Hypnosis is defined as a deep state of relaxation enabling effortless selective thinking. What this means is that the client becomes so relaxed that they naturally lose awareness of their surroundings and concentrate 100% on the concepts the therapist is talking about. It is actually a completely natural state which most people achieve for themselves on a very regular basis. If you daydream, you have hypnotised yourself. If you are engrossed in a film or a book, you are in a state of hypnosis. If you drive somewhere, and don’t remember parts of the journey, you were hypnotised. Every time you go to sleep or wake up, you transition through a hypnotic state.
It is because the client usually hears every word that the therapist says that clients often claim that ‘it didn’t work’. However, there are clear signs that clients are in hypnosis, so the therapist is much better placed to make that judgement. Clients will hear what the therapist says whether they are hypnotised or not. Hypnotised people are generally unaware of their surroundings, so they appear to the uninitiated to be asleep, but they are actually in a heightened state of awareness. It is because people confuse hypnosis with a sleep-like state that they think that hearing the therapist signifies that they weren’t hypnotised.
It is possible, and not uncommon, for a client to transition from hypnosis to sleep during a therapy session, but it is only the conscious mind that sleeps – the sub-conscious is still listening, and the therapy still works.
The significance of the hypnotic state is that the Conscious Critical Faculty is suspended, and this has two hugely important implications. Firstly, it allows new programs to be installed in the Sub-conscious, such as ‘I deserve to be treated with love and respect’, or ‘I only eat and drink what my body truly needs’. Secondly, it allows access to memories and emotions that have been deeply buried – once expressed they can be released, and they lose their toxic effect on us.
Given that it is pretty much impossible to get to adulthood without picking up a few (or a lot of!) unhelpful core beliefs, there are very few people who would not benefit from Hypnotherapy, and quite a few whose lives could be absolutely transformed.