Barrie St John asked:

It is my belief that hypnotherapy is the best complimentary therapy because hypnosis affects people at each level including psychological, physiological, emotional, and even spiritual. And really, only hypnotherapy has the power to do that.

It grants you to work on specific problems one by one, but at the same time, it can improve your overall health and well-being in several areas concurrently. Some people seek hypnotherapy to address a specific area while others seek the overall benefits of hypnosis on a regular, ongoing basis. Many people use hypnosis alone while others supplement it with other forms of therapy.

Even though each form of therapy is valuable on its own, there’s a definite overlap within all methods of treatment. What hypnosis does is it provides a link and it connects those areas together physiologically.

Whether you are in physical therapy recovering from an injury, or in psychotherapy due to emotional stress, it doesn’t matter. Hypnosis can compliment either or both of those treatments, because hypnosis has the power to affect all those areas in a positive way. So in compliment to your physical therapy, it can help you cope on an emotional level with the strain of the injury.

If you’re trying acupuncture to help you quit smoking, there is a specific technique that addresses your physical need for nicotine, but acupuncture alone does little to tackle the psychological craving, the mental tug of war that plays out in the early stages of breaking any pattern of long standing, habitual behaviour. Hypnotherapy can compliment the acupuncture by addressing the psychological need for relief.

Another excellent example of combined therapy is the effect of aromatherapy. When I tried an aromatherapy massage, there is no question I was subdued into total relaxation. It was a fantastic experience in itself, and in my case, I actually reached hypnosis. It’s beneficial by itself, or it can be used as an aide for inducing hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy utilizes a mixture of different models that people are already exerting; they’re just made more powerful when used with hypnosis. Nearly all therapies are successful at producing change in a specific area. Hypnotherapy simply produces change in more areas. This fact makes it the ideal complimentary therapy in addition to being an excellent stand alone treatment for many problems, specific or combined.

It is important to remember that hypnotherapy isn’t intended to replace modern medicine or in any way refute its effectiveness. You might select to use hypnotherapy alone instead of mainstream treatment for whatever condition you are addressing, and that’s a personal choice any individual can make, but it’s not our mandate as hypnotherapists to replace modern medicine, nor do we recommend that hypnosis ever could.

Substitute medicine, which is quite commonly used these days, is very much positioned to offer people a different way to address their health issues. It essentially opposes traditional medicine, by offering stand alone treatments that would directly conflict with traditional treatment and cannot be safely or effectively combined. I would absolutely not place hypnotherapy in that category. Hypnotherapists are not in competition with physicians and health care workers, and we don’t advocate that anyone abandon their medical practitioner in favour of hypnotherapy.

By contrast, I believe that hypnosis is an excellent companion to modern medicine. We tend to forget that hypnosis has been used for many years by doctors and health care professionals like psychologists. It in no way undermines the effectiveness of modern treatment. Rather, it can compliment it quite naturally and quite effectively.

For instance, if you are trying to quit smoking, hypnotherapy alone can help immensely, but if you are also using the patch, then you’re increasing your odds of success. There’s no conflict… one treatment works extremely well with the other.

If you are taking any type of treatment for a medical condition and you find yourself struggling with the side effects, you can turn to hypnotherapy to alleviate the intensity of the side effects and increase you tolerance of the medication, so that it can do its job.

The word alternative suggests that we’re looking for a different way of doing things. We are not. We’re looking to provide a means for the improved physical and mental health of anyone and everyone who needs it. I believe that modern medicine is already doing that. I also believe that hypnotherapy is the ultimate complimentary therapy and can help in so many ways.

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