HYPNOTHERAPIST HEALS MANY MALADIES

The "Consumer Guide to Hypnosis" defines hypnosis as a state near sleep but one is aware of the surroundings and consciousness is not lost.

Tim Morgan of Gordonville defines his job as a certified hypnotherapist as simply dealing with normal people who are coping with normal life circumstances and their character traits.

"I'm fulfilling a need," Morgan said.

Hypnotherapy helps people to stop smoking, lose weight and alleviate pain, he said. It's even been known to eliminate symptoms from certain diseases.

For example, Morgan recently had a 14-year-old female Tourette's syndrome patient. The neurological brain disorder's symptoms include lack of coordination, uncontrolled movements or tics and incoherent grunts and barks that may represent stifled obscenities.

"She also had scophobia," Morgan said. "This is the fear of school.

"When the school bus would come up the street, her stomach would literally get in knots."

Her disease had caused her to get D's and F's throughout her education. But Tim Morgan and hypnotherapy changed that.

"After just four months of therapy, she finally started getting decent grades and even made student of the month," Morgan said. Now, many of her symptoms of the disease are gone.

In another case, it took Morgan just 13 weeks to caused one patient's asthma to vanish.

"She was hypnotically trained out of her asthma attacks," he said. "She's my star patient."

He said she still does not have the symptoms of asthma and is in complete control of her life.

The process of hypnotherapy, which Morgan calls "embarrassingly simple," involves tapping the bottom of the patients feet, with suggestions to relax which puts them into the third state of sleep, called somnambulism.

"I literally read a script of well-ordered, light-hearted suggestions," Morgan said. "I literally change their feelings."

The biggest reason people come to see him is because they want to stop smoking.

"When I'm done smokers no longer have the desire to put poison wrapped in paper in their mouths," Morgan said.

Patients desiring to lose weight often make appointments for hypnotherapy and Morgan says he can help them, too.

"People who are overweight can walk past the cabinet," he said. "Their body tells them there's nothing in there for them. They only eat when they're hungry."

Morgan has treated patients for other problems, including anxiety and stress disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, major depression, panic attack disorder, pain reduction and arthritis and he says he has an 85 percent success rate.

"There's no secret to why this is so," Morgan says. "The mind overrules addiction."

Morgan says that people need him to help them stop smoking, drinking and overeating because they claim they have no will power. He says all hypnosis does is empowers the patient and gives them the willpower that they do possess.

The biggest misconception about religion, Morgan says, involves religion.

"It is not anti or pro religion," Morgan says, claiming that John the Baptist of the New Testament practiced hypnotherapy. "People just don't know or read about it. It is possible and it does work."

And now Morgan is going to share his gift since he has become qualified to train people in the field of hypnotherapy.

"I'm aiming to train mental health professionals, health care givers, but legally, I could train anyone over the age of 18 who wants to be a hypnotherapist," Morgan said. "It's not taught at all today, and that's why I'm very excited about this."