How Hypnosis Works
Hypnosis is now a mainstream self improvement tool. It has received excellent medical accreditation, and is now more accepted as an efficient way to treat a range of psychological and physical disorders as well aiding in the general pursuit of goals and the growing trend for “mindset mirroring” where hypnosis helps the listener tap into the type of mindset common to someone who is already successful in an area they want to pursue.
What is Hypnosis?
This definition comes from Wikipedia:
Hypnosis is “a special psychological state with certain physiological attributes, resembling sleep only superficially and marked by a functioning of the individual at a level of awareness other than the ordinary conscious state.” One theory suggests that hypnosis is a mental state, while another theory links hypnosis to imaginative role-enactment.
But to give our own explanation and bring things to be a little more down to earth here is our definition:
Simply put hypnosis is a state you experience every day. You experience it while you are so into doing something that nothing else exists for you in the world. For example, you are experiencing a mild hypnotic state while you are reading a good book or watching a engaging movie, or even while you are talking to someone and at the time feel like you are the only two people in the world.
Submerging yourself purposefully from that mild hypnotic state into a deeper one is done in order to deal with problems or simply to change yourself faster and better than through other means. You can either go to a hypnotist or get an mp3 or cd with recorded hypnotic audio that helps with your particular issue.
How it Works
Hypnosis works because it is able to rewire your old and negative thought patterns and change them to the ones that are useful for you by planting positive thoughts during a hypnotic trance.
While you are in hypnotic trance (again, as discussed above – this is a perfectly natural state), your conscious mind does not interfere with changes you are making within, and thus you are capable of transforming yourself in what seems like a blink of an eye, especially compared to more traditional ways with which we try to change ourselves.
It was interesting to find out that when a brain of a person under hypnosis is scanned, the patterns we can see are the same as the patterns we see in young children during the ages when anything they hear, see or read easily sticks into their minds. We may refer to this as accelerated learning, and because we easily soak up knowledge under hypnosis is another reason why we can make fast changes within ourselves.
One common myth that many people fear, at least those who have not had the pleasure of deliberately inducing a hypnotic state yet, is that while they are in a hypnotic state, that they will not be aware of anything and the hypnotist can command them to do whatever he wants while they would have no chance of objecting.
This is far from the truth; in fact it is the exact opposite of what goes on during a hypnotic session, as when you are hypnotized you are actually more aware of yourself and your surroundings, and that is the exact reason hypnosis is becoming such a popular way to deal with your problems.
To recap, during a hypnotic trance you are completely aware of everything that’s going on, and you are able to stop the process at will if for some reason you may wish to.
Hypnosis for Health
Hypnosis can help you naturally deal with various health issues, phobias and addictions like weight loss, fear of spiders, dogs, heights or dentists, it can help you stop smoking, boost your immune system or get a good nights rest and even relief pain.
Hypnosis helps naturally alleviate your problems as it deals with them inside the subconscious mind by changing your negative beliefs; for example hypnosis can change the negative belief that dogs want to hurt you, when in essence they feel your fear and mimic it back, and, like humans, what they are afraid of they want to run from or eliminate.
Hypnosis would, in this case, help you remain calm, cool and confident in the presence of dogs, and you would eventually grow even more confidence based on positive experience, something that turns into an awesome circle of having good experiences with dogs and thus growing even more confident around them, thus having more confidence, etc.
Hypnosis for Achieving Goals
Apart from helping you with issues related to health, hypnosis is also good at helping you to rewire your mind so that you can achieve your goals both easier and faster.
Hypnosis accomplishes this by increasing your overall confidence and motivation, eliminating procrastination, self sabotage or fears of both success and failure. Hypnosis also helps you enhance your mind by helping you concentrate easier, have a better focus and memory and by allowing your creative side to show at will.
Like with health related issues hypnosis can help with, this is done in a natural, non obtrusive way. This means that you agree to be hypnotized beforehand and know exactly how the particular session will help you change for the better.
One example to this may be a way in which hypnosis might help you concentrate. If you lack the focus in your daily life, you can put yourself in a trance like (hypnotic) state we already discussed in the how hypnosis works section of this page. From there you would be extremely focused and aware of what is stopping you from concentrating, and can thus change this part of yourself by sheer will while in hypnotic state, with the end result being that you will find yourself easily able to concentrate in situations that you just couldn’t before.
Hypnosis for Mirroring Success / Acquiring the Success Mindset
Yet another huge area hypnosis is successful in helping people you achieve their goals is by replacing the negative, limiting beliefs people have about success, money and rich people like businessmen and entrepreneurs.
It can help you mimic true leaders and thus you can become a great leader and communicator yourself, and even further hypnosis can help you deal with the fear of public speaking and even improve your organizational skills.
Once again, all of this is done naturally, just by allowing yourself to be submerged in a hypnotic trance that you would find yourself in every days anyway, just a bit deeper.
Once you are in that state, what is left to do is find the limiting beliefs you have about success and what successful people have to do in order to get to where they are, and replace those limiting and often negative beliefs with positive ones that will serve you well into the future and allow you to be as successful as you wish with nothing left to hold you back, at least internally.
More In-Depth Explanations
This is actually just scratching the surface, and is a very general look at hypnosis – within the categories below, we take a much deeper look into how hypnosis can help in more specific ways:
Health
Weight Loss
Personal Development
Confidence
Productivity
Mind Enhancement
Business Success
Phobias
Confidence With Men
Confidence With Women
Law Of Attraction
Money Mindset
Success Mindset
External References
What is Hypnosis - About.com article on what hypnosis is. How Hypnosis Works - HowStuffWorks uncovers how hypnosis works. Research on Hypnosis - Take a look at some case studies where hypnosis helped people deal with various issues, such as to give up smoking, lose weight or reduce anxiety, among others. A Brief History Of Hypnosis - Learn about the history of hypnosis and how it became what it is today.