fingers of truth
Finger signals don’t have to be vulgar. Instead of transmitting insults, they can communicate subconscious information. Dr. David Cheek, an OB/GYN, has for over 50 years helped hypnotized patients use their fingers to tell them the subconscious causes of emotional or physical illness.
The process is called “ideomotor,” which means “thoughts that cause a physical action.” The particular fingers are designated (by the doctor or the patient) “yes”, “no” and “I do not want to answer.” When the physician asks the hypnotized patient questions, the relevant finger is raised in response, even when the patient consciously thinks otherwise, or is unaware of the answer.
In his new book Hypnosis: The Application of Ideomotor Techniques (a rewrite of the 1968 classic Clinical Hypnotherapy, co-authored with Leslie LeCron, the discoverer of ideomotor techniques), Dr. Cheek says:
“Thanks to LeCron’s contributions, we can now explore the perceptions of babies during intrauterine development, the perceptions of anesthetized people, and the thoughts and reactions to thoughts when humans are in states of deep sleep, as well as when they normally dream.” “We can discover and correct many sources of resistance that have previously interfered with the success of psychotherapy. The whole process of psychotherapy has been sped up, and therefore the cost of psychotherapy has been reduced.”
These claims, however initial they may seem at first glance, pale in comparison to the other claims made by Dr. Cheek in his 300-page book. For example, he writes compellingly about telepathy between a mother and her fetus, past life regression, spirit casting, and a distinctly unusual take on homosexuality.
Dr. Cheek gives several examples of adult women using ideomotor techniques to discover sexual abuse when they were too young to have conscious memories:
“Babies have an active sucking reflex that can stimulate a father, uncle, grandfather or older brother at the idea of putting his erect penis in that mouth. There is no erotic pleasure in this for the baby. The experience can be terrifying because it is difficult for the baby to breathe His normal sucking reflex can be eliminated by this act The baby usually feels, and absorbs to himself, the guilt of the person who does this… Since conscious memory does not begin “Until the age of 2 or 3, there will be no conscious recollection of this childhood trauma. Some patients will remember having dreams that this was done to them.”
He goes on (obviously to doctors) by pointing out signs in adults that may be evidence of such abuse:
“Be alert to the possibility of oral abuse when you learn that your patient was squint-eyed or squint-eyed during childhood. His dominant eye may have focused in terror on the penis or trying to avoid looking at it. Be alert to oral abuse when your patient has a history of gagging or had repeated strep throat as a child Both are examples of hypersensitivity problems conditioned by emotional trauma from sexual abuse or tonsillectomy You will remember the problem of tonsillitis leading to tonsillectomy, but you will remember previous abuse. be hidden by conscious amnesia”.
Dr. Cheek believes that we are imprinted with particular emotions even while in the womb. He has taught hundreds of women to communicate telepathically with their newborn children.
If a fetus misinterprets the mother’s concerns as rejection, the feeling will be embedded and permanent, says Cheek, and “subsequent loving and nurturing by the mother will not alter the earlier assumption.”
According to Dr. Cheek, birth trauma is at the root of much of adult distress. He describes how epinephrine, released at the time of shock or stress, “sets up” fear or anguish, thus imprinting trauma. “Primary trauma can be at the moment the mother realizes she is pregnant. It can be reinforced during pregnancy, at childbirth, and during the first three years of life. Essays of early life traumatic sequences printed during deeper levels of sleep can occur for the rest of a child’s life.”
And lead to depression, anxiety, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Ordinary psychotherapy is inadequate to the task of dealing with such imprinting because it has affected the primitive midbrain, not the cerebral hemispheres of conscious memories. (Insomnia and floating anxiety may be evidence of such disorders.) Ideomotor techniques can uncover preconscious causes of distress and can then be treated.
Hundreds of his pregnant patients have used hypnosis to allow a breech baby to turn over and deliver comfortably.
The now well-known experience of surgical patients listening in on conversations in the operating room even while deeply anesthetized may have another explanation: telepathy. Dr. Cheek has used ideomotor techniques to confirm this to his own satisfaction. “If this claim can be corroborated by the work of other independent observers,” he says, “it will be very important for surgeons and their assistants to maintain positive thoughts while working with their surgical patient.”
On a lighter note, Dr. Cheek tells the reader how to use ideomotor techniques with self-hypnosis to locate lost objects.
The book contains many (sometimes repeated) case examples and explicit instructions on how therapists can use finger signals.
The gynecology and female urology chapters are highly technical. The author hopes that more women will enter medical schools and that more attention will be paid to the “concept of a mind influencing physical behavior and endocrine balance.”
The uses of the techniques to treat infertility are fascinating and will give hope to couples who may be desperate to have children of their own.
Dr. Cheek is cautiously open-minded about other approaches that can be included alongside finger pointing. These include searching for auras and investigating past lives, although he finds it more productive for patients to simply cut their ties to past lives, leaving open the question of whether they are real or hallucinations. He takes a similar position with the despoiling of spirits, advising doctors to be careful who they broach these issues with.
Especially illuminating is the reason given by Dr. Cheek for why some people fear and/or resist hypnosis: “You [the doctor] may be subliminally reminding these patients of someone who treated them badly at a time when they were spontaneously in a trance.”
Dr. Cheek’s compassion for patients and his desire for them to be co-therapists in their own healing is evidenced in his disapproval of a common technique: “The… concept that repeated abreactions in total age regression “Catalyzing a trauma is not a viable therapeutic modality. It generally alienates patients or forces them to fabricate traumas that either are not the cause or have never occurred.”
There is a lot of helpful guidance on using ideomotor techniques to help people manage pain and combat the unwanted effects of chemotherapy. Dr. Cheek also writes about the forensic and emergency uses of hypnosis.
This is clearly a book intended for professionals, but it’s also a thought-provoking read for laymen.