MEEKER | What do you think of when someone says “hypnosis”? Most people’s experience with hypnosis is limited to Las Vegas-style entertainment where gullible volunteers are made to cluck like chickens in front of a laughing crowd.
But what if the same kind of techniques that made your neighbor cluck like a chicken could help you quit smoking, conquer anxiety or help your child overcome attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—without patches, pills or prescriptions?
“I cannot make you cluck like a chicken unless you want to bring out your inner chicken,” says certified clinical hypnotherapist Michelle Hale, a fifth-generation Meeker native and owner of Colorado Hypnosis and Healing. She’s been a practicing hypnotherapist since 2006, but she started out as a skeptic. When her son was diagnosed with severe ADHD, someone suggested hypnotherapy. Hale resisted at first, but determined to find help for her child, she volunteered to be hypnotized. After all, who would subject their child to an alternative treatment without testing it themselves? When there were no side effects, she consented to let her son undergo hypnotherapy. With treatment, Hale’s son was able to forego medication, and today is a successful engineer.
Impressed with her son’s results, Hale left a lucrative job in construction management and became a certified hypnotherapist. Today she has a wall full of certifications and licenses in various healing modalities.
She speaks most highly of the “sound and light machine” that first helped her son. Combining light pulses and audible tones that mimic the beta waves of the brain and assist in achieving balance. Studies have shown the therapy is particularly for ADD and ADHD, and can also help autism spectrum disorders, fibromyalgia, insomnia, depression and anxiety, self-esteem, negative programming, stress and chronic pain. The treatment has no side effects.
Hypnotherapy has a well-proven history stretching from the Greeks to ancient China to the American Civil War when hypnosis was used as a pain control method for amputees.
Helping people control chronic pain is yet another aspect of Hale’s practice. Teaching people to objectively evaluate their pain levels and giving them tools to deal with pain through hypnosis can help them avoid reliance on narcotics.
“I can teach you to reprogram your mind and control what affects you,” Hale said.
What’s required of the client? Listening to a recording of the session, daily if possible, and maintaining a willingness to change.
“Hypnosis is not something I do to you; it is something you do for yourself. It is a deep state of relaxation with a heightened sense and ability to receive simple suggestions,” Hale writes.
Children are the most receptive subjects, although Hale has plenty of testimonials from adults as well, from people finding relief from debilitating anxiety to people who’ve been able to quit smoking thanks to hypnotherapy, all in just a few sessions.
“Three sessions is an average,” she said. “I’m looking to help people, not to create long-term patients.”
Colorado Hypnosis and Healing is upstairs in the Hugus Building at 592 Main St. in Meeker. Hale can be reached by phone at 970-401-3986 or via email at [email protected].
By Niki Turner | [email protected]
