By Tom Interval
Staff Writer
A pocket watch swings back and forth as you stare at its reflection.
The hypnotist’s dark eyes gaze at you from behind the timepiece.
Your eyelids get heavy.
Your breathing slows down.
You fall into a deep sleep.
If this is the image you have of hypnosis, then it’s time to wake up.
Richard Busch, doctor of clinical hypnotherapy, says that everyone can benefit from hypnosis. But he maintains that many people, including most psychologists, have an outdated notion of what hypnosis is.
“Hypnosis is perhaps the most misunderstood misnomer in the history of recorded language,” says Busch. “People think that someone is going to ‘hypnotize’ someone else and put them ‘under’ and into some zombie-like state of control whereby they become like robots. In fact, hypnosis is nothing more than focused awareness, focused concentration.”
Busch says that when a person watches a movie, listens to a joke, reads a book, or studies, he or she demonstrates focused awareness and focused concentration. “Hypnosis is how we pay attention,” he says. “Most people don’t do a very good job of paying attention.”
Students who have trouble paying attention in class can greatly benefit from hypnosis, says Busch. “Their mind is drifting and they don’t know how to refocus it. I teach people how to focus and refocus in a productive manner for their goals.
“We are never taught how to study, how to focus, how we feel about our body when we read or when we listen to a lecture or when we take a test. I teach people that state of calm whereby they can most productively absorb the material, how to study it and then how to present it back in the test situation. Too often, we are going in the wrong direction, forcing outwardly instead of manifesting our inner calm. We don’t have to be nervous wrecks.”
Obviously, students who know how to pay attention and get good grades can be “nervous wrecks,” too. Pressure to maintain a high grade point average can throw some students into a chaotic whirlpool of stress, especially around midterms or finals week. Again, hypnotherapy can help.
“The educational system,” says Busch, “has nothing to say about [students who feel stress] except, ‘Try harder.’ And that’s not enough.
“Being a student is like a baseball player in a hitting slump. He wants that hit so bad. So he squeezes the bat harder, and he bears down, and he proceeds to strike out again because he’s trying too hard. It’s not a question of trying; it’s a question of focus. I think everyone should have access to an instant focus technique that they call self-hypnosis.”
Self-hypnosis, according to Busch, involves relaxing the body and the mind. Busch’s clients use the “body-scan technique” to reduce or eliminate physical tension; they use visualization to focus, clear and relax the mind.
“When the mind and the body are relaxed and focused, then you have maximum performance,” says Busch. “You can’t be relaxed and nervous at the same time; one or the other has to get the best of it.”
Busch says that people who practice self-hypnosis can be “optimumly functional” while studying for or taking an exam, playing a sport, interviewing for a job or whatever they happen to be focusing on at the time. “We can maximize how we feel when we’re sitting, when we’re reading, when we’re standing, when we’re doing virtually anything.”
And it’s easy to learn self-hypnosis, says Busch. “A child of ten can do it. In one session, [a new client] will feel more relaxed than they’ve probably been in the last six months.”
Busch’s sessions include different types of self-hypnosis: long versions, short versions and instant versions, depending on the client’s situation. He says everyone should know a self-hypnotic speed technique to help them deal with a chaotic world. “We need to have a guidepost of comfort; and it isn’t going to come from somebody else. Ultimately, we are responsible for ourselves.”
Busch says that we all have tremendous, untapped, personal power. And he teaches his clients to release that power through self-hypnosis. “When do we get to focus ourselves instead of being at the beck and call of a parent’s voice, or a teacher’s voice, or a threat of a grade or a threat of a future employer? When do we reclaim our power?”
According to Busch, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and most similar organizations worldwide endorse legitimate hypnosis. “It is the preeminent technique for establishing calm and comfort through the mind and body,” he says.
Busch, who began studying hypnotherapy about 18 years ago with Mark King, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh and Western Psychiatric Institute, warns people about “phony hypnotists” who are not adequately trained and who make exaggerated claims. He calls them “hypno-kooks.”
“Most ‘hypnotists’ are ‘hypno-kooks,’” he says. “I am not a hypnotist; I am a doctor of clinical hypnotherapy, an Ericksonian hypnotherapist [Milton H. Erickson, M.D., ‘Father of Medical Hypnosis’].”
Busch, whose office is located on Thompson Run Road in McCandless, helps his clients with study habits, weight loss, smoking cessation, stuttering, sports excellence, artistic excellence and basic stress-response techniques. He offers a free 15- to 20-minute consultation.
“The students I’ve worked with have done very well,” says Busch. “I’m very proud of them. I wish I had known these wisdoms 25 years ago; my life would have been much more pleasant.”
For more information, call Busch Hypnotherapy Counseling at 366-1000.
