General Information about Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis

– it’s not what you think!

Unlike Stage Hypnosis, which is for entertainment purposes, Hypnotherapy with me is entirely therapeutic. The aim is to help clients achieve their goals and to make their life more enjoyable.

Contrary to popular belief, a Hypnotherapist cannot control you or make you do things against your will. They can, however, tap into and work with you to connect to the parts of you that seem to be unconscious and influence your behaviour. Hypnotherapy can also be used for deep inner healing that is otherwise difficult to do using our left logical brains.

In Hypnotherapy most people remain awake, aware and in control. Usually you will be fully able to see, hear, talk and remember. Some people do enter into a deeper trance state where they feel as if they were asleep. Personally I prefer my clients to remain awake and in an Alpha or Theta state rather than deep sleep Delta. In order to benefit from hypnotherapy, you need to be in a natural state of mind, which utilises the power of your focussed attention and imagination to help provide beneficial change.

Hypnosis goes deep, to the inner store-house of our beliefs and learned responses, which is why it has found wide acceptance in treating disorders such as over-eating and smoking. By getting where the addiction lies hypnosis can suppress the addiction and replace it with positive behaviour. The reason it works is because so much of our behaviour is automatic and unconscious, stemming from our limbic brain, amygdala or right brain (nobody really knows but there are many hypothoses). These responses are often illogical and defy our conscious choices.

During this relaxed state, called ‘trance’, there is a heightened susceptibility to beneficial suggestion and a much improved memory with access to ‘forgotten’ or repressed memories stored in the unconscious of the mind. It is these qualities of the hypnotic state that can be readily used for therapeutic purposes. In itself the hypnotic state is very pleasant and my clients often liken it to feeling as if they have had an all over massage from the inside out.

There are many ways that hypnotherapists work, so let me describe my own methods. I will never even suggest that I could control your mind or behaviour. I would not want you to believe that (because if you did, I could!). No, I want you to learn to resist other people’s mind control and to control your OWN mind. I want you to only accept suggestions that you have already decided are for your own good. It is a fact that you (we) have already been hypnotised all over the shop by socialisation, the media, our parents, our peers and, mostly, our own (often warped) perceptions.

It is my belief that we must all first be de-hypnotised. We must ‘unlearn’ the patterns and beliefs that are keeping us disempowered in order to fully grasp the power and creativity of our own minds.