Hypnotic age regression is a powerful way to speed up recovery because it accesses embodied neural networks that store information about how the brain worked before the injury. Though not a perfect replay of the past, re-experiencing implicitly richer neurocognitive resources can guide the brain’s reshaping.
Age regression techniques help people re-experience earlier times in their lives. They use imagery, stories, and suggestions to bring up important memories from their own lives. This differs fundamentally from retrospectively analysing the past from one’s current vantage point.
Instead, hypnosis can evoke a seemingly direct, multisensory re-living of emotionally vivid episodic memories (revivication). Subjectively, this feels like temporarily becoming one’s past self again in the present moment.
In rehabilitation contexts, regressing to pre-injury or pre-illness states offers several potential benefits:
- Contrasting current versus prior cognitive capacity highlights untapped potential.
- Revisiting former proficiency provides an embodied template for healing.
- Greater self-efficacy and cognitive confidence emerge.
- Negative expectations formed post-injury are counteracted.
- Passive reliance on carers transforms into self-reliance.
- The transient reactivation of past functional networks potentiates their restructuring.
Of course, memories are never perfectly accurate historical recordings, especially when recalled within an imaginative hypnotic context. There is some constructive filling in of details during recollection. Higher cognitive functions also naturally decline gradually with typical ageing.
Nonetheless, research on memory indicates that core phenomenological elements and physical behaviours tend to be recalled more reliably. Also, executive functions rather than memory itself suffer more with normal ageing.
For post-injury patients, regressing directly before the neurological incident is often pivotal. This stage represents their most recent, unimpaired functioning. Even if memory gaps exist, hypnosis can fill them creatively to form a cohesive experiential template.
That template then guides progress in rehabilitation. Temporary access becomes more permanent. The brain reconnects more quickly to its immediate, effective networks.
Future research should examine how factors like recency, frequency, and quality of specific age-regressed memories impact outcomes. Tailoring hypnotic age regression to optimise access to redemptive cognitive states remains an art and science.
However, the possibilities are exciting. Just as elite athletes vividly visualise optimal performance to embody excellence, trauma victims can visualise to help them identify with a time in their life when they were free from trauma, helping them heal. Hypnosis bridges the gap from wiring gone awry back to adaptive neural circuitry.
Dr. Terry McIvor is the founder of the International Guild of Hypnotherapy, NLP and 3 Principles Practitioners and Trainers. (IGH3P)
IGH3P is a professional development body which develops the skills of coaches, Hypnotherapist and NLPers.
He is an educationalist of over 20 years experience and has been accredited as a STEM and Science expert at level 6 and 7 by the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (OFQUAL) in the U.K.
Dr. Terry is also an NLP trainer, Master Hypnotist, a qualified Hypnotherapist and 3 Principles Coach.
He is trainer for most of the leading hypnosis professional bodies in the U.S including IACT, ICBCH,IMDHA, and the Elman Institute,
Dr. Terry has set up his own accredited STEM school in the U.K. called AISR, it is through his academy he conducts his teaching and research.
Learn more at www.IGH3P.com. You can email him at registrar@igh3p.com
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