Our mind is uniquely prepared to experience the continuity of time. While we are advised to live in the here and now, we all wander into the past or future. Our memory and imagination vary greatly from person to person. Even if you can remember every detail from your life, nobody can recall how these events affected them. The mind automatically filters out certain experiences out of normal memory. So, what kind of stuff becomes unavailable to our own thinking? Actually, there is a lot of information that never gets stored in our memory banks in the first place but, even more importantly, there are plenty of experiences that cannot be recalled because they are repressed - kept out of our awareness some how. These are the memories worth analyzing because they sit there deep inside the mind affecting our lives nonetheless. Hypnosis is one of the best ways to help people access those “buried” memories. Everyone has memories or experiences in their unconscious mind that they may not be able to recall but still play a significant role in everyday life. Hypnotic Regression is the process by which you enter a trance and recall material from deep inside that is normally not available to the conscious mind.
Hypnosis enables the mind to travel more easily across the dimension of time. Regression is the process by which the hypnotist guides you back through time to particular events that need to be examined. It is actually relatively simple; you are suggested to travel back through the years to recall specific memories. There are a number of effective techniques to facilitate this process. The hypnotic trance enhances your ability to remember events that you otherwise cannot recall. A good question is ‘why is it difficult to recall some memories and not others?’ Part of this answer can actually be attributed to Freud who described the function of the unconscious mind in great detail. Although many of Freud’s theories have been widely contested, the idea that the mind is made up of different levels of awareness and activity has been substantiated by empirical research and the observation of countless experts in psychology. The research into the formation and use of language demonstrates “unconscious” levels at which words, thoughts, and sentences are created. This deeper unconscious sphere of mental activity can be compared to an iceberg, the large bulk of which is out-of-sight beneath the ocean surface. Similarly, your mind has many activities that operate outside your awareness for good reasons. The brainevolved to economize our focus of attention to limit the amount of what is in our awareness. Consequently, there can be a large amount of mental stuff that you are not aware of but may still have an important function.
Regression can be used to help recall events from the other night or from any point of your lifetime. It can help you remember specific details of an event or even better, to observe it objectively and to understand its meaning and significance. It certainly can be a very powerful psychological tool to dive into the deeper parts of the mind.
The real problem is that we all experience a variety of events that were unpleasant, painful, embarrassing, or just difficult to cope with, which sometimes push these memories out of the conscious mind down into that hidden reservoir of the mind - the unconscious. These can be traumatic experiences, or just awkward ones that we do not want to remember or cannot recall because they were repressed out of awareness. Everybody has memories buried in the unconscious. Most of these memories are not that scary or horrible but some can be very uncomfortable to face. Many of the more dramatic things that happened to you as a child are resting in your unconscious, even if you can remember these events, some of their effects remain unobservable to the average person. That is where hypnosis comes in. Through a trance we can open the door to the unconscious mind and help find the conflicts, turmoil, hidden pain, expose the obstacles, the self sabotage, and reveal the invisible connections between events and feelings. Regression done by a skilled professional can be very healing and transformative. It often brings up new insights into how your mind works and what really happened to you as a child. Most of the memories revealed are not tragic or horrific but, they often help heal the wounds or conflicts we experience in daily life. Occasionally, traumatic events can come up that require very skilled resolution. That is precisely why, it is important that hypnotic regressions are performed by highly skilled doctors that know how to carefully dig for these memories without ever “planting” false memories into the person.
