Publications

Article Index Dr. Kimoglou Dimitrios - Article 2 Dr. Kimoglou Dimitrios was the founder and director of advising the centre of Hypnoyherapy & Aridea in Pella, Greece. (Greek) Click Here For Article Debbie Appears on CityTV ! Download the Toronto Sun article about Debbie ( Kevin Connor, Sun Media) Debbie in the National Post Interview With Debbie Papadakis by Dr. Damon Mesmerizing Art Chips Away at Craving - article in Toronto Star (pdf) Regression Therapy By Debbie Papadakis Hypnosis Can Help You Set and Achieve Goals You Are Getting Very Sleepy - Anaesthetic? The Outer By Robert Hercz Health Focus By Debbie Papadakis, Creating Abundance Stories Can Heal, but don't let your narrative own you By Sibyl Preuschat What Are You Reading? By Debbie Papadakis Professor Horia Nita on Hypnosis Hypnosis Can Help you Set and Achieve Goals By Debbie Papadakis Time Delay in Hypnosis and Biorythms By Becky A. Sigmon, BA, MSc, PhD, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto Debbie Papadakis, Hypno Healing Institute

Interview With Debbie Papadakis

by Dr. Damon
Authorized by the National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH) www.ngh.net

Regression Therapy

- Debbie Papadakis, C.Ht., C.I., Spiritual Psychotherapist, Reiki Master

Regression therapy is used in hypnosis to uncover positive or negative imprints and thoughts that happened earlier in a person's life. It is a process of moving backwards chronologically in order to trace past memories. With a trained therapist the procedure is simple, safe and remarkably beneficial.

The subconscious mind controls every organ, gland and part of the body through the autonomic nervous system; it is the "store keeper" of our past experiences. Some of these experiences are suppressed, repressed or forgotten for survival reasons. This happened mainly in order to protect our selves from the painful memories and not to allow them to interfere and to affect our day-to-day lives. However, these experiences remain in the subconscious mind and in most cases is the root of our problems.

Regression therapy allows us to uncover and find the causes of the initial traumas by communicating with the subconscious mind and to bring out the triggers of different physical, mental and emotional conditions. By playing back its "hidden old tapes" with its patterns and behaviors, the therapist together with the client can identify and be aware of the root of the problem. Then through an increase of awareness and self-acceptance the client can overcome the undesirable conditions. For example, Mary had a great fear of speaking in front of people. In fact, each time she was around people she would become very quiet, she would begin to sweat profusely, and if she was asked a question she was lose her words. Under regression therapy Mary discovered that when she was 6 years old, in grade one, she performed in a Christmas play. When it was time for her to say her lines she forgot them. She looked out at the audience and saw them staring at her. The audience laughed and Mary started to cry. At the time, she did not realize the impact of this event. Under hypnosis she was asked to go back to the first time she felt this fear. Mary talked about the Christmas play and became very nervous. Mary was guided to change the picture by visualizing her being at the same play, performing with confidence and feeling successful. She looked out at the audience and they were clapping, she felt great. Mary's fears of speaking in front of a crowd disappeared and her life changed in many positive ways.

Regression therapy can be used for many physical, emotional, psychological and behavioural problems. If you feel that there are blockages in your life that do not allow you to move forward, you may want to consider having a few sessions of Regression Therapy.

Hypnosis Can Help You Set and Achieve Goals

It is well established that being successful in life is a matter of understanding your goals. Most of us know this, but few of us actually set out on a plan of action. The subconscious mind can provide both motivation and knowledge of procedures through hypnosis.

There are two fascists to goals. The first identifies what you want to achieve, the second how to go about doing it. To achieve your goals you need to set them realistically, and be accountable for the implementations.

To move through planning your goals to achievement, demands that we tell our subconscious what we want. Visualization skills can be useful. To get our goals into the subconscious, several steps are helpful. Set a basic accomplishment goal then evaluate benefits to stimulate your emotional drive. Note the obstacles - if these are excessive you will fail. Figure out what knowledge and skills you require and if you don't have them where can you get them. Set a plan of action and establish a deadline.

If you haven't been successful on your own, hypnosis can program you to proceed through a sequence of small steps - each an achievable goal - so that we can experience both success and a sense of completion.

A lot of us are caught in the "Play Pen Syndrome." As children we are in the playpen to keep us safe. This carries over to our adult life - we play safe, unless we have learned to set goals. Goal setting makes us achieve something in life rather then just going along with what happens.

WHEN VICTOR RAUSCH HAD HIS GALLBLADDER removed in 1978, it was a major operation. "They cut open your belly, open it up with clamps and get in there and move your guts around," the Waterloo dentist recalls.

Of course Rausch would have an excellent recollection of the procedure, since it was performed without anaesthetic or painkillers. He was awake through the whole operation, and when it was over, he stood up and walked out of the operating room.

Rausch had hypnotized himself. Having used hypnosis for years on his dental patients including those he saw while working for the Canadian Armed Forces, he simply had to see for himself how, and if, it worked.

The operation was not without sensation, but it was without pain. 'Once I found out how simple it was to control the perception of pain, it was just amazing," he says. "I didn't want to believe it. It was quite bizarre."

Not everyone was impressed. When Rausch left the operating room, the curious hospital staff that had gathered in the hallway first assumed the surgery had been postponed, After all, if you've just had an organ yanked out, you don't usually leave the scene on foot. But as the news spread, one of the doctors approached him. "I knew this gentleman personally; he was a good surgeon," says Rausch. "He looked at me, stuck his finger in my face, totally frustrated, He said, 'I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to talk about it. As far as I'm concerned it never happened.' He turned around and walked away, For him to accept what just happened, he'd have to discard 90 per cent of what he had learned."

Perhaps many of us would, yet there is no doubt that hypnosis works. Demonstrations like Rausch's operation may only come along every couple of decades, but finding people who have been helped in ways that, if less dramatic, are just as significant is not difficult. Nor is finding respectable scientific backing for the practice. The more you examine hypnosis, however, the more slippery it becomes.

It has taken a long time for hypnosis to reach its present teetering legitimacy. Modern hypnosis dates to the late 1700s, when Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer claimed miraculous cures with magnets. A French royal commission concluded that Mesmer's results were due more to his subjects' powers of imagination than any "animal magnetism' passing between him and his patients. Despite that verdict, mesmerism, as it became known, continued to attract interest.

Mid 19th century British surgeon James Braid used it to treat deafness, rheumatic disorders and paralysis. He coined "hypnosis' from the Greek word for sleep; an unfortunate choice, since the hypnotized subject is actually in a heightened state of alertness.

At the end of the 19th century, Sigmund Fraud became interested in the technique and used it on some of his patients. His endorsement would have changed the history of hypnosis, but he discarded it, partly because it didn't fit his theoretical model and partly because he wasn't very good at it.

At the same time, the public perception of hypnosis was being influenced by stage hypnotists who were turning groups of volunteers into flocks of chickens. A flood of popular literature, including George Du Maurier's 1894 novel Tri/by wherein the heroine falls under the hypnotic influence of the demonic Svengali sparked a movement to outlaw hypnosis. Such popular myths hypnosis is a state of near sleep in which the patient is unable to resist the commands of the mesmerist and, upon 11 waking," invariably forgets what happened couldn't be further from the truth. But they persist, encouraged by self styled therapists (with no more than a few hours of training in some cases) who promise everything from past life regression, bust enlargement and relief from constipation.

Meanwhile, many researchers have been making real contributions. Scientific studies have documented the efficacy of hypnosis in managing pain, bleeding and vomiting, anxiety, and phobias. Some studies indicate that women giving birth under hypnosis have shorter labours than non hypnotized women, and their babies have higher Apgar scores (a measure of the newborn's health).

The British Medical Association approved hypnosis as a valid medical treatment in 1955 and the American Medical Association followed in 1958. Today, patients in the cancer wards of the larger hospitals and In the offices of psychiatrists, psychologists, dentists and general practitioners are often taught self hypnosis as part of their treatment.

Paul Kelly, a Toronto psychologist, uses hypnosis with about one out of five clients in his practice. "Headache, menstrual cramps, pain related to childbirth, irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia. For people with exceptional talent for hypnosis," explains Kelly, "the degree of relief is equivalent to what you can get from morphine."

Nevertheless, hypnosis remains controversial. According to The Canadian Medical Association Journal, 55 per cent of physicians accept its effectiveness, which means 45 per cent don't, possibly because we still don't know much more about how hypnosis works than Mesmer did. In a hypnotic trance, the theory goes, a door to your subconscious swings open to suggestion. Despite the mountain of research, that's pretty much all the explanation we have.

While researching this story, I was hypnotized three times. I heard every word the hypnotists said; I didn't feel any more or less receptive than usual and if someone had slit my abdomen with a scalpel while I was in trance, I'm pretty sure it would have hurt. I wouldn't say I was skeptical, but it did surprise me how "normal" I felt. It also surprised me that 20 minutes in that state seemed to cure my chronic aching jaw.

I had asked Georgina Cannon, a well known Toronto hypnotherapist and director of the Ontario Hypnosis Centre, to illustrate hypnosis by trying to help me with my nighttime tooth grinding. It was a stress related problem which, on two or three mornings a month, reminded me upon waking with aching jaw, aching teeth and aching head that a new cluster of deadlines was closing in.

My session was not convincing or so I thought at the time. In Cannon's periwinkle walled office bathed in tinkling New Age music, I sat in an armchair with my eyes closed and feet up. She "induced" me with a soothing monologue. Once I was deeply relaxed, she asked me to walk along my life's timeline "to the point where the problem began before, during or after your birth without needing to know exactly what caused it." I was told to raise a finger when I got there, but nothing presented itself. It seemed inappropriate to open my eyes, sit up and ask, 'What if I can't find it?,' so after a suitable interval, I lifted a finger just to get on with the proceedings. The whole thing seemed faintly absurd, even though I was supposed to be in trance.

It was a relief to hear Cannon say: "Come all the way back now, holding onto the wisdom," she said. "Come back feeling refreshed, rejuvenated, very very proud of the work you've done." I didn't think I had much to be proud of, but I haven't woken up with any pain since.

First time mother Sabrina Blais wanted a drug free delivery, so she took Hypnosis for Childbirth, a franchised four session course in self hypnosis that was developed in the U.S. and is now available in Canada. She learned visualizations for the actual delivery, such as setting an imaginary dial to the level of pain she was going to accept, and took home affirmation tapes which reassured her that she could have a normal, comfortable labour. The result "The pain wasn't unmanageable. I had to call my backup midwife when I was between one and two hours away from delivering, and it was no problem. I was still able to do that,"

For something even more dramatic, talk to Vincente (not his real name), a
19 year old high school student: "I had these blisters on my lips, and they got worse and worse. They'd start bleeding, there was always this fluid coming out of them. I got medicine to numb my mouth so I could eat, because it was really painful." Doctors couldn't cure him, so he turned to Debbie Despina Papadakis, a Toronto hypnotherapist.

"We did a hypnosis session where I didn't speak," says Vincente. "I'd lift one finger for yes, another for no. She asked me a whole bunch of questions, is this bothering you, is that bothering you. By the end of the session, the blisters already stopped leaking. In only two or three sessions I was back to normal."

"I'd recommend it to people who have an open mind," Vincente adds. "if you don't believe in it, if you don't want It to happen, then I don't think it will happen."

You've got to believe. Every client I talked to said the same thing, unprompted. A good hypnotherapist knows that, and builds the entire experience around nurturing it. People think the "magic" is in the induction, but the induction is almost irrelevant.

"Almost anything works as long as the person expects it should work," says Erik Woody, a psychologist at the University of Waterloo who researches hypnosis, Even the hypnosis itself can be omitted. Studies have found that suggestion, with or without a hypnotic procedure, reduces pain.

The patient, not the hypnotist, does the real work. All hypnosis is self hypnosis, as every therapist will tell you. The question is, are all patients equally good at it? "One on one in this office, I never have a single person who doesn't go into trance very quickly, Not one," says Mike Mandel, a Toronto hypnotist who does therapy, forensic hypnosis (helping witnesses in criminal cases recall faces and other details) and has been a stage hypnotist for 25 years, But he admits he's not dealing with a very representative sample. "A lot of people who come here are desperate. They can't take more pain killers, or they have a phobia that's crippling them in their work," says Mandel. "So I have tremendous leverage. They're at a point where they really want to change, and that helps tremendously."

Both Kelly and Woody representing the "scientific" approach to hypnotism believe that susceptibility varies widely. "To some extent you can train people," says Kelly, "but my opinion would be that not everyone has the same amount of talent. For people that have real talent, it's like money in the bank."

Kelly says Rausch is "one in a hundred," but the patient disagrees, "What determines hypnotizability is need," Rausch says. "People go into spontaneous hypnosis in emergency situations very often, where they perform miraculous feats the mother lifting the car off the baby."

But if the patient's will (or need) to believe is so important, is there really even such a thing as hypnosis? One small camp of researchers believes hypnosis is almost pure placebo and no one doubts that is at least part of the explanation, But so what? What if hypnosis really doesn't exist at all? What if it is just another name for the placebo effect?

The idea doesn't bother therapists. As Kelly points out, the placebo effect may be a bad thing if you're a drug company, but not as much if you're a therapist. 'For healers, it's something to honour because it's a very big part of efficacy, of why this treatment works. Our healing systems are really sensitive to hope and expectation of benefit. That's the good news. It changes our physiology." says Kelly.

Remember that we're talking about something that can make surgery without anaesthetic painless. That capacity which lives, to a greater or lesser extent, in each of us is something that ought to be tapped, not dismissed.

Health Focus

by Debbie Papadakis

Creating Abundance

Have you visualized the words created in your mind that represent the things you want in your life? Do your thoughts, words and beliefs support what you want in your life or, instead, do they support what you really do not want in your life?

For example, are you thinking (saying), I need more money to pay my bills every month", or instead, I have plenty of money to do what ever I would like in my life."

I know that you are wondering, "but Debbie, how can I say I have plenty of money when in reality I do not have it?" Fair enough. Let me tell you how the unconscious mind operates.

It takes every thought you create literally. It does not know the difference between the reality of what you really want and the fanciful thought not yet fully developed. It will give you what you ask of it. It does exactly what you tell it to do. It follows your instructions like a three year old would do. If you say I need more money, it responds by saying, "OK, I will provide you with a greater need for money."

One of my clients once said to me, "The more I work the more money I need to pay my bills." What do you suppose is happening in her life; the answer is, the more she works the more she creates a need for money. Do you get it? Anything you focus on expands. If you focus on what you have, you will have more of that. If you focus on what you do not have, you will have a greater need of that.

I remember once at a lecture I was sitting behind the speaker and noticed a stack of tape sets. I said to the person sitting in a wheelchair next to me, whom I knew, "I would love to have some of those tapes, but they are too expensive". She turned to me and said, "Let me tell you a story Debbie. When I was a little girl I had a small wallet and I filled it with pennies and nickels, but I still had more change left in my hands. I went to my mother and said to her, 'Mommy, Mommy, I have too much money and I do not know what to do with it.' My mother said to me, 'Oh sweetie you will always have too much money and not know what to do with it."

She turned to me and said, "How about you Debbie, how much money do you have?" I looked at her and said, "Enough." She then said, "That's all you are going to ever have."

I thought of that conversation for quite a while and I knew if I wanted more money I would have to change my beliefs. Subsequently, I thought of that conversation even more, thinking, well, she was in a wheelchair, had a lot of money and did not know what to do with it.

Let's analyze how the unconscious mind works. In a demonstration in one of my hypnosis classes, the subject person, in a hypnotic state, is asked to count to 10. 1 then ask the person to count to 10 again but this time in accordance with my instructions. I count to 10 omitting the "6" and then ask the person to count to 10, not asking the person to omit the "6", but the person does omit it. I then ask them to write down their telephone number (I have already determined that no. 6 is included in their telephone number). They write it, even though they did not verbalize it.

I then tell them they can only write the digits of their telephone number as follows: I count to 10 and omit the "6". 1 then ask the person to write their phone number again. They write all the digits with the exception of the "6". What do we demonstrate by this experiment? That the unconscious does exactly what it is told to do.

Now ask yourself , are you focusing on what you want or what you do not want? Think about it.

The Goods alt.health

Tattle-tale tonic
Stories can heal, but don't let your narrative own you by Sibyle Preuschat

DO A LITTLE EAVESDROPPING IN ANY bus, restaurant or office or just listen in on yourself and you'll realize that huge chunks of what we have to say to each other take the form of stories. "I did that, she said this, and the cow jumped over the moon * " We tell stories to explain ourselves to the world, to understand the complicated things that happen to us, to mythologize our ancestry.

Affinity with narrative, in fact, seems to be hard wired into us at a fundamental level. It stands to reason that anything this basic to our nature might have something to do with maintaining a sense of balance in our lives. As Western medicine starts catching on to the power of the mind, serious research into tale telling has begun. Preliminary reports suggest that writing down our personal epics,

But not just any recitation will do the trick. You must be careful not to be too seduced by your own personal mythology. There are many ways to describe the tale of your woes and accomplishments in this life. Finding alternative storylines is what healing is all about.

What the experts say

"Story is secret revealed. When secret becomes story; then perception and consciousness have a chance to start evolving. But sometimes we get that stuck record going, where we say, 'Johnny hurt me' 15 times over. That's either because we've lost connection with our imagination or no one has really heard us. In that situation, it may also be time to look for the secret, to listen with an authentic ear for what we're not disclosing! * ,
ANDREA MATHIESON flower essence producer a n d practitioner

"I see people's stories from a mythic perspective. Everyone is on a journey. And everyone who bas gone through a major event, a trauma or has really had a big adventure. When you begin to story your past experiences as adventures, YOU begin to realize all the discoveries you made. You've survived an ordeal that has changed you and taught you something, and it's -that especially our most traumatic ones, helps our immune system function better. , precious understanding that you then return to the community in the form of a story,"
MICHELLE TOCHER, author How To Ride A Dragon: Breast Cancer Survivors Tell Their Stories

"People form patterns. If a person is always expecting negative stuff, that will be apparent in the narratives. They'll say things like I knew he was going to be like that,'or 'I let him know who was boss; he wasn't going to get away with that.' They just jump to negative conclusions. In treatment we try to give people insight into their narrative."
JEAN VICTOR WITTENBERG, staff psychiatrist at the Hospital for Sick Children, head of the divisional program in child and adolescent psychotherapies at the University of Toronto

"Archaeologists find artifacts, Past life regression takes you back to find your own artifacts, your own story. You can get to the root cause of a lot of your health, relationship and financial issues, It doesn't matter if the story is objectively true. I use it as a healing tool. The unconscious works in symbols and gives us symbolic messages. Sometimes I think the whole past life could be symbolic."
- Debbie Papadakis, hypnotherapist

"I think healing stories began amongst us before we had language. We would have made grunts and gestures. I feel that we create healing stories every night in our dreams, which have to do with the body speaking to itself about its experience. With the immense amount of stimulation out there, people really 'have to work at slowing down and getting Into the dimension of what's happening in their lives instead of just letting that pulse drive them."
GREGORY NYE, director; Institute for Psychotherapy and Emotional Bodywork

'What Are You Reading?'

By: Debbie Papadakis

Books are the most treasured things in my life, One of the books that I found compellingly interesting is Journey of Souls by Michael Newton, Ph.D. It is about uncovering the mystery of life in the spirit world. Dr. Newton takes us to the place that most of us have a hard time accepting or believing exists, The author graphically describes 29 extraordinary case studies where people, in a state of hypnosis, recall their experiences as eternal spirits. Over the years doing past life regressions with my clients, I have had similar experiences. They also traveled in the eternal spirit world and in many cases I helped them find this internal peace. In some cases they became aware of their purpose in life. I enjoyed this book, too, because Dr. Newton guides his readers to experience and to understand what it feels like to die, to see who meets us after death, where we go, what we do as souls, and why we choose to come back and occupy certain bodies. Readers can find peace within themselves by understanding what will happen after the end of their physical life.

Another book. that I am fascinated by is Answer Cancer, Healing the Nation by Stephen C. Parkhill. The author presents a 'mind model: which demonstrates how cancer and other chronic illnesses can be healed. He shows how illness originates and how we can prevent it from developing, The reader reads about the reverse engineering of an individual's disease. The case studies in this book provide us with positive proof that the cure for many debilitating diseases exists in the mind of each and every one of us. Through the regression work that I do, I find that by isolating the root cause of the illness I can help the client bring about a reversal of the illness.

Debbie is the founder of the Hypno Healing Institute, where she teaches certified Hypnosis courses sponsored by the National Guild of Hypnotists. She also teaches Reiki classes at all levels. Contact her at the Hypno Healing Institute Inc. 355 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M6P 2K6 416 760 8996. Toll Free 1 888 758 3223. www.hypno healing.com .

Professor Horia Nita on Hypnosis

Italy, Professor Horia Nita earned a doctorate in analytical psychology. Now he combines all of his skills and qualifications with hypnosis, and as he states, "I am beginning to understand the techniques and philosophies about hypnosis in the United States, and it is amazing how much more helpful and effective I have grown."

The president and vice president of the Debbie Papadakis Fan Club in Toronto, Canada are her two sons, Konstantin (16) and Michael (13), and Debbie says that young Michael is excellent at nonverbal inductions, and seems to have a flair for hypnosis. Having run a successful beauty salon, Debbie always knew that in that profession, therapy skills were often as important as hairstyling. She combined her creative skills, her empathy and under standing and her business abilities (diplomas in business management) with her training in hypnosis to, establish a practice in holistic hypnosis in Toronto. "I have been helping people all my life, " she proudly stated, "and now that my practice is expanding, I look for ward to the future with great joy." Debbie Papadakis works in both English and Greek, was attending her second convention and exclaimed, "I love it!" when asked for her impressions. "I have learned so much about the powerful help this profession can offer. My practice deals with the inner child, regression and anger, and I am experienced in bringing people forward in their lives, I also seem to have, an affinity with older people and that is the most neglected portion of our population." Instructor, therapist, Reiki Master, Debbie Papadakis will add much to our field in Toronto, Canada. That's my journey around the world for this issue. There of course will be much more in the next. It was nice to find a March 7, 1960 edition of LJFE magazine which contained quite an extensive article on hypnosis in therapy written by Robert Coughlin. It began with a quote from Aldous Huxley who said, "Within a few years, every city and village in North America will have its medical or dental hypnotist." The lengthy article quoted Wolberg, Moody, Kroger, Erikson, LeCron and Bordeaux, who were all at the pinnacle of their careers, and all of whom, incidentally, I knew. How little the picture has changed through the years, and any part of, or the whole of that feature story would no doubt be authoritative and meaningful to day.

It is nice to look forward to participat ing in the NGH Solid Gold weekend in Las Vegas at the end of October, as I write my column, and to hopefully interview and photograph any and all of our overseas members who are there. It would be nice, and very much ethical and consumer friendly if NIGH began to insist that members advertising Hypno therapy be obliged to put their name and qualifications in their advertisements. I could never understand why a therapist would refrain from promoting his or her name through the media, unless there were some obvious reason not to. Any comments from our readers on this? It will be nice to receive calls and letters from you and to see more and more members qualify for the NGH Board Certification. Take care and happy to meet.

Hypnosis Can Help you Set and Achieve Goals

All stress in not bad stress. A pleasant romantic encounter, the anticipation of a happy event or reward - such things can produce stress yet still be beneficial. Stress that begins to debilitate however, requires changing.There are cases in which a situation causing unwelcome stress cannot be changed. Effective hypnosis can change the reaction to or perception of it, achieving management of the stressful factors, and allowing a life that is enjoyable and productive.Stress inclinations can be inherited. Children tend to adopt the reactions they witness in their parents. A hypnotherapist seeking causes of stress may find regression advisable.Type A personalities - over achievers, workaholics, highly competitive, quick to anger types often experience harmful stress. Hostility and cynicism in their personalities are factors which make this group susceptible to unwelcome stress…Repression of or refusal to accept feelings (hurt, anger, grief, or other emotion) can produce stress, as can exposure to stimuli which tax physical, mental or emotional capacities beyond their manageable limits. Other stress producers include dietary deficiencies and, for females, PMS. Stress management hypnosis is most effective in individual sessions. Each session needs to be tailored to specific, individual needs subsequent to determination of causes. Hypnosis can reprogram the subconscious mind to develop and act on new responses to old stimuli. Severe stress may call for special counseling or medical evaluation. It should be kept in mind that if emotions are not given relief from stress sooner or later the body will react.

Debbie Papadakis C.Ht., C.I.., is a Hypnotist, Psychotherapist, Reiki Master, NLP Practitioner and President of the Hypno Healing Institute Inc.

- Exit Magazine, April 2000