Incorporating Light and Sound with Clinical Hypnotherapy for Overcoming Addictions

Incorporating Light and Sound with Clinical Hypnotherapy for Overcoming Addictions

Before I was introduced to light and sound machines I was audibly inducing relaxation skills through the use of clinical hypnotherapy and treatment through post-hypnotic suggestion. Positive client results were slow in coming and sometimes painful.

Being new to light and sound, utilizing the machines personally enabled me to become aware of how to correctly run the built-in programs as well as personally experiencing the results. I used the light and sound machine for just over six months. At the culmination of my trial period, I felt the mental, emotional and physical benefits. The result convinced me to incorporate light and sound brainwave frequency stimulation into my practice.

My first endeavor into light and sound stimulation professionally started with four clients who were chemically dependent as their core addiction and were newly released from a second stage recovery program. These four clients began using personal light and sound machines twice a day, every day, while listening to pre-recorded therapeutic MP3’s.  Controlled, individual weekly therapeutic sessions were conducted at my office using their light and sound machines. The program they listened to on their machines was thirty-five minutes of Alpha relaxation brainwave frequency stimulation.

What these light and sound machines do to be so beneficial is basically speak to the mind in it’s own language – the language of frequency. As our senses transmit electrical impulses from outside environmental stimulation to our brain for interpretation, light and sound uses our senses of hearing and vision to generate pulsed light and sound stimulation that after just a very few minutes begins to be mimicked by our brainwaves. This results in our minds getting interested in following the frequencies being interpreted, known as entrainment, and as the built-in alpha relaxation program begins to lower brainwave frequencies from our normal waking state of beta down to our targeted state of alpha, our brainwaves gently follow along. This allows individuals to experience lower states of consciousness without any mental effort. 

It was evident that my clients were following the program of two light and sound sessions per day seven days a week. Their skin color was clear and fresh, eyes were clear, walking steps were firm and their voices had strengthened. Throughout the therapeutic sessions calmness, self-esteem, communication levels, logical thinking and reasoning (ability to make a healthy decision), accepting and taking responsibility for their addiction, the ability to face fear and walk through it, the ability to realize and work through anger, and a strong commitment to recovery were evident. These clients continued to become stronger, maintain their motivation and commitment and took charge of their individual recovery progress.

It is evident that incorporating light and sound brainwave stimulation as an adjunctive modality with weekly ‘in office’ clinical reinforcement and personal ‘at home’ sessions as instructed by the clinician results in a higher probability of successfully ending addictive behaviors. 

The light and sound machine used in my clinical practice contains twenty-five fully researched programs that target all four general brainwave states (beta, alpha, theta, delta) and has extra slots that allow me to create specific sessions for my clients that I can download into the light and sound unit. There is an audio input port with a stereo patch chord so my MP3 player can be connected which means I can play my audio selections simultaneously with the pulsed sound and light stimulation. The eyeset that offers multiple colors is my choice over strictly white for two reasons: the multi-colored eyeset has left and right independent eye color stimulation control. The colors can be selected for attaining lower states like alpha, theta and delta by using cooler colors like blue, green and violet or for entrainment in the beta state warmer colors like red, yellow and orange. Also, you can have one color for one eye and another for the other, so the two brain hemispheres can be in sync, or one side more active with one side less, or hemispheric crosstalk depending on your need.