Tag: Mindful Hypnosis

Telepathy, Consciousness and Collective Healing

We hear it said so often “We’re all one” or “We’re all connected” and I think for the most part, many of us accept this but there is still such a mystery as to how this plays out in our daily lives. I know that there are many ways in which this happens and one of the ways this ‘oneness’ can be revealed is through telepathy. My work with Ayahuasca, psychedelics, shamanism and subtle energies has resulted in some profound telepathic experiences in my every day life. It’s not surprising that most of these experiences involve my son as I have a closer connection to him than anyone else in my life. The first time I experienced this telepathic connection in an overt way, was long before I delved deeply into plant medicines or psychedelics but it was after my initial foray into the world of shamanism. Sometimes there can be hints at future events in our lives – like the foreshadowing we see in movies.

My first experience happened on a day that I went walking with my mother and son on a trail that was unfamiliar to me. We were visiting from out of town and during this walk, I began to take some photos. I became immersed in my photography for a while so my mother and son walked ahead. I said I’d catch up but I guess I waited too long and they must have been almost at my mother’s home when I realized that I really didn’t know which way to go to find my way back to them. I began walking in one direction but it felt more and more unfamiliar and a while later, once I realized that I was truly lost, I heard my mother and son calling my name. I soon caught up with them, and my mother explained that my son knew that I was lost. Before they arrived home my son insisted on coming back for me and told her that I was lost. He was maybe around 4 or 5 years old at the time and when I asked him how he knew I was lost he said “I know your heart”, “I was in your tummy”. Both my mother and I were very moved by this experience and it really began to change how I saw our connection. I am still discovering the depths of this connection.

The second time I became aware of this connection in a pronounced way was quite some time after I had begun working with plant medicines and psychedelics. I engaged in shamanic practices before I worked with plant medicines and through shamanic journeying, I experienced an inner connection with a guiding presence. I experienced this guiding presence as a sort of telepathic communication but it was more like insights, downloads and visions rather than the dialogue it became after Ayahuasca. This wise, guiding presence helped me in many ways right up to the point where I began to work with Ayahuasca. After that, this connection became a more pronounced dialogue that has been a guiding influence in my life ever since. I connect with this presence daily and it ‘speaks’ to me very clearly at times and especially, in the middle of the night and through my dreams. All of this led up to my first experience of conscious/intentional telepathic communication with my son.

One night, I was woken up in the middle of the night by this guiding presence/voice and it was responding to the intention/question regarding my son that I had posed earlier. It was suggested to me, that I speak to my son about my concerns. My telepathic reply to this inner voice pointed out the very practical issue of it being the middle of the night and my son was asleep in his room down the hall. The guided response urged me to speak to my son as I was speaking to this presence – to reach out to him telepathically. I did just that and I had only begun to do this (in my mind) when I heard his door open and footsteps coming down the hall. My son came into my room and I was so surprised to see him that I asked out loud “Honey what are you doing here?”. He replied “I couldn’t hear you” and crawled inside my bed and went to sleep. Obviously, he had ‘heard’ me but in a different way. He knew that I had reached out to him telepathically and this was his response.

A few years later, a friend of mine invited me to participate in a scientific experiment (learn more about that here) exploring the phenomenon of telepathy. In this experiment, participants were asked to meditatively connect with hypothalamic mouse neurons. There were sensors attached to these neurons that translated into data that we could see on a computer screen once the attempted connection was completed. My friend, who was also a hypnosis client at one point, gave me instructions that were most unexpected. He asked me to send signals/thoughts to these neurons that were disturbing/upsetting. It was the opposite to what I had anticipated. All of my practices of this nature have involved more peaceful/healing themes and this was quite the challenge. So, once I was set up and left alone to make this telepathic connection, I used my own hypnotic techniques to achieve a deeply relaxed state and reached out in my mind to this wise presence that advised me to make a game of this exercise and enjoy it, reassuring me that I would not harm these neurons. While in this hypnotic/meditative state, I imagined myself as a fiery cartoon character from a popular animated film called Moana.  I became this large character walking around the petri dish and singeing the neurons with my feet. I experienced the neurons recoil as I singed them. I did this for the allotted time and once the exercise was over and before we looked at the results, my friend sat down with me to share with me the reason for his request (to ‘upset’ the neurons). He said that many participants had used loving kindness type of meditative thoughts in this experiment in the past without much response but one day, when one of the participants happened to arrive in an angry state, and went ahead with the process none the less, there was a very marked response from the neurons. He showed me the computer screen, displaying the sensor’s output, which looked like the kind of graph they have on machines in hospitals showing someone’s vitals.  It represented the results of the entire experiment to date. For the most part, it was flat but there was a large, jagged line going up at one point which was the result of the connection with the angry participant. Then the line was relatively flat until again until it spiked at the end. This time, the line wasn’t jagged, it rose smoothly upwards and this was a result of my little singeing game with the neurons. It was a marked response.

Throughout my relationship with this presence, I have learned a lot about the importance of thoughts, awareness of how they are directed and the impact they have. Typical everyday inner responses impact not only our own experience but they have an effect on others as well. I remember one day as I dropped off my son at school, I walked away with a feeling of heaviness and a kind of worried attachment to him. I remember this wise inner voice saying “leave him be” and I understood that again, this was having an effect and not a positive one. It wasn’t a reprimand, and this heavy feeling I had was an important part of what I was moving through and healing at the time. I was made aware of the fact that I was directing it towards my son in a way that previously, I may not have been conscious of doing. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that this could be harmful but now, given my experiences and discoveries, I realize that all of it has an impact. This is what is meant by the phrase “the energy we’re putting out there”.

The fact that we’re using these phrases suggests a deeper knowing within us. We do know these things on a deeper level. I know now that when I realized that my son knew that I was lost, there was and is a deeper meaning to it. Our children and those who are closest to us, pick up on our feelings, thoughts and moods. I think we all know this but there is more to discover about the nature and degree of this impact, and it’s importance and significance in our daily lives and how things unfold in our world. We are not separate and as much as we’d like to think that we can keep things from one another, on a certain and crucial level, we all feel it. Early on in my experience with this presence, it illustrated this idea by asking me to imagine my thoughts as a digital screen on my forehead so that everyone could see all of these thoughts running through my mind. It was a very effective bit of imagery that taught me a lot and helped me become more aware of my thoughts. Although we may not all be ‘reading minds’ in a literal way, we certainly pick up on quite a lot and the more conscious we are, the more we are doing this. It is an energetic reality that is permeating our experience and once we harness this energy in a positive way, the sky’s the limit.

This understanding of our telepathic connection to one another makes it clear that when we begin to heal and grow on an individual level, it has a very positive ripple effect in our world. For those who are working to improve their relationships with their children, partners, family or colleagues, recognizing this is a good way to start and continue this work. Delving within is a powerful approach to solving most problems in this world. What we sometimes discover is how disconnected we are from ourselves and with this discovery comes the opportunity to change. And when we do, this greater connection to ourselves and to the world around us becomes more evident.  Ultimately, what we discover is how just how powerful we are and how to use that power for our personal and collective good.

Imagination, Beliefs & Healing The mind

When I first began to explore the world of shamanism I had been deeply depressed for a very long time and came to a point where I was willing to do anything to relieve my suffering.  I had tried conventional methods of addressing depression but they just led me into a deeper state of despair. I found the idea of being dependent on daily and nightly medications to be extremely disempowering and I struggled with this and other ideas that all related in one way or another to this basic concept of dependency versus personal power.  This period in my life was an important one as it was the beginning of a deeper struggle, one that I had experienced for years in different forms, coming to light. This situation, in and of itself, provided me with an opportunity for growth and like many such opportunities, it was not apparent to me at the time but crystal clear in retrospect.

At the time, I didn’t realize the nature of this deeper struggle but was keenly aware of the struggling itself which became so intense that it motivated me to open up to all possibilities of relieving it. This open state was the key to my own healing. Once I arrived at this open state, I began to find alternatives that I simply wasn’t aware of before because I was not open to them. The first was energy healing, which led me to shamanism, as energy healing has its roots in shamanism. Since I had begun to experience positive change with energy healing, I wanted to know more about it, its roots and the possibilities for deeper healing that shamanism had to offer. At the outset, I just knew that the kinds of concepts I would be introduced to would challenge my existing beliefs, but again, my open state helped me to overcome these challenges, as healing was more important to me than hanging onto my beliefs. Even then, I began to consider the fact that if my beliefs were healthy ones, they would not have led me into such a troubled state.

The idea of spirits and the use of my imagination were both challenges to me and it surprised me how quickly I overcame this. Pain is quite a motivator. I think originally, I regarded the idea of spirits to be as illusive as the idea of God so I just accepted what was being said about them as a possibility outside of my experience at the time and focused more on my own experience. The challenge then was to become acquainted with my own imagination as a vehicle for healing. This required me to think less, which was such a blessing and a beginning of the healing itself but no small task. Thankfully, I was truly desperate to get well and miraculously open which was a gift that paved the way towards achieving my goal.

As it turns out, the world of the imagination was not as foreign to me as I thought it was but it certainly seemed that way to me at the time. We all use our imagination on a daily basis and often in ways that are not serving us. This too was a new concept to me – the idea of self-service. This was a concept that I found far more appealing and it has been a prevalent theme throughout my shamanic experiences. My daily use of my own imagination often happened in ways that were harmful to me. When presented with any number of possibilities, the images and ideas that would come to mind were usually, overwhelmingly negative. I often put up barriers to all kinds of possibilities, which made me feel isolated and discouraged. When I contemplated positive opportunities, my imagination would create all kinds of barriers – seemingly logical and realistic ones – that stymied my attempts at imagining a better life for myself. We think of this as logic or reasoning but really, it was my mind responding to ideas (fuelled by influences past and present) and rationalizing in a negative direction with the use of my own imagination. I imagined all kinds of ‘reasons’ why good things couldn’t or weren’t going to happen to me. They had a life of their own in my mind and I supported this life – this very animated life of seemingly ‘reasonable’ barriers.

In the shamanic world, I was asked to move beyond this kind of thinking and into a creative state that soon, after I practiced and continued to open up, became a two way street. Eventually, it was not just me ‘creating’ although this was powerful enough in and of itself, it also took on a life of its own and became a state of being that offered insights that were presented to me in creative, imaginative ways.  A world of possibilities opened up in this creative, imaginative state in my mind where previously, there was a hostile and very closed environment. I began to work inside this space in my mind to change the environment using my imagination in a different way than the debilitating way I had engaged it previously without knowing it.

Initially, I believed that this creative, imaginative space in my mind was a new place that I was exploring and because it was so different than the one I was accustomed to, it was indeed very new to me but it had been an atmosphere I lived in for a long time. It is a space that I began to know more deeply through further shamanic adventures of my own and through experiences with plant medicines.  Through plant medicine ceremonies, shamanic journeying and spontaneous spiritual experiences after Ayahuasca, I began to understand that the imagery in my mind was a powerful vehicle for healing and change. I had experiences that seemed so strange to me initially, some involving objects being removed from my body and healing energies entering my body taking different shapes and removing bits and pieces within me that I knew represented or were in fact energies that caused problems. When this occurs within ceremony, under the influence of powerful plant medicines, many of us have a sense of the healing that is taking place and experience a ‘knowing’ that we are being changed for the better. When we begin to do these things in our normal state of mind, we can experience doubt.

I had some extraordinary, very animated healing experiences even in my so-called ‘normal’ state of mind and still, I had doubts. I had these doubts at times even after feeling the benefits of these experiences which often came a while afterwards. This led to more doubt but because of the fact that this healing work was becoming a regular part of my life, I allowed the doubt to pass and didn’t invest so deeply in it anymore. I had learned to do this through my shamanic and spiritual practice. This was one of the many gifts that shamanism has taught me – that we have the power to order our thoughts and to choose not to invest in ones that don’t serve us.

I became more and more focused on empowering methods that involved the mind and taking a more active role with respect to my thinking. People often told me that I was ‘too much in my head’ which was true for much of my life. Thinking and the mind was a focus for me and the way I was in my mind was becoming more and more harmful. However, now, coming to peace with my relationship with the mind and the power of it, I sought to use this focus in a positive way. Plant medicines and shamanism helped with this a great deal and continued to improve my life in every way. It was such a unique and personal journey and as Ayahuasca had encouraged me to do, I have been sharing these experiences with others. I felt compelled to help others and yet, I hadn’t come across a way that provided access to that unique inner space and one that resonated with me until I discovered hypnosis.

I say that I ‘discovered’ hypnosis because my preconceptions of it were mostly negative, which is not surprising given how it has been represented for years and often in the media. It has been presented as a tool that offers power to the person using it on or over another. This of course would never have appealed to me in any way because of my deeply held aversion to dependency or control of one over another. So it was very surprising to me to discover that this tool is not only very empowering, it also provides access to that space within that I had become so familiar with through shamanism and plant medicines. I began to discover that there are powerful opportunities to use hypnosis as a protocol to intentionally experience some of the same healings and insights that I had previously experienced spontaneously and through shamanism and plant medicines.

This was quite a revelation as I had been looking for a protocol to help others to experience this self-discovery and self-healing in intentional ways and here it was. There are hypnotic sessions I went through in my training that I had experienced spontaneously through this ongoing relationship with Ayahuasca and shamanism. It is a vehicle to not only explore within but to make changes there for our highest good. We have seen the effects of powerful influences outside of ourselves. Some of these effects are the wounds we are now working to heal. These influences could not have been so impactful unless somewhere inside of us, we allowed this to happen. This is where deep change is possible. We may now agree to become the powerful influence that is the guiding force in our lives. I invite you to go within and discover your own, wise, guiding voice and engage all of your capacities to heal, grow and thrive.

If you would like to learn more about working with me to discover your inner resources through hypnosis, please contact me at reach.rebecca@me.com

Please note, I work remotely via Zoom which will require a computer with a camera and a built-in microphone (which most computers have).

Personal Growth & Healing Through Hypnosis

The word ‘hypnosis’ often conjures up images of stage performances where people end up clucking like chickens in front of an audience. What does that have to do with personal growth & healing? More than you think. Although hypnosis stage acts may be performed for entertainment purposes, the possibilities that exist within the process behind the act are endless when applied in creative ways for the purpose of healing and assisting us along the path of personal growth.

When we begin to work at improving our lives, our relationships and achieving our goals, we often discover that the real barriers to achieving these goals are not external, they are internal. For those of us who make these discoveries and embark on the path of personal growth, we also learn that much of the harmful programming that was instrumental in creating these inner barriers, began and took hold at a very young age. Most of us are by now, well acquainted with the concept of childhood programming and it’s effects. Throughout early childhood (especially from 0 to 7 years old) we received impressions about ourselves and our world that created beliefs and attitudes that affect our outlook and self-esteem to this day.

As it turns out, a lot of this early programming occurred when our brains were in the ‘Theta’ state. This ‘Theta’ state happens not only during early childhood, it happens when we begin to fall asleep, intermittently throughout the night and before we fully wake. This state is also available to us through hypnosis, which provides amazing opportunities for us to make changes to deeply imbedded programming. In addition to changing our programming, we also have an opportunity, through hypnosis, to access self-knowledge. This can be truly transformative.

If we’re going to make big and lasting changes in our lives, we need to know more about the most crucial and consistent aspect of all of our lived experiences: ourselves. Many philosophers and spiritual leaders over the years have made reference to innate knowledge or the understanding of the soul. They believed that all knowledge exists within us. Hypnosis is a gateway to this innate self-understanding that helps us to improve ourselves and in so doing, to improves our lives. This deeply held awareness is the key to unlock our greatest potential.

I’m sure many of us have heard the phrase “Everything you need is inside of you”. As it turns out, this is true and hypnosis is a powerful way to access our inner resources and to use them to change our lives in profound ways. Contrary to popular belief, hypnosis is an empowering tool. Instead of controlling us, hypnosis can allow us to explore and change the kinds of beliefs and programming that controlled us for years. This powerful process of self-discovery & healing transforms our inner environment, which reflects outward and impacts our lived experience in meaningful ways.

Although there were powerful influences in our lives when we were children and during our ‘formative years’, the power that these influences continue to exert over us is internal. We have internalized these attitudes, beliefs and ideas and this is where change is possible. We have the key. Even our impressions of the past can be altered if we’re open to change. The intention to explore this inner environment is a powerful first step in making these changes a reality.

To discover more about personal transformation through hypnosis, please email me at reach.rebecca@me.com

Please note, I work remotely via Zoom so you will require a computer with a camera and a built-in microphone (which most computers have).