Hypnosis is a natural state of deep relaxation similar to daydreaming, sometimes called “focused awareness”
A hypnotherapist works with the Subconscious Mind, the part of us where dreams, feelings, memories attitudes and behaviours are created and stored and where they can be changed.
During the “trance” state, the critical censor of the Conscious Mind is bypassed so that a state of intensified attention, concentration and responsiveness can take place.
In this pleasant state it is possible to reprogram and recondition negative emotions and destructive behaviour patterns into life-affirming ones.
Does Hypnosis Work?
The short answer is: hypnosis works if you want it to. All Hypnosis is ultimately self hypnosis so its efficacy depends on whether you are adopting the hypnotic mindset and are motivated to change.
Anyone who wants to be can be hypnotised. All hypnosis is self-induced. The hypnotist is merely your guide.
It is useful to remember the following:
- Trance is a state people enter when they are sick, endangered or frightened or as a result of long-distance running, dancing, repetitive chanting, spinning and when remembering events or reviewing dreams.
- Hypnosis cannot make you do something against your moral values.
- It would impossible for hypnosis to make you do anything you didn't want to
- Anybody who is hypnotised retains total control of their own actions and healing process.
Misconceptions about hypnosis
There is nothing supernatural or magical about hypnotism, and there is not one documented case of harm coming to anyone as a result of its therapeutic use.
Although its benefits are well established, it remains a misunderstood and often-dreaded subject in the minds of the general public.
This resistance stems from our natural fear of any powerful force we do not understand. Ironically, there is a much greater danger in not understanding it.
This force does not come from the hypnotist, but from your own subconscious mind, and if you do not control it, it controls you.
Most of our physical ailments and mental depressions are the result of this uncontrolled power working against us when we could easily be using it to our advantage.
Hypnotism is neither metaphysics nor religion, although it does explain the miraculous cures effected by sincere faith healers. It is not contrary to the teachings of any major religions, and is in fact, used in most of them.
Any thought or idea repeated at length in solemn surroundings deepens faith by subconscious affirmation, and this is hypnosis.
You are hypnotized to some degree every day of your life. While reading an interesting book, while watching TV, or any time when your conscious mind is absorbed, your subconscious is more vulnerable.
Fear of hypnotism is gradually giving way to acceptance by a more enlightened society. Doctors are finally accepting it as a valuable therapy in the treatment of the symptoms of psychosomatic diseases.