If you’re frequently dealing with digestive issues like bloating, heartburn, or abdominal pain, you’re probably all too familiar with how disruptive they can be. While traditional treatments often focus on alleviating symptoms, they don’t always address the underlying causes.
But here’s a thought: What if there was a way to address your digestive woes by harnessing the power of your mind? Hypnotherapy might sound a bit unconventional, but it’s making waves as a powerful tool for managing digestive health.
Curious to see how it works and whether it might be right for you? Stick around as I share how hypnotherapy can help with digestive issues and give inspiring real-life stories from clients who’ve experienced positive changes with hypnotherapy.
Understanding the Mind-Body Connection
The first thing you need to understand is that the mind and body are deeply connected. In fact, they are two parts of the same system, and really cannot be separated. In modern medicine and psychology, we are used to thinking of the mind and body as separate, treating them separately and denying the impact they have on each other.
This couldn’t be further from reality. Our minds and bodies are completely intertwined, they key is our subconscious mind. Our conscious mind is the “thinking mind” that uses logic and reason to help us through our daily life. However, the subconscious mind is more like a storage bank full of our memories, our patterns, our learned behaviors and skills, and our conditioned responses.
An easy metaphor to understand the difference between the conscious and subconscious mind is learning a new skill, such as tying your shoe. When you are actively learning to tie your shoe, you are very present and alert as you learn the intricacy of the knots. This uses the logical “thinking” mind to learn a new skill.
However, once you’ve learned it, it becomes stored in your subconscious mind, and no longer takes your awareness to do. In fact, you could probably tie your shoe while your conscious mind has a conversation, or while your conscious mind watches tv. It becomes unconscious, meaning it doesn’t require your conscious awareness, it happens on autopilot.
When we go through something stressful, our mind and body feels the stress. Your mind might have fearful thoughts, whereas your body responds with tension or strain. You might get a knot in your stomach, or a headache, or feel tension in your shoulders. This is your body’s response to stress.
Your body is designed to handle stress. When your body feels stress, it moves into a sympathetic response, also known as the stress response. The main function of the stress response is to get us out of the stressful situation – it’s focused on survival! Adrenaline is released into the blood, causing energy to move to our muscles to get us to safety. It pulls energy from other processes in the body to aid in getting you to safety. Things like cell regeneration, digestion or reproduction aren’t important when it’s focus is getting you to safety.
However, if those stressful experiences are not resolved, that stress response can become stored in the subconscious. Perhaps you were unable to process the fear, shame or guilt from a traumatic experience, either because you were too young and didn’t have the tools, or because those feelings were too painful to face. They become stored in your subconscious and even though your conscious mind knows that you’ve made it through that stressful experience, your body continues to feel the effects of that stress.
Your body is designed to handles stress, but stress is supposed to be something we move in and out of, not something we stay stuck in for months or even years. When stress becomes chronic, our body’s reaction to stress becomes chronic.
Overtime the effects of this stress response can show up in various ways; back pain, abdominal pain, digestive issues, reproductive issues, headaches, and more. When we go to our modern medical system for help, they usually address the symptoms of our ailments, not the core issue that’s caused your body to react in this way.
This is where mind-body techniques come in. Hypnotherapy allows us to connect with the subconscious mind directly and understand the emotional connection to physical ailments.
What is Hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy is a technique that allows us to temporarily quiet the conscious mind to connect more deeply with the subconscious mind, where we have greater access to memories, emotion, and can make more rapid changes to the way you think and feel.
When you go into hypnosis, you are entering a trance state. That may sound strange, but is actually something that we naturally do every day. You enter a trance state when you daydream, when you get really into a movie or book, when you drive a familiar route, or do mindless tasks like washing dishes, folding laundry, or tying your shoes.
Going into a trance state is as easy as bringing your awareness internally. In a conscious and alert state, you are very much aware of your external world, but when you go into trance, you are bringing that awareness inward to your internal world.
You can easily bring yourself into a light trance by simply closing your eyes and following your breath for a short period of time. Often a guided meditation or hypnosis session will have you use your imagination to visualize a scene, or to bring awareness to sensations in your body. All of these techniques simply bring your awareness within, which naturally takes you into a trance state.
This trance state often feels very relaxing, and as you go into trance, you may feel your body start to enter a deep state of relaxation. Some people report their body feeling heavier while others say it feels like they’re floating.
In a trance, you have greater access to your subconscious mind, meaning you can access memories easier, access and feel emotion that’s been stored, and uncover patterns and conditioning that’s been stored in your subconscious.
While in a trance, you are more easily able to make changes to those patterns and conditioning because your conscious, “thinking” mind has taken a back seat. We can get to the root-cause without the conscious mind thinking, and overthinking, and taking us in circles.
How to use Hypnotherapy for IBS and Digestive Issues
We can take advantage of the mind-body connection by using Hypnosis to get to the root of digestive issues and pain. When I’m working with a client on a physical ailment, there are two main approaches we take in a hypnosis session.
The first is to uncover the root-cause of the ailment. In the case of digestive issues, we want to understand why the gut is holding tension so that we can resolve the stress that the body has held onto.
The second approach is to use hypnosis to reprogram the subconscious to feel safe. Creating safety in the mind and body is one of the most important pieces of this work. When the mind and body feel safe, our natural healing abilities can occur.
Our body knows how to heal itself, it’s constantly regenerating cells and fighting off viruses and bacteria. It knows how to heal, it’s just stuck in a state where it’s focusing that energy on survival.
Real Client Results using Hypnotherapy for Digestive Issues
I’ve been working with a client for a few sessions on her digestive issues and pain and we’ve seen lot’s of improvements in just a few short weeks.
To protect my clients privacy, I will refer to her as Jane. Jane has been dealing with digestive issues and pain for over a decade and with little to no relief. She was eager to try a mind-body approach and start to address the underlying emotional cause of her pain.
Starting with Pain Reprocessing Therapy to Alleviate Abdominal Pain
Our first session was spent using Pain Reprocessing Therapy to help her address the pain directly and cultivate safety in her body. If you’re new to Pain Reprocessing Therapy, you can read more about it in this post. Pain Reprocessing Therapy can be used on IBS, digestive issues, as well as many other forms of chronic pain.
In this initial session Jane reported the abdominal pain was quite high, she rated it a 6/10 intensity, however, once we started to implement the Pain Reprocessing Technique, she saw the intensity decrease and the pain change quite dramatically.
By the end of the session her pain was gone and she felt very empowered to use the technique on her own. This session was a turning point for her to recognize that her body is not as fragile as she thought. It really helped her understand that pain is simply a danger signal, and when we cultivate safety, the body responds quite quickly.
Using Hypnotherapy to get to the Root of the Digestive Issues
I used Hypnotherapy for the following few sessions with Jane to uncover the root of her abdominal pain and discomfort. In these sessions, I guided Jane into a trance state where she could more easily connect to her subconscious mind.
In one session specifically, I guided Jane to connect to the part of her that is holding all the tension in her stomach. As she began to become aware of that part of her, her subconscious brought forward emotion, images, and even memories that were connected to the pain and tension in her stomach.
As we followed the emotion it brought is back to childhood memory where she felt a lot of pressure and responsibility at a very young age. Reconnecting with that child self really helped her to understand just how much that weighed on her, she said it made her feel ‘sick to her stomach’, which again, shows that the body is often a perfect metaphor.
Through a gentle process, I guided Jane to release the emotion that had been stored from that experience and reframe what it means to her. Jane felt a physical sense of relief and a lightness wash over her as she released the weight of that pressure and expectation.
In the weeks that followed this session, Jane mentioned feeling happier and more care-free in her daily life. After just a few sessions like this, she already is noticing a decrease in abdominal pain and an increase in overall joy and satisfaction with life.
Jane is a perfect example of the mind-body connection and the power of addressing the root-cause, instead of the symptoms. She had spent year, thousands of dollars and endless time and energy treating symptoms just to find that the pain is still there a decade later.
Now, addressing the root cause, she has found a decrease in pain and frequency – along with an added bonus of feeling happier and more at ease – in a matter of weeks and just a few sessions.
Is My Digestive Pain Neuroplastic?
Do you suffer from chronic digestive pain? Are you curious to know if your pain can be healed with a mind-body approach? Find out with my Neuroplastic Pain Quiz. Enter your details below and I'll send it straight to your inbox.
With this detailed, 30 question quiz you'll discover if your digestive pain is neuroplastic and therefore, can be healed with a mind-body approach.
Conclusion
Digestive issues can be incredibly disruptive, affecting not just your physical comfort but also your overall quality of life. While traditional treatments often focus on symptom relief, they may not always get to the root of the problem. That’s where hypnotherapy comes in, offering a unique approach that addresses not just the symptoms but the underlying emotional and subconscious factors contributing to your pain and discomfort.
As illustrated by Jane’s journey, this method can lead to significant improvements, tackling both the emotional roots and physical symptoms of digestive problems and IBS. Techniques such as Pain Reprocessing Therapy and targeted hypnosis sessions have shown promising results, helping clients achieve relief and enhanced well-being.
Next Steps
If you’re struggling with pain and bloating, and feeling stuck with conventional treatments, it might be time to explore the potential of hypnotherapy for digestive issues and IBS. Together, we can uncover the underlying emotional connection to your pain and discomfort, and start you on a path to lasting relief.
Ready to see if hypnotherapy could be your solution? Learn more about my approach to chronic pain and symptoms here, or simply book a Free Consultation to speak with me directly.
If you’re new to hypnosis and would like to dip your toe to see what it’s like, check out my Free Think & Feel Positive Hypnosis. This 12 minute recording can help promote optimism and prime your mind for the day.
Katie is fascinated with the power of the mind and the role it plays in healing. She has dedicated the better part of a decade learning the most effective forms of mind based healing including Hypnotherapy, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, EFT, NLP, and more. She works with individuals on topics related to anxiety, trauma, self-worth and chronic pain to help heal the root cause and retrain the brain. Katie’s debut book, The Uncaged Mind became an International Bestseller and is available on Amazon.
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