[RE: Feature, “Sleep! Look Into My Eyes,” June 21-27] Thanks for giving a nod to hypnosis, a worthwhile topic. A few notes:1. Milton Erickson should be mentioned in any list of historically significant practitioners. He lived and practiced until 1980 and is studied and admired for his artistry and skill in "utilizing" anything and everything to induce a trance and produce a cure. The book of many of his case histories, Uncommon Therapy , is fascinating reading.2. The writer’s sensing "an angry burrito inside" and an alien chewing its way out of her abdomen are absolutely appropriate images in looking at one’s resistance to a suggestion, hypnotic or otherwise.3. The list of conditions amenable to hypnosis is fairly well-established by now, including asthma, headaches, pain, phobias and—strangely—warts! I found the last item particularly interesting in remembering a friend, a rather left-brained Harvard graduate, who told me that the morning after he saw Our Lady of Fatima at the drive-in movie in Las Vegas, N.M. (decades ago, obviously), he awoke to find his warts—which had never responded to any treatment—had disappeared!
Hypnotronic
In Jessica Cassyle Carr’s cover story in the June 21 issue [“Sleep! Look Into My Eyes”], she ends with the comment, "a hypnotic trance may not be all that different from the spaced-out daydream state I live in most of the time." True. Many of us go into hypnotic trance several times a day. It’s normal; there’s nothing spooky about it.All we do in hypnotherapy is to use that state while the conscious mind is out to lunch to work directly with the subconscious mind to make changes a client wants to make. Millions of people have lost weight, stopped smoking or uncontrolled drinking, or otherwise overcome destructive habits with the aid of hypnotherapy. It usually does take several sessions, though; hopefully none of them while the subject is ill-at-ease with a rumbling stomach!
Me? Misogynist? No.
I love articles like the one authored by Christie Chisholm, "A new report shows that the status of women falls short” [News Bite, “By the Numbers,” June 28-July 4]. There’s nothing like a good laugh to blow off all that frustrating steam that comes from knowing just the opposite is true. Especially in New Mexico.I have read about a woman attorney who engaged in felony shoplifting and was not prosecuted; another woman who has killed two, count ’em two husbands in exactly the same way. The first time, she was not prosecuted. The second, the D.A. phoned the prosecution in. She walked. (I’m sure if she is still in New Mexico we’ll read about the third sap she murders one of these days!) I’ve read about another woman successfully getting more than $20,000 in child support for a nonexistent child; another who got a restraining order against David Letterman because he was apparently sending her secret coded messages during his late-night show broadcasts. (No pun intended! Don’t call me a misogynist!) If there was any justice, this town would also be reading about yet another woman. This one goes to court and tells them her ex mailed letters to her dead mother and father (and does not produce them or police reports about them), and that her ex published a nude picture of her and him on the Web (when it is commercial porn and the owners have already said so!). The information has been turned over to the D.A., but since it involves a woman, nobody is holding their breath on felony perjury charges being filed against her.At the risk of being labeled a misogynist: The pendulum has swung too far the other way. New Mexico is now in fact a gynecocracy.The gavel has replaced the once-preferred handheld, battery-powered tool as the instrument of pleasure of choice for women here in New Mexico. The word "stalker" has now taken on the power that the word "communist" once used to have. Anyone that says women are second-class citizens is spouting a lot of nonsense. It is women that are now first-class citizens, with white males coming in second, and minority males a distant third. Goddess help us all!
What Courage?
Letter writer B.W. Thompson [“Rove’s 100-Year Rule,” June 21-27] alludes to the Republican machine stealing elections. “More correctly, "elites," left and right, steal elections—or at least our representative system of government and in a multitude of ways. I, too, thirst for justice, but we have more urgent priorities than Bush puppet Anthony Gonzales, and frankly, I have yet to see the Democrat "courage" Thompson alludes to.Don’t assume that all Republicans support Bush. If we had a national news media (We don’t; we have a propaganda machine), we’d be told of the major split in the party. Many have been since we invaded Iraq. They feel Bush trashes the Constitution, is unethical, ignores majority rule, lied us into war and works solely for a national and international elite at the expense of the United States. Republicans or not, they share many concerns of the left and we’d do well to work with them.Our nation is in crisis. Let’s put aside partisan politics and focus on returning it to the representative form of government our founders crafted. Let’s unite to save our country from corruption on all fronts in 2008!
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