Healing illness with the subconscious mind Danna Pycher TEDx

what if I told you you might not be who you think you are what if I told you that your very perception or idea of who you are has been weaved into your mind over time what if you don't agree with what your mind has to tell you I've always had an inquiring mind I've always questioned everything I felt the need to get to the bottom of everything and never took anything at face value this ever curious personality would one day save my life let me tell you who I am hi I'm Donna I'm a hypnotherapist specializing in trauma and chronic illness I also do a lot of public speaking about the Holocaust as I'm a third generation descendant about trauma and my favorite topic to speak about the subconscious mind and how it works because holy moly it's fascinating I want to take you on a little journey today that will expose the connection between your mind who you think you are and the potential onset of disease so if you may please follow along as we go through the human experience from conception until death okay so it won't be that morbid we all of us are born as blank slates we all of us then through our experiences our program to have certain beliefs about who we are what we can achieve in life and what type of person we should be from birth until six we are essentially living life in a hypnotic trance it's why we learn languages so quickly at this young age we are sponges just joyously absorbing everything around us at this precious age we set up the rest of our lives that's right what we learned from about the age of zero until six is essentially the patterns or programming we begin to develop from adolescence or from then and repeat again and again from adolescence into adulthood I want to tell you something that might offend you people we are patterns I also want to relay something else to you sometimes our patterns do not serve us those patterns are called disease depression obesity and the list unfortunately goes on and on okay let's for wine for a minute I want to rewind to a really serious pattern that I had in the past I had what's called chronic fatigue syndrome which later turned into fibromyalgia both are chronic illnesses that to put them lightly are no fun and to put them into context can be seriously debilitating I was 18 years old and I would suddenly go in and out of these intense spurts of not being able to function I was dead tired to a point where if I couldn't take a nap in the moment I needed to I felt as if my heart would give out the fact that I was so young I knew something was wrong I went to many doctors many doctors who all told me I was either stressed or depressed and I looked at them and I said I'm a freshman in college really what do I have to be depressed about so for years years I did research into why I felt the way I felt and I became my own advocate I began experimenting with diet with lifestyle many different things just to try to get a handle on my symptoms and I started to feel better and I was able to really get a handle on my life and to manage life really well and when I finally had a big handle on my health I got severely knocked down again and when I say knocked down I mean almost killed in a near-fatal car accident t-boned smashed left hanging upside down in my car until the firefighters came to cut me out not sure if I was paralyzed or dead without going into the gory details I knew that I was for a long ride ahead of me I was handicapped for six months and I developed what's called PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder and on top of that I began to feel sick again in 30 seconds I wasn't the same Danah anymore I develop PTSD and because I knew that I was one person and I wasn't that person anymore I knew I had to see someone or do something about it so I began to see this therapist and she was a very nice woman yeah she would tell me things when you get to a stop sign you need to breathe so I thought to myself am I really paying you this much money for that that I got so eventually after six months of minimal improvement I met a woman who survived cancer and she said she would not have survived cancer were it not for this trauma therapist she went to so I said that's my woman so I went and the first appointment with her there's trauma therapist she said to me and she looked at me and she said I'm a bit alternative I hope that's okay with you and I said I'm desperate whatever you got she said I do this thing called hypnosis I said there is no way you're touching my brain with that stuff I was super skeptical I had no idea what it was and my only reference was show hypnosis and hypnotherapy is not show hypnosis so basically after about six or seven sessions of meeting with her I decided that I liked her she was smart forward-thinking compassionate so I thought to myself what the heck what can it hurt so I walked in that session I walked in feeling one way I walked out feeling another I wasn't exactly sure what she did I just felt better within six weeks my PTSD was gone the next month my depression the next month my anxiety this woman saved my life okay so that's all interesting you know I want to tell you something even more interesting so I mentioned to you earlier that I started with chronic fatigue and later developed what's called fibromyalgia I view these two ailments as sisters very similar yeah travel myalgia on top of the intense fatigue is serious muscular pain yet what the interesting part is I didn't develop this pain until after my accident so here's the interesting part when I was healing my trauma through hypnosis the pain in my legs began to dissipate bit by bit little by little the pain in my body was leaving I thought to myself well what's happening here so that brings us to where we're going today I want to walk you through the mechanics of the hypnotic process and how it works and how the mind and body and disease and thought are all interconnected but first let's jump into the science of how minds and bodies interact so how exactly are trauma and disease correlated I want to mention to you that trauma doesn't have to be a near-fatal car accident it doesn't have to be coming back for more really in my mind the way I view trauma is if you view the world one way and then some situation happened to you and now you view the world in a different way that can be a traumatic circumstance so it doesn't have to be this overwhelming experience have you ever heard the phrase stress kills okay so I used to hear that phrase and I used to scoff yet now I see just how valid that statement is physical and psychological stressors cause inflammation to occur in the body inflammation is the key word in many diseases reducing inflammation is the key to healing many diseases are you with me this far okay beautiful what events happen in life they're recorded when stressful events happen they are recorded as is and that creates a certain level of shock on the mind which therefore sends distress signals down the nervous system which in turn will tell the endocrine system to increase adrenaline and cortisol and while those levels are increased our immune levels are lowered the fact that we have these stress responses initially is not a bad thing yet the fact that our minds compound all of these situations over time without ever letting them go every situation builds upon each other so the real reason we experience stress in reality is for our own good for our own safety if you think of an animal for example a mouse a mouse sees a cat gets anxiety has stress levels why because it needs to make the decision to run away yet once the mouse runs away once the mouse finds cover that anxiety is gone the mouse doesn't overanalyze what the cat was thinking how to feel about it now and what to do about it no that's only something humans do humans encounter a stressful situation we instantaneously attach meaning to it and then it's recorded for ever so the initial stress isn't bad the continual attachment to the stress is bad following me so far good ok so just really right reiterate when we experience stress there's a recording in a subconscious mind and enough of those recordings over time will cause havoc and an overstressed nervous system which in turn will cause an overproduction of stress hormones and a suppression of immune function so now the golden question how do we reverse all of this so there's a new study dedicated to all of this called psychoneuroimmunology psychoneuroimmunology meaning the branch of medicine that deals with the influence of emotional states and nervous system activity on immune function especially in relation to disease so that's the textbook definition in reality the best way that i have found to take the study off of paper and into real life to intervene in the influence of stress on immunity I have found is hypnotherapy how let me tell you so I do this fascinating therapy it's called regression therapy essentially what this means is I take my clients to the first time the very first first first initial time that a stressful event or events caused the ailment at hand for example let's say we're working with depression I'll guide a client through a visualization through their mind to their subconscious mind it's very cool and then through this visualization I'll say something like this we're going to go to the first time the very first time you had emotions around depression and so what happens in the subconscious mind a subconscious mind then links up with the specific memories that are tied to that specific ailment so it goes something like this a client would describe something that happened when they're two years old let's say I was two my parents were fighting I felt very upset confused responsible for my parents etc etc so then I started asking them questions like this in that moment how did you need to feel as a two-year-old and then they would respond something to the effect of I needed to feel like a baby like a two-year-old comforted etc so at this point I would then direct him to feel as if in that memory they were failing their body as the two-year-old with the resources that he or she needed in that moment in that moment there is healing you cannot change what has happened to you in the past instead you are changing the minds perception and the weight of the heavy feelings that the past memory holds then after resolving that memory we would then proceed through other memories in a similar fashion so what exactly is this doing it is completely allowing the subconscious mind to cope with things and never got to cope with in the past this reduces the recorded stress that we've carried around our whole lives when the subconscious mind heals allows the nervous system to relax when the nervous system relaxes there are less erratic signals when there are less erratic signals the endocrine system does not need to be in a chronic state a fight-or-flight there for sending out inflammatory hormones like cortisol and adrenaline you see how this is all coming together okay I know I overloaded you with a ton of information so I want to finish up with this a bit of an experience I had with a client who came to see me there's a woman she came to see me and she came to see me for weight loss which many people do many people come to see hypnotist to lose weight and I asked her what's the issue no motivation to get to the gym you don't have a taste for healthy foods what's going on so she said no I have motivation get to the gym yet every time I go I get into more pain so I asked why are you in pain she said I have this thing called fibromyalgia are you familiar I said oh am i familiar so I said to her let's start from the inside out instead of working on your motivation to get to the gym we should work on your fibromyalgia pain first I asked her where do you feel most of it right now she said in her neck I said okay let's go for it we did a regression session around the pain in her neck and the memory that came up was up a time she was 12 years old her and her brother got in a fight he pushed her down the stairs and she essentially got a stiff neck for a few weeks and then it went away 10 years later it came back and she told me for 20 years she couldn't move her neck we resolved that trauma the trauma surrounding that memory and a few others when we finished she came up out of hypnosis and she went like this for the first time in 20 years she moved her neck my mouth dropped and so did hers we carry our lives with us not only in our minds yet all over our body our bodies and minds are intrinsically connected there is so much more detail I can go to on this topic yet really this is the takeaway I want to give to you today the mind and body are resilient and have the innate ability to heal themselves yet sometimes they just need a bit of guidance my wish for you is to be informed and to know that there are resources out there to help you feel like the best you I was told time and time again that I would be sick or have PTSD forever I was told by many doctors that I'd have to be on high level antidepressants that there was no hope for me this is the pathway of my life yet in reality I knew and I was determined with every ounce of my being to get back to who I knew I was that girl that existed somewhere deep down inside me and now I speak about chronic illness and PTSD in the past behind me no longer part of me if there's someone you know who doesn't feel good please tell them that there is hope if you can heal your mind you can heal your life so here's to you your healthy mind and body and here's some never giving up the fight for your vitality thank you very much

Channel: Danna Pycher

Views: 5,610

Keywords: Danna Pycher, TEDx, Healing, trauma, ptsd, subconscious, mind, health, mindfulness, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, depression, anxiety, addiction

Id: 2x7MZ_AyG9U

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2016