We must first realize that hypnosis is a very natural state. There is nothing mystical, mysterious, or magical about it ! Most people go in and out of hypnosis three to five times a day. If you have ever daydreamed, you’ve experienced hypnosis. If you have ever driven your car on a highway and then suddenly realized you passed your exit two exits ago, you’ve experienced hypnosis. If you have ever been so engrossed in a movie or a TV show and not noticed that someone was trying to talk to you, you’ve experienced hypnosis.

Hypnosis is nothing more then an extremely relaxed state. While in hypnosis you hear everything and you are in complete control. As a matter of fact, all hypnosis is actually self-hypnosis. The hypnotist is nothing more then a guide. The success of hypnosis is directly dependant on the person’s willingness to want to change their habits.

So why do we need hypnosis to bring on change? To understand this we need to understand the mind. There are three basics parts to the mind concerning hypnosis.

First the unconscious mind. This controls parts of your body such as your breathing, your heart rate, and your immune system. This is not an area that the hypnotist is concerned with or utilizes.

The second part is your conscious mind. That is where you are right now as you read this email. This is the part of the mind that rationalizes and analyzes everything you do. Right now you are analyzing what I am writing as well as rationalizing whether it makes sense. It’s also where your working memory resides; remembering your kid’s names, your birth date or even the names of people you know resides in this area. Lastly it is where your will power resides. When you make a conscious effort to change something, “I want to quit smoking” it is made in this area. I will get into why this doesn’t work in a moment.

The last part of the mind is the subconscious mind. The subconscious is extremely powerful. It makes us into who are what we are. The subconscious has four major parts and flawed characteristic.

First is our permanent memory. Everything that we have heard, felt or seen since the point of our conception is stored in this part. That’s right from the point of conception. This is the part many people have a difficult time believing, but I assure you it is true. Through hypnosis you could actually go back and relive your 5th birthday all over again.

The second part is habits. This is where our good and bad habits come from.

The third part is self-preservation. The subconscious will protect us from dangers that are real or imagined. This is very important to understand.

The fourth part is emotions. When we get into an emotional situation the conscious mind parts like the red sea and we act out solely on our emotions, with the parting of our conscious mind goes our analytical and rational mind. Think of an emotional situation you’ve been in. After the situation you may have calmed down and said to yourself, “why did I say that?” You said that because your mind was working solely off the subconscious emotion without the rationalization of the conscious mind.

Now the flawed characteristic is that the subconscious is very lazy. It doesn’t want to make the changes necessary to bring about a positive change in your life. I’ll discuss how we get by that in a moment.

Now realize, as I said, the subconscious is our permanent memory, everything that has happened to us since our inception is recorded there. It also makes us into who we are. The subconscious also take everything literally; remember your analytical and rational is located in the conscious. For example, imagine you are very young and your brother or sister hides in the closet and jumps out and scares you half to death. After a brief terrifying second you realize it’s your sibling and you both wander off laughing. Your subconscious remembers being terrified. It doesn’t utilize the analytical part of the mind that realized it was just your sibling, so if something down the road reminded the subconscious of the event, it will go into self-preservation mode to try and protect you. It will do whatever it has to get you out of that situation.

The subconscious, as I said, makes us into who we are. When we are infants, or some even believe when we are a fetus, we have a wide-open perception of the world. Our subconscious is literally a blank slate, or an un-programmed hard drive, if you’re a computer type. It’s at this moment that our subconscious creates a perception of who we are going be. It does this by gathering the information fed to us by the people closest to us, our parents. So if your father or mother told you,” you’ll never grow up and amount to anything,” your subconscious mind would accept this as its basic programming and begin to build on that programming even though in our analytical mind we may know it’s flawed..

Picture if you will an invisible barrier between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. This is known as the critical factor (or some people may call it the critical faculty). It “protects” the subconscious from suggestions that do not match its programming. It also diverts suggestions into the conscious mind where it can be rationalized and analyzed. So as in the example above, if someone were to say to that person,” you’re a wonderful human being and you will get far in life,” The suggestion would be blocked by the critical factor because it doesn’t match the programming written by the parent who said, “you will never grow up and amount to anything.” But here’s where it gets uglier. If someone were to come along and say,” you’re so stupid, you’ll be lucky to make it to eighteen.” The critical factor recognizes that this matches the initail programming, and lets it in freely. So not only does it enter your subconscious, but it also reinforces, compounds if you will, the original suggestion. This means that every negative thought or suggestion given will continuously compound the original “faulty” programming.

To picture this, imagine cans stacked in a pyramid, like they used to do in grocery stores. The base is very wide, and at the top is one can. Now imagine you flipped that stack over so the one can was at the bottom and the very wide base was at the top. The single can represents the initial suggestion, or it could represent an initial event. Each negative suggestion that entered your subconscious compounds the original suggestion or event, and the base gets wider and wider.

The subconscious will do what it has to protect its programming. Take the example above. This child may have problems in school, because the subconscious perception is he or she is stupid, and will never get far. The child may get diagnosed with ADD or become hyperactive. A doctor will treat the ADD or Hyperactive with drugs. So the subconscious will create something else, maybe have the child develop other destructive behaviors such as drugs, promiscuity, or skip class, anything to help the child match what it perceives as normal.

So how do we stop this viscous cycle? Through hypnosis. Through hypnosis we can by pass the critical factor find the initial event and reprogram the subconscious. Hypnotists use different approaches to make this happen, such as direct suggestion, age regression, parts therapy, ideo-motor therapy, forgiveness therapy, etc. It is all toward the same goal, which is to desensitize the harmful event that caused the viscous cycle. Once this is done, just like pulling out the bottom can on our reverse stack of cans, the whole thing comes crashing down. That is why most people describe, “a tremendous weight lift from their chest,” immediately following a session.

Hypnosis is a process and not an event. Finding the destructive programming is part of the goal and process, giving you relief from whatever it is that is holding you back in your life is the ultimate goal. Many of these point can be explained in much more detail and when we meet you will have a thorough understand of how hypnosis works before you leave the office.