January’s public talk was very much a cerebral one: hypnosis and mental health. Far from being a stage performance leading to the audience acting as it wouldn’t wish, it was an illuminating talk on how the brain operates and how we can all help ourselves to relieve stress and therefore of much benefit in these trying times.
In an explaination of what anxiety is, and something which we all hope to avoid taking over our lives at some point, we learned that our brain functions in 2 ways: the primitive and the intellectual. Negative responses such as fight and flight is rooted in the primitive and used to aid survival by avoiding danger whilst out hunting at the start of the human story. Modern man however, operates via the intellectual, developed through generations of learning. The human of today (ie us!) has a potential to suffer from an over-abundance of negative responses which accumulate in our primitive brain causing us fight and flight responses to situations – if we don’t give the ‘stress bucket’ in our brain the opportunity to empty through REM sleep. Hypnosis enables that REM sleep – which gives an answer to why things often seem much better 'when we sleep on it'. Hypnosis therefore is an enabling therapy and useful towards helping those of us who become overwhelmed with debilitating issues which greatly inhibit personal enjoyment in today’s sometimes rather difficult world.
We all went home having learned something from this Talk and Jamee-Leigh was much thanked for her time and answers to our questions.
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