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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Three years ago, Carolyn Jordan of Peculiar knew just where to go to try to lose weight. She noticed a friend at work who had shed pounds and asked how she did it. Carolyn was intrigued when the friend said her success came from being hypnotized.
“I believe in it,” explained Carolyn.
That was three years ago, and Carolyn lost 50 pounds using the power of suggestion under hypnosis. Six months ago, she retired and slowly put back on 15 pounds. Once again, she sought hypnosis to get her eating habits back on track.
Carolyn confided that she had tried hypnosis before in a group setting to lose weight, but it didn’t work.
“It was hard to focus,” remembered Carolyn. “It didn’t work for me.”
But her sessions with Dr. Valorie J. Wells, Ph.D, did work.
Dr. Wells has been hypnotizing clients for 15 years. She became interested in hypnosis while studying psychology at Park University.
“I was in two accidents within six months and suffering a lot of pain from back injuries,” explains Dr. Wells who was a single, working mother of three at the time. “The medical doctor I was seeing suggested hypnotherapy to help control my pain.”
Dr. Wells found the hynotherapy worked for her and many others. She decided to focus her studies on hypnotherapy.
“Hypnotherapy is usually aligned with the healing arts,” continues Dr. Wells. “Dentists and doctors use it for pain control while psychologists use it for behavior modification.”
Behavior modification can include everything from smoking and biting nails cessation, to help with overcoming insomnia, to pain control or control over eating habits.
That's why Carolyn has returned.
“It works because her message is individualized for me,” says Carolyn. “It’s very relaxing.”
Carolyn recalls the first time she underwent hypnotherapy. It was right before a cruise with seven other women.
“It was amazing,” smiles Carolyn broadly as she talked about the temptation of exotic foods available 24 hours a day. “It was amazing, you know, how I could not eat carbohydrates and be on a cruise where there is lots of food around.”
Carolyn says she never once ate any sweets and her waiter knew to bring her broccoli every night. Her friends were impressed and perhaps a little envious as they gave in to the buffet.
But, what if she hadn’t been hypnotized before the cruise?
“I probably would have taken a bite of every dessert that they had available, especially if it was chocolate,” laughs Carolyn.
Dr. Wells takes Carolyn into the room where the session will take place. It’s a small familiar space with a soft brown leather reclining chair and footstool next to a window.
A few crystal “drops” hang from the ceiling above black and white pictures of soothing scenery. There is a forest, a beach and other peaceful landscapes.
A tiny water fountain bubbles from a nearby end table. Dr. Wells tells Carolyn to sit back and relax while she sits across from Carolyn with a pad and pen.
“We’re going to put food back in its proper place,” says Dr. Wells to Carolyn. “We’re going to reinforce that you don’t want sweets. I’m going to count to ten and I need you to close your eyes when you feel ready.”
Dr. Wells says closing the eyes is important and a common practice when we pray or tell a child to make believe.
“The first thing they do when we say ‘pretend’ is shut their eyes. We close our eyes because it helps us focus,” says Dr. Wells.
But Carolyn’s eyes are wide awake as she gazes at the crystal drops overhead.
“You’ll notice your eyelids are getting very heavy,” begins Dr. Wells in her soothingly expressive voice. “I’m going to count to ten and you may close your eyes any time you want, but you will want to close them by the time I reach ten.”
Carolyn stares somberly at the ceiling and the crystal droplets.
“One,” says Dr. Wells and then she pauses for several seconds before counting ‘two’. “Each natural blink makes your eyelids heavier and heavier,” continues Dr. Wells who has now started soft music playing in the background by the number ‘three’. “
Carolyn shifts in her chair, but continues to focus on the crystals and Dr. Well’s voice. “It would feel so good to let go of the need to focus and pay attention and that’s okay,” says Dr. Well’s who now up to the number six.
Carolyn is still wide-eyed and looking upwards.
“Seven – your eyes are feeling heavier and heavier, just like when you’re trying to stay awake at night to hear the weather forecast,” says Dr. Wells. Her voice is melodic and always reassuring. “You’re like melting wax- sinking on down deeper – down into relaxation. – Eight- in a just a few moments you’ll be so relaxed you won’t even be quite sure where your arms begin and the arms of the chair begin – nine.”
Carolyn’s eyes immediately close and she breathing deepens.
“Good,” praises Dr. Wells. “Ten.”
Dr. Wells explains the process of hypnotherapy as turning down the volume on the conscious, waking mind where all our feelings and emotions are and turning up the volume on our inner self. She says she can’t “implant” any message that is contrary to a person’s moral beliefs.
She says we all know our heart’s desire and what is good for us, we just let our emotions carry us away into overeating or other destructive habits.
Her entire session is proprietary, but we can reveal it involves planning, goal setting, list making and homework.
“Nothing matters but the sound of my voice,” reminds Dr. Wells to Carolyn who appears that she might cough.
Dr. Wells has been talking about the benefits of pure, cold, clean water and that Carolyn will thirst for water when she awakes. The water is part of Carolyn’s weight loss plan, which also includes eating foods low in carbohydrates and high in protein with green leafy vegetables.
“Water is willpower,” says Dr. Wells. “The more you drink the more fat you flush and the pounds just melt away. Food is fuel. That’s all it is.”
Dr. Wells speaks in simple, declarative sentences explaining the powerful suggestions.
“You have all the power you need to become the best that you can be,” assures the doctor.
She continues with more instructions for Carolyn which include tasks and triggers such as knowing when to push her plate of food away and how she will pass up sweets and breads in the coming days.
The session is almost over and it’s time for Carolyn to awake.
“Allow yourself to feel the excitement,” encourages Dr. Wells. “Like bubbles coming to the surface. You may even find yourself wanting to smile,” suggests Dr. Wells as she pauses giving Carolyn time to react.
The very somber Carolyn with her eyes closed begins to smirk. Slowly, the corners of her mouth turn up into a confident grin – lips and eyes both closed.
“Good,” rewards the doctor. “That’s it. Feel the joy! Three, two, one – awake,” commands Dr. Wells with a snap of her fingers.
“How does that feel?” asks the doctor.
Carolyn slowly looks around smiling a big smile now. “Great,” she replies, “And thirsty.”
“You’ll need to stop and buy a bottle of water on the way home,” insists the doctor. She says it’s an important part of the therapy for the client to take that step and seek out refreshing water on their own.
“For all of us, we know how we want to be,” smiles Dr. Wells. “Then our emotions get in the way and we overreact.”
Dr. Wells says we eat when we shouldn’t and we eat what we shouldn’t. We eat because we’re happy, sad or bored.
That behavior isn't much different from that of people who bite their nails or go into a panic attack at the sight of the airport before they even step foot on the plane.
“A lot of that can be a mind-over-matter thing,” says Dr. Wells. “I give the individual the power. I enable them to take back control.”
Dr. Wells says the tough thing about weight loss with hypnosis is that it is more complicated than stopping a habit like smoking.
“It’s much easier to stop doing something altogether than to do it right,” explains Dr. Wells. “On top of that, in nearly every culture food is used as love and it's part of social networking.”
Food is often offered as a reward when we are young.
“Good boy or girl, have a cookie,” adds Dr. Wells.
This time of year is one of the hardest for weight control or weight loss, when we are offered food at holiday parties and family dinner.
If we refuse, we risk hurting the other person’s feelings. When it’s not the holidays, there are still dates and business dinners.
“It’s okay to refuse pie and accept the coffee only if we’re diabetic,” says Dr. Wells. “I help give people the power to say ‘no thank you’ on the pie, 'it’s not good for me', and go on to fully enjoy the cup of coffee and conversation.”
Put It All In Perspective
Dr. Wells does it by first helping her clients put food in its proper place in their lives. “It’s not your friend and it’s not your enemy. It’s just food, that’s all it is.”
The doctor says intellectually we know this and it’s emotionally where we get messed up. So, she tries to take the emotion out of it.
“It’s just fuel,” says Dr. Wells. “You don’t get excited about putting gas in the car. It’s just what you do to get to where you want to go.”
Sometimes Dr. Wells works with the client’s nutritionists and often gets referrals from medical doctors, but she says most of her clients come to her and already know what they need to know. We know if we do best on a low-fat, low calorie or low carbohydrate diet.
“I sometimes have them make a list of ten things that make them happy and often a majority of those things will involve food.”
Dr. Wells helps them replace “rewards” with things that are not centered around food. She takes the sugar out being a reward by enlisting what she calls the “inner voice”.
“I teach them to respond to food intellectually rather than emotionally,” explains Dr. Wells. “We don’t wake up saying we want to overeat, we let other people’s business get in our way.”
Dr. Wells says your inner self will lead, guide and protect you including in how to lose weight.
Dr. Wells says we all experience various levels of hypnosis.
1) Day dreaming. It can happen while you drive down the road and suddenly you “wake up” and don’t realize that you traveled several miles.
2) Night dreaming. It happens while we sleep or nap.
3) Prayer. We close our eyes and listen carefully to the inspirational message or prayer.
4) Meditation.
5) Hypnosis. This is the highest level of talking to the subconscious mind.
Our Test
We wanted to see, first-hand, the process of hypnotherapy to lose weight.
We asked our producer, Shellie Nelson, to undergo hypnosis with Dr. Wells. Shellie takes a medication with a side effect that causes weight gain.
“We may not get as dramatic results as someone who doesn’t have a medical issue,” admits Dr. Wells. “But, then again, I expect her to have some weight loss. I have no way of knowing how much.”
Shellie will be blogging about her experience. She has already undergone her first session and we will reveal her experience.
Shellie's First Hypnosis
Most of the questions I'm fielding are from people wondering what the hypnosis experience feels like.
I was hypnotized once as a child, in an effort to help me remember a long poem I had been assigned in grade school. It did work, and I was able to recite that very long poem in class. In fact, I still remember much of that poem!
I'm now in my forties, married happily and my kids are both in college. I work full-time.
I did go to the session believing it is important to be completely open to the experience. I don't think I have any specific expectations about hypnosis, though. I don't have a set number of pounds I want to lose. I would just like to take better care of the body I have allowed to be my last priority for most of my life.
In many respects, I would compare hypnosis to a near-sleep state, when you are completely at rest but you can still hear everything going on in your environment. You can hear everything but you don't feel the need to react, mentally or physically, to what you hear. Everything is, simply, ok.
I vividly remember everything that was said and that happened before, during and after hypnosis.
I wasn't suddenly a different person after a session of hypnosis. Over the course of the first week, some subtle behavior changes did become apparent.
I'm sleeping quite well, and able to turn off my brain so I can fall asleep much faster than usual.
I'm not deprived and no food is off-limits. Sugar, however, does not seem to agree with my stomach if I eat more than a nibble or two. I'm not really bothered by that. I can have some, and much to my surprise, that little bit seems to be enough.
I did lose three pounds the first week!
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