“Hypnosis is the epitome of mind-body medicine. It can enable the mind to tell the body how to react,
and modify the messages that the body sends to the mind.” -New York Times
There are many misconceptions about Hypnosis that most people have heard throughout time. Here’s the truth. Hypnosis is a totally natural state that we enter into every day. As I explain to my clients, Hypnosis happens when our conscious and subconscious minds are functioning together. As we enter into this state we are in a brain wave where we have the greatest ability to learn, create new pathways in our brain and rewire old outdated pathways.
Hypnosis is a state where the conscious and subconscious minds are both functioning. When the subconscious mind is open there is a hole that can be used to feed the subconscious mind with suggestions to change. It is a time when the rational, intelligent, thinking mind can “speak” to the subconscious mind. It is at this time we can begin to rewrite the programming and delete the old programs. In hypnosis, the mind is open for new learning and highly receptive to things that the conscious mind wants to change.
To understand more let’s take a look at how the brain functions a little more close up. As you are reading this you are currently in a state of full consciousness. This state where we have willpower, thinking, motivation and rationality makes up the minority of our brain power. You may have heard that we use only 10-12% of our brain. Well, that is not quite true. In actuality, we use 10-12% of our brain for consciousness. The rest is functioning in our subconscious mind. That seems strange that so little of our brain functions for the most important part of our personalities. So let me explain a little more about the reason for the subdivision of our mind.
As we are developing from birth we come into this world with a blank slate in our minds with the exception of the functions needed to keep our tiny selves alive. From before we were born our
autonomic nervous system (which is part of the subconscious mind) controls the beating of our hearts, the breathing (yes we mimic a breathing function in utero) digestion and reflexes. These things have been “preprogrammed” in order for us to survive. Without a foundation to build upon, the conscious mind is unable to do the “higher thinking” that we take for granted. So we build a model to the world so that we can learn to interpret our experiences in an organized way.
As we experience life and sensory input we begin to learn things we like and grow to understand what we don’t like.
We learn that a hug from our Mother is pleasurable and that falling down on our knees hurts and we would like to try to avoid that. As our model of the world and experiences grows we begin to formulate patterns of behaviors that will create desired outcomes. After a while, we begin to have more independent thought and the conscious mind is completely formed (usually between the ages of 6 and 8). All the while we have been storing experience in our subconscious mind. In our subconscious mind, we have been creating routines of automatic behavior that guides us through our everyday lives.
Automatic behaviors include things like learning to walk, to talk, to feed ourselves, to control our excretory functions, to express our feeling and so many more things. If we had to think consciously of the sequence of events that have to happen to stand up and walk we would not be able to do anything else. But as a young child, we were able to master these sequences and put together a routine for our subconscious mind to run to accomplish the task. The subconscious mind is a storehouse of routines and pattern and automatic behaviors that help us function in our daily lives.
There are many times when we wish to change to established programs we are running in our subconscious mind. When we wish to lose weight or quit a bad habit or learn how to deal better with the stress in our lives or create more money in our lives the subconscious attempts to keep the status quo.
The subconscious is very happy to keep our routine habits the same day in and day out. As many people know, it takes 21 to 30 days to change a habit or a routine. Over that period of time, the subconscious will attempt to put things back the way they were prior to your attempts to change. And unless we keep the habit or behavior that we are changing in the conscious mind all the time over that period of 21-30 days we will fall naturally back into the old routine. The willpower of the conscious mind is indeed overmatched by the pre-established routines of the subconscious.
Think of just trying to change a simple thing as which hand you use to place the key into the lock for the door to your house. You can open the door with either hand but you will most certainly use one hand an overwhelming percentage of the time. And when you do need to use the other hand; like in an instance when you have the other hand holding something you cannot put down, you will have to consciously think about how to do this thing you do automatically every day. For the majority, try to write with your opposite hand. It is extremely difficult if not nearly impossible and requires focus to do so. This is how hard it can be to change a habit or behavior.
As a Clinical Hypnotherapist, it is my job assist all people to become more highly suggestible to themselves. In a trance, state clients are able to access the autonomic nervous system (breathing, heart rate, pain receptors) to bring the subconscious mind into unison with conscious mind with the assistance of the hypnotist. This creates a suggestible state where the client is able to create change. My job as a Hypnotherapist is to listen and learn how to speak to their subconscious mind and assist the client to use their conscious mind to create change. Most hypnotic suggestions last only 7-10 days. That is the reason I suggest to my clients that they have a minimum of 4 sessions (1 session each week covering 21-30 days) to create and reinforce lasting change. Where traditional talk therapy addresses only the conscious mind, it created change slowly and requires months or years of therapy.
Hypnotherapy acts rapidly on the issues and creates lasting change in just a few sessions. Of course, it is always your choice as to what type of therapy you feel comfortable with.
Take some time and check out my profile on Healingclouds.com. This platform has allowed me to work with and help people in different countries on different continents. It is a really exciting thing to be involved with and I am so proud to be one of the many practitioners on the site. The great thing is that this site allows the client to find a practitioner and a modality that works best for their situation and provides a safe and secure place for sessions to occur. I’m looking forward to the continued growth of Healingclouds.com and meeting so many wonderful people from all over this planet.
