What Is Hypnosis?
Guess what? There’s no magic or mystique about hypnosis. You may be surprised to hear that you actually are in that natural but altered state quite often during a regular day, like when you daydream behind the wheel of your car. Let me explain…
It’s simply the act of relaxing you out of your busy conscious mind and into your own inner, subconscious mind, and you can even learn to do it yourself. It’s a process of simply refocusing your conscious mental attention (busy beta waves) from being on the outside world, slowing them down (to alpha or theta), and redirecting your attention. That’s it! It’s like going into meditation except you’ll want to have communication and responsiveness with your subconscious mind when you get there. The bottom line is, all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. You are directing your own mind.
There are a lot of myths and misconceptions that have been created over the years, especially with all of the stage acts seen in the entertainment field. Here is the truth of how hypnosis works:
- First of all, you are always conscious – because you are not unconscious! It’s always “on.” The process is a cooperative one during which time you become refocused as to where you chose to redirect your attention. That means – all those stage hypnotists never really had any “power over” their volunteers after all. All that entertainment is done with the client cooperating. He or she willingly takes suggestions since hypnosis cannot make you do or say anything you don’t want to do or say. You are always in complete control!
- It surprised me the first time I was hypnotized because I didn’t think I was hypnotized. I knew I was totally aware of what was going on the whole time, and I also remembered everything when I was done. I figured that can’t be hypnosis since I was still under the misconception that it was some kind of mind control. Now I know that just can’t happen. In fact, I realized I had the power to just open my eyes anytime I wanted. I could also share what I wanted, or not share, or make anything up. It was totally up to me. But I knew I was there for a reason and wanted to reach my goal.
- I also found that hypnosis allows us to tap into what’s stored in the subconscious when we are helped to focus there. It has an amazing amount of information and capability when you think about it. Did you know the subconscious is what guides our whole autonomic nervous system? That’s the automatic functioning we take for granted like breathing and digestion, etc. It also is the storehouse of all memories – that’s all memories – even the ones we don’t seem to recall, or those that are suppressed or even repressed. And yet it never lets you remember more than you can handle. Isn’t that amazing?
- Hypnosis can also let you tap into your emotions, creativity and imagination. The subconscious holds those jobs as well! It’s all in there to work with, once you can get past that analytical conscious mind. You have such amazing untapped power, and it’s all accessible to you whenever you are ready and willing to go there!