement is simple. The body has a deep inner knowledge of how it wants and needs to move in order to alleviate stress on the joint, increase healthy circulation, restore flexibility, and relieve pain. These simple movements are easy and natural for anyone to experience. In fact, most of us have already experienced hypnotic movement at one time or another. Have you ever noticed the way your body stretches sometimes when you wake up in the morning with a stiff back? Sometimes when you wake up stiff, and you take the time to get up slowly, you may find your body reaching up in a slow relaxed stretch, perhaps your muscles tremble slightly, and you might even sigh or moan with pleasure as you stretch. Have you noticed how good your back feels after you have stretched out the kinks in this way? This is an example of hypnotic movement. Of course you didn't think you were in trance. But you were, having just woken up, in a state of being relaxed and connected to your body and its needs.

This state of relaxation with increased body awareness is not the usual state of deep hypnotic trance that most hypnotists and their clients are familiar with, in which the body lies in peaceful repose, while a hypnotist leads you on a journey and offers hypnotic suggestions. This is a state of "alert trance", just like that morning stretch, in which mild relaxation is combined with a profound awareness of our body and its feelings. This state is similar to the trance which athletes describe when they are running a marathon, or playing at their peak in a sports event. They call it being "in the zone", a blissful state of stepping out of their daily worries and feeling merged with their body as it performs flawlessly in the sport. Sportsmen know this altered state quite well and seek it out in every competition and practice, even though few understand that it is a type of hypnosis. To achieve the results of hypnotic movement you need to work with a hypnotherapist who is familiar with this alert trance.

While many of us have surrendered to our bodies' natural hypnotic movements once in a while, few of us listen to our bodies' needs for movement very often because we have as a culture been trained to override our bodies' feelings and needs as children. How often were we as small children told to stop fidgeting (a movement little bodies should be doing lots of) when forced against our nature to sit still at a desk? Stop wiggling, sit still, no you can't go to the bathroom, don't make those noises, children should be seen and not heard...etc.etc. It is no wonder that most of us start regarding our bodies as a stupid object, a vehicle that at best carries us around, but then has all those aches and pains that we don't understand. Then we are trained to believe that there is nothing we can do for our bodies' pains except take it to a doctor. There we receive pills to make it better. We have lost the knowledge of our bodies' healing powers.

Well, there is good news. Your body may have stopped making these healing movements years ago, but it still knows how to move in all those miraculous ways. All it needs is some help in awakening these latent inner powers! And that help can be provided by a hypnotherapist trained in Somatic Healing, of which hypnotic movement is one of many techniques.

Let me illustrate this with a story. A client came to me with severe sciatica. The pain radiated constantly down his right leg, forcing him to contemplate leaving his job permanently on disability. While some folks might be thrilled by a ticket to a life of leisure, this man loved his work in the construction business and wanted to get well. Unfortunately, the doctors didn't hold out much hope, given the depth of his pain. While I led him gently into the mild alert state of trance, I gave him suggestions that his body knew exactly how to move in its own way to relieve his pain. I used a number of other suggestions to trigger this movement. Soon his body was twisting in the peculiar combination of stretches and wiggles that is hypnotic movement. Within about three sessions his pain was gone. But, this was not just because of his work in my office.

No, he learned to use hypnotic movement on his own, and simply did these simple exercises every time the pain arose, and at night while lying in bed. Soon he was back at work. Then one day he fell off a platform on the job and sprained his ankle. The pain was severe, but by this time he had mastered the art of listening to his body's needs. No, he didn't call me. He spent a few minutes resting at the work site, relaxing into that deep state of body awareness we call "The Zone". Then he allowed his foot to move for a few minutes very slowly, free of pain, in its own unique way, as I had taught him. Within half an hour he was pain free and back on his feet. I was not there to witness this miracle, but he was thrilled to share this story with me, and a co-worker called me to ask if I could teach him to use the powers he had witnessed with such amazement. That's why my favorite somatic healing practitioner, Brigitta D'Amato, calls this work "Somatic Self-Healing". Because we empower our clients to heal themselves!

I have trained hundreds of practitioners in these techniques as a part of the Somatic Healing training. Using hypnotic movement, we have achieved excellent results in a wide variety of joint and movement related conditions including:

o Rheumatoid arthritis - I was crippled with the disease 29 years ago, and developed this technology to heal myself. I've been entirely symptom-free since 1984. ( I now use hypnotic movement to keep my body flexible and strong so I can pursue my hobby of rock climbing and mountaineering. At 57 I have the flexibility and grace of a 30 year old thanks to hypnotic movement) I have helped many more with this condition.

o Carpal tunnel syndrome - We've seen immediate reduction in pain, stiffness and swelling, and continuing improvement through daily practice.

o Osteoarthritis - We've seen flexibility restored, swelling reduced or eliminated, and pain sometimes completely removed in knees, hips, lower back, and fingers. One client was able to restore her ability to play her favorite Rachmaninoff piano pieces in a single session by giving back the strength and flexibility in her fingers. Now she says every time her fingers begin to swell and hurt, she simply uses a simple massage and movement technique to restore complete freedom of movement in 5 minutes or less.

o Sciatica - I have worked with many clients helping them learn to rotate and re-align hips on their own

o Post-traumatic injury pain and stiffness - We have achieved remarkable results with long-term post-traumatic pain from automobile accidents and other injuries. We have had especially good results with whiplash injuries.

o Chronic back pain - Backs respond quite well to hypnotic movement. See our web article, Healing Back Pain for more details, including hypnotic movements you can start doing now to improve your back.

o Post surgical recovery - If you suffer chronic pain even after corrective surgery, hypnotic movement can be very important for a full recovery. See our article on Hypnosis and Surgery for more details.

Would you like to learn these healing powers for your own body? I developed the hypnotic movement process in 1979. I have been teaching it since 1995. In all these years, I have found that almost anyone can learn to enter this delightful zone of body awareness, and can learn in a remarkably short time to become a master of the hypnotic movement technique. It can be used in conjunction with pain medications and any other medical treatment, and physical therapy, which I find works well with hypnotic movement. Tell your doctor you want hypnotic movement therapy. Then call our office at (800) 950-4984 and start learning now how to control and maybe eliminate your pain while healing your joints!