Mind-Body Therapy: Ideodynamic Healing in Hypnosis

I had the pleasure and opportunity to meet both of the authors and discuss hypnosis and their work. This book has the ability to transform you to the next level of skills to become a more effective clinician. Read it and re-read it carefully; there are many principles to be intuited and practiced.

My initial interest in buying this book was due to previous exposure to Leslie LeCron's ideomotor signaling in his eminently useful 1964 book, "Self-Hypnotism." After reading that book several years ago, I found ideomotor signaling (using a pendulum) to be surprisingly effective when doing some autohypnotic "uncovering" work. Now I was excited at the prospect of having what at a glance appeared to be a "how-to" manual that would illustrate clinical applications of the technique with case examples and transcripts, especially considering that coauthor Cheek had at one time collaborated with LeCron (Rossi collaborated with Milton Erickson). "Mind-Body Therapy" proved to be not only everything I hoped it would be, but much more than I bargained for. The authors present a theoretical framework for understanding the process of mind-body communication which they condense "into three stages or loci of a single system of cybernetic information transduction: the mind-brain, the brain-body, and the cellular-genetic (p. 159)." They convincingly subsume Pavlovian conditioning, Freudian repression, Jungian complexes, dissociative phenomena, and altered states of consciousness under the rubric state-dependent memory, learning, and behavior (SDMLB). Ideomotor finger signals then become a therapeutic means of gaining access to those state-dependent memories and learning that are not otherwise readily accessible to consciousness but are adversely impacting one's functioning at emotional and physiological levels. However, the book goes further, in that it not only outlines the use of ideomotor signals to uncover unconscious material but also to actively facilitate its therapeutic resolution, often with minimal if any processing at the conscious level. The authors contend that when using ideomotor signals in hypnosis, formally inducing trance becomes unnecessary because establishing the signals in fact facilitates the trance. This validates aspects of my above-mentioned personal experimentation with the technique, but I had not realized previously that this was a common response. Now that I am using ideomotor signaling more frequently and confidently when working with clients, I have observed this to be true for others also. The following brief passage (one of the many I highlighted in the text) illustrates not only the complexity of the work but the author's gift for synthesis. Here they discuss the concept of "imprinting" in the context of traumatic experiences and subsequent emotional and psychosomatic illness: "The presence of great emotional or physical stress evokes a state which is indistinguishable from that of hypnosis. The unconscious response to injury is similar to the effect of a strongly given posthypnotic suggestion. Unlike ordinary learning by repetition, this memory is completed (learned) on initial impact" (p. 239). The authors outline three stages of assessing the validity of ideomotor signaling. In brief, they contend that 1.) Emotional and

This exceptional book, a collaboration of two gifted characters, is as relevant today as two decades ago when it was a pioneering look at the mind body process. It explores many different facets of the use of communication, suggestion and hypnosis in medical situations. The information is so interesting and accessible that the book could appeal to anyone with a curiosity about the mind/body relationship. Cheek was an Ob/Gyn who regularly used hypnotism in his practice. Rossi an ally, student and collaborator of the late, famous Dr Milton Erickson, is a theorist, a psychologist / hypnotherapist and clear-thinking, research-driven psychobiologist. The examples of work with medical patients in this book show the profound and binding impact of experience on the health of the body. Processes of communication are used to explore past experiences of patients (usually consciously forgotten) that had a dramatic impact on current reproductive health. The book is part detective story and a meandering look at many different facets of the mind in medical situations.