4 Corners Hypnosis

Astral Travel with Hypnosis December Workshop

There are planes of reality which go beyond the physical one available to the five senses. The workshop describes the concept of astral bodies, travel though the astral plane and how it has been practiced by cultures from ancient Egypt to the present day. Led by David Botsford, this workshop includes: an experiement in remote viewing; the chance to enter hypnotic trance using advanced sound technology; techniques which can enable the detachment of the astral body from the physical body; methods of travel to other places on the physical realm and other planes of reality; a written handout and CD which will enable participants to continue the process after the experience. An experienced author and hypnotist originally from England, now living in Central Florida, David will be conducting this session on Sunday, December 12 from 2-5pm at New World Wellness in Kissimmee. Fee: $20 in advance or $25 at door. To reserve tickets call 407-922-2325.

A meditation for sacred healing

by David Botsford

          Healings have always taken place in sacred places. In ancient Greece and Rome, sick people visited temples devoted to Asklepios and other healing deities. In a heady atmosphere of music, chanting, incense and religious ecstasy, they read descriptions of healings inscribed on walls, prayed, entered trances and awakened (in many cases) cured. (1) In medieval Europe, pilgrims visited the shrines of saints, often traveling for years from one to another, and were similarly healed. Records at the shrines of St Godric of Finchale and St Thomas à Becket in England describe blind people recovering their sight, the deaf hearing again and the crippled walking. (2) Nor are such cures merely ancient superstition. Dr Alexis Carrel, later Nobel Laureate in medicine, visited the shrine at Lourdes in 1903 as a skeptic. He was amazed to see - among other “miracles” - an abdominal tumor disappear within minutes from a woman dying from tubercular peritonitis who completely recovered her health. (3) The religious labels placed on these spiritual experiences are irrelevant. As William James explained, “the mystical feeling of enlargement, union, and emancipation…is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material furnished by the most diverse philosophies and theologies.” (4)

Here is a simple technique to access sacred healing. Statues and pictures of enlightened beings often show them sitting or standing in a specific posture. One arm is bent at the elbow with palm raised and facing forward (like taking the scouting oath). This is the “fear-dispelling” gesture. The other arm is lowered with the hand resting in the lap, turned upwards and slightly “cupped”. This is the “boon-bestowing” gesture. Sometimes an eye is displayed in the center of each palm. This universal sacred pose is seen in representations of deities from the pre-Columbian Americas as well as Buddhist, Hindu and Christian art. (5)

Play some meditative music, such as Hildegard von Bingen’s “Heavenly Revelations”, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Symphony No. 5” or Tony Scott’s “Music for Zen Meditation”. Sit, stand or kneel with hands in the sacred pose. Imagine an eye in the center of each palm. To achieve calmness, visualize mountains, a sacred spring, a dark cave and a statue in the same sacred pose.

Now the task is to separate those things we do want from those we do not want. Focus on something to be eliminated – perhaps sadness, negativity or resentment - and imagine it “positioned” in the raised hand. It may be something visible, felt or heard, or a combination of impressions. Once there is a definite sense of its presence there, consciously “expel” it by projecting it from the raised palm. Then become aware of something consciously desired – maybe energy, motivation or self-belief. Imagine that desired quality taking shape in the cupped lowered hand. When that sensation is fully present, mentally “draw it in” through the lowered palm.

Then reverse the position of the two hands and repeat the process. After each “expulsion” and “absorption”, exchange the hands’ position. Any sensations such as heat or shaking are authentic.

David Botsford is a hypnotist and intuitive/psychic reader in the Four Corners area of central Florida and author of Hypnosis for Smoking Cessation. His websites are www.4cornershypnosis.com and www.4cornersintuitive.com and www.selfhypnosiscd.com and he can be reached at 863 420 3634.

(1) Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body, Tarcher/Putnam/Penguin, New York, 1992, p. 259.

(2) Ronald C. Finucane, “Faith healing in medieval England”, Psychiatry, vol. 36, no. 3, August 1973, pp. 343-346.

(3) Alexis Carrel, Voyage to Lourdes, Harper, New York, 1950.

(4) William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Longmans, New York, 1902, pp 435-426.

(5) Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1974, illustrates numerous examples.  

Transmuting thought from negative to positive

by David Botsford

In the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (US, 1975), set in a psychiatric institution, one patient constantly rubs his hands and repeats the words, “I’m tired”, while ignoring everyone else. He continuously experiences powerful negative mental states which exhaust his energy, even though he is physically sedentary.

To understand the Law of Perpetual Transmutation of Energy, we must recognize that our thoughts manifest an energy which is as powerful as electricity. The key is to control, transform and redirect that energy so that it consistently works to achieve our goals.

This is often easier said than done! Many people have read – and been inspired by – books, seminars, DVDs and about “positive thinking”, and used the “self-talk” techniques of cognitive therapy, but still find those negative thoughts creeping back in when caught off guard.

Here is a way to get control over this process. According to metaphysics, the universe consists of a vast mass of formless “stuff” from which forms – including material objects, living organisms, spiritual entities and conscious thoughts – are manifested. This “stuff” is known in the East as mana, prana or qi, and in the West as animal magnetism, the od force and orgone energy. However, it is not necessary to believe this in order to use this technique – skeptics find it just as effective.

Our internal train of thought derives from “pre-verbal” energy which manifests itself into the form of words, pictures, sounds and feelings. These forms have sub-modalities. Sub-modalities are the components of which sensory experiences are made. Visual sub-modalities include brightness, focus, size and whether it is color or monochrome, still or moving. Auditory sub-modalities include volume, speed, tone and location. Kinesthetic (feeling) sub-modalities include heat, size, location, roughness, weight and motion.

Focus on how you experience negative thoughts (instead of on their content). Are they pictures, sounds, feelings, or a combination of one or more? Once you have identified such a thought, alter it so that you become aware of the energy “behind” it. (“Blur” a picture, “distort” a sound or word and “soften” a feeling.) Notice the sub-modalities: recognize a color, a sound, a feeling you can identify with “negative” energy. Imagine placing this “negative” energy in your left hand.

Now think about the most positive, empowering experience you can remember. Experience the details. Similarly, change the specific memory into the “positive” energy it derives from. Notice the sub-modalities of this positive energy: its color, sound and feeling. Imagine putting it into your right hand. Let it expand there, growing like a mushroom until you can really sense its power.  

Then cup your hands and let the negative energy from the left hand be transformed into the positive energy in the right so that it becomes uniform. Let that positive energy fill your body, mind and spirit.

Finally, take action in accordance with this transmutation. Thinking alone will not achieve your goals. As Wallace Wattles put it, “By thought, the thing you want is brought to you; by action you receive it.” (n)

(n) Wallace Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich, Elizabeth Towne, Holyoke, 1910, p. 104.

David Botsford is a hypnotist and inuitive reader in the Four Corners area. He has produced a series of self-hypnosis CD sets and is the author of the book Hypnosis for Smoking Cessation. His websites are www.4cornershypnosis.com and www.selfhypnosiscd.com and he can be reached at 863 420 3634.

New World Wellness presents past-life regression with hypnosis workshop

          Increasing numbers of scientists, psychologists and doctors are concluding that the ancient wisdom, still accepted by billions of religious believers around the world, that consciousness cannot die, is true. It is simply manifested, or incarnated, in one lifetime after another in an endless cycle. Past lives can provide us with meanings and lessons which can guide us in the present and the future. People are increasingly using past-life regression as a means of therapy and guidance, or simply out of curiosity and self-exploration. This workshop explains briefly what is known about the nature of consciousness and reincarnation. It includes practical exercises using hypnotic regression, in which participants experience previous incarnations in order to achieve insights and guidance which can assist them in living life in the here and now.

          Remarkable exercises include Past-Life Psychometry where participants divide into pairs and exchange objects which they have possessed for many years, then tuning into their intuition and picking up images and insights about the past lives of the other participant; Future-Life Progression where participants travel to future lives and gain insights about the future direction of their individual consciousness; and Healing Regression where participants are guided to explore the connection between events from past incarnations and any challenges they may be experiencing today.

          David Botsford will facilitate this workshop and is an experienced author and hypnotist, originally from England, who now lives in Central Florida. He is the author of the book Hypnosis for Smoking Cessation (Crown House, Bancyfelin, 2007). This workshop will be held at New World Wellness on September 26 from 2 – 5 pm. Pre-register for $20 or pay $25 at door. For more info, 407 922-2325 or www.wellnessdowntown.com

The social factor in abundance

by David Botsford

“When you have a lot of money, it can cause misery. But I’d rather have that kind of misery than the misery without it.” (n) Donald Trump

A great deal has been written about “prosperity consciousness”. Certainly it is vital to think thoughts consistent with financial success, if that is what we desire. The Law of Attraction reliably manifests what we think about. However, much of the material written on the subject tends to assume that the individual is an isolated atom, disconnected from the broader world of which we are all a part. People who sit at home visualizing $100 bills floating down from the clouds, without reference to taking action and connecting with other people, are likely to find that the Law of Attraction results in simply more such isolated visualization – and those numbers piling up in the “negative” form of unpaid bills. Also, beware of the technique of visualizing luxury yachts and Italian sports cars in the hope of acquiring such items. At least research the running costs on those vehicles and decide if they’re worth it before doing so!

The precondition of abundance is that we know what it means to us specifically. As Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, put it, “He who knows he has enough is rich.” We must also remember that abundance is the net result of a process of interactions with others, and does not exist in isolation from the rest of life. The Law of Karma (cause and effect) is as powerful as the Law of Attraction.

For self-employed people, prosperity consciousness is most effective when the following factors are in play:

1.                     Think about how – from the client’s point of view – our services will improve their lives. See, hear and feel the benefits your client enjoys from making use of them. In order to know how to do this, it is vital to actually learn what clients want and how they want it delivered. This “indirect” thinking is preferable to focusing on the end results of the cash and material rewards received at the end of the process of providing a service. Learn from clients themselves how they can best benefit from our services. Constantly seek to improve the value they gain from the purchase.

2.                     Take massive and consistent action. Thought, emotion and action are all one. Thoughts multiply their power when they are associated with action.

3.                     Let people know you exist. At least in the early stages, every self-employed individual has to spend about nine hours marketing for every hour they are paid for their services. People today are overwhelmed with commercial messages from advertising, direct mail and the Internet. Live communication in the form of networking, public speaking to groups and one-to-one selling tends to be more effective these days.

4.                     Build a repeatable formula of action which consistently brings rewards of abundance (financial and otherwise).

5.                     Once that formula produces results, find ways to constant improve its beneficial effect for those who use it.

(n) Donald Trump with Meredith McIver, Think Like a Billionaire, Ballantine Books/Random House, New York, 2004, p. 49.

Macrocosm and microcosm in healing

David Botsford

Healing can be understood as realigning the individual with “higher” and “lower” levels of experience.

Western medicine tends to treat a patient as an isolated unit, disregarding the impact of outside forces (other than bacteriological) on the individual’s condition. In psychiatry, “mental illness” is usually considered to be like a mechanical fault in a motor, to be “fixed” by the addition of pharmaceuticals.

Yet this approach of simply drugging unhappy people without changing their exterior lives provides no long-term solution. Radical thinkers such as the psychiatrists Dr Milton Erickson, Dr Thomas Szasz and Dr R.D. Laing, and the family therapist Virginia Satir, have shown that “insanity” can be understood as arising from overall family and social contexts. The individual’s relations with family and society, as well as individual behavior, must be transformed in order to achieve healing.

Physical ailments, too, are often manifestations of the individual’s life experiences and relations with others, processed by the unconscious mind. Louise Hay’s popular book You Can Heal Your Life lists correspondences between common thought patterns and specific physical illnesses. The science of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) has demonstrated that “mental” experiences within the nervous system (including the brain) cause actions within the immune system. When a person continuously thinks of himself as “under attack” (in an emotional sense), the immune system responds by producing antibodies as if the body were under attack from external bacteria. However, because there are no external bacteria to combat, the antibodies attack the healthy tissue, thus causing rheumatoid arthritis and its associated swelling. By changing a person’s thinking to a sense of being protected and loved, the body rebuilds itself in a healthy way.

 Healers in traditional societies understand the need to harmonize the individual not only within himself, but also at the familial, social and even spiritual levels. The Yoruba healers of Nigeria, and their patients, believe that “insanity” is caused by spirits or witchcraft. To cure them, they manipulate symbols of power in impressive rituals. They use direct command, metaphor (e.g., “As the river always flows forwards and never back, so your illness will never return.” ) illustrative stories about individuals who overcame challenges, songs, and sacramental elements including the use of sacrifice and shaving, greasing, cooling and cutting the head. A patient may be instructed to move to a new home “because of the witches or sorcerers in his present quarters” or to change his occupation. As an ego-strengthening technique, he may be told to join the cult of a deity (Orisa) to enjoy mutual support and identification with the qualities of that god. (n)   

The healer who wants to help clients achieve transformation must recognize the need to help align the individual’s experience at both the microcosmic and macrocosmic levels. It is vital to utilize the symbols which have most power for that specific person, and induce the sheer headlong emotional whirlwind which will break the client from the previous unwanted patterns and make the positive goal consciously desired by the client into a permanent reality.

(n) Raymond Prince, “Indigenous Yoruba psychiatry” in Ari Kiev (editor), Magic, Faith and Healing, Free Press/Macmillan, New York, 1964, pp. 84-120.

David Botsford is a hypnotist and inuitive reader in the Four Corners area. He has produced a series of self-hypnosis CD sets and is the author of the book Hypnosis for Smoking Cessation. His websites are www.4cornershypnosis.com and www.4cornersintuitive.com and www.selfhypnosiscd.com and he can be reached at 863 420 3634.

Invoking the Goddess

by David Botsford

At an unconscious level, human beings have immense resources for healing –in the physical, emotional and spiritual fields. By connecting with their healing symbols, they can access those resources and achieve their goals.

          Every culture has healing symbols. In modern Western medicine, the placebo effect is well documented. The doctor’s prestige, white coat, pharmaceuticals and impressive-looking electronic equipment are powerful healing symbols. In west Africa, diviners advise Yoruba people who get sick to contact a supernatural agent such as a witch, double, ancestor or Orisha (spirit which manifests one aspect of God). Christian faith healers encourage believers to let Jesus or the Holy Spirit become a living presence in their lives. In Peru, Sharanahua shamans mix patients’ dreams with their own traditional visions to create healing symbols. In Mexico, Otomí shamans cut magical paper figures that represent the life force of different beings and manipulate them to suggest change. (1)

          The divine feminine is a universal symbol among human cultures. It can be understood either as a conscious entity or as mythical representation of processes of creation. According to Joseph Campbell,

“All of the references of religious and mythological images are to planes of consciousness, or fields of experience that are potential in human spirit….And the personification of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female….Everything you can think of, everything you can see, is a production of the Goddess. ” (2)

In the beginning is the Void, the undifferentiated energy which is neither male nor female. The divine feminine, or Goddess, is the medium through which that energy takes specific forms – material, emotional, mental and spiritual. Artistic representations of the Goddess show her containing the universe within her body. In ancient Egypt, for instance, the goddess Nut is represented as the whole heavenly sphere, a female figure filling an entire temple ceiling.

          We can invoke Goddess in our own lives when we want to access the qualities of creativity, nurturing, receptivity, understanding, compassion that she represents. (Of course, this process is equally useful for women and men.) We by-pass the conscious mind – with its continuous (and often negative) “running commentary” - by filling the senses with symbols alluding to Goddess, in order to mobilize those resources. Instead of focusing on the problem, which can often merely reinforce it, we shift our focus towards the solution.

Sit in a semi-darkened room while playing music which you associate with the divine feminine. My favorite is Marcey Hamm’s “Celestial Dance”. From a Tarot deck, place the cards the High Priestess, the Empress and the Moon on a brightly-lit table and observe them passively. Imagine that you are surrounded by spirals and snakes, swirling around you. Breathe slowly, deeply and evenly. Imagine that you are breathing in those spirals and snakes with every inhale. Say these words to yourself: “Earth Mother, divine feminine, Goddess, yin energy, I invoke you. Give birth to the forms that will guide me forward.”

Let things happen inside. Whatever you experience is authentic.

(1) James Dow, “Universal aspects of symbolic healing”, American Anthropologist, March 1986, vol. 88, no. 1, pp. 63-64.

(2) Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, Doubleday, New York, 1988, pp. 165, 167.

David Botsford is a hypnotist and inuitive reader in the Four Corners area. He has produced a series of self-hypnosis CD sets and is the author of the book Hypnosis for Smoking Cessation. His websites are www.4cornershypnosis.com and www.selfhypnosiscd.com and he can be reached at 863 420 3634.

Finding balance in love

by David Botsford

‘Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.’

So sung a little Clod of Clay,

Trodden with the cattle’s feet;

But a Pebble of the brook

Warbled out these metres meet:

‘Love seeketh only self to please,

To bind another to its delight,

Joys in another’s loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.’

Blake’s poem “The Clod and the Pebble” speaks of the eternal challenge of love: the search for a balance between our desire to give spontaneously and for the fulfillment of our own self-interest. Each of us inhabits a subjective world in which those we love reflect something of ourselves. Yet in finding love we give up something of the self we were before.

As a hypnotist, I seek to assist clients in finding solutions to challenges involving love. The unconscious mind has all the resources needed to find these solutions. Clients often find it difficult to talk about love, partly because of self-consciousness, and partly because they lack the words to really express themselves. So I often use devices such as tarot cards, palmistry and runes as means of enabling clients to find answers at an unconscious level.

Here is one such technique. If you have a Rider-Waite tarot deck, look at the Lovers card. (If not, print out the image from the Internet.) It displays nude female and male figures, beneath the angel Raphael with upraised hands, with the sun on top and a mountain in the background. The man is understood to represent the individual’s conscious mind, the woman the subconscious, and Raphael the superconscious, which connects us to universal consciousness. The sun is the light-source from which we draw energy, life and potential consciousness. The mountain suggests climbing, aspiration and attainment above our current level through volition. Now forget about those meanings and just gaze on the card for three minutes. Play a love song you enjoy in the background. If your conscious mind wanders, that is good. Let your unconscious mind absorb what you see.

Then, look at your dominant hand (the right hand if you are right-handed). Examine the heart line (the large horizontal line nearest the fingers). A relatively straight heart line is a physical heart line, signifying satisfaction primarily through physical love. A curved heart line is known as a humanitarian heart line, meaning someone who needs to be aroused through the emotional aspects of affection. Notice the depth and form of the line, along with any breaks, irregular shapes and changes in direction. These manifest events connected with the ups and downs of love over the course of your life. Then imagine yourself shrinking in size and traveling along your heart line from the beginning (at the edge of the hand) to the end. Spontaneously experience whatever comes up. Then take few moments to return to the here and now, and trust your unconscious mind to guide you forward.

David Botsford is a hypnotist and psychic reader in the Four Corners area, His websites are www.4cornersintuitive.com and www.4cornershypnosis.com and www.selfhypnosiscd.com and he can be reached on 863 420 3634.

This event is a house party at the home of David Botsford, hypnotist, in the Four Corners/Davenport area, off Highway 27 near exit 55 on the I-4. Please call 863-420 3634 or e-mail davidbotsford@gmail.com in advance if you would like to attend, and you will be sent detailed directions.

Lifestyle Weight Management Hypnosis: Get slim with a reliable system with you in control

Saturday January 24th 2010 at 2.00pm Length: approximately 90 minutes

Instructor: David Botsford                                                 $30 per person (includes CD and handout)

If you want to lose weight permanently, you must permanently change the behavior that led you to put on the excess weight. We learn the habit of overeating (and becoming overweight) in the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is also where we must learn new and more useful habits in order to get slim. Even once we have developed these better habits, we must track our progress every day to ensure that our weight is indeed reducing day by day.

          The Lifestyle Weight Management Hypnosis program is a new system developed by Ohio hypnotist Matt Dawson. It makes the process of getting slim through hypnosis as easy as possible. It teaches you simple techniques anyone can follow to eat less and get slim, reliably and permanently. A hypnosis audio CD is included with the class to listen to every day to ensure that your unconscious mind absorbs the message and transforms your daily habits. Following this system, you can continue to eat the food you now enjoy, but you will be satisfied with less of it. An essential part of the program is tracking your new behaviors and recording your weight on a written chart every day for 30 days. This puts you firmly in control as you measure your progress towards slimness. The Lifestyle Weight Management Hypnosis program cuts out all the non-essentials and provides you with a simple, predictable, controllable system which gets you slim for life.

          While the class is a complete system for permanent weight loss in itself, attendees who pay to attend are welcome to repeat the class free of charge any time, if they wish.