You need your regression hypnotherapy clients to be connected to their feelings. Feelings are what give you a bridge to the past. But what do you do when the client lives in his heads?
What do you do when the client is disconnected from their feelings?
Before you begin the healing work you need to help your clients tune into their feelings. It begins by finding a feeling. Teach the client how to find the feeling.
Where do we feel our feelings? In the body. But some people just aren’t that tuned into what’s going on in their body. They live in their heads. And the reason they live in their heads is to avoid their feelings. They’ve learned to stay in their head because it’s safer there.
When you ask you client, “How does that make you feel?”- and they start giving you a list of thoughts like, “Upset . . .” or “Like I’m being put down . . .” – that’s a problem.
If you ask the client to notice what’s going on in their body and they say, “I don’t know . . .” you’re going to find it very difficult to guide the healing process.
When you ask your client what they’re feeling and you get that deer-in-the-headlights look that should tell you something. They're disconnected from their feelings. When the client doesn’t know what they feel this tells you that they’re disconnected from their body. They’ve lost touch with how they feel.
What do you do when your client can’t feel their feelings?
How do you get them back into their body?
If you have a “Kinesthetically Impaired” client who really isn’t aware of what’s going on in their body you need to tune them into feelings. Teach them how to reconnect with their feelings in the body. This will make your job so much easier and help you get better results in your sessions.
Teach the Client How to Feel a Feeling
One of the things I routinely do in the first session is test. I want the client to be tuned into feelings and sensations in the body. So before I begin the regression work I test to find out just how connected the client is to their feelings. That way, I can ensure that they’ll notice what’s going on in the body during sessions.
I usually use the Elman Induction in the first session. This allows me to test and observe responses and teach the client how to work with me in hypnosis. I will then stack the following three body awareness exercises on top of the induction. These exercises can help to:
- Increase the client's awareness of feelings
- Double as Deepening techniques
- Prepare your client for the emotional healing work of regression hypnotherapy
1. Use Physical Touch
You can use physical touch to get the client connecting with their body. Just make sure you have the client’s permission to touch before you use this technique.
Touch acts as a non-verbal suggestion. You can do a non-verbal progressive relaxation induction by gently pressing down on the client’s hands, forehead or shoulders. For example, I’ll say, “As I touch you on the forehead let the forehead relax.” And I will gently rock the forehead from side to side.
What I’m going is testing to see if the client is relaxing the neck muscles. If the neck is relaxed the head will move easily in random patterns of movement. That tells you the client is following your instructions.
If there’s resistance you might want to stay there a little longer. Offer a few more suggestions until you get the desired response. Then gently press down on their forehead, shoulders then hands while offering suggestion for deepening relaxation.
If the client is helping you’ll feel that, as well. Their head will be moving on its own. But if they’re helping they’re not relaxing. And they’re not following your instructions. You need to get their compliance before continuing. Usually all that’s required is to tell the client to let YOU do all the work.
Source: Marilyn Gordon “Touch Induction”
2. Increase Body Awareness
Progressively focus the client’s attention on specific areas of the body where something is “touching”. e.g. feet, knees, stomach, arms
Source: 5-PATH “Three Important Things”
3. Increase Awareness of the Breath
Bring the client’s awareness to the physical sensation of the breath coming in through the nostrils and down into the lungs. Instruct the client to just notice how the breath is going in and out of the body. Then have the client do a tour of their body and notice what’s there.
If there’s any discomfort then you can invite them to just breathe into that area. If they have any physical pain, use the word “discomfort.” And have them “touch the owie.”
Physical touch calms the energy system of the body. So, if you have permission, you can place your hand there. e.g. shoulders. Or you can have the client place their hand there. e.g. tummy
Source: Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
Set up for the session work.
When it comes to session work, the more energy you put into the front end, the less work you’re going to have to do on the back end. Setting your client up to be successful working with you will make it easier to do your job when you get the client into the events from the past.
When your hypnosis client is disconnected from their feelings, teach them to notice feelings and sensations in the body before you begin the regression work. Prepare your clients for the work you will do together and you’ll have “push button” clients.
Before you begin the regression work …
- Check out how aware the client is of their feelings.
- Teach the client to notice feelings and sensations in the body.
- Practice body awareness exercises.
These three easy techniques can help you to get your clients out of their head and into their body. You can use physical touch, imagined touch, or the awareness of the breath.
Teach your clients how to find and feel their feelings. Once they have learned how, you can use any or all of these techniques in subsequent sessions as a deepening technique. They will then act as reminders to keep the client focused on what’s happening in the body. Cool, huh?
