Below is an paragraph taken from a research project : Hypnosis and Rehabilitation after Stroke published in Contemporary Hypnosis 2006 (contact me for full paper). This is one of the case studies and illustrates how hypnosis and the process of hypnotherapy can work. The first subject used to be the captain of a large ship prior to having a stroke. His passion for this job was one of the driving factors in his endeavour to recover as much functional ability as possible. Although his general level of recovery was good, he complained of a lack of dexterity to perform most tasks with his left hand and described it as a club. Progressive relaxation was used as a hypnotic induction because the subject related easily to its strong physical component. The hypnotic deepening techniques involved working on the ship on a perfect day with nice weather, a light chop on the water and no shipping traffi c nearby. He visualized entering his office on the ship, the place chosen for the imagined practice of hand movements, and then established a set of ground rules: maintain a positive outlook; allow distractions to pass by without affecting concentration; relax into the moment; suspend judgment; accept any outcome that occurs. With these guidelines in place, he proceeded to count out money for the week’s payroll, a task that requires considerable bi-manual dexterity, during which the subject occasionally used the phrase, ‘countin’ the money’. This phrase was adopted as an anchor that the subject was instructed to repeat whenever the task felt most natural and automatic. Next the subject was instructed to imagine performing sequential opposition of the thumb to each finger, first on the right hand, and then on the left. He did this with ease on the right side, but was unable to do it at all on the left. He was then instructed to repeat the key phrase and proceed to cycle back and forth between imagined practice on the right and on the left. This process enabled the subject to achieve perfect imagined performance of the sequential finger opposition task. Afterwards, the subject was told to imagine performing the task while watching each of his hands in turn. It was again difficult to imagine performing the task on the left side. The key phrase was used again with cycling between eyes-closed and eyes-open imagined practice until he achieved perfect imagined performance with his eyes open. Then, he was asked to perform the task physically, and a similar process ensued that culminated in the subject touching his thumb to his ring finger for the first time since his stroke. At the start of subsequent hypnosis sessions, the range of motion for the subject’s thumb remained improved from baseline but not as significantly as immediately after the hypnotic procedure. On the fourth hypnosis session, the subject came in and announced that he was practising the visualizations on a daily basis and that he had tied his own shoelaces for the fi rst time. He remarked that, ‘When my doctor told me that I reached 99 percent of recovery, I just gave up. Now I feel like I am making progress again’. Upon being asked to describe what was different after hypnosis he explained, ‘When I do it perfectly, there’s no thinking, it just happens. It’s just a relaxed reaction’.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 00:00:11 +0000
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