Hypnotherapy won't make you bark like a dog, but it may help you relax, stop smoking or lose weight.

I had hoped to fall into a deep sleep, and then be made to cluck like a chicken or bark like a dog. Or both.

But it did not happen. After 20 minutes of listening to the soothing voice of Portland hypnotherapist Cynthia Farr-Weinfeld, I felt relaxed. Very relaxed. Spacey, even.

Oranges and blues swirled before me like a lava lamp, even though my eyes were closed.

It was the middle of a work day and my car had just died the day before.

Yet that didn't seem to matter anymore. Instead my mind was comfortably numb.

A few years ago, the idea of being hypnotized as a self-improvement technique, or to alleviate a medical condition, might have been dismissed. Today hypnotherapy is a growing trend. Health-care practitioners use it to help ease the pain of childbirth.

Hypnotherapists offer to help people quit smoking, stop gambling, and escape the stresses of hectic lives.

I knew the claims, but was skeptical. So I decided to try it myself.

In the midst of my recent session with Farr-Weinfeld, I recall hazily her making suggestions. She encouraged self-talk, such as "my mind enables me to be relaxed and calm as I go about the activities of daily life."

I relaxed more deeply. I forgot about deadlines for writing my stories. The engine failure of our car seemed a distant memory. Stomach flu? That bug our daughter caught didn't seem to bug me either.

Farr-Weinfeld continued, and I kept relaxing. She told me to envision a place that calms me, to plant it in my mind so I could bring it up at any time when I needed to relax.

The image could be an island, she suggested. Or a lake. Perhaps a sunny beach.

The place I envisioned was Hadlock Field, sitting down the third base line watching the Portland Sea Dogs play baseball on a warm summer night. Now that is nirvana.

But the serenity was not to last. After a little more talk, Farr-Weinfeld told me she was bringing me out of this state.

I remember thinking, "I'm not in any state, I'm just sitting here with my eyes closed, listening to you. I feel pretty good, but I'm not in a state."

Then she stopped talking. I yawned, stretched, and felt very much like I was waking up from a nap, though I had never stopped hearing her.

OK, I was relaxed, but also a little disappointed at not being made, unknowingly, to walk a tightrope (like I saw in a movie once).

But I also was happy to be enlightened. Ah, I thought, this is what hypnotherapy is.

It's not the theatrical hypnotism of nightclubs and TV. It's something much less mysterious, a way to relax and get rid of stress.

"I can't make you do anything you don't want to do," said Farr-Weinfeld. "What I do is help get you in a meditative state, relaxed. My hope is that it's something people can learn to do for themselves."

When I first heard the term hypnotherapist a couple of years ago, I thought it was just a New Age name for a hypnotist. Sort of the way mailmen became postal carriers or garbage men became sanitation engineers.

But after talking with Farr-Weinfeld for just a few minutes on the phone, I realized she wasn't going to have me howling at the moon or standing on my head.

Then she offered to hypnotize me.

Farr-Weinfeld, 37, told me that she got interested in hypnotherapy more than 20 years ago, when her grandmother quit smoking with the help of a hypnotherapist. Her grandmother lived another 23 years, to the age of 87, and never once craved a cigarette again.

"That was shocking to me, and it really got me interested," said Farr-Weinfeld, who lives in Portland with her husband and daughter.

Before making this her job, Farr-Weinfeld worked as an education technician with autistic teenagers and mentally disabled adults.

In the mid-1990s, she took a 50-hour course with Priscilla King, a nurse and hypnotherapist in Scarborough , and became a member of the National Guild of Hypnotists.

As part of her training, she underwent hypnotherapy herself and found it "very peaceful." In her business, Tree of Life Hypnotherapy in Portland , she specializes in smoking cessation. But she also offers help in stress reduction, weight loss, fear reduction, insomnia and self-esteem enhancement.

She charges $50 an hour.

The Portland phone book lists a dozen or so "clinical" hypnotherapy professionals. Hypnotherapists do not have to be licensed by the state. But medical insurance may cover some hypnotherapy, when administered by a licensed social worker or other medical professional.

But it usually doesn't cover the services of people certified only by a specific hypnotherapy association.

Farr-Weinfeld, for instance, is certified by The National Guild of Hypnotists and her services aren't covered.

When I got to her St. John Street office on a Tuesday, I read her pamphlet, which answered a few simple questions about her hypnotherapy sessions.

What would it be like? The pamphlet said that if anyone had ever been driving down the road and lost track of time, or didn't remember what they had passed the last few minutes, then they had been in a trance-like state.

That's what her session would be like.

What would I remember? Everything. Would I be in control? Yes.

OK, I thought, if I remember everything and am in control, how is this different from my daily life?

I was coming in for a 20-minute stress reduction session, even though I'm not particularly stressed. I have sort of the normal stresses: cars breaking down; baby getting sick; having to work this crummy, dead-end job (just kidding, boss). Normal stuff.

Farr-Weinfeld had told me that I'd be in a meditative state, but I had never meditated.

Her office was all about relaxing. It had a fireplace, an overstuffed chair and couch, candles of various soothing aromas, and a multi-position chaise lounge.

After explaining that she was going to talk to me and help me relax, Farr-Weinfeld had me recline in the chaise and close my eyes.

In a calming voice, she basically guided me through 20 minutes of breathing, thinking about breathing, and visualizing stuff.

"Notice how the air feels against the skin of your face and hands," she said near the beginning. "Let every noise you hear deepen your state of relaxation."

She talked very specifically about my breathing, to "feel your breath entering your nose or mouth and flowing down into your lungs. When you exhale, let your attention follow the air back up out of your lungs and softly out through your nose or mouth."

I followed this advice for a while, and started to feel a little short of breath. Then I heard her say "If you start to feel a little short of breath, don't worry, this simply means that you need a little more air and that the deep stresses are coming out."

Wow, I thought, that's pretty cool.

After that, she told me to let all my muscles and nerves grow loose and limp, "like a rag doll." And I did; it was pretty easy. After a few minutes I didn't really feel anything except my breathing. My normal little back pains and head pains (I talk about them daily, just ask my wife) could not be felt.

Farr-Weinfeld continued to talk about relaxing, telling me to let "waves of relaxation" wash over me, and to let my attention wander. Which it did. I was never asleep, I heard her the whole time, but there were several times when I really didn't comprehend what she was saying.

It did not seem to matter. I was seeing stuff. Little swirls of orange against sort of a night-sky background, then light blue lines, in swirling circles, against the same background.

I got up from the chaise and was a little wobbly. The breathing has something to do with our sense of balance, she told me, in more scientific terms than I can remember.

I got on the elevator and got off on the wrong floor. I continued to feel sort of ultra-relaxed for the next hour or so. Then I went back to work, and the real world.

But I could see how, if someone did this for an hour or so every day, they'd be pretty relaxed much of the time.

Also, some techniques Farr-Weinfeld does with her clients are designed to allow them to use self-hypnosis when they need it. "Meditation is just a form of self-hypnosis," she said.

Since seeing Farr-Weinfeld about a week ago, I have used breathing as a way to help me fall asleep. I'm not an insomniac, but if I find my mind racing at bedtime, focusing on my breathing has helped slow that race down.

I've also envisioned Hadlock Field a couple times this week, but I'd do that anyway.

So I guess my conclusion, after a very limited exposure to hypnotherapy, is that it's getting help to feel relaxed and in control. Sure, you might be able to get that way on your own, but a little guidance never hurts.

Even if it is disappointing that the guidance doesn't make you cluck like a chicken.

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at: rrouthier@pressherald.com

©2005 Ray Routhier, Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.