My first memorable experience with hypnosis occurred while I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2006 - 2007. As Christmas neared, I started an evening practice of meditating and practicing self-hypnosis, to calm down and clear my mind as a process for preparing for restful sleep.
Clearing my mind from the incessant chatter and worries took some time to master. With practice, clearing my mind became easier. The week before Christmas, the weather called for snow to fall the day before and on Christmas.
The hectic pace and threat included in my surroundings in my daytime, seemed to calm because of my nightly self-hypnosis. More and more, with each night while practicing self-hypnosis, a recurring theme of peace and wellbeing developed – kind of incongruous considering where I was at the time. I also had visions of doves, which are themselves a representation of peace.
Two days before Christmas, 2006, the snow started to fall. In the outside courtyard in our American and NATO military forces compound, someone had placed a decorated Christmas tree, at the base of which was a 12-inch-tall Santa Claus dressed in a red shirt and camouflage coveralls.
As Christmas approached, with each day of snow, I took pictures of the accumulating snow inching up the statue of Santa Claus. The pictures of this extraordinary sight included a Christmas tree and Santa Claus statue at the base of the picture frame and the attendant snow accumulation and on the top of a picture frame, on top of a building, was a sandbagged machine gun position.
On Christmas day, I took pictures of Santa Claus, with snow up to his chest, just before some of us gathered around a fire pit to sing Christmas carols. For a moment, singing with my military family in Afghanistan, brought me close to my own family in the United States.
The day after Christmas, I was reviewing my pictures of the snow-covered Christmas tree and Santa. The snow looked so clean and pure. And then I looked closer at the individual snowflakes in the picture, and some appeared to be in the shape of doves. At that moment, I felt a sense of calm and understanding that everything was going to be ok. This feeling reinforced the images I was seeing while in hypnosis.
The rest of my deployment flew by and my fellow American servicemen with whom I deployed, made it home safely.
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