The term hypnosis comes from the Greek word sleep, hupnoein. However, hypnosis is nothing like sleep but is rather like a relaxed state of hyperconcentration.

We often go through life with certain mental blockages and we haven’t the slightest idea where they come from or how to change them. The millions of bytes of information in the subconscious mind control, in part, what we do and our daily choices. In a hypnotic state, the body relaxes completely and the subconscious mind becomes accessible. This means memories, beliefs and, in a way the programs in our brains that keep us from fully appreciating life, are within easy reach. Once problems have been “unrooted” at their origins, the brain’s natural resources can be exploited to find tools that are better adapted to our current lives.

We could compare the human brain to a computer. When you look at your desktop, it appears as though there’s nothing much going on. In reality, there are a whole host of programs running in the background. It’s the same with us. Even if we look like we’re just sitting, doing nothing, there are thousands of “programs” running at any given moment in our subconscious minds. With hypnotherapy, we’ll go find which programs are preventing you form moving forward in your life. It’s these old programs, or system “bugs” that keep us from doing what we want to do, despite our best efforts.

The subconscious mind is the driving force in our lives. Willpower can only get you so far (just ask any dieter!). Eventually, your unconscious programming will take over. It’s a little like the conscious mind is like a fly at a window. The subconscious mind is the window itself. The fly wants to go outside but as long as the window doesn’t want to open, it’ll never happen. The window isn’t being obtuse or mean – on the contrary, the window simply wants to protect the fly at any price. The problem comes from the fact that the window closed during a rainstorm because it wanted to keep the fly from drowning or getting hurt. The fact that today just happens to be a beautiful sunny day doesn’t get through to the subconscious because of its inherent fear of danger. Oh sure, it might be sunny now, but what if it rains in half an hour?

In hypnotherapy we’ll ask the window why it doesn’t want to open. Once we get a response, we can suggest a better, more updated way to protect the fly by showing it that it’s not raining now and that the fly knows enough to come inside if raindrops start to fall.

What it’s Like
Hypnosis is rarely what we expect it to be the first time. You’re fully conscious and in control of your environment when in trance. You’ll never do anything you don’t want to do or say anything you don’t want to say. Everything you said during your session will stay in your mind – there’s no hypno-induced amnesia going on! Often, people wonder if they were really in a hypnotic trance – then they look at the time and realise the fifteen minutes they thought they were hypnotised was really an hour and a half! It bears mentioning that emotions come to the surface more readily, too. This is only because we’re venturing into the right hemisphere of the brain where our emotions and imaginations reside.

Our brains literally slow down when we’re hypnotised. The electronic frequencies of the brain slow to a speed that is just above those of sleep.

As you can see, we actually go into hypnotic trance twice a day – when we fall asleep at night and when we wake up in the morning. Our brains slow down to a level of hypnotic trance before falling asleep or waking up!