Hypnotherapy, Weight Reduction, and Surrendering

I’ve been thinking for some time that I should blog about my own journey using hypnotherapy for weight reduction, but have hesitated because, frankly, I haven’t been losing weight. In fact, despite the fact that I baked only one kind of cookie over the Holidays and gave them all away, I ended up with a kitchen counter full of holiday treats and indulged with abandon.

So that I don’t scare away every prospective weight reduction client right from the start, let me say now that I have clients who have experienced great results using suggestive hypnotherapy, or a combination of regression therapy, parts therapy and suggestive therapy. Many have lost an average of 12 pounds with some losing more than that, so I know that for many people, hypnotherapy is extremely effective. Dr. Allen Chips, my instructor, had a client lose as much as 175 pounds using hypnotherapy.

For me, however, my journey has become not so much about weight reduction as about self-acceptance, and as I have recently come to understand, surrendering.

Using past life regression therapy, I’ve traveled back to three life times associated with weight issues. In each of these regressions, another piece of the puzzle slid into place as I uncovered a more complete picture of myself. But still, I hung onto the extra weight.

I learned suggestive hypnotherapy techniques and made a recording for myself. One night I fell asleep listening to my recording, the Ipod set on replay. I awoke at 1am, realizing I’d just listened to the session six times in a row. Not surprisingly, my dreams were dramatic and informative. I learned more about why I hold onto extra weight and it had to do with protecting myself.

With this new understanding I felt surely the weight would now come off. I made a new recording to reflect a sense of security, a feeling that I could protect myself in other healthier ways. Nothing happened.

This fall I did more regression work, this time not to a past life, but to this life. It is incredible how healing it is to revisit long forgotten memories and release those energetic charges that cause so much distress in such mysterious ways for years—decades.

The regression work I did was part of the training for my master certification in Virginia Beach. Dr. Chips first did a demonstration for us regressing a woman to help her overcome her fear of heights. She easily went into trance and reported being incinerated at Hiroshima. Her regression was startling and dramatic. Marge, the woman who was regressed, has since become a dear friend and reported to me that she is now fearless on a ladder.

We were then sent out with partners to regress one another. My poor hypnotherapist did not get anything like Hiroshima. Instead, she regressed me back to the age of thirteen and my first perm. Think Gilda Radner as Roseanne Roseannadanna.  “What are ya tryin’ to do? Make me sick?” I hear Gilda whining. The hypnotherapist felt compelled to call in help, asking my spirit guides to come show me how beautiful I really was—but instead, I started to laugh. With those big glasses? Nope, that girl really did look pretty goofy. The thirteen-year old Cindie sat crying her heart out. In the reality of that memory, though, she/I did not cry. I buried it all away. When I came out of the regression, I laughed with hypnotherapist. “I bet you were hoping for something more exciting like the Spanish Inquisition,” I said. “Instead you got a teen with bad hair.” Amazing how much energy there is in bad hair. Don’t forget to tip your stylist the next time she does a good job.

There was actually more in that memory than just a perm, but it is too personal to write here, at least for now, but it had to do with something said to me, and body image. The message that I got from that regression and another I did the next day, were both about self-protection and about self-acceptance.

Since then, I’ve been contemplating this idea of self-acceptance, not just of myself as I am now, but as I was at 13 and at 4 and at 34. This Thursday I joined a brand new group started by Jeanne Troge at Brigid’s House in Park Rapids—A Course in Weight Loss, following the book by Marianne Williamson. At the first meeting, the subject of surrendering came up. Surrender. Ahh, the exact messages from my regressions. Surrender. How in the world do you surrender? How do you accept yourself exactly as you are, when you are only doing it so that you can force the change you are so desperate for, I wondered? It’s a Catch-22. To surrender would mean to give up all together any chance of ever losing weight. It would be saying, I lose, I quit, I give up.  And I don’t give up. I don’t want to give up. I know that with my smart brain I can figure this thing out.

So I put the question out there for Universe to answer: What does it mean to surrender? How do I give up the struggle when the desire is still there?

I prayed. “I want to surrender, but how can I if I don’t even really know that that means?”

Today, I got an answer. Micara Link, a sweet friend and talented psychic, sent me an email asking if everything was okay, she was picking up some strong emotion from me. I posed my question to her: what does it mean to surrender? She wrote, “I know how surrendering can seem like giving up or something like that, but there’s totally a difference. In surrendering you TRUST that all is in divine order while still holding the energy of positive expectation. Giving up has no trust and does not hold positive expectation. I think there’s a way to hold our visions, dreams, and desires within us while remaining open and unattached, following the signs the Universe gives us with trust.”

Positive expectation, of course.

With gratitude, relief, and I admit, a tear in my eye, today—I surrender.