Some of you may be surprised to learn that we are all natural-born hypnotists and that we mesmerize ourselves, for the most part unconsciously, several times each day. It all has to do with a natural rhythm—a rhythm of activity followed by rest—that recurs throughout the day.
This rhythm undulates on all levels, from cellular to conscious experience, where there is a natural oscillation of these two contrasting states of consciousness. Although these periodic fluctuations were glimpsed by Charcot, Freud, and Jung with increasing clarity, it was Milton Erickson, one of the most innovative and influential psychologists of the twentieth century, who first clearly saw the therapeutic potential for healing.
Observing how clients during the rest phase showed behavior similar to that of someone under hypnosis, he called it “the common everyday trance.” Erickson found it to be so powerful that he made it the fulcrum of his practice.
Whereas most therapists hold a 50-minute session, Erickson worked with patients for an hour and a half or more. He had observed that, during a 90-minute interval, people almost always drift into the common everyday trance, and that during these intervals, which he learned how to facilitate and deepen, a therapeutic window opened, and stayed open for 15 or 20 minutes.
While the window was open, a natural healing response was activated. Erickson liked to say: “Your conscious mind is very intelligent, but your unconscious is a heck of a lot smarter” and “Trust your unconscious. It knows more than you do.”
Erickson became something of a legend because of his “magical” success with patients whose problems had completely baffled other therapists. This “magic” so mystified some of the media who reported on Erickson that an article about him in Time magazine was headlined as “The Sorcerer of Phoenix.”
Ernest Rossi, a psychologist who studied under Erickson for eight years and who calls himself the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, has continued to research and refine this therapeutic approach. It was he who traced how the idea developed via Charcot, Freud, and Jung, and he noted correlations with the many biological rhythms that had already been detected and were being studied by scientists, especially ultradian rhythms such as the basic rest-activity cycle (BRAC). (Circadian rhythms are those, such as wakefulness and sleep, that happen once a day. Ultradian rhythms repeat several times a day.) And speaking of sleep, it was in the study of sleep and dreams that the basic rest-activity cycle was discovered. Scientists observed a period of rapid eye movement that occurred every 90 minutes or so in subjects who were sleeping and, when awakened during this REM sleep, the subjects reported that they had been dreaming. Thus, cycles of REM sleep alternated with deep dreamless sleep throughout the night.
During the day, the 20-minute rest phase recurs roughly every 90 minutes and Rossi designates this as the Ultradian Healing Response. This is nature’s way of providing a pause that refreshes, so that body and mind can recover from previous exertions, and be recharged and rejuvenated.
The UHR does not recur with automatic regularity. You can override the process by ignoring it, or by giving your focus to whatever in our sometimes hectic modern world is clamoring for your attention. But if you consistently override it, you are paving the way for what Rossi calls the Ultradian Stress Syndrome. This can lead to a downward spiral where you may find yourself experiencing such malfunctions as accident proneness, errors in judgment, memory problems, slips of the tongue, flashes of irritation, and social gaffes. And if, at this stage, you persist in ignoring the cues for rest and recovery, you can spiral down even further into such stress-related illnesses such as ulcers, migraines, impaired immune systems, strokes, and heart problems.
After much research, experimentation, and thought about this, Rossi has come to believe that “the healing traditions of many cultures—medicine man, shaman, faith healer, and hypnotherapist—all tap into our natural Ultradian Healing Response without realizing it,” and that the UHR is “the common core of all the holistic mind-body approaches to healing.” He has also broadened its application as a source for problem solving, personal growth, creative insights, and the evolution of consciousness.
Hallowed be thy hypnopompic!
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If you wish to learn more about this, I recommend the following two books by Ernest L. Rossi: The 20-Minute Break and The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing.
HyC