What is hypnotherapy?
The difficulty in a world that requires concrete facts as proof is that to measure hypnosis is not an easy task; essentially it is not quantifiable when compared to physiological matters like measuring heart or respiratory rate.
Tests are based on psychological scales and through physiological means, but the real problem lies in that hypnosis itself challenges these parameters because it is an individual experience.
Some people will be brought back from hypnosis feeling that they have experienced a life-changing phenomenon whilst others will just feel relaxed but not vastly different from their pre-hypnotic state.
Hypnosis can enhance your concentration and increase your responsiveness to suggestion in order to make the beneficial changes that you may wish to make in your thought patterns, behaviours or physiological state.
Hypnosis is a completely natural state and occurs naturally several times a day for each and every one of us. Have you ever been driving somewhere and completely forgot the journey? This is because your “Subconscious” is a storage system for information that has been passed through and accepted by your “Conscious” brain, your subconscious permits you to perform a learned task or behaviour, without consciously thinking about it, giving your conscious mind time to focus on planning and making decisions about your day and future. This is what we sometimes call “Day dreaming”, and creates the same brainwave pattern as hypnosis.
This state of “Daydreaming” is what a hypnotherapist is trying to help you achieve with relaxation and suggestion. At no point will a hypnotherapist have power or control over another person. A hypnotherapist is simply a skilled person guiding another into self-hypnosis.
When you achieve a hypnotic state, your subconscious becomes accessible and responds to positive suggestion as if it were real, creating a new positive experience or positive pathway in your subconscious mind. With repetition this new suggestion will be accepted as true and reality.
In today’s society we find it very hard to achieve a state of quiet where the body is fully relaxed and the mind is empty of negative or worrying thoughts; however, the state of hypnosis with its associated relaxation makes it one of the most useful non-pharmacological processes known to mankind.