Next week: Our very own Matt O’Halloran will lead a working session on Rotary Park. (Please park in front parking lot next week!)
President John Cottle opened our meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance.
Thought for the Day: Helen Keller “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” and “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
Guests: Tom Birdsell, Debra Lennox, Alena Guest
Visiting Rotarians: Judy Martin from Fort Bragg Rotary, and her guest Laura Felding (Fort Bragg Rotary’s exchange student from Denmark)
Donna with our guest, Alena Guest.
Visiting Rotarian Judy Martin and her guest,Laura Felding.
Guest Tome Birdsell.
Susan with our guest, Debra Lennox.
Happy Dollars:
Matt shares his happy dollars!
– Donna is happy that our scholarship committee is working hard to determine the awardees from Mendocino High School. Interviews will be held next week.
– Matt is happy that they have a volunteer to mow Rotary Park this weekend.
– Heather is happy to be attending the B Corp Leadership Development event next week in Berkeley with Harvest Market.
– John C is happy with our high number of visitors today.
– Susan is happy that she’ll be on a camping trip next week/weekend!
– Sean is happy to announce the Ducks Unlimited fundraiser at Silver’s at the Wharf next Saturday, 5/8/15.
– Gary is happy because Cinco de Mayo is coming up, but the only trouble is that he can never remember what day it’s on.
– Matt is happy that everyone is OK from when they got t-boned in the car in his neighborhood. A great insurance agent (Sean) helped everything go smoothly.
– Kira is happy with the weather today!
– Harold is happy there’s no Sunshine Report today!
Sunshine Report
No need for one — this is great news, because it means that everyone is healthy. Hooray!!
Announcements:
Monday, May 11 at 12:00 noon is our Club’s next Board meeting at the Mendocino Hotel. $20 to cover the cost of lunch.
July 4 event planning: the Club’s current proposal is to do a family event in park, and no BBQ at the firehouse… The Board will discuss this. If you’d like to chair the committee to organize the annual BBQ, let John C know now!
We have received a request from the Senior Center for volunteers to drive people who have to travel out of the area for medical needs. Contact Charles Bush at Sr. Center to volunteer.
Cornelia talks about the Rotary Park Art Competition.
Cornelia reported that the entries are coming in for the Rotary Park Art Competition, with a deadline of May 22. Feedback will be sought from community after this date with a showing of all entries at the Mendocino Community Center, with commentary sought on components of the different designs. Please ask your artist friends to contribute their ideas. Entries must be 2 dimensional, up to 11×17″. See our facebook Mendocino Park page.
Pt. Cabrillo Lighthouse will host a lens tour this Saturday, May 2 – $5 each. A second Lighthouse event will be on May 9: a winemakers’ dinner event. $125 tickets are all inclusive, and include a tour of lighthouse. The dinner event will be held inside the lighthouse for the first time.
Thanks to Tom for initiating Shelter Box fundraising for earthquake victims in Nepal.
As a Club, we’re raising money for earthquake relief in Nepal through our Foundation – thanks to Tom Honer for initiating this effort. The response has been great!
Dean encourages us all to invite new members!
Dean talked about our Club’s shrinking membership due to attrition. We’ll be doing a membership drive soon — think of, and INVITE!, your friends, neighbors and acquaintances who would be a good fit for our Club. You pay for your guest’s first lunch, and the Club will pay for meetings 2 and 3. Then hopefully the prospective member will join! Dean has brochures to help explain the process.
Today’s Program
Donna introduced our speaker for today, Alena Guest, clinical hypnotherapist. Donna first met Alena about 5 years ago when she started working as the Wellness Program Coordinator at Mendocino Coast District Hospital (MCDH). Alena has provided lectures through the Wellness Program, and has created a series of self-hypnosis courses.
First, Donna asked Finemaster questions, from which we learned the following:
– The father of modern hypnotherapy was Isaac Mesmer of Vienna.
– There’s a place in our minds that one can access through hypnosis: the subconscious.
– What percent of the population is considered hypnotizable? 95%. Wow!
– A sign that a person is likely to be hypnotized: they sometimes have ‘highway hypnosis’ or ‘zone out’ when driving (and don’t remember how they got where they were driving)
– T/F: the senses are enhanced during hypnosis. True.
– T/F: some people can lose consciousness in hypnosis and get stuck there. False.
Today’s speaker, Alena Guest.
Alena Guest is a medical hypnotherapist with the highest level of training you can go for. She is nationally licensed, and has been a featured speaker at many locations. She is a provider of alternative treatments through the MCDH Wellness Program. She also has a local private practice.
Alena cited very recent, credible research supporting the effectiveness of clinical hypnotherapy. Hypnosis as a mode of treatment is increasing in its acceptance among mainstream medical communities. Research supports that healing from surgery, improving hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, headaches, healing from childbirth, impotence and infertility, chronic pain and more can be improved via hypnotherapy.
In recent centuries, medicine has become more specialized, breaking the body down into smaller and smaller parts, and treating those parts as if they stand alone. Alena believes that this is the wrong approach to medicine; the body must be engaged in a holistic way in healing. Medical hypnosis helps the body reach homeostasis (aka balance), which is the body’s way of initiating healing.
Neuroscience/neuroplasticity research shows that the thin outer layer of the brain is always learning how to learn — this has great potential for treatments of alzheimers and other diseases. Hypnosis can create a favorable climate in your brain for continued/new learning. The subconscious stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system is the way this happens.
At our local hospital, Alena was called in to help a woman in her first trimester of pregnancy, suffering from terrible morning sickness and dehydration. No drugs were working, and Alena was able to create healing within less than an hour with hypnotherapy. Alena has also worked with children in her private practice to overcome stuttering, bed wetting, test anxiety and other issues. She has helped clients resolve migraines, addictions, low self esteem, insomnia, phobias, breathing difficulties (COPD) and more. She has worked with cancer patients; one example was to treat a patient’s sever claustrophobia so that he could have an MRI as part of his treatment.
Alena brought a couple of recorded CDs to share: to treat insomnia, and to help with pre- and post-surgical healing.
Q&A
Alena provides self-hypnosis training and individual client sessions.
How are self hypnosis and mindful meditation different? They are both mindfulness techniques. The difference is that meditation is to find a place of stillness in the mind. Hypnosis goes much farther, with a clear affirmation/suggestion to give to your subconscious mind once you reach that place of stillness. This affirmation can be repeated just as people are falling asleep, as these brainwaves are similar to a state of hypnosis. You work to replace an old, dysfunctional idea with a new idea, to create a new habit and behavior.
Even though it seems high, in Alena’s experience, it is true that at least 95% of people are hypnotizable — she’s only had two individuals who weren’t. There are different levels of susceptibility to hypnosis: 5% are nonhypnotizable; 25% reach a light state of trance/homeostasis, which is enough to work with; 45% go into a medium-state trance in their first treatment, and this is where a great amount of the healing/change occurs; the last 25% are so hypnotizable, they could have surgery with only hypnosis as their anesthesia.
Alena has had about an 80% success rate treating smokers’ addictions — there is a high rate of recidivism with addictions. The law of repetition: the brain loves repetition of the new messages/learning, so Alena provides a personalized CD so that clients can repeat their treatment sessions at will.
Can a patient in deep hypnosis be persuaded to perform a behavior that is deeply morally repugnant to him/her? “Absolutely not.”
At any age, you can change your habits. Neuroplasticity is real, and can be accelerated/supported with hypnotherapy.
Today’s Raffle Winners: Susan, and Cornelia. Neither drew the joker.
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