Beating the Heat

Once while visiting my hypnotherapy mentor I heard a brief question posed to him in the hall-way outside his office. This as he departed, so I unfortunately didn't hear the answer he provided though I'm almost certain I know what it would have contained in principle.

Outside the atmosphere sizzled at 100 degrees at the time, and had been for days on end with barely any breeze - the stifling air sat oppressively over everything. At least it was a dry heat.

The question related directly to this: "Hey Clark, could you hypnotize someone so they wouldn't feel the heat?"

The answer from a functional perspective is of course Yes - this would be a fairly simple suggestion and task that the sub-conscious would be particularly receptive too. The continuation to this though is that it's a suggestion which shouldn't be entertained regardless of the relief it would bring.

Pain, discomfort, and negative psychological pressure together serve a very important purpose in the protection and preservation of both mind and body. Protection is in fact the primary motivation of the subconscious, coupled with its uncanny knack for automation of simple activity and behavior.

In this case the discomfort resulting from heat acts as a warning flag to care for the body by reducing exposure, hydrating, and relaxation. If this warning were to be overridden the threshold before damage and discomfort would normally become severe would be far more likely to be breached through a course of activity obliviously pursued. The discomfort should remain to draw attention where appropriate so course corrections can be made and the matter resolved instead of potentially exacerbated.

I'm sure his response was less technically oriented and very kindly worded into something else. After all, responding negatively to one request is not nearly as powerful a psychological communication tool as placing positive emphasis on a proposed alternate. I would have like to hear what his alternate was - this is an area I could still use much improvement.

I have much I would like to say regarding the positive nature of pain in providing attention and focus to its origins. Bad habits arise to do this, as well as to provide outlet for negative pressures or because the derived pleasure out-weighs the negative consequences (which then potentially continue to build until expressed through other seemingly unrelated avenues). However, I can't seem to get the ideas straight in my mind in any pre-compositional organization. I'm taking this to mean that I haven't yet internalized it in a sufficient way to articulate it to others. I have it solidified on the abstract spatial side, but haven't broached into the logical hemisphere to complete the picture in a way to express it linguistically.

Something I'll have to keep working on, since this is one of the primary areas I would like my hypnotherapy client education material to focus on.