What exactly is hypnosis?
Hypnosis is a treatment option that may help you cope with and treat different conditions.
To do this, a certified hypnotist or hypnotherapist guides you into a deep state of relaxation (sometimes described as a trance-like state). While you’re in this state, they can make suggestions designed to help you become more open to change or therapeutic improvement.
Trance-like experiences aren’t all that uncommon. If you’ve ever zoned out while watching a movie or daydreaming, you’ve been in a similar trance-like state.
What hypnosis isn’t!
True hypnosis or hypnotherapy doesn’t involve swaying pocket watches, and it isn’t practised on stage as part of an entertainment act.
How does hypnosis work?
During hypnosis, a trained hypnotist or hypnotherapist induces a state of intense concentration or focused attention. This is a guided process with verbal cues and repetition.
The trance-like state you enter may appear similar to sleep in many ways, but you’re fully aware of what’s going on.
While you’re in this trance-like state, your therapist will make guided suggestions designed to help you achieve your therapeutic goals.
Because you’re in a heightened state of focus, you may be more open to proposals or advice that, in your normal mental state, you might ignore or brush off.
When the session is complete, your therapist will wake you from the trance-like state, or you will exit it on your own.
It’s unclear how this intense level of inner concentration and focused attention has the impact it does and there in lies the magic.
- Hypnotherapy may place the seeds of different thoughts in your mind during the trance-like state, and soon, those changes take root and prosper.
- Hypnotherapy may also clear the way for deeper processing and acceptance. In your regular mental state, if it’s “cluttered,” your mind may be unable to absorb suggestions and guidance.