My second session was as interesting as my first but for very different reasons. Quite a bit, if not all, of hypnotherapy is about visualisation and this was my first foray into that visualisation.
I’m going to skip over my journey into the control room because each time I do trance work I find it to be quite a personal experience. As your mind relaxes you remember things from the past and find yourself thinking about things that you wouldn’t normally think about. There’s things I’ve sorted in my own mind, quite unrelated to weight-loss, just in the process of getting into a relaxed state.
Anyway, this session of trance work was focussed on my control room.
The control room is essentially a visual representation of your subconcious mind and the inner workings that control your body. It might sound weird but most of the control of your body goes on in the subconcious mind. Breathing is an obvious example where there is both conscious and unconscious control. Think about it a little more and you’ll soon start to realise that most things, walking, standing up, blinking, yawning, swallowing etc etc are controlled unconsciously. It’s not magic, the physiological basis for all of these things are pretty well understood, but it does remind you that you’re not in control of your body as much as you think you are.
I digress. The point is that as you live your life there is very little that your body does that you have full conscious control over, eating is one of them. If you don’t have conscious control then how do you change your behaviour? The control room gives you a way of visualisaing the inner working and gives you a fighting chance of changing them.
The first sight I got of my control room was through a large steel door that was embedded in a rock. I have a precise location in my mind now of where my control room is and I find it pretty easy to get back there is I ever need to fix anything. My control room is a pretty big place. There’s a tonne of switches and dials and monitors and displays and instrumentation in there and plenty of things that I have no idea what the hell they are. The closest I can come to describing it is…take Elrod House, the place they used as one of Blowfeld’s Lairs in the Bond film Diamonds are Forever and the one in the picture, mix it with a nuclear power plant control room, throw in a chair and table set, a big mirror, a massive opaque glass sheet on one wall, some big green plants and a rock formation with water flowing across it’s surface and you’re pretty much there.
The point of me being in my control room was to find the switch, or the dial, or the button that was broken or out of kilter and fix it. I browsed around and found a few things that I didn’t like the look of. I’ve fixed most of them now but there’s still more to go. The one I was looking for at the time was obviously the one that controls my eating.
I found it on a control panel right in the middle of the room. It looked a little like the image at the top of the post. It was a simple switch with two read-outs. As you pushed the button one display increased and one decreased. The two displays we’re my representation of the control I have around eating and the amount of food I eat. When I got to the switch my control over eating was pretty much zero and the amount I ate was at a 10. I flicked the switch and brought them to about 5 each. There was still something that wasn’t quite right. I found out what later on in another session but it’s a long story.
While I was in my control room this time I just sat at the table and chilled out a bit. I had a good old look around too. I found plenty of things to fix and I found plenty of things that were working very well.
The only other thing we did in there was to go and take alook in the mirror. It was a classic visualise you goals kind of exercise. When I looked in the mirror it wasn’t me who was looking back at me, it was me in a few months when I’d met my goals. When I first looked in the mirror it was like it was smeared with grease. I couldn’t get a clear image of what I was going to look like or feel like. It took a few sessions to get the image crystal clear but I have it in my minds eye now.
After sitting for a little while longer in my control room I left it there and headed back out into the sun of the surrounding area. I made my way back to where I’d started and Clare roused me from my trance.
All in all this session was fascinating. I have visited my control room on many occasions since and when I get the chance to do some self-hypnosis it’s one of the places I always check in on, just to make sure things are running smoothly.
Sid.
